The Time Warp of Pregnancy, Birth, and New Parenthood

Introduction and Welcome

Britta: 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 feels like it needs its own music intro, because we're talking about the time warp that happens in pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. So grab your comfy beverage of choice or take us along for a walk as we connect with a powerhouse of wisdom around all things birth and postpartum. Adriana Lozada, 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 all parents wondering what happened to their ability to get anything done. Ask any new parent, especially a mom, about time during the perinatal period, and you'll hear about minutes feeling like days and yet, months flying by in a blink. Time is weird, folks in this era of our lives, and not enough people talk about adjusting to this other worldly time warp. We're going to do that here today, as well as a few other topics, and I will do my best to not break out into a Rocky Horror Picture Show classic song as we talk about the time warp. Sorry if I've now activated an ear worm in you, it's playing in my head too. My guest today is Adriana Lozada, a certified advanced birth doula, perinatal, perinatal educator, international speaker, best selling author, and you might know her as the voice and creator behind the acclaimed and amazing birthful podcast, I'm honored to call Adriana not just a colleague, but a friend. I think we first connected through her podcast, birthful more than a decade ago, I think, and our friendship grew from there. There are so many things I admire about Adriana, from her admirable ability to keep her glasses always clean, I don't know how she does that, to the way she can scramble up a wall in a rock climbing gym, to her remarkable background, but more than anything, I am awed by her wealth of wisdom around all things birth and postpartum. Y'all are in for a treat, and I'm so excited for this conversation. So welcome Adriana. Thank you for being here.

Adriana: Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me and all those kind words. I feel the same. We're just kindred spirits, of like um, and all of all the things you do and your knowledge, and as I look at your collection of goddesses behind you and remember all the fun conversations we've had mythology and the times you've been on the podcast. So I

Britta: know we y'all, we're gonna try really hard not to just have a love fest on air here for all of you, but there is so much love and respect in this conversation between us. I mean, I just, I love this woman. I loved getting to visit you in your home and going rock climbing with you and tootling around a cemetery and exploring and meeting your family, and then getting to have you come out and MC for my book launch in 2020 just before the world completely changed. And it's just yeah. I feel honored to know you,

Adriana: yeah, yeah. And I think of you all the time. Somebody mentioned your book recently, it keeps popping up like it's a marvelous, marvelous book. And I'm so honored to have been part of its birth in that way.

Britta: So yes, one of, it's one of my doulas for that, for that birth. Yes, I remember us wrapped in, I think we were in robes and having coffee the morning it it was released, and it was this weird moment of like, hi, hi. We're just sitting here having coffee together. And yet, my book that I've been working on for years, just got birthed into the world, but here I am just having coffee with a friend, and it was this multi experience, moment of the sacred and the mundane, like the the everyday, not that that having coffee or tea with A friend isn't sacred, but it was like, this is, this is every day. This is the joy of the everyday. This is the sacred in the everyday. And then the book being out was like the everyday in the sacred. It was kind of this experience, yeah, and I. Got to share it with you, and that's just super special for me. So delightful. Yeah, we got to dive into this conversation. And I want to, I want to talk. I want to start with something that very few people talk about, which is what I mentioned in the intro, the warping of time during birth and postpartum. And you have talked about it as the warping of time. So can you unpack what you mean by the warping, warping of time, and what's happening there?

Understanding Time as a Cultural Construct

Adriana: So I think first, we've got a like, when thinking about this, we've got a I love context. I'm huge fan of context, because that that really colors everything. So think about three things to consider about time, four things. And the first one is like the idea of time as a construct. This idea of time as a means towards productivity and efficiency, that is a construct that is not what time is about. And even though this idea of the 24 hour clock is ancient, 1500s with the Egyptian the idea of the productivity and efficiency time as a means towards an end to organize us that came with the start of the railways in the UK and Canada and the US, like in the late 1800s so, and then in 1880 and you were talking about this. So I looked it up, because that's what I do. 1884 there was the international Meridian Conference, and that's where we got the time zones.

Britta: That was not that long ago, folks, 1884 it's not that long ago when you think about time. Yeah. Okay, so

Adriana: this whole productivity, right? Same thing with with we see with birth and postpartum practices and what happens around the world. So just even exploring that, that our relationship to time as a construct, and how can you step out of that when you've got always during the perinatal period, I find in birth and postpartum, even pregnancy, you've got these sort of tension and forces between what physiology and biology wants, and then what our modernized lives want, right?

Britta: So, so the the time construct, I just want to make sure I'm following this. So the time construct of what you're saying is like, we kind of think of time as a fixed thing that is, is universal, that everybody understands in the same way. That is, that is measurable by a clock, by this tool called a clock. And yet, the ideas of what time means, what how we hold it, and the construct of it is actually not concrete. It's not it's it's something that we live within, right?

