#335 | September Q&A: Boundaries with Family, Oversupply, Pushing Techniques, Preventing GBS Infection, HBAC, Failure to Descend, Waterbirth

I'm Cynthia Overgard, owner of HypnoBirthing of Connecticut, childbirth advocate and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the Down To Birth Podcast. Childbirth is something we're made to do. But how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

My goodness, we've been at our microphones a lot lately. Doesn't it feel like we're just

-- it feels like an appendage of my body right now.

-- it is requiring me to have a lot of shirts, right? I own a million tops, and you don't, and I don't know how that is. I don't know how that is. I have a funny thing about tops. I love to buy pants, and I'm willing to spend a lot of money on pants, because pants you can wear repeatedly. I could wear the same pair of pants three times in a week and have a different outfit every time. But for some reason, tops feel I have a hard time with them. I'm not a big blouse person. I like to wear a t shirt, a tank top, a sweater or a sweatshirt.

Yeah, you're in, you're in workout clothes a lot, or baggy, shapeless sweatshirts. You do that a lot too. Well. We're on YouTube now, and you're wearing a nice, vivacious red I think that's your favorite color, red shirt. I do like red. Yeah, good. And I haven't seen that one before.

That's because I've been trying out nuuly, which is a really fun way to actually rent clothing for a month. And you can try things that you don't really feel like being committed to for a long time, right? I forgot you do that. That sounds interesting. I would want to I wouldn't want to get attached. Like, if there's something I really like, I wouldn't want to have to just send it back. So I like, I prefer to own my clothes.

So as we often do, we usually begin these Q and A's with a little bit of a continuation of a conversation that we start on social media. And the other day, I was taking a bath, as I often do, although a lot less in the summertime, and there's a big spider in my tub. And I was like, um, well, what do I do? That's like, that's nothing to you, right? It's nothing. It's really nothing to me. Like, I don't, I don't want to kill a spider, and I just decided to be, yeah, get in the tub anyway. And the Spider was just hanging out in the tub with me. Yeah, see? Okay, exactly what I was thinking. That's not you. I didn't think you'd actually take a bath with it sitting there. But I know. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised.

I did contemplate it for a second, like, and then I was like, I screw it, whatever it'll it'll just crawl away. So I shared that, and I asked everybody who is afraid of spiders, because it's such a common fear, and more community is definitely afraid of spiders. But if not spiders, what else is your biggest fear? So do you know your biggest fear?

Well, I mean, I think there's like, existential fears, and I think there's just simple fears, yeah, and I don't know what everyone was answering to when I don't know what everyone was responding to when you asked the question. Ask the question. I used to have a fear of spiders when I was growing up. I i When if I saw a spider, I definitely had, like, a visceral aversion to it. And then I saw the movie, gosh, it was. It's an old movie now called arachnophobia, and by the end of the movie, I was completely desensitized to spiders, and I have never had that visceral reaction to them again at all. Interesting. They're just another bug to me now, yeah, I don't have any response at all because in the movie, you're so overexposed to spiders, I couldn't believe it was a wonderful benefit of watching that movie. Yeah. And I wonder how many other people had the same experience as I did. So I can't think of any other you know, fear in that category. I can't think of anything else that explains why I'm not afraid of spiders, because I have basically grown up living with them at summer camp, sleeping in old cabins and in the woods. And spiders are everywhere. So you're just not afraid of them, if you live amongst them. So anyway, a lot of people are afraid of spiders, but a few people submitted some other funny, interesting things that they are deathly afraid of that were surprising. Some were very expected. Okay, so we'll just go through a few for fun. One woman said algae growing on bridge pillars, and having to touch algae to survive, like one of random fear algae growing on bridge pillars, the specificity of it is incredible, but also that that she fears it. I guess she probably had some scary experience when she was little swimming, and like a creepy moss touched her leg, and I wonder what she thought of our spirulina and chlorella episode.

