Holding Fear, Power, and Possibility in High-Risk Pregnancy

Introduction and Welcome

Britta Bushnell Hello folks, and welcome to transformed by birth, a podcast about the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host. Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and all around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode explores the transformative journey of having a high risk pregnancy, preterm birth and or NICU stay experience. So grab your comfy beverage of choice or take us along for a walk as we connect with parajat Deshpande before we begin, we start the way we always do, by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do or just take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is for those experiencing extra situations, extra stress and extra fear in an already high stakes experience. High risk pregnancy, those words can send a wave of fear through an expectant parent, and yet, what does high risk even mean? The reality is that different providers use this term to describe wildly different situations. For some, it might mean monitoring a minor complication. For others, it signals a genuine medical crisis. And for parents, hearing those words, it can trigger panic, catastrophic thinking and an overwhelming sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong, even when the situation may not warrant that level of fear. When we talk about high risk pregnancy or preterm birth or having a NICU stay, the conversation usually centers on medical protocols, monitoring interventions and the baby. But what often goes overlooked is the immense psychological and emotional toll of navigating any of these experiences for the parent or parents who are navigating them, when the stakes feel impossibly high, when every twinge, every appointment, every day carries the weight of extra uncertainty and fear. Today's guest, Parijat Deshpande, I hope I said that right. You can correct me in a moment, founder of reuvel and author of pregnancy brain, a mind body approach to stress stress management during a high risk pregnancy, Parijat is on a mission to end the high risk pregnancy crisis, and her approach goes far beyond medical management. She works with the trauma, the stress physiology and the profound transformation that happens when parents are navigating high risk pregnancies, preterm birth and NICU experiences. In other words, she's the perfect person to have this conversation here, where transformation is a huge part of our focus. So whether you have experience with high risk pregnancy, preterm birth, or had a child in the NICU yourself, or have supported someone who has or work as a perinatal professional, this conversation offers crucial insights into stress physiology, navigating trauma and how we can all better support ourselves and other families through some of the most challenging experiences of their lives. So welcome, parejad, I'm honored and excited to have you here. Thank you for being here.

Parijat Deshpande Oh, thank you so much for the invitation. Britta, it's so wonderful to be here with you.

Defining High Risk Pregnancy

Britta Bushnell Yes, we get to talk and connect over email, and in the past, we have as well, and it's always a joy to get to talk with you. And we navigated. We both have turquoise covers on our books, like we've had some fun together over the years. So it's wonderful to get to have you here and get to talk with you about this. So I want to dive in and talk about first, what does it mean to have a high risk pregnancy? What this term that gets used so often, but can mean so many different things. It's used both liberally and it's also used judiciously. So it's got this, like mixed up feeling and sounds like a term that is defined in one single way that is agreed upon, but I don't think it does. So can you elaborate on this and get us all kind of on on a similar understanding about what we're talking about?

Parijat Deshpande Yeah, it's, it is a term that can be so charged and have completely different meanings for different people. So I like to think of it as just an umbrella term. Is, it's. It's just describing a type of pregnancy where you are at additional risk of maybe developing some kind of complication for you baby or or both. And that can mean anything that can mean so in the United States, it's defined as over 35 that is not the case outside of the United States, so just keep that in mind.

Britta Bushnell Okay, that's kind of a good piece of info.

Parijat Deshpande Yes, exactly. So it's not just a line that's drawn across the board, necessarily, but in the United States, it is over 35 it can be if you're carrying twins, triplets, higher order multiples. It can be if you have a history of health conditions like lupus, cardiovascular disease or even asthma or depression. It can also be because something popped up on a blood test or an ultrasound that your provider went, Hmm, you might just need a tiny bit more monitoring. Let's see what's going on. That can mean a one time extra test, or can be mean additional monitoring for the duration of your pregnancy. So you see it's it is exactly as you said. It's such a vague term. What it does not mean, though, that something bad is definitely going to happen. That is not what it means. It just means a little bit more risk to a lot more risk, depending on what you're dealing with, just additional risk, but

Britta Bushnell a spectrum of risk, spectrum of increased risk, exactly

Parijat Deshpande that will require a spectrum of additional monitoring, and it says nothing about necessarily the outcome of your pregnancy, for your health or baby's health, or both.

