The Myth of the Perfect Mom with Erin Schlozman

Introduction and Welcome

Britta Bushnell: All right, you good? Yes. Okay. 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 an all-around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about the toxic quest for perfection in motherhood. So grab your comfy beverage of choice, or take us along for a walk as we connect with the author of The Myth of the Perfect Mom, Erin Schlozman. 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 the part of us that cares so much about our kids that we think perfection is the only option, the part that tries too damn hard. I feel tender for that part of us, and I light today's candle for her.

Becoming a mother is a massive transformation of most aspects of our lives, and on top of all the dramatic life shifts and the exhaustion of parenthood, mothers are expected to climb what my guest today calls the Mount Everest of adulthood, the unattainable peak that beckons us to strive for perfection, to be the best mom, the happiest mom, and the most perfect mom. But perfection is impossible to achieve and a false god to strive to please.

My guest today, Erin Schlozman, a licensed therapist, a maternal health advocate, and author of The Myth of the Perfect Mom. With over 15 years of clinical experience, she helps women navigate the emotional realities of motherhood with honesty, nuance, and compassion. Through her writing and speaking, Erin challenges cultural myths about perfect motherhood and offers a more grounded, human approach to matrescence. She is the founder of Fourth Trimester Wellness, a community dedicated to supporting women in the transition to and through motherhood.

Welcome, Erin. Thank you for joining me, and congratulations on your new book. I'm so excited it's out in the world. You birthed the baby.

Erin Schlozman: It is my third baby. Yes, in the form—

Britta Bushnell: —of a book.

Erin Schlozman: Yes, my — yeah. My husband, actually, the day before the launch, he was like, "Are you ready to be postpartum again?" And I was like, "Oh no! But sure, yes." But yes, it is very much like that.

Where the Myth of Perfection Comes From

Britta Bushnell: So yes, Erin, your book breaks down harmful myths surrounding early motherhood, in particular, and what it takes to be a great mom. You have — I think it's ten myths — that weigh new mothers down in postpartum, and I think we've got to start with kind of the big overarching one that's in the title: the perfect mom. What are we talking about here?

Erin Schlozman: Yeah, so I drew on my experiences becoming a mom, and I drew on client experiences, and just from a bigger picture. I was noticing that the moms who were attracting into my practice tended to be high-achieving, very goal-oriented, first-time moms who were getting ready to become a mom or had just become one, and they were like, "I'm supposed to be good at this, and I'm not good at this." Or C-section moms who were trying to explain away why they had a C-section, or bottle-feeding moms trying to explain away why they were bottle feeding, or career or stay-at-home moms trying to explain away their decision to either return to work or not. And then when you scratch the surface, there tended to be a lot of cultural myth underneath those feelings. So exploring: where does this come from? Who assigned this to you? Why are you carrying it? What is perfect? Are you defining what perfect means, or is this being defined for you, and you've decided to take it on yourself?

Similarly, when I became a mom for the first time, I had passed a board exam at that point. I was married to a wonderful man — I'm still married to the same person. I was high-achieving at that point in my life, and I had this little baby, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't like not knowing what I'm doing. So it goes in two ways. There are the cultural myths, but then there's also the understanding that a lot of parenting is learned, and if you haven't learned it yet, you have to give yourself space to be able to learn what that looks like.

Britta Bushnell: Oh, yeah! And there are so many messages out there about what doing it "quote unquote" right looks like or should look like. The loads of shoulds come like a big old tidal wave, pushing you forward after having a baby, and even in the journey to parenthood, it's just loaded with shoulds.

Erin Schlozman: Right. I mean, even with fertility — when someone's like, after one month of trying, "well, we're not pregnant, so we're never going to get pregnant, this is never going to happen, we're failing" — and it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. The hugest percentage of people don't get pregnant within the first month. This usually takes many months.

Britta Bushnell: Many months.

Erin Schlozman: Yeah, many months. And where do these ideas come from? I think a lot of it is that modern moms have access to so much information, and for a lot of new parents, it can be hard to decipher what is credible and what is not. So it's picking all those pieces apart, and really getting to the root of what you want this to look like for you, regardless of any expectations you've been carrying.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, so I love this. I talk about eight cultural myths in my book, and the first one is about control and certainty, and the last one is about exceptionalism and perfection, so I look at those as bookends. But perfection is one that I see as really permeating so many things, and I'd love to hear you tell us a little bit about what you think that quest for perfection is costing us.

