Today we chat with Paula James-Martinez, a passionate women’s health advocate and founder of the non profit The Mother Lovers. Currently working with our friends at prenatal vitamin company Needed, she’s a talented writer and producer who recently directed the birth documentary Born Free (now streaming on IP+).
Filmmaker Paula James Martinez travels across the United States to understand what makes it the most dangerous and expensive nation to give birth in. From heartbreaking personal stories and harrowing facts to perspectives of experts both in the medical and legal fields, BORN FREE: BIRTH IN AMERICA shines a light on the true cost of giving birth in the US. The film is an invitation for every person to start a conversation about the state of maternal health. Watch Born Free on IP+
Want more pregnancy + parenting? Informed Pregnancy Plus is a new streaming platform by pregnancy focused chiropractor Dr. Elliot Berlin. Dedicated to pregnancy, parenting, and everything in between, IP+ offers everything from prenatal workouts and yoga flows to original series and iconic birth films like The Business of Being Born. (Pssst, subscriptions are a great gift for parents-to-be!)
Start your FREE TRIAL of Informed Pregnancy+ and get access to all our curated pregnancy and parenting content.
Functional prenatal and postpartum nutritionist Jessica Zadeh joins the podcast to discuss the third trimester of her first pregnancy in this before birth story. Jessica’s nutrition masterclass is now streaming on Informed Pregnancy Plus.
“And I kind of just was at this point where like, okay, I have to figure this food stuff out because if I don't, I'm going to pass it on to my children one day. Anyway, so the long and short of it is I bought one of his books and I went home and I told my husband, I'm quitting my job. I'm going back to school to study nutrition.”
“I kind of thought that I had gotten my body to a place where if I continued to, you know, eat 200 grams of protein a day and eat very specifically and work out every day that I would just have like that quintessential perfect little baby bump. But my body just, I guess is not like that. So, yeah, that's been really hard for me.”
“So now my anxiety has shifted more into because I am having a girl and having a daughter just brings a lot of anxiety for me and my worst fear is passing this all along to her. So now my anxiety kind of has shifted that way.”
“I don't think anyone has a birth plan that goes exactly how it's written. So ideally in a perfect mystical world, I would have a completely natural, unmedicated, magical birth and delivery with like no tearing. And it's just this great idyllic experience.”
“So kind of all over that spectrum is where I work. So it's fun, because it's a lot of different things, but then it's a lot of, you know, detective work. And it's really fun to kind of see them through that whole journey because you can actually see the improvements and how excited they are and really, you know, you're not just helping them, but you're helping their family. So I really enjoy that part of it too.”
AI-generated transcript with speaker labels — may contain errors, especially names and medical terms. Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC appears in blue; Jessica Zadeh in orange.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[0:12] Welcome to the Informed Pregnancy and Parenting Podcast. I'm your host, pregnancy-focused chiropractor Dr. Elliott Berlin. My guest today is a functional prenatal and postpartum nutritionist. She currently has a nutrition masterclass streaming on Informed Pregnancy Plus. She joins me today in her third trimester of her first pregnancy, Jessica Zadeh. Welcome to the podcast.
Jessica Zadeh[0:57] Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[1:00] I'm excited to learn from you. I've always run away from because I like pizza, but it's important for me to learn this and I'm open. You caught me at a good time and I've had the luxury and joy of working with you. And I really appreciate your approach before we jump into the details. Let's start at the beginning. Where are you from originally?
Jessica Zadeh[1:21] I'm originally from Connecticut, but trees, yes. Trees, humidity, nature seasons, but yeah, moved to LA for college in 2003, which seems like five years ago, but it's like a really long time ago.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[1:36] Well, Connecticut to Los Angeles. I mean, why for college?
Jessica Zadeh[1:42] So I was born in Connecticut, lived there for a really long time, then went to junior high and high school outside Minneapolis in a suburb outside Minneapolis. Minnesota. Minnesota. Yes, exactly. More nature, more seasons.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[1:53] More seasons or less seasons. Minnesota seems like only winter and the 4th of July.
Jessica Zadeh[1:59] Winter and then really, really hot and humid. There's like one nice day in October and then there's like one nice day in May, if it's not snowing, but yeah, but you can get a house there for under $2 million. So I think that's why people stay.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[2:11] Oh, you know, that seems nice.
Jessica Zadeh[2:13] Yeah, it seems nice, but no, I moved to LA for college because I guess the long and short of it was to get away from my mother. Oh, well, I want to know about that. Where do we start?
