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postpartum depression

Kangaroo care

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See newborns’ breast crawl,Triplets holding hands, and baby wearing videos

Hey, today I was searching for a kangaroo care video I saw last year, and find more goodies to share.  Especially because many of my students come from the Ayurvedic world first before the mother and baby care world – I’m sure you will enjoy!  I so wish I had done this with my children, and received it myself of course.  Fortunate and grateful I am my mother was at home with us, and nursed us some.

BREAST CRAWL

Unicef sponsors an international policy to support baby’s first minutes/hour after birth by naturally finding the breast to nurse.  Bottle fed or breast later on, the benefits of colostrum are essential for life immune and gut health.  Watch a baby find the nipple and self latch within a few minutes, in this video.  Watch his awareness and focus change when he sees the nipple.  Babies born under sedation or early cord cutting may need more help.

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Here is another of several videos on topic.  You can see how conscious these babies are as they see the dark aerola and begin to figure out how to move to it.  So beautiful!  People think babies are not conscious?  To see this one begin to figure out his mouth, to know that is what he needs to open wide, and to assess his body and relation to what he knows he needs to do …

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KANGAROO CARE IN HOSPITALS TEACH US ALL

A very dear interview of Sunnybrook hospital staff by a little girl about when she was less than 1 pound herself.  Simple from the heart, and clear.  There are many online videos on topic, but this is just so sweet  😉 – watch through to the end!  She was worn by mama and papa many hours a day.

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This hospital does very simple kangaroo care – not fancy props.  At least an hour a day is advised here.

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In this Kenyan hospital with shortage of incubators see many different fabrics/ways to kangaroo their babies.  Interesting discussion, good education, mamas wear their babies for hours.

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Here is the one I was looking for, updated with discussion up front. The mums and dads as well as babies are so worth watching as well as listening to in this 21 minute video.  Translated subtitles, from the Institute of Neonatology, Belgrade, Serbia.

Watch for the mutual comfort the twins and triplets – newborn, give each other.  Take note of the kangaroo care wraps the hospital provides – they do a zip up or velcro.  I want to see these in the stores.

And how they bathe a newborn premie the first time, starting wrapped.

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This TED Talk shows another lovely, successful in third world villages low cost and low technology solution to keeping leeeetle premies warm – for many hours safely.  Most parents are not willing or perhaps even able after a difficult birth, to do kangaroo for 4-6 hours on end, though with the leeeetles it is so needed.

It will be good to see more of is this technology combined with kangaroo care.  Created by a team of Stanford students who gave up their studies to move to India for 2-3 years to develop, test and successfully launch this Embrace Global solution!

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WEARING BABY IN A SLING

Great for kangaroo care!   Do it bare chested, and baby in diaper only.  There are many clips of the variations of using slings with babies on youtube.

Here’s one on how to Moby-wrap your newborn from a 3 weeks postpartum mama – I extend her gratitudes!  .  SIMPLE clear instructions.  I’ve seen it done and done it myself but couldn’t remember well till I saw this.

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Ring slings – cradle and burp carry positions/management

How to use Superfoods for Mamas

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How to use Superfoods for Mamas is a big topic!  And yummy one.  And this post is currently in kinda messy draft version, but perhaps you will find value anyway.  It’s time sensitive, with focus on hot weather.

Shall we share favorites and “chew” on it together? I have my faves, but I also am concerned for how some of them are used for postpartum mamas. And oh my, just starting to think about it, there are layers of discussion so, here goes a few of them.

There are some fun guidelines with food tastes and colors and their effects on the natural needs to balance for the weather, as well as the “season” of our bodies after childbirth. There are some very noteable exceptions, good to know about! And we should look at superfoods for restoring balance when immunity is down but the need for lactation and energy to take care of baby is up.

Let’s do summertime today, as it’s summer here. It is time to keep cool! Yet mother’s digestive “fires” are already low, and need help. She needs special help keeping them burning, and reducing hot flashes is not about ice water, it is about stabilizing, rebuilding body and hormones.