The Psychology and Emotion of High Risk Labels

Britta Bushnell Okay, so then let's talk about the psychology and the emotion, because that that term does create like a zing inside the body when we hear it that says, ouch. I'm scared. I'm worried there's more help me. So can you talk about stress and pregnancy? Because I feel like there's a lot there that we could unpack, and maybe even the role of being categorized as high risk, like there's there's a chicken egg piece too. So talk to us about that.

Parijat Deshpande Yeah, well, let's, let's acknowledge the fact that when you hear the term high risk and you weren't expecting to hear it, that can be scary. Yeah, true. It's true across the board, right? It's, it can absolutely be scary. And what I found with working with clients over the years is that a lot of that fear comes from the unknown, and sometimes it's because we just need to wait till test results come in to know a little bit more. But more often than not, I find it's because they haven't gotten all their questions answered by their provider. What does this actually mean? Who do I need to go see? How urgent really is this? Like You seem fine about it, but I feel like I need to see somebody yesterday, you know, tell me. Tell me what's going on here. So there's a little bit of this communication gap that that I notice often feeds into that fear when the provider may know something that the patient is not okay.

Fear Is Hungry for Information

Britta Bushnell I have to interrupt for a second because one of my teachers uses the phrase fear is hungry for information. And when I hear you saying that, that's the thought that comes up into my mind is, oh, if we hear a term that we are unfamiliar with or that elicits a feeling of extra fear, often what we want is more information, more understanding. Give give me all the bits and parts that I don't understand. Yeah, that that really checks. That means, yeah, okay, yeah. I'm glad that there's that piece All

Parijat Deshpande right, yeah. So there's so that's fully there and, and let's just call it what it is that as a patient, you are allowed to ask as many questions as you need, to fill those gaps. And I know that sometimes we don't think of it in the moment, and that's where you can message your provider, schedule telehealth or schedule another appointment if you really need to, if you really run out of time in that moment. But you're allowed, you're allowed to fill that gap, and for providers to be mindful and cognizant of sharing more than you think you need, because it's very possible your patient may not be filling the gaps the way you fill the gaps about this term that you have just now shared with them, or

Britta Bushnell may not be yet able to ask The questions because they're still in the moment of processing the label, uh huh, exactly. And so it's like, wait what? And then, and then, three hours later, when they're sitting over coffee or lunch, they're like, now I have all the questions, exactly.

Transformation and the Shattering of Expectations

Parijat Deshpande And so in line with the work. You do on this podcast and with your community is there is a transformation that takes place when you hear a label about your health, about yourself, about who you are, or your baby or the pregnancy. There's a shift that has to happen where I thought I was going to have this experience, and there were all these dreams, these visions, these ideas that I had, that I'd filled in the blanks based on any number of things, maybe previous experiences, stories I'd heard from others, even media, might be filling in those gaps for me. And now you've used a word that has shattered most of that in my head. It may not actually maybe most of it is still possible, but in that moment, I don't know if any of that's possible, and so we need to give people a moment to recalibrate and go. What does this even mean? What does this even mean?

Britta Bushnell Which makes me think also about premature birth or having a neonatal intensive care or NICU stay. That there's also some of that grief recalibration. This isn't the planet I thought I was getting off my spaceship on that. I thought I was going to the moon, and now I'm going to Mars. Wait a minute, what? What just happened here that that pacing is part of it, the nervous system, metabolization, right? Is that part of what you're speaking to?

Parijat Deshpande Yeah, absolutely. And you just nailed what we need, which is time to do that recalibration, and the entire medical experience does not necessarily allow you that especially when it comes to pregnancy and especially when you're considered high risk and you're being monitored more frequently, and all of a sudden, I need you to go to this other doctor. I need you to get this other test. I need you to have this conversation with this person. It can be it. Can be very rushed, and your nervous system does not work on the same timeline as the medical system does. Your body needs time to settle, to heal, to process, to think, to make sense of where we're even going.