The Real Cost of Chasing Perfection

Erin Schlozman: I've got a whole list in the book. The therapist in me wants to say that the mental health consequences are massive. It contributes to perinatal isolation. It can contribute to perinatal mood disorders, anxiety, depression. I have my own thoughts and feelings on perinatal mood disorders, but I think isolation is a really big one — because it can shine a light on fear of being judged, or are you isolating because you're afraid to be vulnerable? How many moms won't make a plan because they don't know if they can get there on time, or what the parking is going to be, and then that triggers anxiety, and it all kind of compounds onto itself.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, so it's costing a lot — so many aspects. I also think there's a way in which it's costing just the nervous system downregulation that our babies really need.

Erin Schlozman: Yes. I think we love to name everything — slow motherhood, intensive parenting, all the different things — and slow parenting has become a goal that people work toward. When really, I think just by the nature of having a baby, and healing, and what life with a newborn looks like, it innately shouldn't be fast-paced. That's something we created, not something created by nature.

Britta Bushnell: Absolutely, and at the same time, as soon as we name it as something like "slow parenthood," it can become a should that fuels the striving for perfection. Well, now I need to be a slow parent.

Erin Schlozman: And intentional, and I need to be doing it this way and that way, and then again, that turns into: who says? Says who?

How We Pass Perfectionism to Our Children

Britta Bushnell: It can be so important to also recognize there's a way that we pass on the striving for perfection to our children. I know this one personally — just ask my children, who are adults now, and they are strivers. And I'm like, oh crap, I passed this along to my kids, and so did my husband. And yet I want to cut us all some slack.

Erin Schlozman: I mean, we all have our stuff, right? Our kids are going to pick up — I mean, they are who they are naturally, but they're also going to pick up some of the stuff about ourselves we like and some of the stuff we don't love, and we live in a culture that's very success-driven, especially externally validated success. So who knows where it came from — I'm sure a lot of different places.

Britta Bushnell: But oh, as moms, if we have the opportunity to blame ourselves, we tend to.

Erin Schlozman: Oh yeah. And I think, too, about childcare — this isn't college. We just need to make sure they're safe, and there's no such thing as the Harvard of preschool, right?

Britta Bushnell: Right, and yet that made me giggle, and at the same time, it also makes me tender, because I do think the desire for our kids to thrive is coming from a beautiful place.

Erin Schlozman: Absolutely. But exploring what thriving looks like, I think, is where a lot of moms get into sticky mothering, in terms of what they're expecting from themselves.

Climbing the Mount Everest of Adulthood

Britta Bushnell: Absolutely. So you use the metaphor of climbing the Mount Everest of adulthood. Can you unpack that metaphor for us a little bit?

Erin Schlozman: Yes. I think our healthiest selves are when all the different areas of our life are integrated, and we can move between them in a way that feels authentic and true and real. But there is surely a massive shift that happens after you have a baby. For a lot of moms, there's your whole life before, and then there's the life after, and things aren't quite integrated yet. I think it takes time for the before and after to integrate, and that middle is climbing a mountain of: what am I doing? How did this happen? What is expected of me? What do I want this to look like? It's a moment in our lives when everything crashes together at once, and then figuring out what we want it to look like on the other side of it.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. Okay, and so if we're climbing Mount Everest of adulthood, it's the feeling of the unattainable — the pinnacle. We're not just climbing a local hill; we're going for the biggest, tallest one in the world. Is that right?

Erin Schlozman: Which I think speaks to expectations too. When you think about Mount Everest, there are the people who did it successfully, and then there are the people who didn't make it, or didn't get to the mountain, or didn't survive the process — but the expectation is always the same, that we are going to conquer the mountain.

Britta Bushnell: It makes me think — nobody goes to climb Mount Everest having not done smaller mountains first, and yet—

Erin Schlozman: And nobody goes thinking they're going to fail. Even with the language of failure, there's an idea that it might be disappointing, but that's overridden by all the other really strong feelings of, we're gonna do this.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, and moms today often go into motherhood — their first, their second, whatever — thinking, "I got this," without necessarily having experienced it before.

