Your Holistic Pregnancy

I want to invite you into a world unknown to most women.

A world where possibilities for pregnancy exist, a world where trouble trying to conceive doesn’t result in an IVF sentence, a world where you feel so sure of your body’s ability to birth and breastfeed your baby not even the power of the Earth could shake this belief from you.

Creating the birth of your dreams - more than a birht plan checklist

I want to invite you into this world of creating your dream pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding experience because it will involve you walking through a secret door, yes imagine Alice in Wonderland theme here!

I want to invite you into this magical motherhood world because the majority of your doctors, nurses, and family members won’t even know to let you know it exists!

Before we journey into this world together, first take my hand, so I can show you the world I came from.

My Birth Doula and NICU NURSE Story

I spent my early career as as nurse in a level 4 NICU taking care of some really sick babies. I could never fully wrap my head around why these babies had such a hard start to life and I hated that most were so heavily medicated at just minutes old.

Jen Ciszewski - former NICU nurse, birth doula and lactation breastfeeding consultant kansas city — (my health was taking a DOWNHILL turn at this time)

Sweet baby girl getting discharged!

I started to become intrigued with reading the birth history in the baby’s chart. I became fascinated with what mom went through or had experienced in her own body before baby arrived. For most of these babies, if mom would have had better health or a better birth it appeared likely the baby could have avoided a NICU stay just a few hours after birth.

It was heartbreaking for these mommas to have to surrender their precious newborn baby to the radiant warmers, IV pumps, and sterile gloves of the hospital intensive care nursery. These mommas wanted to be home skin to skin with their babies nursing into oblivion, but instead they were rocking in a cold hospital rocker about two feet from their infant’s hospital bed drifting to sleep by the sound of beeping hospital alarms, so what happened?

our modern birth machine

Allow me to invite you deeper into the birth machine I have witnessed ravage mother’s ideal experiences by three main points…

PLEASE NOTE: this is a summarized synopsis of the cases I saw along with the education I have now. This article is in no way intended to diagnose, treat, or make medical recommendations without the individual consultation of an experienced provider.

1. Hormonal imbalance in pregnancy

The majority of mommas with tiny weeny little ones in the hospital just after delivery were not educated, informed, nor empowered about their own bodies.

23 week old babies just aren’t born spontaneously unless momma’s body is having a tough time carrying the pregnancy.

Ironically, allopathic medicine does not hold all of the answers and sometimes bed rest just isn’t going to cut it!

Often times these mommas are experiencing extreme hormonal imbalance and would benefit from immediate bioidentical progesterone therapy along with a complete overhaul in their routine OB visits including nutritional therapy, pelvic floor training and nervous system healing.

2. early medical intervention during birth

These mommas were not educated, informed, or empowered about their own birth.

Fear and time constraints are the narratives of the modern birth world.

The current model teaches women their bodies are dependent on interventions to birth without complications instead of the transparent truth - many times it’s the cookie cuter conveyer belt of a birth system that is pumping Pitocin before baby is ready to be born and surgically removing infants unnecessarily.

Listen, I have SEEN IT HAPPEN.

A preconceived notion that a momma was putting her baby at jeopardy because she chose to not start labor within the recommended time for spontaneously ruptured membranes (her water breaking). The baby was in what I determine appropriate fetal distress during contractions and because the provider had it in her mind from the start this baby was going to be unwell because of mom’s choice not to be induced after her water broke (provider’s own brainwashing) - at 10 cm and 100% effaced the doctor asked the mom to elect for a C section because baby was having perceived complications of stress and fever. Instead of a few more pushes, they rushed mom to the OR and baby was born via C section, perfectly health, with no fever nor signs of distress. I could not believe what I was seeing. As the doula, mom and dad asked me what they should do. It is our role as doulas never to give suggestions, rather inform and empower based on both sides of the evidential coin.

Mom looked at me and said I know my baby is fine, and I feel like this doctor won’t deliver him without a C section. They tried talking to the provider again and the doctor told them “mom, you’re burning baby’s precious time here”. I was disgusted to say the least and the parents knew full well what had occurred. Sure as the doula I could have advocated further, but to who??

When the head hospital hancho is running the show who is there to intervene?

The birth business is a broken system-we can empower ourselves with information before we enter the system so we feel safe no matter where we bring our babies into the world.

The happy news is, this momma had her second baby, same provider, same place, very similar scenario and she chose a different option that led to her most desirable outcome! Witnessing her again was such a beautiful reclamation of her power!

3. stigma around home birth

The majority of these mommas had succumbed to obstetrician-invoked home birth stigma.

I remember sitting bedside one night working in the NICU while a few nurses joked about the home birth patient that was being transferred to our unit (this is not a reflection of all nurses on that unit I know for sure, solely the few I observed).

“The midwife was probably blowing bubbles in the home birth pool while the baby was unconscious, without a clue.”

Something struck me as off about this statement very early in my nursing career, having no education surrounding alternative birth locations for women, I wasn’t sure quite what it was.

Now, I can see the message clearly portrayed, if you give birth anywhere but in the hospital you are uneducated as a mom or incompetent as a provider.

Woof. What a narrative we’re birthing our children into.

Birth place stigma

Why do I think this stigma exists? Not due to the nurses' bedside conversations in NICUs around the country actually, just as any system can become faulty, so has our birth system.

In several adept countries around the world..

Home birth is not a socioeconomic symbol,

Midwives are not inferior providers,

and doulas aren’t unrecognized volunteers.

All three are rooted in sacred feminine practices and ancient medicine secrets that have birthed humankind into this world long before the birth machine was built.

And mommas, no matter where you choose to birth, your birth room is a beautiful and sacred place, as long as YOU feel comfortable there.

hold up - Modern medicine praise!

Let’s back up a second, modern medicine is a beautiful thing. Our fallen world has morphed women’s bodies into psychologically abnormal states. I have seen cesarean sections save mom and baby, I have seen 21 week old babies live healthy lives after NICU interventions that saved their lives. We need our hospitals. Rather, our birth world is incredibly disorderly with a backward hierarchy of birthing needs.

The real problem is not viewing birth as a natural process

Our foods, our air, our water, and our hustle bustle society are all crashing progesterone levels, shortening cervixes, and attributing to symphysis pubic dysfunction impeding vaginal birth to name just a few. Therefore, it is only practical that we must create a medical system that can help take care of our dysfunction, in fact we have done just that.

However, this system has replaced the normative idea that birth is a natural and normal process within female physiology and only needs to be intervened with when a problem presents itself.

Yet we have nitrile gloves wrist-deep in women’s bodies and Pitocin is the first thing offered a nervous mom when she’s one day past her due date and not yet experiencing labor. We see moms condemned for declining interventions post-birth for their babies and left in the dark about how their bodies are truly designed to produce human milk during the postpartum period.

the best place to give birth

A woman gives birth best where she is most educated, empowered, and at ease. This is going to look very different for each and every single momma. The least we can do is offer her the various options without hierarchy or judgment.

happy new family - birth doula kansas city

If you feel like your pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding education has not been diversified nor personalized to your preferences, you are not alone.

There is a beautiful birth world that is inviting you into a magical motherhood experience.

happy new mom postpartum with newborn baby, birth doula kansas city

Whether this is your first baby, fifth baby, or you’re adopting a baby, this is a place where you belong. Where there is a logical and medical route for your heart’s desires, except in this world, nothing is kept a secret from you momma.