Britta Bushnell And what you're what you're inviting us to look at is that kind of, how do I what do I need, even in the midst of being told you need to go get this test you need to, you know, do these things to be able to create that space to ask myself, what do I need in this moment that allows me to also listen to and process and integrate?

Parijat Deshpande Absolutely. And in my experience, we have been raised in a society, especially those of us who are old enough to have children, who have been told that the medical practitioners know best, and we should just do as we're told by the people in the white coats, right? And I am not saying to throw any of that out. They have expertise. Let's listen, let's lean into those relationships and learn from them. What I am saying is you also have knowledge and wisdom about you that is very different than what the person in that white coat has about you. And they need you. Your medical team needs you to share your knowledge with them. And in order to share that knowledge with them, you need the time to understand what knowledge it is you even need to share with them, right? So what is this experience? What is it bringing up for me? How is it activating me? What is going on? And it may not be something you can figure out in two seconds to share with your providers, but there are ways to communicate it even in real time when you walk in and you're like, I can't even make any of these decisions yet. I don't know if I'm here yet can, can we just take a breath for a second, and I can ask you some questions and we can unpack this? Most providers will do that when you just tell them how you're showing up in that room. That's what they need from you. And it doesn't need to be anything more than I need more information before we keep going. That's enough.

Britta Bushnell And what's what's underneath all of that is actually this nervous system, stress, information, processing, integration, kind of, how am I handling all of this incoming and outgoing information? And you write about and work with this. So can you talk to us about stress physiology? Yeah.

Understanding Stress Physiology in Pregnancy

Parijat Deshpande So there is, let's go back a few 1000 years. So our bodies have not evolved with the speed that our minds and our society has. So physiologically, we're still very similar to the way we were 1000s of years ago, right? Our nervous system and our stress response have not necessarily evolved that much. So let's go back to the days where we were worried a lot more about predators coming after us versus the internal dialogue and the social media and the technology and all of the things that are coming at us now. Our bodies don't know the difference. So if we are thinking, what if I lose this baby? What if my baby comes early? What if I develop pre eclampsia? Our body will respond to that the same way it would if we were out in the middle of nowhere and a lion was running towards us. And it we may not be in imminent danger, but our nervous system and our body is being told to be in that danger, because our thoughts drive our physiology. They tell our body what to do, where to go, what to secrete. And so what we have to understand is, in pregnancy, your stress hormones cross the placenta, and the baby feels those stress hormones. And so when your stress hormones, especially your cortisol, is elevated for prolonged periods of time, that can lead to increased inflammation in the body, that can lead to your uterus getting signals to contract earlier than it's supposed to. That can lead to high blood pressure. It's connected so closely to our blood vessels and our cardiovascular system.

Britta Bushnell So what you're saying is that that how I stress, how I process stress, actually has a direct bearing on what happens in pregnancy and the physiological symptoms that I might develop in pregnancy. Yeah. And and preterm labor as well. Yeah. So then the thing to look at is, how do I manage my stress? How do I work with what's happening? How do I reduce it?

Parijat Deshpande And let's throw in there that sometimes you may not have control of whether or not you develop a pregnancy complication or you deliver preterm. There are a lot of factors at play here. I am not saying that this is just in your control. It is not. And there's very often we do not know what caused the preterm birth. It just happens. We don't have answers. But what we do know is, when we can help regulate the nervous system when we can help people process their stress and navigate their stress. We can reduce that risk. We cannot eliminate it, but we can absolutely bring it down, especially when you learn how to regulate your nervous system. And that part becomes critical to your quality of life throughout this pregnancy and really beyond.