Erin Schlozman: Which can be so challenging. I mean, assuming they're just going to be able to do it. I have chapters in the book — one on attachment, one on bonding, one on this cultural belief that we're handed a baby and know exactly what to do immediately — and that catches a lot of new, first-time moms off guard, because it's like, wait, I'm supposed to know what I'm doing, but I don't. So distinguishing between innate maternal behaviors and the learned skills of parenting — if you get them confused, and you're already not feeling so great about how you're doing, it's another thing that kind of picks at the scab.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, and it drops us down in our sense of success or self, and we can use it against ourselves in ways. That's one of the things — when I hear you talking about perfection and motherhood, I think that Mount Everest energy, we tend to use against ourselves.

Erin Schlozman: And I also think about — there's an anecdote at the very beginning of my book. My son, my firstborn, was probably two months old, and I was standing on a corner holding him. He was screaming. I was trying to figure out how to get the stroller to fold down. I was in my husband's sweatpants, just trying to get out of the house to go for a walk to get some fresh air, and a stranger stopped me and said, "Isn't motherhood just the best journey?" And I snarled at her and said, "Motherhood is not a journey, because that assumes there's a clear point A to point B." It's similar with Mount Everest — we assume there's a start and a finish, when really the path is going to look different for everybody, and there isn't always going to be footprints to follow. Most of the time, you're going to have to figure out where you want to get to, and then how you're going to get there in a way that hasn't been paved yet.

The Ten Myths of Motherhood

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, absolutely. So in your book you identify ten specific cultural myths — do you want to unpack a couple with us?

Erin Schlozman: Sure. Let me get the book, I'll read them to you, and then you can tell me which ones you'd like to unpack. So the first chapter is the myth of the perfect mom. The second is the myth of the perfect birth. The third is the myth of the perfect way to feed your baby. The fourth is the myth of the perfectly innate mother. The fifth is the myth of the perfect mom-baby attachment. The sixth is the myth that mom is your only identity now. The seventh is the myth that self-sufficiency is a marker of success in motherhood. The eighth is the myth of the perfect postpartum body. The ninth is the myth of the perfect postpartum mood. And the last one is the myth that motherhood is not ambitious — that ambition and motherhood are opposites of one another, which I don't think is true. Those are juicy. When the book was all said and done, I felt like each of these chapters could probably be its own book, but we'll leave it how it is for now.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. So I'd love to — of course the myth of the perfect birth definitely catches my attention, and the mom-baby attachment I think would also be a really powerful one. I could pick any of them, but let's start with the myth of the perfect birth — my area.

Unpacking the Myth of the Perfect Birth

Erin Schlozman: Okay. So when I started this chapter — I've had two C-sections. I never feel the need to explain them away. With the first, my baby was sunny-side up. We tried everything to rotate him, and he continued to rotate back — he wasn't coming out that way, so I had a C-section. With my second, my daughter, I don't even really know what my plans were — I don't know if I was going to go for a VBAC or schedule a C-section — but my water broke at 32 weeks, and she hadn't dropped enough. She wasn't coming out that way either.

Britta Bushnell: But she was coming out early.

Erin Schlozman: But she was coming out early, yes. I have a mom who, in the 80s, gave birth with no interventions — worked with a midwife who was very progressive at the time, no pain support, and just white-knuckled it. When I was thinking about what the myth of the perfect birth is, I had an idea of what people would say, and then I started asking people. My very good friend Ruby — I asked her, "When you think of the perfect birth, what do you think of?" And she said, "I think of a midwife and a doula, at home, in a tub, no interventions, soft lighting, relaxing music." Which is crazy, because that is not how I gave birth, nor is that how I would actually want to give birth. So I asked, why is that your idea of what a perfect birth is — especially because that's not the birth you had, and not the birth you wanted?

Exploring this — especially with birth — because birthing is really where we see the beginning of the medicalization of womanhood in the United States. It was one of the first practices where a woman's autonomy was no longer part of the process; it was someone else dictating what was going to happen next. Where birthing had been a community practice for thousands of years, when birthing became a hospital event, we saw processes change. So, trying to understand: have you asked your own mom about her birthing experience? Your grandma? What are the narratives you absorbed growing up about what makes birth right or wrong, imperfect or perfect, and is there judgment that comes with those conversations?