Everyone wants to use ice to cool down – makes sense, right? Not in the gut. Oriental traditions even in their hot climes in South East Asia, India and CHina know, it doesn’t work well. Why, they can’t all explain, but even airplane hostesses at least used to know, never offer a Chinese ice water!

Ayurvedic medicine explains the effect is to constrict digestive enzyme effectiveness, and the stomach itself, and to create indigestion, gas and bloating, depending upon the person’s specific strengths and weaknesses. All postpartum women are extra sensitive to cold temp foods and drinks.

So – how to keep cool without cold temp? Energetically, those foods which are sweet, astringent, and bitter tend to cool us down. Yet those which are really astringent, like cranberry and grapefruit, increase vata and are not satisfying or rebuliding – too cleansing is not where mamas need to go, with so much rejuvenation, lactation, and 24/7 on call duties.  Rose is bitter and sweet, and combines well with more nutritive substances.  It gives it’s properties best in a cool infusion.

Rose Infusion

Veggies with oxalic acid like chard heat. Leafies in general have their own issues, being very floppy and unstable in the winds of change; they more easily get frayed, and that is the effect on early pp mamas. Dandilion too – has to be balanced with oil, well cooked garlic, well cooked themselves, salt, lime, maybe some toasted cumin, and served with a root vegetable like yams – now we are talkin’.

There are exceptions to the taste and color “rules” – like even sweet citrus, pineapple and early season mango heats, except a little lime is cooling. Red, orange and yellow colors to lesser extent as food and drink tend to warm, including beet, except pomegranite which is awesomely cooling. White things tend to cool nicely, and coconut is superiour here. Yet ripe banana for all it’s virtues including potassium, is heating. Everyone wants banana to sweeten their smoothies as if using fruit was better than natural sugars. Food combining wise, you are creating problems long term if not also short term.

Some favorites and how to balance them
Goji has some warming effect. Sweeter, non citrus juices like grape, blueberry, acai, even apple and pear, and especially pomegranite are lovely complements. My fav? Young Living’s Ningxia Red Juice (goji, aronia, blueberry, et al with stevia, low glycemic!!!) 1-2 oz, with 5-6 oz of Annie’s Coconut water with pulp. If you use pomegranite instead, then it combines nice with chia, or even avocado and spirulina.

Acai is more cooling, and some preps less interesting than others. Lovely with pure pomegranate! I don’t have a favorite brand yet.

Banana is lovely pureed in coconut milk or water – how about adding rose water or rose infusion also, or a splash of vanilla, and soaked dates for iron nutrition? Pinch of cardamom is important here, and for early mamas, wait a week or 2 on this, adding fresh grated ginger too. All but the banana are cooling balance and ripe this time of year.

Spirulina and chlorella – if you don’t know their virtues for many things including recent research on benefit to babies used in pregnancy (link to it), please ask our friend google. In the meantime, 1/2-1 tsp in an easy to digest blender drink like grape or pomegranite with a pinch of himalayan salt, and maybe avocado and maple syrup (cooling, honey heats but is GREAT with avocado in cool weather), maybe 2-3 mint leaves too – and some fresh grated ginger ladies for mamas, blend it well and enjoy! A squeeze of fresh lime with the avocado and greens is magic here. These supergreens need help digesting though small molecules, being cold energy. Fresh ginger is more tridoshic and refreshing than dried.

Chia is warming, but the qualities and nutrition both are lovely for postpartum. We see above use of super greens, pomegranate and grape and others with it. If you use coconut with it, will be creamy, yummy, and need both sweet (soaked dates?) and spice for digesting – the standby, grated ginger and or cardamom, are especially good. Or try clove or black pepper! Clove is postdigestively cooling but really helps agni (our digestive enzymes).

Good fats, like Ghee and coconut oil are too, and these two are cooling.  Research years ago linked low blood lipids with postpartum depression.  In many mama’s smoothies, I will add 1-3 tspoons of good fats, not just thinking about efa’s here – choose by taste as well as priority effect. We need good cholesterols for feminine hormones, efa 3s for brain, breast and other functions, and toasted sesame has special flavor and health virtues which are well added to the warm almond milk – curried spirulina smoothie with ginger! That one is not so cooling, but great in damper climes.