Really good for you. That stuff is the best, by the way. I still am on that every day. I love that stuff. Yeah, it's great. Anyway, okay, um, we actually had two people, yeah, say grasshoppers. Okay, I have really freight across hoppers. I have a crazy family story. My niece Monique, who you know and love. She's the one who living in Spain right now. She always got herself into just hilarious situations. I don't know how this happened, but when she was in high school, they had a lizard in a science class that they I don't remember what they did with lizard for a while, but at the end of the unit, the teacher, I think she was a senior. The teacher said, Does anyone want to own the lizard? And she was like, I'll take it. So she she took a lizard home. She had to frantically go to a pet store, like, buy something for the lizard, find out what they eat. And apparently they eat grasshoppers. So she bought a bag of 100 grasshoppers. Oh, dear. Okay, later that night, they're in the kitchen, like cooking dinner, and they heard a grasshopper. So they're like, Monique said, Oh no, my bag of grasshoppers must have opened. So she said to her sister, I'm going to look for the grasshopper, run to my bedroom and get the bag and like, we have to count how many grasshoppers are still in the bag. Her sister ran to the bedroom and came back and said, the bag is empty. The whole bag of a hunter grasshoppers.

Oh, my God. I feel sorry for the women who don't like grasshoppers, and they have to hear the story right now. They were in the house that they said that night, when they were all sleeping, there was just like this symphony of grasshoppers. I believe it okay. How big you rid of them? I don't remember. It's the story is 10 years old. Now, I just remember laughing so hard I couldn't contain myself. That's all I remember about it. I'll get the details from her again.

Well, this one woman said she's afraid of them because you never know which way they're going to jump. Now, imagine 100 of them loose in your house. That's wild. That's a crazy story, I know. All right, so stink bugs. They just stink, but they're not too scary. In my mind. These are a lot of bugs, algae bugs. Everyone's afraid of nature.

It's true. Roaches, wasps, um, you just have to open your doors more.

Like, why is nobody saying they're afraid of the twin girls in The Shining Ew, sorry. Movie is true. Someone said the wind, the afraid of the wind, like I said, it's howling and it's if the trees are blowing a hurricane, yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely ominous, yeah, definitely feels ominous.

Okay. OB, someone said, OB, GYN, there we go. That's what we're looking for.

Okay, no need to fear them. Just have an aversion. If you do, you might want to fear some of them, not all of them.

Just got to learn to manage them.

Mountain lions legit, although they are beautiful. When my feet don't touch where I'm swimming, I get that dark water. No, I mean, actually, in open natural waters, I get that. In a deep swimming pool, I don't get it at all. But in an open natural water. I totally understand that feeling, yeah, because you're imagining there's more life on under sea level than above, yeah. Well, don't bother me in the dark. And if you imagine all the life under sea level, there's so much more under sea level than above, it's it definitely can make you want to jump out of the water.

So that is, that is probably my biggest, like basic fear in life is the ocean at night. That really scares me. I love the ocean. I spend a lot of time in the ocean. I'll swim anywhere. I'll swim with sharks, but not after dark.

I grew up going to the ocean in summers. I never swam in the ocean at night. I don't know how anybody can I so admire the people who can I did it once I and it was. It's very It took a lot of bravery, but I got stung by Portuguese man war one time swimming in the ocean. And I think that's where that fear came from. Okay? And then they really the best. A lot of them are just bee you know, things like bees, snakes, underwater caves, underwater caves.

Who goes there who goes into underwater caves? Bad idea in her imagination, she does. It's a terrible place to be trapped. I guess that's what's going on. Yes, things that fly that are bigger than a fly and smaller than a bird, that's a lot of things that fly in that size. I mean, some of them are really intense, so I'm just skipping over those, like burning alive. We're going to skip that. Okay, there's one that I can't find that I have to have to finish on that I still remember that was hilarious, the car wash. A lot of people have that fear of the car wash.