Each chapter has a cultural critique, a personal story, client stories — all of those different things. But really taking a step back and saying: why, right now in time, is there this ideal of low intervention as "natural"? What does natural even mean? And from a personal standpoint, I would have died in childbirth, and my babies probably would have too. So when we create a value judgment around safety — I end the chapter by saying I'm grateful to have birthed in this period of history, because it gave me a chance to be a mom, when in other times I don't know that it would have. We're all familiar with the mommy wars, and this is one of them. The definition of birth is something coming out of something else — it's not how you did it, it's not who else was involved in the process. It's that you did it.

Britta Bushnell: It makes me think of a couple things. In the very first couple of paragraphs of my book, I share a story about a client telling me about watching a birth film set on a farm — kind of a commune-type place, home birth, Ina May Gaskin, all those things.

Erin Schlozman: Like a red-tent kind of situation.

Britta Bushnell: It's very midwife-centric, but highly focused on physiologic birth, with all the bells and whistles — candles, flowing white nightgowns, the whole thing. This client told me she watched this film and started crying at the end. I nodded, thinking I understood — oh, it's beautiful — and she put her hand down and said, "No, Britta, I was crying because I suddenly felt the pressure of 'right' birth." Seeing it gave her the feeling she was being told this was the way she should want to give birth, and that was a weightiness on her. It makes me think of the myth of the perfect birth — she watched this and was like, oh my god, wait a minute, now I know what I'm supposed to do, and it feels like too much, too hard. And she had placenta previa, which is 100% — nope, you are having a cesarean.

Erin Schlozman: Yes, you're having a cesarean.

Britta Bushnell: No ifs or buts about it, because you cannot give birth to the placenta before the baby. That just doesn't work.

Erin Schlozman: That can be super dangerous too.

Britta Bushnell: Oh, to both the parent and the baby. So she had to do some wrestling with that moment — with the birth that was her birth. And that's my whole book too — the myth of the perfect birth, and what it actually means to be transformed by birth is not held by those who are birthing in white nightgowns with candles. It's not owned by them —

Erin Schlozman: Unless that's what you want, right? It's not owned by them.

Britta Bushnell: — that you can be transformed by the process, having birthed in a hundred different ways.

Birth as the Lens Into Motherhood

Erin Schlozman: Yes. And, like we were chatting about before we started recording — birth is the lens that we walk into motherhood through. If a mom is really struggling with her birth story — the first group I ever led was a birth-processing group, so moms had a space to come and process through what their experience was, because there's a quote I love: before a seed becomes a flower, what it undergoes looks like total destruction, but then it turns into something really beautiful.

Britta Bushnell: It wasn't darkness — it was being planted.

Erin Schlozman: Yeah, birthing can be a lot like that.

Britta Bushnell: Being in those groups, where people can unpack and talk about their stories, is a place to process the other side of the idea that we walk into birth and parenthood already measuring ourselves.

Measuring Ourselves Against Everyone Else's Birth

Erin Schlozman: Measuring — yes, well, "you had a VBAC, why couldn't I have a VBAC," or everybody clutches their pearls when a mom comes in and says, "I wanted a C-section, I scheduled a C-section, I woke up, did my makeup and my hair, went to the hospital, had my baby, and I wouldn't do it any other way." There's judgment in every scenario you can imagine. When really, birth isn't the point — it's a means, but not the whole point. A lot of moms step into motherhood and birth becomes the lens through which they judge themselves, the measure of success. When it's like — why, and says who, and you get to be the narrator.

Britta Bushnell: For some people, they really want to walk through it as a rite of passage — I take a rite-of-passage approach to my work, but I don't gatekeep what the ordeal looks like.

Erin Schlozman: Well, don't get me started on gatekeeping. We do so much gatekeeping.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, but there's so much belief that if we're talking about birth as a rite of passage, the ordeal we face becoming a parent through birth is the physical intensity of birth — that that's the ordeal. We don't get to pick the ordeal. It might be intensity, or it might be having to say, "what's right for me is a scheduled cesarean birth, and that's actually what I need." My ordeal is claiming that.

Erin Schlozman: Or your ideal is not my ideal, and you get to claim yours, and I get to claim mine. That's another piece of this — we have too much access to everybody else's underwear.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah.

Erin Schlozman: And I think if you don't have a strong sense of self, or you're wavering in your sense of self or worth, and all you have is mirrors held up to what other people are doing, you're not going to feel great about any of the things you're doing, and that will be magnified by your birthing experience.