Britta Bushnell This is so great because I'm hearing that there's a there's a path into what to do. There's a there are some things that we can do, but not in a fix it kind of way, not in a I have to do more things way because that creates more stress. But there's there's things that we can be looking at inside ourselves and with our support to learn how to relax, to feel safer, to allow our bodies to do the things that they're designed to do. And when our body feels threatened and scared, then all kinds of cascade happens. But when our bodies can sink into safety, when we can bring ourselves to relaxation, to exhale, right? I hear breath even being part of that. What does that look like?

Practical Tools for Nervous System Regulation

Parijat Deshpande Yeah. So let me give you a really tangible quick example that you can use right now. You have, let me, let me give you a little bit of data. You have approximately 80,000 thoughts, give or take each day, on average. You take about 20,000 breaths on average, each day. So I've just given you two tools to work with stress, and it starts with awareness. What are your thoughts like right now? Are they racing? Are they catastrophic? Are they what if, what if, what if? If they are take a second, get in your body. What's one sensation you can name right now? It can be I notice my breath is really shallow. I notice my shoulders are up at my ears. I notice my jaw is tight. That's all I'm asking you to do. Just notice it. Don't try to change it. Just notice it. When you can notice that your awareness has shifted. Thought awareness is gone. You're out of your head and you're in your body. That is the first step of being able to start regulating, and it's such a quick, tangible thing anyone can do. And then from there, you can take as many more steps as you want to work with breath, to work with guided meditation, to work with mindfulness, somatic therapies, so many options. But that first step, just noticing, was I just in my head? Yep. Okay, get in my body. What sensation can I name? Those two things alone. You can keep doing them all day long. And it will just pull you back in to your body, back to reality, back to the present moment.

Britta Bushnell I love that. I do too. I feel like that right there is a gem. I mean, everything you're saying is gold right here, but that, that that particular piece of asking myself, what's happening right now? Where am I right now? What's happening right now and coming into the present? Sometimes I'll work with folks with a with a question that's Is there anything I need to tend to in this moment? In this moment right now? And often the answer is no. And even if I'm worried or thinking or that the thought is cascading, so bringing ourselves back to presence is like it's it's such a tool and so effective that it's, it's almost too simple. You know what I mean, it's like, no, no, it can't be that. Yeah, it's, Parijat Deshpande it's so simple. And we don't, we don't want it to be simple because you and I both know we're such doers. We live in such a society of doers that we want it to be do more. Tell me more to do. Give me what it is. Prescribe me something. And this actually is the antidote to that. It's be aware and be present. That's it.

Britta Bushnell And when we can, when we can lean into that, when we can allow ourselves to arrive in our present more often. First of all, it's a practice, right? Like, this isn't just flip a switch and you do it once and you're done. This is over and over and over again. This is a daily, multiple times daily, check in many, many times. How many times can I ask myself, what's going on in my body right now? Because I might ask that, you know, 20 times in an hour or 30 times in an hour, or 100 times a day. And every single time I ask myself that question, I'm bringing myself back to presence. And that little that one little question could be just the thing to to deescalate a huge thought spiral, right?

Parijat Deshpande Absolutely. And just normalize for everyone. You will forget to do it. You will so let's just acknowledge that. Oh, man, I was in my head for like, five hours, and I just realized, oops, I'm supposed to be practicing that thing. That's okay. That's okay. You will always be able to come back to this. Will always be there. You don't get it wrong. Just come back as soon as you remember, and eventually you will remember more often. You will remember and you will do it and it will help even more.

Britta Bushnell Yeah, it's like, it's like, we're, I'm thinking of that that sort of meditation or mindfulness image of the butterfly on the leaf, and your thoughts are the butterfly, and you're just noticing the fluttering and noticing and not making the butterfly wrong for doing its thing. Yeah, the butterfly is just doing its thing. Oh, there it is. And same thing with being activated or being escalated and and bringing ourselves back is just an ongoing process and practice.

Parijat Deshpande Exactly. And what you're going to notice over time is as you start to catch yourself more often, it won't be hours later. It might be minutes later or even in the moment. You'll start to catch yourself mid sentence in your head going, wait a second, I'm looping. Okay, let's pause, and you will be able to catch yourself. It gets easier over time. Yes, yes.