Oh, do you know what I sort of have a fear of. I have a really good answer to this great let's hear it. I have a fear of walking down extraordinarily steep slopes. Because, when I was a child, yes, because, you know the scene in The Princess Bride, everyone does Yeah, and they roll down the hill when she Yeah, yeah. That happened to me when I was five years old. My family was driving, and we let the dog out. We had a Samoyed. We let dog out of the car, and my brothers and the dog went running down this steep hill. And I was like, always, you know, my story of my childhood was like running with my brothers and being the, you know, being behind and running up, I started running down the hill, and I don't know what happened. I was just Oh no. I didn't trip at all. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was I could feel myself losing I could feel losing myself to gravity. I could feel that I was leaning forward and that gravity was pulling the upper part of my body forward while I was running down, and I didn't have the consciousness of, like, how to run, to brace myself. They just ran because they were older and strong. They were really strong. And I was running, and I just went bumping and bouncing all the way down the hill. And, yeah, and I was once walking down a steep hill with my friend at Ker Palu, and we parked our cars at like, the top of a very steep hill, and you were you were supposed to walk the long way down. But she said, Let's just walk down this way. She went down this steep hill. And one of my funniest memories is I started walking down with her, and I just got scared halfway, and I was just standing halfway with my legs really far apart, bracing myself as if you were just gonna suddenly start tumbling down the hill. And I was afraid to take another step. And she walked out and looked back at me. She was like, What? What are you doing? And I was literally afraid to move. And all the cars were just slowly driving in and parking, and I was just in front of everybody with my arms out and my legs wide open.

Did you just turn around and go back up? Or No, I was halfway down. I was completely stranded, and I just froze, where did you go from there? I got my wits about me, and I was like, you can do this. I just had to use the mental focus. And I just, I got myself out of it by getting down the hill. But it scares me. That's something that that's something that scares me. Well, we will not go to San Francisco then, oh, I had no problem in San Francisco. That's not that bad. I'm talking like a steep natural terrain that is unusually like things no one has any business walking down. I like the where other humans are still comfortable. I lose my comfort level because I had a crazy experience with it when I was a kid. It was nuts. I and the best one of all, someone said, anything that is small enough to suddenly crawl into my vagina, what?

I guess spiders would fall into that category.

Okay, that that's a horrible thought. I think you guys are all a little too creative. Just settle down. Get your mind out of crawling things in the vagina and caves under the water. Just live. I mean, that is, yeah, if we get creative enough, we're going to freak ourselves out. This is, this is great. I like the creativity amongst our community all because you took a bath with a spider. Yep, I did, and I don't know where it ended up. It did leave, and it probably ended up in your hair, in my bed, right?

All right. On to the questions, okay.

Hi, ladies, my name is Addie, and while I'm not currently pregnant or trying to conceive, I have been listening to your podcast for about two and a half years, and my husband, husband and I are planning to start a family in the spring of 2027 spring of 2026 My question for you is, how do I navigate being the first in my family to have a home birth when I'm surrounded by negativity from both my family and his family? I've gotten to the point where I don't even bring it up, and I've set firm boundaries with anyone who has overstepped or given their criticism and thoughts when I wasn't asking. I. An example of what I'm up against. My sister is a labor and delivery nurse who thinks home birth is the most dangerous thing someone can do. As a side note, she's currently pregnant and doesn't even know the difference between folic acid and methylated folate, even with me sending her the studies. And on my husband's side, everyone talks about pregnancy and birth as if it's the worst thing ever. I constantly hear about how they push for an early induction just to get the baby out, and that they're over being fat, and that's not even counting my overbearing and intrusive mother in law, who believes that she should be allowed to bond with grandkids through bottle feeding immediately, she did do this with other grandkids. Thank you in advance. Love the show.

Oh, I worry about women like this, because no matter how strong she is. That is not going to be an easy family to have as in laws when she has a baby, what were you going to say? I was going to say, I think she should move, yeah. But it's the marriage. It's like, you really do marry someone's family and wow. First of all, the comment about fat, that's like, that's emotionally that says so much about someone if they talk about pregnancy as being fat, it's so negative, and then the mother in law having notions of how she's going to feed her grandchild, it's not going to be easy for her to be in that family.

Nope, but she's already taking the right steps. She said she is setting boundaries. That is obviously the first and most important thing to do. If that's not enough, I'm no joke about moving space creates a lot of protection from too much intrusion of family members, if you need it. But I think she should keep her birth plans to herself.

