Supporting new parents is an absolute passion of mine. Acupuncture is a fantastic tool for the myriad of discomforts that come up throughout pregnancy, and is so very helpful for birth preparation - position of the fetus, physical ripening and softening of the cervix, addressing mental/emotional/spiritual readiness.
Acupuncture and acupressure are wonderful supports in labour - for pain relief, hastening dilation, optimizing baby's position and descent, strengthening contractions, re-energizing fatigued birthing parents. I love attending births and am happily available for in-home or hospital support when desired.
I offer postpartum support for breastfeeding challenges like milk production, blocked ducts, mastitis, and surgical and/or perineal/pelvic floor healing; with in-home or office visits. These treatments often involve acupuncture or acupressure, but also dietary, herbal, lifestyle support, and can also be geared towards baby if there's issues with digestion or colic.
I invite families to consider building your own pre and postpartum package, which might include:
Repositioning treatments for breech babies at 34+ weeks
Labour preparation - weekly in-office treatments at 38+ weeks
Prenatal in-office visit for acupressure in labour education (attend with a birth support person)
Birth Support - Home or office visit for acupuncture in early labor, follow up in advanced labour at home or in hospital if desired.
Postpartum home visits - acupuncture treatment, bodywork; breastfeeding support; herbal, dietary and lifestyle coaching.
...
It’s such a destabilising time of change and transformation at best ... and it’s often worse.
We’re thrown into this thing we’ve never done before, and often haven’t even seen done well before, and more often than not have very little physical support and help with. Our bodies are stretched and torn and cut open and swollen and inflamed, maybe prolapsed or incontinent. We have a gaping wound the size of a dinner plate on the inside of our uterus. Our nipples are chapped and cracked, and yes - sometimes bleeding. Our breasts are leaking and engorged or painful and blocked or infected. And if we can’t breastfeed our babies and we felt the desire to? There’s agony, there’s grief and loss. Even if your baby is fed formula by choice there’s all the never ending goddamn sterilisation of bottles and then having to warm them up while your infant screams with hunger. And nearly all parents get to experience a newborn waking up every 90 minutes in the early days - all night long. The potential for colic and the purple screaming and the shit explosions and so much vomit on pretty much everything.
This. This is the experience of new parenthood.
And it’s somehow pathological if new parents are anxious or depressed. We’ve also had a shift or loss of former identity through bringing life into the world, a process that can take time to grieve and re-orient to. While simultaneously experiencing torturous levels of sleep deprivation. And a never ending amount of often thankless and unpaid domestic labour.
And so much isolation for far too many of us.
...
And, a little sneak peak - I'm hoping to once again host Motherhood Circles in the fall! (Nonbinary primary caregiving parents welcome, too). Be in touch if you might be interested.
Come as you are. Bring your little ones, your unwashed hair, your rumpled clothes.
Cause we sure as fuck can't do it alone.
Wee ones welcome, tea will be on the stove.
Hope to see you two, too.