Almonds and almond milk smoothies … Almond, vanilla, acai, organic milk and other foods are among special hormone or neurotransmitter supportive foods, before we even begin to talk about the buz around certain herbs.  Almond and dairy milk though, are great places to add these herbs, as they deliver into the deeper tissues for rejuvenation that way.  Serve warm, chai type spices and or soaked saffron and cardamom, teaspoon of ghee with, and maybe some soaked dates.  It is a delicious energy drink!  Avoid fruit and almond together, please; milk and almond is wonderful.

Yoghurt and kefir are sour, especially after first day freshly made.  They clog channels more in early postpartum, and the sour is a taste to minimize for about 10 days.  Then – a thinner yummy lassi (2-4 parts water, with spices and sweet or salt) is lovely, before 2 o’clock, with a vegetarian meal.  Avoid with fruit, especially banana though.  You can sweeten with dates again, which are cooling, and don’t make us gassy as easily as other fruits do with their post digestive sour / gut fermenting effect which interferes with the other digestive stages in the gut.

Carrots are warming, even more, beets. The raw is not a good idea first few weeks after birth. Favor soup! Then? Carrot juice with coconut, and maybe fennel powder maybe great! will balance the heat – Let the fennel hydrate in bit of hot water to access properties for lactation and digestion – and take the temperature chill off the vegetable juice. I’d put pinch mineral salt, tsp or more grated fresh ginger or citrus zest in there, and no greens until her tummy is free of gas and dosha vikruti (imbalance) not showing vata.

This is just a beginning, of course…. What are your favorite smoothies?  What would you do for good food combining and postpartum use?

Think Rebuilding, good food combining, hydrate dry stuff well, use some fat, and some spice that is not too heating or in small amounts, make it fresh daily, and make it delicious!

Tips for Tempers

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Here’s quick tips to teach your client, and more if you have time to read the full blog.  These are good supports, and important preventives.  This first is free and she can do this while baby is falling asleep in her arms – “alternate nostril pranayama”.   More tips below are low or no cost choices also.

This breath practice balances the hemispheres, calms, freshens, and brings peace and contentment.  Yoga teachers, Ayurvedics and Doulas – be sure to teach your client the gentlest form of this yogic technique at this time.  It helps so much for life force purifying, freshening, moving and balancing.

Here’s instructions for your client:

  1. check which nostril you are breathing from now.  Right is solar and heating, left is lunar and cooling.  Let’s balance first, then can do more cooling “lunar pranayama” if you know it and need it.
  2. sit comfortably upright or in whatever rocking chair is comfortable.
  3. use your free hand (right if there is a choice); thumb is used for closing one nostril, ring/little fingers for the other, when it is time.
  4. breathe in and out nice easy and full.
  5. close one nostril with thumb and breathe in the other.  Naturally full breath in.
  6. switch to close other nostril and breathe a Naturally full breath out, then in on that side.  No strain or holding.
  7. switch using thumb.  Out, then in.
  8. Switch,  Out/in.    Switch Out/In …
  9. Continue, for 10 minutes.
If temper is up, do it.  If fear or anxiety dominates, do it.  See what two times a day does.  You are sitting with your baby falling asleep in your arms anyway, right?
Often we need more tools.  Here are some insights into what an AyurDoula can do.  These involve simple changes, it does not have to be about taking something away.  I believe in the crowd out instead of take-away approach.

When we get stressed and tired, it is so easy to loose it.  How many mamas have not experienced this?!    It is common and natural to snip or even have thoughts of hurting someone – our baby! for a few moments when we feel trapped in overwhelm.   Yet consistently negative emotions are the highest risk for baby – and for mom.  They can, left to grow, become life threatening, as we all know from the news*.

“Type A” – “pitta” mamas especially – and – at the end of pitta season all of us,  which is right now creates  special call to attend to such conditions.  Overlay the astrology if you believe in it, which says especially until the 23rd of this September, there are extra influences to promote short fuses.  Here’s some tips for your clients.

