Sleep, fitness, and nutrition are foundational aspects of living well, and that doesn't change when you're expecting. To optimize your prenatal health, do these three things: Take care to move your body every day, prioritize your rest and sleep, and eat real food. Want a 4th? Listen to your intuition.

A long time ago, I didn’t understand the point of birth stories. I thought once the baby was here, the birth was more or less incidental. After all, "the only thing that matters is that you have a healthy baby," right? Uh, no. I take major issue with that statement. Having a healthy baby is obviously very important--but the mother’s experience of birth is far from incidental. Birth involves both you and your baby--it’s a cooperative act between your body and his/hers. Really, there’s no such thing as a baby. There’s a baby AND ITS MOTHER. This is called the mother-baby dyad, or the 4th trimester works, too.

Be aware (beware!) of the “cascade of interventions”. Why is it so necessary to be a thorn in your care provider’s side when it comes to refusing procedures or tests? Why rock the boat? Why not just go along with the routine procedures? How can an extra blood test, or refusing a vaginal exam now, make a difference in my birth experience later? Enter the cascade of interventions:

Ask questions, and don't just accept the answers blindly. There’s not really any such thing as a “routine” procedure, except for what's part of your care provider’s typically-preferred routine. It’s all Optional. Recommended. Suggested. Commonly practiced.  If your care provider tells you to get a test or procedure done, ask what it’s for, and whether it’s medically necessary. Is this just something he or she likes to do to fill in a blank on a chart somewhere, or is this procedure actually highly beneficial for YOU and your baby, in your unique situation? Read this as an article on my SubstackCheck out my homebirth courses at RethinkBirth.com

Are you committed to having a better birth? Do your own research! Don't rely on your health care professional to tell you everything you need to know, because they won't. Not because they're a jerk or anything of the sort. It's just that they don’t have the time to spend telling you things that aren’t medically necessary for you to know. The medical community, on the whole, is trained to look for and deal with pathology - which a normal pregnancy and labor do not fall under. Your OB might give you some handouts to read, or even give you a book to take home - but those information sources are going to be woefully incomplete. Pregnancy is not a disease, and our babies do not need to be rescued from our bodies. Trust birth. Read the rest of this as an article on my Substack. Check out my Navigating Birth in the System course.

Why do we need empowered childbirth? How would we even cultivate such a thing? Women often experience fear throughout pregnancy in our culture--and tend to look toward modern obstetric care to “deliver them” from the unknown experience of birth. We have become disconnected from the true nature and ability of our bodies. The intense, primal, transformational experience of an unfettered birth is something that far too many women today miss out on. Being aware of the fact that you have choices is one of the first key steps to having a calm and confident birth experience. You always retain the power of CHOICE - whether you're planning a homebirth, a surgical birth, or anything in between. Read the article to go with this episode on my Substack: KrystalTrammell.comExplore my courses at RethinkBirth.comWatch this on YouTube instead

Welcome to the RELAUNCH of my podcast, now with a video component on YouTube. In this episode, I talk about my reluctant path of becoming a doula, supporting Cesarean births, and how I slowly realized that I didn't quite fit into the typical world of birth pros! Watch this on YouTube instead: https://youtu.be/PPuSKHM_Sn4 Read my Birth articles on Substack: https://www.krystaltrammell.com/s/birth Enroll in my courses and download a bunch of free offerings on my website: https://www.rethinkbirth.com/

Why doulas are trained to distrust birth Ancestral wisdom whispers, and fear drowns it outFreebirth doens't need to mean ALONEHow to balance professional liability with trust in birthing womenFreebirth isn't radical, it's simply a response to how the system treats women

Does religion inform your beliefs, or do your beliefs come first? My grandma was Catholic, but not the normal kind. Am I a 2nd generation "new ager"? How the concept of oneness is getting co-opted by hate

Who's REALLY sexualizing your child? Fashion and makeup as art  Teaching discernment Releasing victim mentality Internalized shame is not protection

We've unschooled for 17 years now, and it's had the greatest impact on (not just education, but) our entire worldview... Innate curiosity is meant to be nurtured, not micromamangedYour child isn't 'behind' anything - it's all made-up and arbitrary! How grades encourage us to stick to safe, boring topicsWhy I don't call it "child-led" learning {can you say BURNOUT?}Why modelling boundaries is the best thing you can do as a parent

Meeting my cancer-survivor friend who ate 'clean dairy' and avoided grains rocked my world, and THEN my husband's wheat allergy took over: Misadventures in solving your own mystery illness through foodRegistering my shock that meat is part of a 'health-promoting' diet for CeliacAhimsa, the Wiccan rede, and WTH those have to do with nutrition...Spoiler alert: everything is connected!

Okay, we all know that the-year-that-must-not-be-named did a number on society...but did it make you rethink pretty much everything? Yeah. When we blogged about immune support, her medical board told her to stopWhen the rest of America and Canada were not worried yet, we were already cautious!How the goalposts keep moving, but you're an asshole if you talk about itWhat if the emperor has no clothes? (except for a cloth mask, just in case!)

I had five kids over 12 years - and THEN I became trained as a doula and birth pro! At age 18, I was one of the youngest clients to deliver at my small-town birthing centerI had two hospital births, one so-so, and one that traumatized me (details left unsaid in this podcast - but check the links below)Writing to re-live my trauma as purge-therapy - unkind, but it helpedMy husband's fears around unassisted birth (whose body is this? mine!)My first doula birth was a Cesearan, and it was...not what I expected--!

This is part one of my food journey, from militant vegan teen to apathetic mama in survival mode: healing my views around eating-as-drudgery, and learning to find joy in foodthe effect of epigenetics and how we can influence our gene expressionbrain-retraining - i.e. what you THINK about your food while you're eating it /matters/it helps to have a hawt husband who's also an epically talented chef + foodie

Welcome! Today I'm jamming on a Terence McKenna quote and following rabbit-trails of... Nourishment from the Earth vs. vitamins and shortcutsPermaculture's influence on our lifestyleKaty Bowman's 'Nutritious Movement' and why interconnectedness is keyMy mama's ethical vegetarianism - and blind spots (we all got 'em!)Stressful jobs and how meditating for 5 minutes a day won't fix it all

in which i explain a teeny bit about who i am and what this gig is all about! was hippie before the internet existedunschooling and how that term has been co-opted by chaosemotional space-holding, doula work, and freedom to speak truth into beingnot much cursing but definitely will be using my fucking voice in this show! you've heard it here first