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[2:24] Where do you start? Okay, let's start there. So you're living outside Minneapolis and you're not loving it. Why?
Jessica Zadeh[2:32] No, I mean, like I had a very idyllic childhood in the sense that like I didn't want for anything. It was very, you know, like upper middle class. Like everyone's mom had a Volvo station wagon. Like in that sense, like it was great, but I had, I still have a mother. She's still alive. I have a mother who has borderline narcissistic personality disorder. So the way I always explain it in the short term is if you've ever seen the movie Mommy Dearest, literally that, and she, there you go. Yep.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[3:00] No wire hangers.
Jessica Zadeh[3:02] And she was very, very rigid about food and bodies and put me in dance class and figure skating when I was very young, which I loved, but doesn't exactly help foster healthy environment with your body and around food. So my way to cope with this, which I later learned in college, so studying child development, you know, try to fix yourself by learning about it, I became very controlling about my food in my body. So I developed just a myriad of disordered eating habits starting when I was probably around like age four was my earliest memory of it. And it just kind of grew and, you know, became exacerbated from there. So by the time I got to college, I had a full blown eating disorder
[3:48] and a slew of health issues that I wouldn't really go on to rectify until my early thirties.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[3:54] Okay. This is important because as a nutritionist, it sounds like this laid a lot of the groundwork for the work that you do now. Just clarify for me, dance class and figure skating. What about that was off putting to you?
Jessica Zadeh[4:06] So I loved it. It was the only kind of sports I really liked. It wasn't like a soccer or basketball, like team sport kind of person really. But I had, I guess, kind of the best examples. Like I had this one dance coach and I was in tap ballet and jazz and her name was Rebecca with a K. And this was like the early nineties. She would just walk around with a diet coke and a cigarette and she would make us stand up against the wall with like a yardstick. And she would put a yardstick against our stomach to make us like suck in our stomach. And you are taught to be very, very conscious of your body, what it looks like, what it looks like in comparison to other girls
[4:44] and how it's supposed to look and how you're supposed to fit in certain costumes. And like I was literally told, if you eat Oreos, you will get fat. And you will never get married. No one will ever love you. So things like that do not.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[4:57] I mean, if you eat enough Oreos, you probably will get fat, whatever your choices, what does that have to do with never getting married or nobody loving you? Ouch.
Jessica Zadeh[5:07] I don't remember the exact conversation, but I remember that, you know, kind of like snippet of it, but it does.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[5:14] Did mom put you in these classes for the yardstick?
Jessica Zadeh[5:18] Yes and no. Well, so here's the other, my mother and I have many differences, but one of the biggest is that we are just very polar opposite. I'm five, eight. I'm built like my dad. I'm very muscular. I have a very big bone mass. My mother is about five feet tall, like German little woman, maybe a hundred pounds at the time. And she was just very, very athletic. And I just was not. And so because that was a difference in her eyes, it was something wrong with me that needed to be fixed because I just wasn't like that. So that was kind of, uh, cause on my mother's side, my grandfather is Austrian and that kind of mentality, it's sort of like a tough love mentality.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[6:03] I mean, that's even without the narcissistic personality. I can only imagine how much more intense that became. Also, I think I didn't take dance because they would have needed a two yard stick.
Jessica Zadeh[6:15] Yeah.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[6:16] Okay. Back to you. So you moved to California to get away from that environment.
Jessica Zadeh[6:21] Yeah. You know, I've always thought of myself as kind of a spiritual intuitive person. And I just had this feeling that the only way I was going to, like, there had to be something more in the sense that like I was just in this cycle with my mother and I just felt like, and I had cousins in Hermosa beach and it was like the furthest place away that I did get into a school here and it was kind of like my safety school. And so I transferred and I was like, okay, well, I got into a school there. I have a cousin kind of in the area if I like need anyone. And so I was like, this is my only option kind of. So yeah, moved here, came to school, studied applied
[6:57] developmental psychology, basically to, you know, learn about why I was so messed up about so many things and initially became a teacher and a newborn care specialist. And I was a nanny for a while. I worked at a baby store on the weekends and I was very heavily into the early childhood development area and worked in that for a really long time up until like 2017 ish.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[7:24] What changed?