Adriana: And so your body when birthing, or your baby during postpartum, as your baby as one that has no real thinking brain, neocortex, until, like, a few years in, does not have any capacity or understanding or care for that idea

Britta: that construct, yeah, that's Not a capital. It's not a

Adriana: capital T truth. It's a small t truth. If it was a capital T truth, it couldn't change. We couldn't go like, it's daylight savings today, and let's all change the clock. And we agreed now it's an hour earlier or later. Like, that's tells you how much of a construct, right?

Britta: And as just ask any parent who's who's dealing with a baby or toddler, about what happened, about how they feel about Daylight Savings Time, and they will tell you it is a little T, not a big T, because it is so disruptive. It's so disruptive. They're like, Excuse me, my child's body knows what it knows, and you telling me I need to jump forward or jump back doesn't help.

Circadian Rhythms, Baby Time, and the Postpartum Time Warp

Adriana: It's so disruptive. So there's that first Okay, so that's the first one. That's the first thing. And then understanding that, like our bodies, have a circadian rhythm, we if we take away that construct of the 24 hour, which is a thinking brain process. And I you know, it's a made up idea that we all agree on great our bodies physiologically have a circadian rhythm that tunes in to the rhythms of sun, of light and dark. And, you know, in the winter, it's a little different than in the summer, and we don't really respect that very much, right? And it has, we've kind of meddled with our circadian rhythm by having lights in our houses, but

Britta: absolutely, yeah, but

Adriana: when we talk about physiology and what our bodies need and understand. We haven't adapted to that. Our physiology has not changed towards that.

Britta: So meaning our body still needs the circadian rhythm and and those the shifts of rest and activity that are activated by that.

Adriana: And if you and if you look into or if you grab any article about how to improve your sleep, the first thing is, wake up, you know, like, tap into that strength in that circadian rhythm, use light and day and darkness towards your advantage. Have red tinted glasses. Don't do this the blue light from the screens, right? That's why, because your body functions better if you tap into its own physiology. So then there's that. But then when you get into the postpartum period, you are being guided, and your life is being basically, yeah, controlled by your baby's stomach and their bodies, and until they're about three four months, they don't have a cyclical production of cortisol and melatonin to provide a circadian rhythm. So I think that's a really important thing to understand, in terms of that time warp you are stepping your first of all, we're in this idea of like time. I have to do things at the five, and I have to meet with somebody and blah, blah, blah, do that. That goes out the window. And then even further, your own circadian rhythm gets hijacked a little bit, because now it's living in a 24/7 of it's all you know, you're at every three to four hours feeding. You're awake every three to four hours for that, depending on how you're doing. I mean, this is if you you know physiologically, and then you figure out techniques around it. But that's, that's the truth. Because we're carrier mammals. We're supposed to be like on our bodies all the time, and our milk doesn't have a lot of fat content to last so long. So that's the context, right? And then the fourth aspect is, yes, the babies don't have circadian rhythm, but they have a circadian rhythm, but not cyclical production of those hormones just yet, it's

Britta: not to really support a circadian rhythm that resembles the one that that older humans have

Adriana: right, that understands night and day right? They don't the beginning and then beyond that, in terms of what they need, they move at such a slow pace. For us, it's remarkably fast for them, because they're learning everything like I like to say when they're born, they don't know those arms are theirs. They don't know they're an I. They don't know separation between primary parent, caregiver and themselves until three to four months, when lots of hap lots happened at lots happens at three to four months. So trying to, like, apply grown person's logic and understanding of the world to this cute, cute baby that is just trying to figure everything out and regulate temperature and go from womb to out of the womb, right? Like all those processes that need to change, yeah.

Britta: Well, so much and that, that dissonance between the pace of a baby's body, particularly a newborn in those first three months, and the pace of modern life can can be really challenging, because it can be like scratching a record. It can feel so a switch has been flipped, and we're in another alternate universe where time does move differently, which is why I love you call that you call it a time warp, because it really feels like you're in an alternate universe. Yeah, and that alternate universe is slow.

Adriana: It's slow, and the time warp also has, I guess, the fifth element about it is that it the warp part of it not just slow, but some things are incredibly fast and some things are incredibly slow. And you see that in your daily life. You have had those experiences when you deep dive focus, the focus is what's going to give you that internal ability to speed up or slow down time, right? So meaning, when you go deep into focus, it could have been 10 minutes, but you did so much because you were just in it, and at other times you're, you know, waiting your focus is, is just hankering for some stimulation while you're waiting at some doctor's office and don't have your phone, because the phone's a different thing, right? And then that clock, you're just watching it, and all the seconds go blast way more. Yeah. So there's also that aspect and that I feel you feel it the most during birth, during labor itself.