Oh, for sure, absolutely they don't need to know. No, it's really everything else. It's, How does her husband handle them? Because the thing that got me was she said she's already set boundaries, and she's still giving a list of things that are coming up and how they are. So there's just it's, yeah, so distance, yes, boundaries, yes. Probably setting expectations beforehand, yes. And I think she'll have to invoke her husband for sure, not to be the intermediary. I don't believe in that. I don't think he should ever speak for her. I think he should speak for himself about the boundaries that they're seeking when they have their baby. And he should be the one to say, Look, Mom, we're not looking for advice on how to feed the baby. We're not doing bottle feeding. I mean, there's no reason he can't say that. I do think it would be a mistake if he speaks for his wife and says, well, she's feeling this way and like she doesn't really like when people do that. I think that's a big mistake and undermines her. But he should just handle it.

Well. That's another really important point. The two of them really have to be on the same page on all of these things, because I completely agree that, you know, he needs to come from his full confidence, full belief, full voice. And he's going to set those boundaries. She will set her own boundaries, but he needs to be like the iron wall, right?

And then they can be like, you've never been the same since you met her. She changed. Oh, well, oh well, I guess so. Our takeaway is she's already on top of it. She's already managing a difficult family, or a family very much out of alignment with her and out of rapport with her as much as possible, so she can focus on what she can control. And I guess that's more on the marriage and on the marital boundaries and household boundaries.

What I think is great about situations like this is you can just let the actions speak for themselves. You can just let your parenting style, your birth experience, your baby, your relationship, speak for itself. You don't have to explain anything to your in laws about why you don't want to introduce bottles in the beginning. You just do and you let the actions speak for themselves.

It also said a lot that the sister in law works in the industry, so you know, the family is going to respect her opinion the most, but that this woman sent her information and research that her sister in law had no interest in. I just think that was just such an interesting detail. And am I surprised? No, but it says a lot. It what it shows you is she shouldn't waste her time trying to educate them, or at least show them her way of thinking, not that she has to educate anyone, but at least to say this is why we made this decision. I think that would be a mistake. Don't explain yourselves. That's, I think, a big mistake people make.

If you're if your information is falling on deaf ears. It's not worth your energy. If somebody's receptive and open, great, have the conversation. If they're not interested, just do and be who you are, and don't explain yourself and don't justify

Hello. This is Bella. I absolutely love to write the show. I actually had a question related to breastfeeding. I was a major over supplier with my first daughter, I quite literally filled up my deep freezer up three times on top of exclusively nursing my daughter. I'm not sure if it's something I maybe did in the early days of postpartum that caused the major oversupply, or if it's maybe just genetics, but I am. I'm pregnant with my second daughter, and I'm due in August, so I'm wondering if I'm going to have the same supply that I did with my first, or am I going to have the supply that's greater than I had with my first? I'm kind of scared to see how much of a big supply I'm going to have the second time around, I always hear that your supply with your second baby is always more than with your first. So I'm just kind of anxious to see but I'm just want to see your guys's comments on that. Thank you.

Well, I would really, I really wish I could get a little bit more information from her and ask her how she was collecting this milk that she filled her freezer with because the thing is about oversupply. If you are over producing milk initially, and you feel the need to relieve your breasts with some other form of relief other than your baby. So that could be a haka, that could be a milk collector, that could be a hand pump, or that could be a pump, or it could even just be your hand. I hear women all the time say I had I was just collecting the milk that was dripping. But anything that you are actually putting on your breast to collect milk is actually stimulating more milk production. So you can't really maintain an oversupply unless you are collecting the milk. You have to stop collecting the milk, and then your supply will regulate to the baby. So if you're exclusively feeding the baby at the breast, and you're not doing any other form of milk collection, if all your milk is going into your baby, you don't have an overspy. If you're storing milk, you're perpetuating an oversupply. So I'd just be really curious to know what she was doing that she didn't feel that her oversupply had anything to do with what she was doing, but somewhere it had to. And this is a really common misunderstanding that that women have. So yes, with her next baby, she will start off with a really abundant milk production. That's just how it works. If you made a lot of milk the first time, the second time you have a baby, the milk comes in, oftentimes even a little bit more abundantly, or at least faster, your body will adjust to your baby if you just give it time, and you just give the milk to the baby, if you need to help slow it down a little bit, you can use cold compresses. You can do peppermint tea. And most of it's just time. I mean, sometimes it is a little too much for the baby in the first two weeks before your breasts start to settle, but between three and six weeks, the supply will level off to the demand of the baby if you're not doing anything extra. And it can be really hard for these moms who produce a ton of milk to to allow that to happen, because they feel so uncomfortably full. And the relief is so relieving when you feel full to get some of that milk out, but if you keep getting the milk out, you're going to keep making the extra milk.