Postpartum mothers are on duty 24/7, no matter what help they have.  Think about the many bodily changes – tons of invisible work Mama has to do in addition to being on call for Baby.  Do I need to elaborate on other responsibilities?  We do what we can.  And we see the need for a better way!

This is where DOOOOLAS can dooooo so much in such simple little things ways, to prevent problems.  We mother the mothers at this time with the umbrella of love, wisdom, timely guidance practical supports. – Ayudoulas are specially trained for this work.  Or call on whatever friends and family and other helpers are there, under organizing guidance of an Ayurvedic who understands the special management of this “42 Days for 42 Years” window.

Let’s start with what Ayurvedics know as Vata dosha – the air and space element metabolic functions in the body.  Yes, even with high pitta (fire/water) dominant in a mother’s constitution, vikruti (imbalance) and summer to fall seasonal exacerbations, we have to look at calming vata after birth.  It can push the pitta overlays to flare up quickly.  And vata needs warmth among other things.  How to?

Avoid energetically heat producing foods and favor the season’s coolers – succulent sweet fruits and vegetables, coconut, some pomegranate and grape is great, gently cook more coriander and cilantro into foods, and organic milk rather than yoghurt or cheese helps.  But take them room temp or warm, not cold, to prevent gas, bloating and even colic contributing influences.

Also very important – enough good fats, carbs and snacks promote much needed stability and rebuilding.  At this time of year, favor clarified butter (“ghee”) and coconut oil, for their cooling properties.  Ghee not only cools, it strengthens digestive enzyme functions, and helps carry out impurities from the cells better than butter right now.

Many common chill out measures especially pitta dominant mamas will call on – can be shifted.  Most of her chill down choices make her feel more dry, brittle, fragile, emotionally chilly, ungrounded and fearful, ie, vata exacerbated.  Minimize and replace things like

Dietary

  • cold temperature foods and drinks – replace with thermous of cooling but digestive and lactation supportive weak herbal teas kept in a thermos for easy access.  Fennel, cumin, coriander, fresh ginger are good helpful – 1/2 tsp of the mix to 1 quart of hot water!  Cooling grains, like basmati (not brown) rice, quinoa and oat are preferred; cooling diary – clarified butter and organic cream top milk vs other forms, and taken warm temp cools; cooling or make the most of it – iron rich – sweeteners vs honey; cooling proteins include easy to digest small legumes, or poultry for non vegetarians.
  • bland foods – add “middle of the road” enzymatic seasonings which don’t spike heat but help digestive “fires” and make the food tasty too – food needs to be appeetizing!
  • Cucumber – and salads in general – by my experience is guaranteed gas for mom and baby used raw – I’ve cooked and seasoned it to delicious satisfaction, or you should avoid these.  Try steaming asparagus or another vegetable on the “foods to favor” list in our cookbook, and serve with a lime not vinegar vinaigrette with well roasted garlic.  This will probably satisfy salad desires for now.
  • dry quick foods like toast and crackers constipate and don’t satisfy – serve flat breads with soups and lots of ghee or other suitable fat to ground and nourish.
  • high sugar low fat sweets hit fast and hard and though even this is preferred to nothing when tempers flare – give her a little to keep blood sugar up then make a sweet with lots of butterfat, coconut, cacao butter, nuts or full fat dairy – you see adding protein and fats gives startup fuel from the sugars and carbs last a little longer, then the fats give stable long burning fuel.
  • chocolate has sweet, oily and bitter taste.  Good change she needs more of all, but craving chocolate let’s look at adding more bitter taste appropriately  – turmeric, fenugreek, and maybe a little well seasoned and cooked dandelion may crowd out that craving.
  • leftovers or pre-prepared foods to save hot kitchen time are generally devoid of prana – life force – and we say, are tamasic.  This means heavy, dulling, depressive, frustrating energies prevail with these.  Use easy cook methods and make smaller portions.