Britta Bushnell And in the middle of a high risk pregnancy, on the days where there's extra appointments or extra tests or extra information or being asked to process one more thing, there is a tendency for some of us to feel like we should be able to handle all of it, and we should be able to just show up and there should be, I don't know, like a stoicism or a competence, even when we don't know any of this or haven't dealt with any of this before. So how do you work with people who are in the midst of feeling like they should be able to do all of it and like they're not supposed to feel dysregulated or activated?

Reframing Expectations and Self Compassion

Parijat Deshpande What a great question, because you just identified one of the primary challenges we encounter in this work. We want everyone to acknowledge that pregnancy is hard, high risk, pregnancy is harder. How could it not be? That's just the reality. And you are dealing with such enormous stakes right now that involve so many layers of yourself. It's involving your your thoughts, your emotions, your body, your life, your baby's life. This is a lot. Can we just acknowledge that as a fact, please, but we don't, and we don't because we are, we are told you should be so grateful you're pregnant. You should be so you should be excited. You should be enjoying this time. You should be glowing. And I just had someone say this to me, you should be the least anxious you've been in a very long time, because you should just be in bliss, because you're growing a life. And all of this gets thrown at you, and you're told as a woman, or you've grown up in a world where the message was, suck it up, don't burden other people, get your stuff done, do all the things. So now we have a perfect storm of you are a good pregnant person when you are xyz, and you're just internalizing all these shoulds. And on top of that, you've gotten a label on your pregnancy that is triggering alarm bells in your system all day long. How could you possibly be in the place where you should be, and how is it in any way realistic that you would be managing this with ease? Of course, you're not. And the first step is acknowledging how hard it actually is to be where you are to even then begin to have the space to say so what would help me?

Britta Bushnell Yeah, and and just letting it be hard. Yeah, that's big. Yes, yes. I love that. Oh, gosh, yes.

Parijat Deshpande We want, we want you to, we want you to acknowledge it's hard and we don't want you to dwell on it. We want you to just go Yep, it's hard. Okay, it's hard. Done.

Britta Bushnell I accept that it's hard, or I or I lean into it. It's hard. So I need support. It's hard. So I need more rest. It's hard. So I need more information. It's hard. So I need, you know, whatever it is that you're that you're requiring in the moment, right? Like, allowing, allowing it to be a thing.

Parijat Deshpande Exactly, exactly. And it's, it's such a subtle shift in one's mindset, but it's so important. I'm not saying wallow in the fact that it's hard. I'm saying, own that it's hard so you can then have more clarity and act from a different place.

Britta Bushnell Yes. And one of the things that you said, I don't want to slip past it too fast, is that you said acknowledging how hard it is is the first step that allows you space and access to be able to then have more clarity, feel, find your agency, be able to access those parts of yourself that are capable, or smart or effective or whatever, rather than it turning into a swirl of shoulds. Yeah, when we can let that be hard, then we can actually show up much more as our best selves.

Parijat Deshpande Absolutely. And and there are people supporting you in different ways, whether it's your provider team, your doula, your partner, your family, whoever those people are. But here's the hard truth. They can't do this work for you. They can't make you show up differently. They can't make you do these things. It is. This is all yours to do. And that can feel isolating and exhausting because the pregnancy itself is already isolating. You feel alone in this process in many ways, even though you've got all these people who you think want to support you. But this is the one piece of this entire puzzle that you have control over, and it's you. And we want, I want you to see that, that you actually have more power than you are given the impression that you do, because you have yourself, your relationship with yourself.

Navigating the NICU Experience

Britta Bushnell So I want to make sure that we talk about the NICU, because there's a whole piece to this that when a baby does go to the NICU, it's a unique experience on top of high risk pregnancy. Yeah, it's a whole additional piece. And I feel like this kind of falls in another category. Can you speak to that experience?