Britta Bushnell: And birth, because of the journey it can be, and often is — you didn't sign up for water breaking at 32 weeks, at the beginning—

Erin Schlozman: At the beginning of a global pandemic. No, that wasn't on my bingo card.

Erin's Own Birth Stories and Radical Acceptance

Britta Bushnell: Your bingo card, right?

Erin Schlozman: No, but accepting it was my choice — how I chose to heal from the experience, and the stories we tell our daughter about her birth. Although the circumstances around it were not ideal — my water broke at 32 weeks in May of 2020, and the hospital's goal was to keep me pregnant for another two weeks, on an antibiotic drip that whole time. Well, my daughter, like myself and my mom and my sister and all the women who came before her, was like: yeah, no, I'm not interested in doing that — I'll see you tomorrow. And she came the next day. None of us could do anything but decide how we were going to move; the destination was already determined. It was my job to make it through that process, and it ended up being a really empowering experience. It was all women — female OBs, all the nurses. The only male in the whole room, and I didn't notice this until after, was my husband. The day after she was born, the OB who delivered her came and said, "I just want to tell you, your daughter is going to go on to do amazing things. I was born at 32 weeks." And I was like, thank you for sharing that — and also, watch out, world, because this little one knows what she wants, and there's not going to be any stopping her, which I think is awesome.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, and I love — as you're speaking about this — there are different ways we can use these perfectionistic ideals against ourselves. You had a place and a moment where you made a conscious choice, and maybe grieved part of what happened, but also stepped into an acceptance and an excitement.

Erin Schlozman: I definitely had a moment where I was like, okay, this is what we're doing — I radically accepted that. Is this ideal? No. But is this what's happening? Yes. And so we're going to do it. With both of my births, my water broke before I was in any sort of active labor, and with my son, my first, I had a C-section that was totally unexpected. Actually, it's really interesting — when I first found out I was pregnant, I said to my mom, "I think I'm going to end up having a C-section." I just had an intuitive feeling. But that was the first time in my life I was conscious of the process of surrendering, and that has informed so much of my own experience as a mom — surrendering to whatever the process is going to be. And that can really help break down ideas of perfection, I think.

Surrender as the Secret to Joyful Parenting

Britta Bushnell: Say that last part again — that by accepting, you—

Erin Schlozman: Surrender — that just surrendering—

[Editor's note: brief audio/connection glitch in the recording at this point.]

Britta Bushnell: Hang on a second, Erin — you're breaking up. Your internet just glitched. Let's back up for just a second, to talking about surrender.

Erin Schlozman: Oh, I'm sorry. Yes — so, surrender, I think, is actually like the secret to having a joyful parenting experience.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, I mean, that's a good soundbite right there. It's a big piece — that's the secret. What does it look like to hold both a desire to do the best you can, and surrender to what it is, at the same time? You don't have to just surrender in a place of throwing up your hands and being like, "well, whatever." You can still read a book, you can still be like, huh, what do I want to learn about attachment — and then remember that you're in a place where you don't get to control everything.

Erin Schlozman: Well, and I think of surrender as actually the opposite of indifference.

Britta Bushnell: Say more about that.

Erin Schlozman: I think indifference can lead us to cynicism, and to judgment, and to shame — a lot of judgment, both for others and ourselves — because indifference isn't... you're never actually indifferent. Indifference is a response to an experience of some sort. Surrender, on the opposite side of it — it's like one is your arms crossed, and the other is you're open for a hug. Surrender is really an acceptance of a situation or experience, regardless of whether it went how you wanted it to go, or how you thought it should go cognitively. Being able to accept it with an open heart, regardless of what the expectation was.

Britta Bushnell: Yes, I love that, and that's so important in birth — holding your education and your hopes in a very loose grasp.

Erin Schlozman: A loose grip, yeah.

Britta Bushnell: It's kind of like the hug you were talking about.

Erin Schlozman: When you think about holding on to a kite — the harder you hold on, the more you're going to get flung around with it. The looser your grip, the more you're actually able to move with the experience instead of being flung around. I think that's a valuable metaphor in motherhood too.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. So whether it's birth, or early parenting, or feeding your child, or bonding with your child, or what work looks like — all of those ten things you spoke about — surrender is... I don't know that I love the word "antidote," but it feels like surrender is the exhale to the inhale of perfection.