The Clock as the First Intervention in Labor

Britta: Okay, so if we're gonna go to birth, one of the things that I think I first heard from you was the idea that the first intervention is the clock,

Adriana: well, and I even say the first intervention is your due date,

Britta: yes, well, which is a form of a clock, right? I mean, it's a form of time measurement. So absolutely, the first intervention is, is time based in terms of your due date, and then when, when labor begins. The first tool is this, this, and nowadays, yes, the with, with how much is happening in an induction realm, due date piece is even has bumped up even higher, I think, from what I've been seeing. And then the clock like the fact that, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

Adriana: And so in terms of the intervention of time, so when you think and regular childbirth education classes and in books. And whenever you think you're in labor, what's the first quote? Unquo I'm doing? Air quotes, commandment for that partner to do, if there's a partner, whoever it is, the support, time

Britta: contractions, time your contractions.

Adriana: And yes, that that that is the first intervention during labor for physiology, because for for birth to flow, you need to get out of your thinking brain. You need You need to feel safe, supported and secure. That's the nervous system part. But then you need to shut off the thinking brain so that your ancient brain can take over, because that's where the hormones flow. That's where birth happens. And if you keep thinking about time and bringing it out like time only happens like that's a construct, an idea, that is a thinking brain process. So by keeping you in thinking brain, just timing contractions is actually gonna impede you, it's going to create an obstacle for flowing into birth, which is like so at odds. Back to that dichotomy,

Britta: yeah, I Yeah. And I often talk about that, that dichotomy, excuse me, in terms of the the Greek gods, Artemis and Apollo and that Apollonian brain being that neocortex, that thinking that, Oh, you know, time exists in Apollo's realm. It's it's very bright and clear, and we like order, and the construct works for us. But Artemis is realm that body, realm that nervous system, realm that birth, realm that physiology. Realm is cyclical. It has a very different relationship to time. And you know, it's it's animals in the forest aren't looking at a clock. They're responding to the cycles of Sun and Moon, the cycles of seasons, the cycles of weather. I mean, it just so many different things. Sorry, I just went off on my tangent, but, but it's a kind of thinking of time.

Adriana: Yeah, it's the same thing. And I love, I love the the Artemis and Apollo duality as well, like that, the bringing into that, you know, I do, and that, and you were talking about cyclical. And our physiology is cyclical, we blink, we breathe, we digest, we sleep, like our heartbeat, constantly. Our body is nothing but cycles, yeah, and change, so is birth, yeah, exactly constant, up and down and up and down and but, but always back to that regulation, that homeostasis,

Why Timing Contractions Works Against Labor Physiology

Britta: yeah, so. So when we hear in the messaging that is out there, whether it's in some childbirth class. Services, or from providers, or from our friend who recently gave birth and our our partners. I mean, I remember the very, very first birth I attended as a doula. I arrived and the dad, in this case, handed me a yellow pad. The fact that it was a yellow pad and not an app, tells you how long ago it was, but it was a yellow pad, and it had every single contraction that she had had written on it, and he was so proud of it. And I, I'm tender for that, that dad who who was trying to do something and wanted to help. And I was like, Okay, let's put this over here, because it does mess with what's going on in the brain,

Adriana: and so that's why what childbirth education classes you take and what you read and what you listen to does matter in helping you prepare. Because parents want to do the thing they want to do whatever is needed to have this birth flow, that dad, that parent wanted to that is just that that's what they were told to do, time contractions. And I tell people, Don't time contractions first of all, because what you want, because the time is such a warp during labor. And this, people have this idea of like labor lasted 24 hours, but they think that it's going to be hard and furious and fast from the get go. And it's not the first like out of a 24 hour. Probably the first 12 were really or the first 10 were really boring. You know, a cramp, like,

Britta: doesn't mean that it wasn't hard, but it wasn't doing it all

Adriana: well, no, but I mean, like, even you could have the first few hours be a cramp, like, sensation every 30 minutes. Why are you wasting your time timing that?

Britta: Yeah, or even paying attention to the clock? I mean, and that's also then, when we, when we adhere, or kind of a fix time to contractions as a definition for labor, we're also missing a lot of other possibilities that are happening. I mean, I remember somebody that that took my class telling me how she thought that she had the stomach flu because she was was vomiting and pooping, and was like, Oh, my God, I'm so sick. And called her her midwife, and said, You know what? Why don't you it was at a birth center, why don't you come in, she was in labor, and that was the way that her body was in the process of starting labor, and it wasn't contractions. So we fix this idea to time and contractions, which can then make it so that we're not looking at a bigger, fuller, animalistic possibility. And it mean it makes sense, because we are a culture that likes certainty, yes, right? So we're looking for tell us, but there's more to that, right? And that's where that construct comes in. Yeah.