Jessica Zadeh[7:26] What changed was my wedding. Actually, I got married in 2017 and actually I saw my mother at my wedding. She was invited to my wedding, long story. And the year after my wedding, I gained 80 pounds and this was while I was still going to SoulCycle multiple times a week. I basically would like not eat during the week and then binge on the weekend, but then do like crazy HIIT workouts, which does not foster weight loss, by the way, for anyone listening. It just creates a lot of excess cortisol in your body and adrenal fatigue and messes with your hormones. And it just does really bad stuff. So I was at an in-service with Dr. Bill Sears, the pediatrician.
[8:09] This was literally a year after my wedding and he was talking about how he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in the early 2000s. And he was seeing doctors at UCSF, I believe. And I think they gave him like four to six months to live, something like that. And he and his wife decided that if he has four to six months to live, that they were just going to travel, enjoy their time. But he said at the end of the day, I'm a scientist and I can't stop researching things. So while they were in the Mediterranean and Spain, he started speaking with these other clinicians about his cancer and they recommended all these alternative healing modalities.
[8:46] And he thought, well, I'm going to die anyway, so why not just try it? And most of it was nutrition based. And so he completely rehabbed his diet, stopped eating everything, non-fat, low fat, processed, started eating really high, healthy fats, unprocessed foods. Obviously a lot of other stuff went into it too. But the long and short of it was this was in 2018 and he was still alive and his doctors at UCSF were like, well, this is weird. So he talks about how it changed the way he practiced medicine. And he started getting in a lot of trouble with the American Academy of Pediatrics because he started saying, no, you shouldn't give your kids fruit loops
[9:27] for breakfast. You should be giving them eggs and whole milk and raw dairy and all this stuff. And so sitting there, I was kind of at the end of my rope in terms of food and being at the beginning of my marriage, I knew then I wanted to have children someday. And I kind of just was at this point where like, okay, I have to figure this food stuff out because if I don't, I'm going to pass it on to my children one day. Anyway, so the long and short of it is I bought one of his books and I went home and I told my husband, I'm quitting my job. I'm going back to school to study nutrition. He was like, okay. And so I always kind of say like, you know, the therapists that become
[10:05] therapists to solve their own issues. I kind of did that with food. So right when I started, when I went back to school, I did a sugar detox. I started seeing a functional medicine doctor, started getting my hormones figured out my cortisol levels, completely changed the way I ate, lost a hundred pounds and became a functional nutrition practitioner. And that's what I do now.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[10:29] Well, you say it just like, Oh, lost a hundred pounds. It's not like a massive.
Jessica Zadeh[10:33] Well, it took a long time. It did take three years, which kind of, and I'm skipping a little bit ahead, but that's one of the issues that I would say the biggest issue I'm having in my pregnancy is that it took me effectively 37 ish years to get to a place with my body where I actually was comfortable with my body and I liked my body and I was good with food and all this stuff. And then I got pregnant and thrown a whole wrench into it.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[11:02] So, okay. Well, that'll be interesting. And God, my mind is racing with how did your mom get here?
Jessica Zadeh[11:07] Wedding.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[11:07] If you didn't invite her, how long had it been since you had seen her? What happened at the wedding? What happened since the wedding? But I really want to get into your pregnancy. So let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk bumps and bellies. We'll be right back.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[11:33] Welcome back. We're talking to Jessica's a pre and postnatal functional nutritionist. Okay. So pregnancy for you, you're in the throes of it. Now, how has the pregnancy been for you so far?
Jessica Zadeh[11:46] So I've been kind of separating it because I guess if you're asking me from a clinical perspective, I'm having what they call a non-eventful or it's very good. Clinically speaking, it's very a boring pregnancy, a boring pregnancy. Yes. Emotionally, psychologically, I've been having a rough time because like I said, before I got pregnant, I would walk five miles a day, go to Pilates every day. I was in very good shape. I mean, I still am in very good shape. I shouldn't say that what's been hard for me is and you would think that I know this because I do this for a living and I talk about this with my OB all the time and he just looks at me like,
[12:23] yeah, because you're pregnant. I kind of thought that I had gotten my body to a place where if I continued to, you know, eat 200 grams of protein a day and eat very specifically and work out every day that I would just have like that quintessential perfect little baby bump. But my body just, I guess is not like that. So, yeah, that's been really hard for me. The weight gain part has just really been psychologically tough and I think it's a mixture of eating disorder stuff being brought up. I think it's a mixture of having been this weight previously and lost it. And then it's also a mixture of a little bit of the fear of like, even though I help other women
[13:05] get their weight off, there are some people that breastfeed and they have a much harder time with it. So it's kind of all of that. And just watching my body change so much has been a lot.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[13:18] Okay. So it's not like you're having like mega stuffed Oreos as the mainstay of your pregnancy.