Erin Schlozman: Yes, yes, yes. It's like the opposite of fueling the fire.

Motherhood as the Most Ambitious Thing You Can Do

Britta Bushnell: I love that. So as a therapist who has worked with this demographic, is there one of the ten myths you see showing up really dominantly right now — one where you think, oh gosh, this one keeps showing up in my office?

Erin Schlozman: Well, that's how I picked the ten — those were the ten most common that I saw showing up in my office. I think as the age of first-time parents gets older, I talk a lot more with parents about ambition and their careers, and having a career but also having a baby — how do these work together, can they work together? Women have so long been told that ambition isn't our word anyway, and then you get women who are ambitious in their personal or professional lives and accept that about themselves, but it's like, how do I do everything, how do I do this well? So the way I tend to frame it is that motherhood is actually the most ambitious thing you can do. Think about it — you're growing a human, and then you're handed this little human, and you take on the task of raising them to be, hopefully, a decent adult and human and neighbor and community member. That's the most ambitious thing you can do, outside of — do I want my job or do I want to raise a kid? Just the decision to have a baby is, in itself, a really ambitious act. And then how does that ambition — if we acknowledge the ambition of being a mother — and yet we're still in a place of struggle—

Britta Bushnell: Or conflict, or exploration of ambition in the world of production — producing outside of the producing of a child. How do you help parents unpack some of that?

Erin Schlozman: So a lot of what I see is this compartmentalizing — this is this part of my life, this is this part — and I find myself posing the question a lot: what if we looked at becoming a parent as expanding instead of shrinking? If this is another area of your life where you get to grow and reach and expand and explore, as opposed to "I had a kid, so now I can't do these other things." What if I had a baby and now my superpowers are even quadrupled? That reframe can be really powerful, because we're so often told it's this or that — you have a baby or you have all these other things. What if we get to grow, have a baby, and still be growing, still be learning, still be expanding, still be reaching for the things we want to reach for? That's really how I personally feel about motherhood.

Britta Bushnell: It totally expands us.

Erin Schlozman: Yeah, it's like traveling — going on trips is going to look different for a couple of years, but that doesn't mean you're not going to be able to explore still. And that's not even the inner work, that's just the practical — you just need another plane ticket.

Britta Bushnell: Practical, or even the reassessment of where you actually want to go when you have children.

Erin Schlozman: Exactly. At least for me, having kids has only enhanced my life in such beautiful ways. I don't feel stripped of anything. I feel like there's an equilibrium you find — for me, there was an equilibrium where I still get to be a mom, and I just wrote a book. That's a pretty amazing combo to be able to do.

Naming What's Hard About Motherhood

Britta Bushnell: And yet a lot of folks talk about life as harder once they have a baby — that life was easier before kids — and you address this a bit, and like to acknowledge motherhood as something that can be hard.

Erin Schlozman: Right. I mean, life has tension.

Britta Bushnell: So what do you think is important about being able to name that?

Erin Schlozman: That parts of motherhood can be hard — for some people, and I talk about this in the book, it's harder than it is for others, and the transition is harder for some than others; that's natural. We've got to speak the truth — there are parts that are hard. Your body isn't going to look the same after, just very practically — there are things that are going to change in ways you couldn't have expected, or that aren't easy. Denying yourself the ability to acknowledge that is denying your experience. And what fun is that, if you're going to be denying yourself how strong and powerful you are? Moms are amazing — there wouldn't be people without us — and there's power in that.

Britta Bushnell: And it being hard doesn't mean it isn't worth it.

Erin Schlozman: Well, and what are you going to identify with — the challenge, or the bigger picture, where the challenge is a piece of it? Most things that are worth it have a challenge in there somewhere.

Perfectionism in the Social Media Age

Britta Bushnell: I'm curious — I've been in the field of childbirth for over 25 years, and that means I've walked this path through a really big change in technology. We started before we hit record talking about technology a little, and it's making me think that perfectionism is kind of on fire right now in the social media age. Is that something you've unpacked at all? What do you think is going on? It feels different than it did 25 years ago.

Erin Schlozman: I can't speak to what birth 25 years ago looked like personally, but I do know the way moms compare themselves to other moms is very different because of what we can see now. It's about what we have access to, and I don't think enough of us think critically about whether we want to know this — is this the information I want to have access to? I talk a lot with moms about curating what their social media looks like. You get to decide if you're going to open your phone and laugh, or open it and then close it feeling awful — that's a decision. We get to curate what we see and don't see; we're not victims to it. That's actually a pretty empowering place to sit.