Adriana: Well, and also, let's take a step back and even think of why we need to time contractions. And we need to time contractions because we want to know when you get to 511 which is a medical need, not a physiological need. It's more because if you're going to traditionally, a hospital like, and I gotta say, like, new traditionally, like, because it's only in the couple 100 years, right? Or not even,

Britta: yeah, I like that. New traditionally. I like that. I know, because there's a lot of different ways to use the word traditionally. So, yes,

Adriana: so in the in the medical and the medicalized birth experience, you need to know when you're trying, they're trying to identify a way from you switching from early labor to active labor, right, or more established labor, because they don't want you to come in and occupy a bed, and waste that resource if you're not there yet. So it like even understanding that the timing of contractions is not for you, it's for the medical provider, that it does not mean anything at all to your labor, like you were saying this person was having flu like symptoms, and that was labor. But also we know that the the labor that starts hard and fast and furious from that first contraction,

Britta: and I had one of those, and I kind of want

Adriana: to get there too early. But what is your body actually saying? And having providers tell you, Oh no, you can't be in labor because it hasn't been that long, or we just check your your two centimeters, it's like my body does not know time, does not care and it and also, the cervix is not breath. It's not linear. It doesn't move at a certain rate,

Britta: even if sometimes we want it to and I get that, I get the impulse to want that, because we have become so head focused animals that it makes sense. It's like, I feel I kind of want to put my hand on my heart for parents who are like, but, but, but I want that I'm like, Yeah, I get it. I get that. That's what we want. And it can be helpful to both be understanding of the part of us that wants it to be more like what we're used to, while simultaneously embracing or or metabolizing might be the word I'm looking for that. It isn't so time this, there's labor, and there's also post partum. Oh, you were you gonna say something? Go ahead, yeah,

Adriana: I wanted to add also the idea that it's like, but I want that, and there's other ways to get that. We're only given the time contractions, we're only provided this information. But I like tapping into physiology and explaining the physiological process and what your body needs, because then it gives you tangible tools of what to do instead of timing contractions. It's not like my childbirth education classes. I don't just leave you hanging on. Yeah, don't time contractions, but then good luck.

Britta: Fair, good yes, nor do I

Adriana: yeah exactly. So there are a lot of things you can do to help your process and actually help your process,

Navigating the Return to Productivity After Baby

Britta: right, and, and, and things that like that dad in that first labor that he can do that are really supportive, because that impulse to Support is real and beautiful, and let's utilize it, but let's utilize it in a way that is, yes, that's actually supportive. So so talking about that around labor and birth is fabulous, and then when we talk about that postpartum period, there's a it's like, when we're talking about it for labor and birth, it feels finite. It feels sort of like, okay, for 1224, 4872 hours, okay, got it. I'm gonna not focus on time, like, okay, I can do that. But then we're in the postpartum period and life starts creeping back in, asking us to do things, our to do list, our productivity, our work, our achievement oriented society. Holy shit. Adriana, what do you do then?

Adriana: Oh my gosh, I have lived experience. You have lived experience. It's so tough. And when I like, when I had my child, nearly 21 years ago, I was not a doula. I did not have a doula. I didn't like I say. I did have a midwife, and dude did the birth plan. And on paper, my labor matched pretty good my birth plan, you would say successful, and it was kind of the most Rude Awakening, loneliest, most miserable time I've ever had, even though there were four people in the room, like my mom was there, my husband was there, my midwife was there. The problem is nobody told me that internal transformation, and how all these skills that I was really good at, really good at, all the efficiency skills and the time skills type A you got it, how useless all of those would be during labor and birth. Nobody explained that physiology to me. Nobody explain ways to connect with my body and go internal and really and the idea that, like this separation between active labor and pushing that doesn't really exist, like so many things I know now that I wish so I deeply understand that that feeling for people and then being in postpartum with that same type a mentality of what did I do today? I did nothing. Oh, only sustain live. But yeah, I. And so I think it's back to that context of understanding, the importance of understanding or embracing or going into in with curiosity, to this new way of being that requires, honestly, what it requires if you want to do something for six hours a day in little chunks is observe your baby like become an anthropologist. Just observe your baby because they're teaching you, and they do it in a very slow rate. It's not like they're not communicating. They just don't have verbal communication, but they are communicating non stop and engaging in communication with you. They are mirroring your your facial expressions. They are so trying to connect and and let you know what's going on with them. But, but we don't know that type of connection. Yeah.