Jessica Zadeh[13:25] No, in fact, I really have it in probably people listening to this who are pregnant are going to like hate me. Honestly, my biggest craving has been raw, full fat cottage cheese, which is like super lame.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[13:36] You glutton.
Jessica Zadeh[13:37] I know. Like nothing. Like, I don't know. It's been my diet. It's a very, very intentional and specific with my diet. I think twice when I was, I didn't ever even have morning sickness. I never threw up nothing twice when I was really, really nauseous. I made my husband go to Gelson's and get me a Mexican seven up for people that don't know what that is. It's seven up manufactured in Mexico without corn syrup. So they use actual real cane sugar versus corn syrup. That was kind of like the worst thing.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[14:07] You reference a couple of times eating disordery kind of things.
Jessica Zadeh[14:12] Yes. So for me, I mean, and people are kind of all over the map on this. So there's kind of a differentiation in the clinical world of eating disorder treatment between eating disorder behaviors or symptoms, meaning are you restricting? Are you binging? Are you purging? That kind of thing. And just eating disorder thought patterns. So for me, I haven't engaged in any type of eating disorder symptom or behavior in many years. For me, what tends to creep back in are the thought patterns. So what I mean by that is just really being very, very hard on my body, in my head. And I think I also struggle with the reality of what my body looks like to other
[14:53] people versus what it looks like to me. And I guess a prime example of this is my baby shower was a couple of weeks ago, and I had a little bit of a mental breakdown because of people taking my picture. I didn't want my picture taken because I'm so uncomfortable with where my body is at this point. It just brought up so much anxiety and I just got emotional about it. I didn't want it. And my husband came at the very end and people were lingering and my husband's family is all Persian Israeli, so they stay a very long time. And I looked at my husband and I was like, I can't do this anymore. I need to leave. I'm out, like I'm done. It was just too much,
[15:32] like people trying to touch my belly and people saying, oh, you look great or whatever it was. It was just too much focus on my body and it got me too in my head about it. And it's a hard thing to explain. I don't know if I'm articulating it well, but well, one thing
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[15:46] that's not so hard is if you don't feel good with how you look, you don't want to be the center of attention. You certainly don't want to be the center of attention with cameras flashing.
Jessica Zadeh[15:58] Right. Yeah.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[15:59] I think we can all relate to that when you had your eating disorders, how did they manifest themselves?
Jessica Zadeh[16:05] So I was kind of all over the map. I guess if you look at like my medical history, I was bulimic. I also had a diagnosis called EDNOS, which now they've changed it. But back in the day, it stood for eating disorder, not otherwise specified, meaning you kind of fluctuated between restricting, binging, purging, all of the above. So I was kind of all over the map. I'm very lucky in the sense that I don't have crazy medical issues because of it. I guess the biggest one that's impacted me in pregnancy is I had a couple of esophageal ruptures, meaning my esophagus ruptured a couple of times and I had to have surgeries to fix it. And then I had hiatal hernia repairs
[16:47] because where the esophagus connects to your stomach, it becomes very, very worn out. So they have to go in and suture it and basically make it stronger again. So that's something that in the third trimester, like anything I eat, which I don't really have an appetite right now, which is another subject, but like I can have two cups of bone broth and I get heartburn because of like where the baby's physician pushing on my esophagus. It's kind of agitating all that tissue. So that would be kind of the biggest medical complication I guess I had. In that sense, I'm very lucky. I have a lot of dental stuff, but other than that.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[17:24] Dental stuff from nutrient deprivation?
Jessica Zadeh[17:27] No, from purging for 30 years. So I don't really have any like enamel on the backs of my teeth, which if you're someone like me, who's like weird about fluoride and stuff like that, it's a whole thing.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[17:40] But now you're towards the end.
Jessica Zadeh[17:43] Yeah.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[17:43] Is that feeling better or worse? I mean, obviously you're going to be getting as big as you'll get. So if you weren't happy with how big you were a month ago, it's probably not happier in the sense of you must have grown, but are you happier knowing that it's a finite period and you're getting to the end of that finite period?