So they basically just have to do nothing but endure it until it all adjusts.

Well, you can use cold compresses, right? Does that really help? Absolutely? Yeah, sure. It dramatically helps. Two to three cups a day of peppermint tea can slow things down really quickly. Cold compresses on your breast. In between all feeds, it's hard for oversupply to perpetuate through that again, unless you're doing something to keep removing the milk, not your baby. Feeding your baby. Feeding is okay.

Hi, ladies, I'm a big fan of the podcast. I had my first baby last year, and I actually had a couple of questions regarding that birth. I'm pregnant with my second, so I'm curious how things are going to go. I birthed in hospital with a midwife, and she kind of used the technique so that I could feel where where to push properly. She just kind of inserted her fingers. This was not a cervical check. I ended up getting the epidural, unfortunately, and so I couldn't feel a contraction. I was 10 centimeters dilated. And she said, let's start pushing. So we would just watch the contractions on the monitor, and they would tell me to push. And we all tried pushing. I ended up pushing for four hours. After two hours, they did administer Pitocin. My question is, like I said, she used this technique where she kind of inserted her fingers to help you feel where to push. But she did that continuously. I don't even know how many times, but a lot through that four hours, I was very swollen after basically, I'm wondering, just like you mentioned about cervical checks being a risk for infection, that's obviously also a risk. If you could give some more information about what that technique is, and if it was overused, or if it was kind of necessary to be continuously doing that over the four hours, I'd love to hear more information. And my second part of the question, I did test positive for GBS, so I did agree to the antibiotics. As a first time mom, although I've listened to your podcast, know, there's a very low risk, you know, of everything happening like that. But my question is, I find afterward in my chart that they just continue. Continuously through the IV gave me rounds and rounds of antibiotics during my whole time there, which was over 24 hours in the hospital. So my second part of the question would be, is it possible to or is it effective to just agree to one round, I believe it's four hours of antibiotics and then disconnecting myself from the IV pole, but still leaving that port in. And what are the benefits of the continuous antibiotics? And I guess, what are the risks if I were to have stopped after just one bag or one round of antibiotics? Thank you so much, lady. Bye.

This technique of the hands inside of her while she's in the pushing stage. It just it. I do you. Is this actually a technique. It sounds terrible to me, so can you talk about that?

Yes, I've seen this routinely and commonly done in hospital birth, especially if a woman has an epidural, because oftentimes when a woman has an epidural, they're not feeling that natural, explosive reflex, right? They're not feeling those urges to push with the body, so providers will use their hands to press on the backside, the back wall of the vagina, which actually stimulates the reflex called the Ferguson reflex, to help her feel where to push and how to push, and feel that urge to push more. Whether it's effective or not, I can't say certainly if the woman if it's happening, and the woman says, Oh, that feels that feels good. And I feel like I know what I'm doing. And she feels like she has more awareness of how to push effectively, then fine. If she's having a physiologic birth, I wouldn't do that at all, but sometimes with an epidural birth, they might need a little bit of support. But if that was not comfortable to her. She wasn't really aware of what was going on, then absolutely not. That's something that should that. That is something that requires proper, informed consent, and the provider should be checking in with her and saying, Is this helpful or not? Is this helpful or not? Because having your hands in the vagina during birth is not, you know, that's not ideal, and it does increase the risk of infection.