The thing that scares me, especially with birth, is that every few years there's a new trendy thing, a new trend in the birthing process. For me, autonomy is important, and consent I think is so important in the birthing experience, but education is super important, and safety is also really important. So making sure people have access to evidence-based information — no matter what day and age you're birthing in — is really important.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, and yet that's so interesting, because I think even that is loaded with landmines. A lot of research — some of it is high quality, and some of it is not so high quality — and it starts to be hard to navigate. Well, there's research, okay, but what kind of research?

Erin Schlozman: Right. And who did the research, and are we looking at a pool of three people, or 33,000 people? I'm not afraid to make people uncomfortable, so I take a very "you get to decide what your birth is going to look like for you" approach — and I'm fine with that. A large part of my audience is professionals in the birthing community who also have really strong feelings about what a birth should look like, which can get—

Britta Bushnell: —really tricky, when the birth professionals come in loaded with their own ideas.

Erin Schlozman: Yes, with their own ideas, often grounded in their own experiences. So when I say you can have a C-section and be empowered, that can upset a lot of people. Or when I say — I have a three-page list in the book about why someone wouldn't breastfeed or choose not to nurse — that also really upsets people. And it's like, that's okay, you do it how it's right for you, and let everyone else do it how it's right for them.

Britta Bushnell: If we're really speaking about consent and bodily autonomy, that goes into those areas too.

Erin Schlozman: A thousand percent, yes. "Have you lost the baby weight yet?" — that goes into those areas too. We don't get to pick and choose.

Britta Bushnell: Even — and it's okay that it's confronting for some folks. That's okay.

Erin Schlozman: Yes. Hold your hand on your heart—

Britta Bushnell: —and feel confronted. Yeah.

Erin Schlozman: Yep. And I think that too goes back to saying the hard parts out loud. You're not going to love every moment of the experience of parenthood, but also you're not going to love the way other people are doing it either — and it's really none of your business. We all get to do it how it's going to work for us, I think.

Where to Find Erin and Fourth Trimester Wellness

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell us about your Fourth Trimester Wellness community, and your book, and where people can find you?

Erin Schlozman: So, becoming a mom — I had my second baby at the very beginning of COVID. Before that, a big part of my therapy practice was community-based work; it was a private practice, but I would go to new moms' houses. Obviously all HIPAA compliant, but I knew as a new parent how hard it was to get to any appointments, and I wanted to break down as many barriers as I could for other new moms, so I would go to them to do therapy in their space. From a professional standpoint too, you get a different view when you're in someone's space, seeing how they're functioning. When I had a baby in May of 2020, I obviously stopped going into other people's homes, as it wasn't safe for me, my family, or them — I had to protect everybody. That was the lens I launched Fourth Trimester Wellness on Instagram through. I knew how isolated moms were, I knew the barriers to therapy were really high at that point, and I knew moms still needed support — that need for connection didn't go away just because of the public health emergency we were all experiencing. So Fourth Trimester Wellness was launched at that exact tipping point in time, informed by the knowing that moms still need support, parents still need support.

That's my Instagram account. I have a Substack called This Postpartum Life. And I have a book that came out last week, The Myth of the Perfect Mom. At this point it feels like I'm findable everywhere — but right now I'm just in that promo machine of having just launched my first book. It feels like my third baby.

Britta Bushnell: Oh, I know that one. So everybody, go check out the book, The Myth of the Perfect Mom.

Closing Question: What Erin Wants Parents to Know

Britta Bushnell: So, Erin, I want to close with a final question — one I ask everybody. What's one thing you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel, or know during this profound period of their lives?

Erin Schlozman: You are allowed to laugh. You are allowed to laugh and have joy and find humor in the absolute absurdity of life with a newborn, and you're allowed to have fun.

Britta Bushnell: I love that. That's not one I've heard before, Erin. So I love it. Thank you, and thank you so much for joining me.

Erin Schlozman: Yeah.

Outro

Britta Bushnell: 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 — 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. Now let's gather what we want to take away from this episode with Erin, and breathe it in with an inhale, and with the exhale, I'll blow out our candle. Until next time, bye, friends.