Postpartum as Spiritual Practice and Presence

Britta: So so really embracing what's happening with a sense of curiosity. And I'm also hearing sort of a subtext of curiosity and presence like this that slowing down. It it's activating in my in my mind the idea of postpartum as a spiritual practice, as a meditation practice, and yeah, because it's like, Oh, why do we sit on a cushion and meditate like you're not technically doing anything, although many of us like to then check that off our list of things we did today. I'm just, I'm gonna own it. But it's like, while you're meditating, you're not technically getting anything done, you're just having a very present moment. And there's an element of that that we we revere in our spiritual seekers like, wow, they were able to meditate for six hours, or they're on silent retreat for three months. There's a part of me that's like, let's give that vibe and those accolades to a postpartum parent who is, what are they doing? They are doing a three month retreat of three months. Well, since we've been using the three month mark, kind of like holding that as Yes, but at least three months, at least three months, yes. Let's be clear, even if at some point in that time, we do have to start integrating part of some of our other aspects of our life. And unfortunately, some people have to integrate work very, very early, and others can can have long, long, long stretches. But how do we for for that when, when that integration period begins, whenever it is for a parent, where the the outside world is knocking on our postpartum door and saying, Hey, time to show up to work or be productive or start to climb your achievement ladder. How do we, how do we balance our time warp? How do we start to to find the time warp exit?

Adriana: Yeah, and so I think in preparation of the time warp exit, which it's not a really Time Warp exit, it's more having to layer on these requirements on top of your reality of slowness because of that. Yep, there's no there's no door, there's no door, it's a both and which is really tough, so understanding that is really important, but taking a step back to that time immediately, from, you know, baby came out, to whenever, like in my postpartum education classes, I like to have people do a postpartum vacation plan. And again, I'm using air quotes on that.

Britta: And glad, glad to see the air quotes, because the whole idea of the vacation being Yes,

The Postpartum Vacation Plan: Reframing Rest and Recovery

Adriana: yeah, I'm calling it Yeah, no. It's not like actually go on a vacation. It's the fact that if you embrace postpartum as a vacation, because we know how to do vacation well, and in vacation, we eat eat really good foods that usually we don't prepare, we don't clean, we don't do laundry, somebody else take cares of our pets and our plants, and we wake up whenever we wake up, and we go to bed, whenever we go to bed, and we

Britta: do the things that feel good to us. Yes, yes. We might. A massage places?

Adriana: Yeah, yes, discover new things. So if you can bring that ethos of a vacation to your postpartum period, it will feel less stressful in that I'm doing nothing right. It'll it'll balance out that a little bit that, that internal discord of this is, you know that all that, that anxiety and internal grief that goes of like I'm doing nothing and I didn't even, I can't even take a shower today. Who cares? You're on vacation,

Britta: right, right? I love that. I actually don't know that. I've heard you talk about that before. I love that. Yeah, mentality

Adriana: is awesome. It's called a postpartum vacation plan.

Britta: Yeah, because we do have an understanding of of what's expected when we're on vacation, not that we're always really super great at turning off and dropping into vacation mode entirely. There's, there's an ingrained productivity that even has to be unlearned for vacation, sometimes for some of us. And since you brought this up, it's making me think of reentry, which kind of brings me back to my my previous question about that layering, because I don't know about you, but for me, re entry after a vacation is so effing bumpy. Yeah, it's so tough.

Adriana: It's tough. And you've got to look at the whole picture and umbrella, right? You have to look at it from above and go, okay. The reason why I was bringing up the postpartum vacation idea was during that time that you have, quote, unquote, off, I want you to nourish yourself and nurture yourself and be nurtured and be taken care of and soak it in. You know, otherwise saying that is be mothered as much as possible without guilt, because you are doing so it's trying to figure out how to and that's the same thing when people have a hard time taking off for vacation. Like, how do you do it without guilt? And really tell yourself you deserve it, because your body is recovering from an intensely depleting process. You were your baby's pantry. Your baby was feeding off your everything, and you need to replenish your body, with good foods, with sleep, with all the things while you're being sleep deprived, right? Like it's, it's just a crazy reality.

Britta: And listen to though, I know it's really and I appreciate that you you know are speaking to that, because I do think that even that is validating to hear for a lot of parents is, oh, my God, I was all those things, and I'm being asked to replenish at a time that I am still those things in many ways, 100%

Adriana: and so that's why the the idea that you have to go back to work so quickly, and quickly, I mean, less than six to 18 months, is what research with other countries that do have longer postpartum leaves. What people say is 18 months is the idea. So the idea is take off as much as you can, and knowing that for some people, that's only a week, and that is cruel. So then it's under like the first thing, give yourself grace and understanding that what you're being asked to do is irrational, and lean into your village. Try to set it up. And it can be like, I love the the idea she's not doing that kind of work anymore. But Aaron Maccabee had a book called Seven, seven days for seven sisters, and it was just seven of your friends who were all around the same reproductive age and having babies and such, and each one got one day where they would come and take care of you. There would be your postpartum doulas, basically for a day or for four hours or two hours, but they would get a day, and in seven days they each of them only got one one day or one two hour responsibility, but you got seven days worth of support.