Lifestyle

  • Eating out gives probably GMO and free radical producing fats and other non-rejuvenating foods, though it gives her a break from the kitchen.  Ask if you can work with her best friend to renew the food chain a little longer if that is what’s needed.  Use this budget towards a postpartum home spa treatment instead.  Three in a row can really not just safety net but reverse many in free-fall emotionally.
  • An intense, distracting movie increases the fire element – singing or story time with family at night, more sattvic (light, love and peace filled) movies, like that are best.
  • Skipping naps.  Guess what……..this is high risk emotionally.  Need help fitting it in?  Let’s talk about the many factors, and who/what might best help.
  • Spending hours talking, processing your emotions – usually means you skipped your naps, as well, and probably ate fast food.  Can your friends value their time with  you at even $5 or $10/hour in contribution to your care at this time?
  • There are many ways to think creatively and each situation needs it’s own TLC this way.  AyurDoulas are trained to apply the needed principles to whatever resources are at hand to make the most of a mother’s experience.

Moms need to feel growing stability and rejuvenation, as well as fresh qualities in their early postpartum, even though many foods and lifestyle things that give these can complicate there are many which help.  For both hot tempered impatient or blaming moods,  and fearful, depressed and anxious moods settle, we see them settle down much with simple measures.

Stability and tissue rejuvenation are among the top priorities for mothers after childbirth according to the ancient Ayurvedic medical textbooks.  We see that the psychology, the heart and mind can be saved from self or other’s blame and most efficiently addressed taking proper care of her body’s needs at this time.  Such a blessing!

* Those mothers, whose anger or negativity became so serious we heard about them  in those very sad news stories, were all on some mood medicine cocktail inappropriate for them, according to Dr. Ann Blake-Tracey, and her website, Drug Awareness.

Of course – many mothers have pushed the envelope too far or have such fatigue their genetic predispositions are giving serious conditions beyond the scope of a general article.  We can’t presume to diagnose, treat or cure in this piece or as Ayudoulas in practice, and must encourage appropriate consultation for a client’s primary health care provider.  Postpartum mood disorders can be life threatening.

These simple supports are likely to still be helpful under this greater umbrella of licensed medical care, and for some clients, their path takes them out of our hands.

Genetic Roulette

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“Genetic Roulette”  is a free online, well done movie.   GMOs seriously affect babies children and adults with allergies, inflammatory bowel issues, reproductive issues and much more. This is the education I was waiting for, well done.

Plan on about 1.5 hours, a notepad, some tea, and friends to watch it with?  Very well done, it doesn’t drag brag or offend but it is seriously presenting this life and planetary big impact topic.

http://geneticroulettemovie.com

Then – let’s talk more how we can help the so many who have fed their families and animals GMO foods.  There is homework for reversing the effects; some of it will work, and as one of the doctor/researchers on the video explains, it depends how many different sources soemtimes, how well it all can be reversed.

Better news – Dr. Gary Young and others do have their attention on more potent methods to help reverse the real genetic damage.

Much gratitude to Jeffrey Smith’s untiring work over many years, and lawyer Stever Druker, both familiar faces from my days in Fairfield, Iowa.

Namaste

Ysha

Herbs for Mood – Depression and many related conditions

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Herbs for Postnatal Moods – We use several really good ones.  Front line – I often call on Tulsi with Gotu Kola or another Brahmi tea – serotonin enhancing in Nature’s user friendly bio-balancing way that can be tandemed for month or more before beginning to SLOWLY reduce other herbs, according to some experienced Ayurvedics.  Transitioning off over at least 6 months, according to Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, if on mood meds for over a year.  She does not however have Ayurveda’s toolbox, so I believe there can be more help up front while still proceeding so very cautiously.   (Good results for a few days do not mean all is well – the medicines have stored in high quantity in brain tissues and begin to download in chunks into blood).  So this is just a beginning discussion of a number of mood supportive herbs.

These 2-3 herbs are also gentle at a time we need to be gentle!  They are key manas (Mind) rasayana (rejuvenative tonic) herbs.  Yes, they are safe in pregnancy and postpartum.  Especially for Mamas, I combine them a bit of digestive (ginger, pippali, or even cardamom), with shatavari (wild asparagus root) to potentiate the manas effects (connecting to body/hormones, and enhancing to lactation anyone?) and/or ashwagandha (more root chakra and Vata grounding/pacifying, also helps lactation).  There is controversy about use of ashwagandha in pregnancy, some are big on it, others totally avoid, I take a more middle perspective, in smaller amounts and well combined.  We can discuss that again another post.

