The Vital Importance of Postpartum Care
Why is the vital importance of postpartum care so overlooked and what can we do about it? In this episode of Superpower Mommas, host Tatiana Berindei talks with a postpartum doula, mother of four, and creator of the Center for Sacred Window Studies, Christine Devlin Eck, about the importance of receiving nurturance during the postpartum window. Rooted in the Universal Mother Principles, Christine shares what new moms need and how to give it best. If you are a mom – or know a mom, new or not, you will want to tune in to this one today!
Tatiana Berindei:
Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Super Power Mommas podcast. I am your host, Tatiana Berindai. And today, my guest is Christine Devlin Eck, and we are going to be discussing the vital importance of postpartum care. I am so glad that she said yes to coming and being on the show to talk about this with you all today. This is a topic that I feel does not get enough highlight, it’s not held with enough relevance. And I think it’s so, so, so important, which is why I call this the vital importance of postpartum care. So I’m just super grateful that she’s here today to talk about this with you all. Let me tell you a little bit about her before we dive in. Christine is a mother of four young children. She’s an Ayurvedic health consultant, birth and postpartum doula, and the founder and director of The Center for Sacred Window Studies.
She’s an advocate for social awareness and change for postpartum care in cultures where traditions and caregiving have diminished or disappeared. She is an educator, organizer, and group facilitator. And her mission with The Center for Sacred Windows Studies, is to empower professionals in postpartum care and families with information and tools and create the support needed during the sacred postpartum window. She trains conscious postpartum caregivers to support families using diet, routine, herbal support, healing touch, and the universal mother principles of caregiving. Simplicity, flexibility, compassion, listening, intuition, grounding, and non-judgment. Christine resides in Western Massachusetts and teaches students around the world. And I am so happy to have you with us here today, Christine.
Christine Devlin Eck:
Oh, thank you so much for that introduction. It’s my pleasure.
Tatiana Berindei:
So before we start off today, I would love to hear… I mean, I think that you’ve covered a lot in that bio, there’s our conversation. What would you say your superpowers in the realm of postpartum are?
Christine Devlin Eck:
That’s a great question. And I think, for me, it really comes down to those universal mother principles that you just read off. I think that those really create the core of human care, not only for other people but for ourselves as well. It’s a very cyclical give and takes. And so when I approach caregiving with a family or when I’m working with students, really continuously bringing it back to simplicity and flexibility, compassion, listening, intuition, grounding, non-judgment, everything can fall into one of those categories. And I think sometimes when we study very long and hard at something, or we go into any kind of situation, we tend to make things more complicated than they should be. And particularly in the postpartum window, I find that it’s very easily overwhelming for a person who’s just given birth or for someone who’s trying to do their best to care for them, it can quickly feel complicated. And so bringing it back to this heart, this core with these universal principles to me feels like a really important thing. I guess, a superpower, you could call it.
Tatiana Berindei:
Yeah. And it’s one that a lot of our medical institutions have really lost. All of those words could be said to be missing in certain settings. So we were talking a little bit before we went on recording about just why this is so important and how so many people overlook the postpartum period, especially when it’s your first baby. Everything is about the birth and the pregnancy and sort of the magic of that and the anticipation and the excitement. And the postpartum period, it’s kind of like, “Oh, well, I’ll be fine. I’ll be able to just figure it out.” And the sad truth is that… Well, it’s not a sad truth, actually. I feel like it points to our interdependence. And I think, actually, our interdependence is a really beautiful thing as part of the human experience.
But birth is really a time that highlights that. And it’s not a codependent thing. I think a lot of women can fall into this uber-feminist, like, “I have to have it all together. I have to be able to do it all myself.” The mentality that our culture really feeds and inculcates. And the postpartum period is not the time to bring that bravado up. And I would just love to hear a little bit of your understanding as to why it’s so important to allow ourselves to be cared for in that time period.
Christine Devlin Eck:
Yes. Well, I am right there with you, in that I did not know what to expect at all during the postpartum window. I assumed that it would be very intuitive and I felt very prepared and cared for during pregnancy and birth. But what I discovered is that without proper preparation and planning and understanding and awareness, I was left feeling really disempowered and really lost and very thrown off by all of the different challenges that came about. And it was, honestly, quite pretty straightforward… There were some challenges with nursing and so forth, but I was really blindsided in a way that I never, ever want anyone to feel. And I think that I felt a little betrayed by our society and that they were not telling people and we didn’t have any support structure that was set up to nurture people.
So much so, in fact, that when someone hears the word postpartum, they think of depression and that’s not what postpartum actually is. It’s this window of time that every single person who gives birth has to go through because we’re healing and we’re transitioning into becoming a parent, which is so monumental on so many levels. A physical level, an emotional level, a spiritual level, all of the levels are transitioning into this new role. I like how you talked about that word, interdependence because this is the time if there ever was a time for us to embrace that interdependence and to gather around and support one another, which historically, is what communities did.
Tatiana Berindei:
And there are still some cultures that are really good at it. I mean, there might be people tuning in right now from countries where, “Y’all have it down.” We’re in the states, we don’t have it down over here.
Christine Devlin Eck:
And so we have a lot to learn from cultures who are still practicing that. And I think that we did have that at one point to a greater degree. And so I’m interested in helping people start to emphasize the importance of their communities and their caregivers and asking for support and people. Hopefully, with more and more awareness and conversation, it won’t be up to the birthing person to be like, “Can you come help me?” It will just be something that friends and family will know, “Oh, I need to go help them right now because the baby is here and they’re healing.” So it’s beyond important to me and it’s a glaring need in cultures where these community traditions have been lost. And so I definitely felt that yes, to be one of the voices who’s talking about it and teaching about it and spreading some awareness about it.
Tatiana Berindei:
Yes. And thank you for saying yes to the call. We do have to go to a quick break and we’re going to dive in. There’s a lot more to discuss here. Before we go to break, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
Christine Devlin Eck:
Yes, thank you. My center is called The Center for Sacred Window Studies. It’s an online school and resource for postpartum. It’s www.sacredwindowstudies.com.
Tatiana Berindei:
Beautiful. So we’re talking with Christine Devlin Eck about the vital importance of postpartum care. And if you are listening to this and you are looking for more support in the realms of your travel in the spiritual world, if you are looking for a community of like-minded people, please, please, please do yourself a favor, go over to superpowermommas.com and check out the SPU plus community. We have a whole host of offerings for you all over there to dive deeper into what it means to be a communal person on this planet in this time, right now, how to live a more high vibrational life, which includes doing things like taking care of your friends and your family when they’re in a postpartum moment.
So go and check that out and you can also find a link directly to Christine’s website in the show notes over at superpowermommas.com. We’re going to take a quick break, but we’re going to be right back. So don’t go anywhere. Stay tuned.
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