Britta: God, I love that. Okay, that's fantastic.

Adriana: There are ways to make this happen, and at the same time understanding that it's not a utopia, and unless you've got oodles and oodles of money to take those 18 months or to have, you know, around the clock care, it's gonna be really tough as you're shifting your identity as well, like you're being asked to be primary caregiver, as you're becoming goo and real. Structuring into your butterfly,

Building a Postpartum Village in Modern Culture

Britta: yes, yes. And it makes me think of so. I love how much of a boom there has been in talk and books about the postpartum period, about the fourth trimester, and really leaning on a lot of practices that are integrated into cultures other than the US and Canada. You know that are that that really embrace supporting new parents in the postpartum period. And so there's this this energy now and awareness that I love about wanting to get that Postpartum Support in that fourth trimester, in that three months after baby's born. And I have seen parents reading some of these books and getting excited about this Postpartum Support, and then kind of shocked when it's not just sort of automatically there or or supported by the culture that they are in. And so it can be surprising that if we're if we're reading this, these these fabulous books and resources and learning that to have that kind of support in a culture where it's not integrated, does require personal preparation for those things, and that sucks,

Adriana: but and also, yeah, and It also requires unlearning back to what we were talking at the beginning of time warp. Like most of these cultures, also have a different relationship with time already, it's not just this postpartum practice. So for example, I was born in Venezuela, raised in Venezuela, and I always like to joke my husband gets at me because I am in non professional stuff, I tend to want to be more flexible with the time. And if we're, like, 510, minutes, 15 minutes late, whatever, and he gets really upset about that. But let me bring forth an idea that when I went with my daughter, when she was around, she was a baby, so, like two years old, and we were visiting in Venezuela, and we were invited to a birthday party of a friend. The invitation was for five. No, the invitation was for three. I arrived at five, and I was the first one there, and the host was still getting she's like, great, you're here. Help me put balloons up. I was two hours late on purpose, and then I was already too early. But there's also no end time. So this idea that you're renting a hall or have a thing, or it's a play date from seven to from five to seven? No, this thing started was supposed to be at three. Started ish, at five, 530 I left at seven, but people were just showing up at seven, and they were going to be there till nine. It was a pool party. People were starting to throw food on the barbecue like

Britta: the concept of time. Totally different. Total different concept of time. So we can't just import ideas and miss that piece and

Adriana: expect that to be easy, to import the idea and be shocked when it isn't easy.

Adriana: It's not just it's not just this single idea. This idea is masqueraded in this cultural point of view from birth that everybody knows and expects so. Your village does show up. You don't have to create it. You are supported. Everybody knows that you're going to have a quantenna or a golden moon, or whatever it is that you're gonna, you know, need help for 40 days, roughly,

Britta: yeah, and so what? How do you recommend? I mean, you, you gave the example of this seven days for seven women or seven friends. What was it?

Adriana: Seven? Was that the book is seven days for seven seven sisters, seven days or seven sisters.

Britta: But you could call it whatever you want. Yeah, right, but I was just trying to get the terminology that you had shared and and so you had that kind of recommendation. Do you have other ideas for for folks heading toward the postpartum period, for finding a way to move into that slow time and getting community to support in that baby time space,

Adriana: it is so difficult, right? You know, other than moving to one of these countries that will inherently support. Support you it you have to be really intentional. And you have to be intentional ahead of time. It has to be a preparation. So creating that postpartum vacation plan, or postpartum plan during pregnancy, handing it out, having a conversation, another thing that is really that has been people. I can't remember who shared it on the podcast on birth fall, but the idea of, you know, figuring out who your people are going to be, and then having them come over to the house during pregnancy and showing them around the house, and here are the dishes, and here are the things, like, if you're gonna come in and help me out for two hours, let me give you the lay of the land. So I'm not giving you the lay of the land. It's that switch of being host

Britta: to being family to where, like, when you go to a family's house, you you just help your you move in. And that's what we're basically asking our village to do with us, which is both a change for the person coming into the home and the one whose home is being coming into exactly

Adriana: so I'm being I'm asking you not to be host and sort of to layer your circle of support From the most helpful ones first, and be, be selfish, like, if your aunt Maggie or Matilda, whoever is just gonna come, want to come and hold the baby and not help at all, then she doesn't get to come hold the baby until the baby is like, Two months. Yeah, she can wait. And the helpful people that are going to take care of you so that you can take care of the baby and support you, like, even if it's like, oh, I need to sleep, hold the baby. Then I also had a thing of where you could put on your on your fridge, a list of things that need to get done, because sometimes it's hard to ask for help, right? So if it's empty the dishwasher, fold the laundry, change the laundry, whatever it is that you need done, walk the dog and having it be where. I mean, we live in a very transactional culture, so having it be transactional, you know, check what thing off the list you get to hold the baby, kind of thing, you can't just come in and hold the baby,