Parijat Deshpande Yes, thank you for saying that, because there's some parallels to the high risk pregnancy experience in the NICU, but very distinct differences as well. And I think the one in the same is you are living in heightened uncertainty 24/7 in both cases, but in the NICU, your baby has now been born, and you are on the other side of pregnancy, so it's not about you in your body. In the same way, it's about your baby in their body, or, you know, whatever, however you're identifying them, their baby and their body. And you are also recovering from your own birth, postpartum, and the thing that I see forgotten all the time is that the NICU is for the baby. Of course it is. That's who needs that medical support, but it's a trauma that lives in the parents and the family members who are experiencing it as well. And we forget that all the time. And so I'm constantly trying to speak to that piece of this, because I have heard so many times from people, but you should be grateful. At least your baby's alive. At least they're here. At least da, da, da. As if you can't hold space for so grateful, my baby is alive, my baby is here and my experience is traumatic right now, and this is so hard and I'm so scared. You're allowed to hold both of those at the same time. And when we are reminded when we're reminded all the time that we should just focus on the gratitude piece or the positivity, all of the stress, which we already talked about impacts your body, right? Everything we're talking about impacts your body. So now you are postpartum, you are recovering, you need your body to be able to heal. You also need to keep your milk supply up if you're breastfeeding or pumping, and stress impacts all of that. This impacts every bit of who you are. It impacts your relationship with your partner. It impacts your mental health. It impacts your ability to bond with your baby. All of this is so real, and it is forgotten about because people are so focused on your baby. And we need to bring attention back to the entire family unit. You all are deserving of support, and you all are going through something really hard.

Britta Bushnell I'm so glad that you're saying this, because I think it's, it's one of those under spoken experiences, and there's a piece to this also where it's like there's no word for it. There's no rite of passage for NICU. There's. As a culture, when when these things happen, we're like, we're just kind of crossing our fingers, hoping it gets better soon, and we lose sight of the entirety of the of the experience. So I'm I'm really grateful that you're you're speaking to this,

Parijat Deshpande yeah, and especially because you are going to be discharged at some point, whether it's with your baby or before your baby, if the baby spends more time in the NICU, you are going to be discharged, and that transition is a big one, and it is often either rushed or not talked about or not prepped for or there is no space provided for what that will feel like. And when you walk back into your home, whether or not you have your baby with you or not, it hits different. I mean, we know that in general, walking back into your home from the hospital when you've given birth is it feels different. But when you have a NICU experience on top of that, it can feel very isolating and so jarring and hard and confusing all of a sudden in a way that we don't prepare for.

Britta Bushnell And we don't also, we don't know how to be there for each other when things like this happen. Like, what do we how do we show up for each other? Because we live in a society, right, where we fix things, we make things better. We want everything to just to write itself and to wrap itself up in a bow at the end. So if if there's someone that has a baby in the NICU or knows someone that's had a NICU stay or experience, what? What guidance can you give to to someone who wants to be able to support someone in that situation?

Supporting NICU Families

Parijat Deshpande Yeah, I love this question. Thank you for asking it. So we often want to, we want to make it better for them. And the hard truth is, we can't. We can't make it better for them. So what can we do? We can provide presence. When you show up, whether it's physically or virtually or through a phone call, be present with them. If the conversation is just a couple minutes, that's all it is. If it's longer, that's all it is. If it's them crying and you just listening, that's all you need. And if you are someone who needs to be the problem solver and say, Okay, what can I do for you? Hold that for a second. Don't start with that. Show up, just be present. That is a gift to somebody who is going through this, to be able to sit with them and not try to fix them, to just be there and listen and allow them to feel however they feel.

Britta Bushnell I mean, because we're a fix it

Parijat Deshpande society, yes, we are, yes, yes. So you're telling me, don't fix it. Don't fix it. Be present, yeah, which we're terrible at.

Britta Bushnell No, yeah, terrible. I know. I mean, it's, I see it all the time with work I do, yes.