Jessica Zadeh[18:06] Yes, that does make me happy. Now if you couldn't tell I'm a little high strung, a little OCD and anxious. So now my anxiety has shifted more into because I am having a girl and having a daughter just brings a lot of anxiety for me and my worst fear is passing this all along to her. So now my anxiety kind of has shifted that way. And I have some anxiety about the delivery, more so about the hospital, I guess. Yeah, I guess to answer your question. Yes, it's dissipating, but it's kind of shifted to different anxieties.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[18:44] OK, I think that observationally in the work that I do and especially the work that I've done in the past supporting labor, it seems to me most people go into labor with some kind of combination of excitement and anxiousness. And so the ratio could be different from person to person or even for the same person from time to time as you get closer. And the things that you're excited or anxious about could also vary. I'm curious what you have planned, especially if your anxiety, part of it has to do with being in a hospital setting. Let's take a little break and when we come back, we'll find out what birth you have in store. Welcome back. We're talking to Jessica Zadeh.
[19:39] She is excited and anxious about becoming a mom in six weeks. How much of that is about becoming a mom? And how much is it about body stuff? And how much is it about birth?
Jessica Zadeh[19:52] I would say pretty equally split. I mean, as far as becoming a parent, I think, you know, a lot of people have asked me why I've waited this long. It's one, I've been married for almost eight years, two, I'm 39. So I have waited a long time to do this. And I think the answer to that is twofold. One, I worked with children for a really long time, so I kind of OD'd a little bit. Needed a break.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[20:15] You peaked early.
Jessica Zadeh[20:17] I peaked early, yeah. And when you do study child development and you work, and I'm sure other people who are educators or, you know, work with little kids can attest to this. When you really learn how severely you can just mess up a human being, it makes you a little more trepidatious, I guess, to just jump into it. And I'm sure a lot of my own childhood issues played into that as well. I was very kind of gun shy. Like, oh, God, like, OK, if I do this, like, am I going to be too good? Anyways, there's all that.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[20:47] Well, now you make me want to go back and ask all the questions I have in the first segment. You moved away from your mom intentionally, but it sounds like the relationship actually became even more intentionally distant.
Jessica Zadeh[20:59] Yes. So after I moved away for college, I had a therapist when I was in college. She was in Westwood. She was amazing. And she gave me the really good advice. I think I was maybe 24 at the time, 23, 24. And she essentially told me in her experience with this type of dynamic, if one person does not just sever the relationship, you kind of just end up in this hamster wheel of whatever it is, dysfunction for, you know, the rest of time, essentially. So I was told essentially if you don't sever ties, that it's just going to keep going in the cycle. So I stopped speaking with my mother when I was 24, 25. And then the long story short, when I was planning my wedding,
[21:45] like I said, my husband's family is Persian-Israeli. And the long and short answer of it is that I was told by my father-in-law that my mother was expected to be there. So it was that dynamic. And then also my grandparents wouldn't come if she didn't come. My father wouldn't come if she didn't come. So it was kind of like wasn't really my choice, but she came. So when I saw her when I got married, which was in 2017, that was the first time I had seen her in, I don't know, I was 32 when I got married. So seven years, I guess.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[22:18] And no contact at all during that time? No. Well, what was it like to see her?
Jessica Zadeh[22:25] Well, that's kind of a funny story. I can laugh about it now. I was so anxious about it. I had a wedding planner who had these three other women come and, you know, they follow you around with your lip gloss and everything. And this one girl, she followed me around and I gave her a bottle of Ativan and a case of duck horn Sauvignon Blanc and said, make sure I have this at all times. And I, to this day, do not remember anything from my wedding because I was high on Ativan and drinking Sauvignon Blanc all day. And that's how I coped with it.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[23:01] Wow. That's your wedding.
Jessica Zadeh[23:04] That's my wedding. So I also did not want video because at the time, this whole concept of me not wanting photos and videos taken of me is deeply rooted. It's not like a new thing. I did have a photographer there. And there are some really funny photos that he got of me where I just look like completely just a mess. I mean, people took videos, you know, but we instructed the photographer to, you know, she's not to be near me. The rabbi was very conscientious of the situation, and he didn't mention my mother at all. She wasn't even at our Ketubah signing.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[23:41] Oh, narcissistic leaning people don't generally like that.
Jessica Zadeh[23:46] No, they don't. So she did have a mild outburst at the end of my wedding, which I do not remember. But one of my good friends was my roommate in college, witnessed and replayed the whole situation for me. And yeah, so she did have a little outburst at the end. But then, yeah, that was in 2017 and we haven't spoken since.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[24:07] So that was it. Just the one that was it. The one one random night that you have to get married. That's when you saw her. And that was it. I say, so she's out.