Britta: right, right? So I'm gonna hold me first. Yeah, hold me please. Please, hold me first. So I'm hearing as we talk about about time, and we talk about postpartum, and we talk about inviting people into our home to have a different relationship in our home, I'm hearing a lot of elements of changing our relationship to constructs that have been solid through most of our lives, and it's making me think of of course, one of My favorite topics, transformation and what it is that like, how? So if we're, we're talking about these doing things, these things we can do to support, how might we be to support this transformation? Because all of these elements you're talking about have elements of external doingness, of course, but there's also this part of like getting out of our own way, or about being a different way of being, can you I don't know if that's making sense. It's not a well formed question, but there's something in there that I think you've got something

Embracing Uncertainty, Identity Transformation, and Intentional Parenting

Adriana: to be efficient for well formed questions. That's not the how we're jiving. We get it. We can be in the messy, right? It's that, like, let yourself be in the messy. It's gonna be messy as hell. Let yourself be in the messy and be okay with, like, start practicing being in the messy, right? And then there's the idea of the thing is going to happen. Change is going to happen. The birth is going to happen. The unexpected is going to happen. Whether you like, you can't plan it, it's it is so embrace the uncertainty, but also it's going to happen. So you can be there, show up and be prepared and open and curious and adaptable for whatever it is, and with a lot of grace, or you can go down kicking and screaming and absorb the trauma and have a horrific time like and the spectrum in between those

Britta: but the chain is change is gonna happen. Full stop, it's gonna happen.

Adriana: Yeah, okay, so I invite you to then decide. Who show up for it and do the different work. And it's hard work because we don't leave live in a culture that supports it. So you're gonna have to, like, you know, rewire so much of yourself, and also even put boundaries around people that are like, no. You should just, you know, you wanted to nurse. And they're like, no, just give a baby a bottle and so you can sleep well meaning. There's gonna be a lot of well meaning people telling you stuff that is coming from that culture that is not supportive. And you get to decide which way you're gonna do it, but do it from a place of intention, is what I'm saying,

Britta: and that is one of the things that's coming up for me, is that that's not just the voices external that can come in and and self sabotage and sabotage our ideas, but we can self do that too, like Our internalized voices can come in and go, Why don't you just, and, you know, hey, why don't you just, and we can use those voices that we've internalized against ourselves as well. So it isn't just a one time decision to do it differently. It is an over and over again.

Adriana: Yeah, and pregnancy is a great time to start laying down that foundation, to start meditating, to start setting up boundaries, to start deciding, thinking about how you want this to look and how what can you shift around to support that for yourself, and both internally, in your mind and and around you? And I want to say like, yes, when I gave birth, I'm super type A. Had all the, had the not great experience, both birth and postpartum, and then became a doula. It was through doula work that that became my Zen practice of like going to birth and being there, not knowing how long you're going to be, not knowing which way it's going to go, and just showing up for this contraction and this contraction and this contraction, it's such a presence practice, right? And for whatever this bring. And now maybe let's shift this. Let's try something different. Let's curiosity and observing, looking at what what else is this like? It's good practice for tuning into your baby, like watch birth videos, because you'll hear the set and talk, get a doula, and talk to your doula about what the sounds of births are, how how they see change, without having to do anything clinical. Because we're not that's not our scope. So I don't care about vaginal checks. I look at the whole person, and that tells me and ask them right back to I believe people are experts in themselves. So tuning into you know your body. You've been living in your body for however many years. You know your body better than anybody. What's your body? Telling you, telling me the baby is coming or something's weird. I got to move like this. Let's do that.

Informing Your Intuition: Birthful's Core Philosophy

Britta: Yeah, I love that. And I love, I kind of want to bring us toward the end of our conversation with one of my favorite things. I mean, I love the birth full podcast, and I'm a big fan of your tagline, that it's the birth full podcast to inform your intuition, and that tagline to inform your intuition. I i quote it so frequently, I feel like I should be giving you, you know, royalties for it, because it's, it's just so good. It's four little words, and yet it's, it's about that being an expert in your own life, and yet not giving that idea that you're supposed to be an expert in everything from the get go, because you are an expert in your own life. So can you, just before we wrap up, Can you unpack the to inform your intuition, like, what is it that you mean and about that for the folks that are listening