Parijat Deshpande I mean, my dream is to have support people of families in the NICU take a class before discharge to be like, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. This is gonna look different than you expected, especially if the baby was preemie, or has medical complications, or a micro preemie, like, this is not just okay. Baby's home. Everything's erased. Now let's you know, like that would be a dream. It's can we do? Can we do some of this? Because it's the more, the more and the better support you have when when you take this baby home, whether it's after a high risk pregnancy, whether a NICU stay was involved or not, the better your postpartum experience is going to be. We know that for 1000s of years, right? The that support is critical to your postpartum experience and your recovery in all ways.

Britta Bushnell Boy, wouldn't that be great. I'm kind of thinking that that when I sometimes I'll ask guests on my podcast, what gives them hope, and you just gave me hope, like in in imagining that kind of preparation, yeah, for folks heading in, heading home and and reintegrating. Yeah, how powerful that would be to have that kind of of support. Now you have a company now that is so in addition to your book and your journal, you also have Revell. Did I say that? Right? Yeah, you did. Okay. So what does that do?

Introducing Ruvelle: Prevention Through Stress Physiology

Parijat Deshpande So it's taken everything I used to do in my private practice, and it's made it easy to access for anyone and everyone at any time, because I was maxing out in my private practice, and I was trying to figure out, how do we get this work to more and more people? Because we know that it works. We know that it works too. So rubella is focused on prevention. Our whole goal is, how do we reduce your risk of pregnancy complications and preterm birth through stress physiology and helping you navigate the medical system, especially when things went wonky the last time. And so are you

Britta Bushnell working with professionals, with individuals, with

Parijat Deshpande Who do you all the things,

Britta Bushnell all the whoever's who's listening right now, our listener that's listening right now. How does what you're talking about relate to them?

Parijat Deshpande Yeah, it's, all of your listeners. So if your listeners are people who are pregnant or trying to conceive, or are NICU parents, preemie parents, lost parents, we've got self paced programs for you that you can just jump right into today, and you go at your pace, and you do you do the work on your own, with options to get additional support as needed. And then we work with providers. We work with health care providers. We look work with allied health care providers. We work with therapists, how to work, specifically with high risk pregnancy patients and NICU parents. The language you should use, the language you should not use, how to provide trauma informed care to help them. You know, really to the best example is how to get away from telling them to stress less. And what can you say instead, to actually be supportive, right? Just bullet point, right? There. Love that. And then we work with employers to help them include high risk pregnancy and NICU parents as part of their employee wellness benefits, because we are always forgotten in that world.

Closing Question: What Do You Want Parents to Know?

Britta Bushnell Okay, that sounds very important. So as we start to wrap up, I like to end with one question, and it's the same question I ask every time, which is, what's one thing that you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel or know during this profound period of their lives,

Parijat Deshpande I think it'll always come back to this. For me, I may have a lot of answers, don't get me wrong, but I think it'll come back to this, for me, you have more power than you are made to believe. And that doesn't mean you have the ability to control everything, but it does mean you have power in those moments when you are made to feel powerless, you have it. And it's not just lip service. It's not just this Hallmark key slogan that power resides in your body right now, and you can access it at any time. And I really believe you do that and you can have a very different experience no matter the bumps that lie ahead for you, beautiful.

Where to Find Parijat

Britta Bushnell How can people find you? What's Where do Where do people learn about your work?

Parijat Deshpande Best Places to go to our website, ruvell.com r, u, v, e, l, l, e.com, from there, you can see everything that we offer for all the people and all the companies. We're on social media, but not really. So if you want to reach out to us, email us from the website that'll actually reach us.

Britta Bushnell Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate always. Love talking with you. So fun. Thank you, and thank you listeners for sharing this time with us. If something shared today impacted supported or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produce this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for the podcast and these conversations, please follow rate and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join us on Instagram at transformed by birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of transformed by birth. And now to close, let's gather what we want to take away from this episode, what we've learned, juicy morsels that are important. Breathe those in on an inhale and with an exhale. I'm going to blow out our candle until next time bye. Friends.