Yeah, I wasn't thrilled to hear that they were giving her Pitocin for the second stage of labor. It just shows how one intervention always leads to another. Now that she has an epidural and she's on her back, she's lost that. Because the best thing about having, I don't even want to say a physiologic birth, because that implies so many other benefits. But the best thing about not having an epidural is you have communication from your baby, but it was never supposed to come with this other package of like, oh, and now we're going to have our hands in your vagina. Like, did you want an epidural still? Because this is what we're going to do. Yes, electronic fetal monitoring to manage the risk of the epidural, but to have their hands inside of her and then to give her Pitocin because she's on her back, it's already less productive. Epidurals notoriously slow labor, so there's no surprise there, and there shouldn't be any rush on women who have an epidural because it's going to slow their labor. There's some research out there on giving Pitocin in the second stage of labor, and it shows that it minimally shortens the second stage of labor. It was something like from about 150 minutes, which is already a long time. That's like two and a half hours already, because I guess they had women on their backs, probably with epidurals to begin with, to about 135 ish minutes, or something like that. It was a difference of about 15 minutes. However, there was a significant increase in the use of rotational forceps. So Trisha, rotational forceps does that not imply that these babies who had Pitocin in the second stage had a much higher risk of a malposition baby, right? Meaning that they're using the forceps to change the position of the baby, to help the baby come out. I mean, it just goes to show one thing always leads to another. It's like, Oh, yay. The Pitocin did speed up the second stage a little bit, but yeah, the baby is not coming down, working out the position that that baby needs to be in, because there's this rush to, like, push the baby out. One thing is always connected to another. That's the hardest thing for anyone to understand and conceptualize when they're making a decision about an intervention. We have no idea about the downstream effects.

It's also a great example of how difficult it is for providers to just sit back and let it happen. I mean, what if, you know, we never put her What if we never put our hands in her vagina and didn't help her push and the birth of the second stage process took two more hours? Oh, well, if the baby's okay and the mom is okay, what's the big deal? So it is a lot about just this. Need to rush second stage. Nobody wants second stage to take more than an hour or two, three at the most, because, you know, now we're getting worried about the baby having a bad episode, or the baby getting stuck at the shoulders. So we're always in a hurry to move things along, which is why they're doing Pitocin and why they're using their hands to help her push. We know that sometimes the length of pushing can go on for six or eight or 10 hours. I'm not saying that that's ideal or that's what we're looking for, but providers get very nervous. Pushing stages are taking too long, and they want to be actively in there, doing something to expedite the process, whether that's giving Pitocin, using their hands to help her push, or using a vacuum or a forcep to expedite second stage. So as for the second part of her question about antibiotics and labor and GBs, what we know from the research is that in order for the GBS treatment to actually be effective in the way that we need it to be. You're supposed to have two doses, four hours apart. So it would be normal for her to get a second dose, and if she only got one dose, a lot of these women who are getting one dose are not necessarily having the protection against GBs. Anyway, I think we should just explain what's normal, and maybe this will help clarify so according to the GBS protocol, in order for the antibiotics to truly be effective at preventing GBS infection in the newborn, which is what we're trying to prevent, you need two doses of the antibiotics four hours apart. Now, if you're still in labor longer than that, you would continue to get antibiotics, because the antibiotics wear off and the GBS, in theory, can come back. Now I don't know that we really have great data on what happens if you give two doses and then a woman's in labor for 24 more hours and you stop. You know what that risk is for the baby, but this is the protocol. You're on the antibiotics the entire time you're in labor. Now, if they were still giving her antibiotics after her baby was born, that would not make sense. So she didn't really specify. She said, for the full 24 hours that I was there, don't know. I'm thinking she meant the entire time she was in labor. Okay, well, that's a wrap for the regular part of today's Q and A episode in the extended we have, actually, we have a couple of questions about H back VBAC moms. We have one mom planning home birth after cesarean section, who wants to know how to best conserve energy to combat the risk of maternal exhaustion, which is a top reason for a transfer from home birth. So very interesting and good question. Next one is from a VBAC mom who did transfer the first time around from home to hospital, and believes her baby never descended, and now she's concerned about whether that could happen again. But we hear her story, and you'll hear our comments about what we think might have happened the first time, and there is a current rumor or debate that water birthing is no longer safe, that it's an intervention, and therefore it's not good for baby. And we're going to talk about that. One woman called in about it, and I did, I did talk to Barbara Harper last night, and I will relay her response to this. And finally, one mom is asking the ever present question of whether it is okay to sleep on her back in pregnancy, to join our extended you just have to be a member of any tier with us, on Patreon or be an apple subscriber of our podcast, and if you're with us, let's get into those questions now, and otherwise, it's time for quickies. Quickie time.