Adriana: well, and we have such a fraught relationship with intuition, right? First of all, I'm nodding vigorously here, yes. Like, what is your intuition, right? So, right, yeah. And so the intuition, how I define it, is other ways of knowing that are not brain neocortex center thinking, brain centered. So sometimes you. Know, because your other senses are giving you the information. Like, we think, Oh, it's our brain that gives the information, but oh, boy, is our amygdala way faster, right? And thank goodness, because it saves us from burning our hands. By the time our brain goes like, Oh, it's hot, that hand already came off. It was autonomic. So the intuition is other ways of knowing, and you have that inside you, your body, physiologically, we didn't talk about somatics, but that your body's constantly communicating with you. And it's about informing, getting thinking brain. It's joining the thinking brain in the body. It's informing your intuition. It's and so we tend to then be it's like almost naming the thing by through information, so that then we can, when we can name it, then we can understand it more clearly, because we're not used to tapping into that intuition, yeah, well, and then our

Britta: Yeah, we can. We can gather information and then utilize our body's ability to process it to help us understand what's what's right for us. It's, it's almost like, like the information process it through your intuition equals expert in your own life. I mean, I'm just kind of writing an equation, equation. How appropriate, but, but there is an element of that where it's they're all connected, the idea of getting information, of utilizing your intuition to process that and and being able to remember your expertise in who you are.

Adriana: And so my ultimate goal is that everybody has a wonderful birth and postpartum experience as they define it. That's the important part of it as they define it, because they are experts in themselves. And part of it is figuring out. When we come together for doula work, we come together for for classes, is figuring out the informing your intuition is what's going to work for you. And let's explore that. So for example, and with the ultimate goal of you believing you can do this, I want you to go into birth and postpartum excited, not fearful or wanting to have somebody else do it for you, which is the culture we're in, the you know that can be good, but it eliminates you, and then it doesn't set you up for good parenting. It doesn't set you up. It's it takes away your power. And that's very It saddens me, honestly. So I tend to in one last thing, like in terms of separation of purviews, and this can be the separation of purviews with your loved ones for postpartum or during birth. I say you're the expert in yourself, and your body knows it's a physiological process, and your baby is a physiological you know isn't physiological process if you go to meet them, and birth prepares you in the skills to meet them and that slowness and observation, but you're expert in yourself birth is physiological. Physiology is going to do its thing. All those things that you do, like time contractions, know your due date, figure out active labor and blah, blah, blah, all those words, all of that is from the medical professionals. And they are experts in the medicine, and you're paying them good money to be on the lookout, but that's their job. Your job has nothing to do with that. You don't know how what heartbeats mean. Your job is to connect with yourself and go into that deeper knowledge of listening, figuring out how to listen to your body to and get out of the way to deeper brainwaves so it can do its thing. Those deeper brain waves are where you're going to live during postpartum. It's that slowness that we were talking about. So I know that wasn't quick, but Well,

Britta: that's and yet, that's the important piece. And I love how you made the connection between what we're doing in pregnancy, in labor and in birth is part of the initiatory process into what is needed, physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, in your rite of passage for that journey into parenthood, that it it has purpose for that change, that transformation on the other side,

Adriana: yeah, it has purpose, yeah. And you need that physical representation. I think birth is that physical tectonic plate shifting, physical representation of the internal changes that are happening in your identity. Like, that's the marking that change. Yeah.

Where to Find Adriana and the Birthful Podcast

Britta: I love that. Where Can folks learn more? About what you're doing now, because you're doing all kinds of different stuff now, yeah,

Adriana: I'm going into, I'm becoming a doula trainer, or yes, so I'm gonna stop going to births and then training doulas, and especially in English and Spanish, because I we need culturally congruent doulas. I am not even though I speak Spanish, I'm still not the doula. I'm not the culturally congruent doula, I'm not the culture, but I can provide education in their preferred language. So that's really important. So I'm excited about that. You can find me and all my stuff@birthful.com and listen to the birth full podcast, like 400 episodes.

Britta: Yeah, it's, it's a treasure trove, folks, truly and and I'll link some some episodes in the show notes too. So yeah, Link

Adriana: yours and link Karen Strange's episode. Okay, on the baby's experience, she's all about that slowness. You should have her on the show.

Final Question and Closing Ritual

Britta: Okay, great. Noted. All right, so I have one final question I like to end with, 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,

Adriana: yeah, and we talked a bit about it, but just understanding that this face of life is going to ask you to give so much of yourself, and for you to go into it with grace, grounding curiosity, and then set things up to nourish yourself, almost as much, if not more, than you're nourishing your baby.

Britta: I love that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Adriana. I'm so happy to have you. Thank you for taking this time and for being who you are and sharing your wealth of knowledge here and out in the world in the ways that you do. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. 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 on the again, again, on the next episode of transformed by birth. And now let's gather what we want to take away from this episode, about time, about the transformation, and let's breathe that in with an inhale and with an exhale. I'll blow out our candle until next time bye, friends. You.