Although there are many distinct diagnoses for mood issues after, or before childbirth, in Ayurveda we see a common thread during the postpartum time of high Vata, which may also push another dosha out of it’s right place and function.  We can consider support with herbal foods – a gentle benign tea – and leave the legally appropriate scope of practice in hands of licensed practitioner.

Tulsi-Gotu Kola Tea is on sale – just received the message today – with this wonderful company, Organic India .  I so honor this company – they sustainably employ thousands of families now in India in organic herb production.  They have loose leaf tulsi and brahmi (gotu kola or bacopa both work similarly and are called “Brahmi”).

I learned this from Ayurvedic practitioner of many years, Sarasvati Buhrman – she gives 4-5 drops nasya (nose drops/nasal administration of herbs) per nostril of brahmi decocted into ghee for Vata depression, varying it for Pitta and Kapha, along with 4-5 cups daily of the above tea as front line support while the rest of needed “homework” is being put into place.  I’ve worked with an older woman her family sent me East to support for a week, in severe suicidal condition under Dr Bhurman’s advice, and watched it really help, but please note that nasya is contraindicated in Pregnancy.

And severe cases MUST be under her doctor’s umbrella of support and referral.  Particularly with pitta cases involving violent impulses or thoughts which are highest risk.  There may be risk to baby or mother’s life.  They often have many issues and sources of advice, which can throw them off from prioritizing use of your support, even dietary and massage gets de-prioritized.  So this is offered as beginning discussion on long term project for education and care research perhaps.  We would want to look at the individual’s other issues in postpartum time and prioritize for it all to create their unique herbal formulation, under client’s and Doctor’s OK.  Research projects would start with much simpler parameters of course, and less potent results for many.

How does all this fit in context of a postpartum care practice?  

The following perspectives and the best possible care are especially important!  Mood support is greatly aided with the following knowledge and skills which may be much less difficult to implement than herbal formulation.   A mother’s special abhyanga (massage) given 3 days in a row absolute minimum, or 5-6 days (not spread out, in a row) as a wiser minimum for more serious cases, so helps ground the herbal effects and not just pop back out of benefits to this process.  It is a deeply significant component of postpartum care and of mood supports,  actually advised for all mamas, not just mood challenged, for 42 days daily.

Also deeply important are the rather unique even to Ayurvedic students and many western trained Ayruvedic practitioners, dietary recommendations after childbirth.  You can learn more in my basic webinars on Ayurvedic Maternal and Newborn Care.  Also useful is the e-cookbook and e-handbook for your clients, Touching Heaven, Tonic Postpartum Care/Cooking with Ayurveda.    The advanced 5 hour webinar on Safe Postpartum Herbs is also available, and will be most valuable to those with some knowledge of Ayurvedic herbology.  Those wanting to get started with potent supports right away can begin studying client and practitioner use of aromatherapy.   A 2 hour Essential Oils (More than) Basics class is also now recorded and getting really good reviews – as I must say I expected – even from experienced aromatherapists.

The early post-pregnancy time has been called “The Black Hole in Health Care” by Dr. Jeanne Watson Driscoll PhD,APRN,BC.  It is a big Y in the road, and effects easily last for decades – “42 Days for 42 Years” according to “Mother of Ayurveda” in the west, Dr. Sarita Shrestha.

I must make clear disclaimers to this post – it cannot be intended to replace the advice of your medical doctor or primary practitioner.  Information here is presented for educational purposes and  you must complete your own homework and work within your appropriate scope of practice.  For serious concerns, you may wish to also look at the reports by Dr. Ann Blake Tracy on a well researched website maintained for many years, Drugawareness.org.  She still offers phone consultations if you feel you are having adverse reactions to mood meds.  For some of the heavy social/medical industry implications – The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a nonprofit mental health watchdog, responsible for helping to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices.  This is not a first focus recommendation for mothers, please; there is a serious political and social conscience and service they provide for those so inclined to work in that arena.

In your service,

Ysha Bhu