People love quickies. I posted these just very last minute. Whatever they are, we have to answer them. We don't get to screen them. We're just going to answer the first date. So are you ready?

I'm ready. I didn't realize we did eight. I thought sometimes we did more than eight. I guess we'll just see how it goes. We just picked a random I just picked a random number. Okay, well, we're going to start with this one, because this is, this is number one. Who do you recommend for HypnoBirthing? If I missed the July class, I'm due in December, me, there's only one person we recommend. That's the Quickie answer. Your class is the best HypnoBirthing class. So there we go, and you can take it any time of the year. Just contact me, midwife pressing on the perineum during pushing. Does it help with tearing? Well, a warm compress on the perineum may help reduce tearing. Yes, that is evidence based to potentially reduce tearing. Pressing on the perineum, I'm not sure if she's talking about warm compress and support or pressing down on the perineum. Sometimes I see you know, providers will do that, pulling and pressing down on the perineum that I would not say is helpful. Does your cycle length affect your baby's gestation? Absolutely, by a number of days, the number of days, right? So it's like if she has a longer cycle, let me make sure I'm understanding this. So if she has a longer cycle, let's say a 31 day cycle, then her guest date should be considered three days longer than what it otherwise would be calculated as, what did you say? How many day cycle? 3131 so, yes, three extra days. Okay, so it's 266 days from conception. And if you ovulate late, then you add, if you have late, three days past day 14, then you add three days, so now you'd be at 269 days. But again, we're too technical on this.

And is that average length of her period, like the average over the previous year or two, or is that because you don't know exactly for the month you conceived, when you ovulated? So do they just take her average time? That's why. That's why this whole thing. Is, oh, that really, is really pretty useless, right? I mean, sometimes, I mean, if you really consistently have a 35 day cycle, then you should factor that into your due date.

If it's consistent, but it probably isn't consistent. So the whole thing is, we don't know exactly when she ovulated, the month she conceived, and that's really the extra days you would be adding on if you knew it. All right, interesting.

Do breast reductions impact breastfeeding? Yes, they can, because you're removing breast tissue, we're removing milk making tissue, and you are interfering with the nerves, and so the nerves don't always fully heal, and so you can have decreased nerve stimulation, which sends the oxytocin to the brain. So yes, it can see that that I'm sure you don't want me to talk about it right now, but that response leads to questions for me, because I know small breasted women can produce milk just as well as large breasted women. Of course I would expect a breast reduction could affect breastfeeding. There's no question about that. But I mean, it almost seems to imply that a large breasted woman has more make milk making capability, but it doesn't work that way, right? Her body is designed the way her body is designed. And if you remove some of her milk making cells, then it may impact. But I think the nerve function has a lot to do with it. Okay? Favorite podcast not birth related. Oh, my goodness, give me one. First one that comes to mind, I'll go with move your DNA. With Katie Bowman, I've learned a ton from her that is that that's about just moving your body.

She's a body mechanist. It is way more than that. It's riveting like she is absolutely like the intellect about how all the cells in your body work, even the impact of bras, holding your breasts like you, you learn things listening to her that are just so fascinating. Yeah, when she had home births, like she, for example, has no chairs in her entire home with her husband and kids. Wow, no chairs. She's really fast. She's been on Joe Rogan and she had, I'd love to get her on the podcast. That would be amazing. And please send me an episode. She's published like 12 books. She's just, i She's really fascinating. A Rolfer during a session recommended her to be years ago, and I'm I'm still listening awesome. I want to listen that sounds great. I would love that. Probably the podcast I listen to the most regularly these days is culture apothecary. Oh, okay, sounds like she just, she just brings on so many interesting guests. I like, I like, who she interviews. So, yeah, okay, should I be worried about a posterior baby at 33 weeks?

No, of course not. You can't do, you really can't do a whole heck of a lot about it for one, so don't worry about it. Two, the baby can change position for sure. Three, even if the baby is posterior, the baby can turn on the way out. And four, the baby can be born posterior.

All good reasons. I will say one thing, if your baby is posterior, don't worry about it. But there is something you can do about it, and you need to get on your hands and knees more and get out of the chair. People who are sitting in desks and or long commutes are sitting a lot are going to be more prone to this. So you gotta get forward leaning. What can help with my pushing stage next time I pushed for six hours and now I'm nervous?

Well, we don't know the conditions around the position she was in, the position her baby was in we don't know enough.

You have to know that the second time pushing is going to be faster. It's just a mechanical like certainty, unless, yeah, it's pretty much a certainty. Once a baby has been through your vagina, once it's going to come through faster the second time, try your hands in these. When in doubt, handsome these it's comfortable. It helps with field fetal positioning. Just give that a shot. Was that eight? Oh, I don't know. I wasn't counting. Okay, all right, last one, what do your kids think of your work? Mine don't talk about it too much. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that.

I think my kids have a lot of respect for the person.

I was just gonna say that they have a lot of respect they there's a little, a little part of them that's like, Oh, that's weird, you know? I don't, I don't have that for my kids, my mom, my my my daughter gets very excited if a teacher is pregnant and she'll recommend the podcast, or the teacher is already listening to the podcast that's really fun for my daughter, and my son has so much respect for me and so much in common with me about really caring about natural health, so we just have a lot in common. And he knows we interview super cool people and learn a lot all the time. And I think they think it's pretty cool. They definitely tell their friends about it, but they don't. They really also don't think it's a big deal, because everything any child is used to is not a big deal.

My son's favorite part is that we're sponsored by element. He thinks that that is awesome, and he loves to share that. And I think element is great too. So you know, Billy Elliot is one of my favorite movies, and. There's a very endearing line in it. His mother died when he was very young, and he's with his ballet teacher, and he talked about his mom briefly at one point, actually, they read a letter that that the mom had written and and the instructor said she sounds like a very special lady, your mom, because that's their accent and how, I don't know, she said she sounds like a very special lady. And Billy says, no, she was just me mom. And I think it's just such a precious response. I just feel like that's how it's supposed to be. They're just supposed to be your mom. That's just, that's kind of like saying that's what I expect of my mom, like she's just --

Yeah. And also it was his way of saying, like, not everyone has to be special, special, special. Like, she was special simply because she was his mother. She didn't have to be. Yes, my mother was amazing. She was it was just like that. She was just my mom. But what's more precious than that? I mean, it's just, it's a very endearing moment of among many in that movie, amazing movie.

Okay. Last one is favorite item in your home.

Come on. I hate questions like that.

What just comes to your mind? Because something came to my mind immediately, and it might not be my favorite thing, but it's clearly at the top of the list, near the top of the list, if we're talking about something that is not sentimental, because I would go on and on if I were telling you special sentimental things, something I bought, I have two identical hanging like fixtures that I love as much as I loved the day I bought them. They're gorgeous. They're shaped like globes, and they're crystal, and they have like they're wrought iron, and the crystal is almost in the form of, not quite leaves, but it they form globes, and they're just beautiful. And when they're on at night, they cast these beautiful the way the light hits the walls around them. Anyway, those are my two favorite things. Now, we need to see a picture of them on Instagram, because I don't even, I can't even picture what those are, and I've been here many times. They're so beautiful. Yeah, they're up the staircases. So if you go up the first and go up the second, up the second, they're above each staircase. Yeah, I just think they're so beautiful. Okay, that was that of store bought things. I thought of several things, but I decided to go with my light fixtures, because I love them. What did you think of the first thing that came to mind is my fireplace.

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. And you use it so much, spend a lot of time here, and when I was at your house the other day, a bird flew down the chimney and into the room with us. So that was a very special fireplace, which really freaked us out for a while. Birds just fly right into your home, not from all your open windows, but right down the fireplace.

Yes, so they're called chimney sweeps, and they live in my chimney.

Okay, it was fun recording you. I recorded you trying to get it out of the house. I didn't share that yet. I gotta share that one. When we put this episode out, I should share that. Okay, yeah, alright. Well, thank you everyone for the questions.

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And you can see Trisha wearing the same tops over and over again.

Thank you for joining us at the Down To Birth Show. You can reach us @downtobirthshow on Instagram or email us at Contact@DownToBirthShow.com. All of Cynthia’s classes and Trisha’s breastfeeding services are offered live online, serving women and couples everywhere. Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.