Jessica Zadeh[24:19] Yeah, but ironically, she has two sisters who are my aunts who I have a very close relationship with. And I have a relationship with my grandparents or her parents. And I have somewhat of a relationship with my dad, but it's hard because he's kind of under her.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[24:32] So, yeah, wow. OK, so why would you be nervous about becoming a parent?
Jessica Zadeh[24:38] Because I've had such great examples.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[24:42] So that's understandable. That's one third of the nervous pie.
Jessica Zadeh[24:46] Yes, that's one third of it. I would say the other third of it is, you know, just the normal stuff like how what is work going to look like after, you know, I don't know, how are we going to afford to pay for private school? Like stuff like that, like that kind of minutiae. And then the other anxiety part, I guess, is just about the delivery, which we did our Cedars tour the other day a couple weeks ago now, I guess. And I said to my husband, I'm very fortunate because you connect me with Stacey, who's my doula. And I said to my husband, I don't know how people do this if they don't have all the kind of support that I've put in place. I feel like it would be
[25:27] so much more anxiety provoking.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[25:30] Well, yeah, I mean, I think so, too, for people that want it anyway. You know, the old saying takes a village and we don't know everybody has the village accessible. It's challenging. So your plan is hospital birth with an obstetrician.
Jessica Zadeh[25:46] Yes, actually, you recommended Dr. Rothbard to me, too, I think. So, yeah, I switched my OBGYN who I had for, I don't know, 15 years. I started OBGYN shopping, I guess, if you will, probably about a year and a half ago. And my old OBGYN, she did some stuff during COVID I wasn't a fan of, so interviewed a lot of people and ended up going with Jason Rothbard. And the reason I ended up going with him is because in my interview with him, he was actually the last OB that I interviewed, too. And I kind of went in and I was kind of just over the whole process. I was getting very frustrated with it because I was getting, I guess, frustrated with the answers
[26:22] I was getting from doctors. And I kind of went in there not in a mean way, just very much like, OK, this is who I am. Like this is what I want. This is what I don't want. And I was very surprised, but very pleased with his answers. And I think one of the things I said to him is I said, you know, I will not do the gestational diabetes test. I won't drink the drink. I will do blood spot monitoring, but that's all I'll do. And he just looked at me and he said, OK, it's your body. You can do what you want. And I was like floored by that kind of that, which is kind of sad if you think about it, because I feel like all doctors really should say that.
[27:00] But yeah, he was just very accommodating, I guess, which I feel like all doctors should be. And I think a good balance to I tend to be a little, again, high strung. And he's very kind of relaxed about that. So I did know I wanted to deliver in hospital, I think, because I don't think home birth would be right for me because I have so many anxiety and I would be worrying about what could go wrong and that kind of thing. And because I am at advanced gestational, I think I did want to be in an environment where God forbid something did happen. I, you know, had the tools that are available. So, yes, hospitals delivery, but I also wanted a very, you know, kind of allopathic
[27:42] light, if you will, environment, which is why I ended up going with Stacey as my doula because I wanted someone there to be my advocate. I wanted someone there to kind of take the pressure off me so that I didn't have to kind of like run the show. And she's been great in the sense of helping me kind of develop a plan, what I want, what I don't want. And I feel very comfortable with the fact that I can kind of delineate to her and I don't feel like all the pressure has to be on me, if that makes sense.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[28:12] Yeah. So what's the ideal? What's the vision that you're aiming for?
Jessica Zadeh[28:18] So the vision, which is weird, because you think I'd be super adamant about this, but everyone that I've ever known that used to be a newborn care specialist and everyone that I worked with, no, I don't think anyone you would be a good person to vouch for this. I don't think anyone has a birth plan that goes exactly how it's written. So ideally in a perfect mystical world, I would have a completely natural, unmedicated, magical birth and delivery with like no tearing. And it's just this great idyllic experience. I don't know if it will go that way. Ideally, I don't want to have an epidural. I've kind of left that as a question mark on my birth plan
[28:58] in the sense that like let's do everything we can to mitigate that. If it does happen, I'm not going to stress over it. But besides that, I want to be as, I guess, natural as possible. I was laughing with my husband during the hospital tour when they were showing like your food options and I was like, well, this is sad. So like bringing in like that kind of stuff, like whatever I can control, trying to control that. So like bringing in my own foam bath, my own water with, you know, trace minerals and lemon juice and things like that, I think will help me feel more in control of it. But I don't know, at the end of the day, I mean, I don't know,
[29:36] maybe she ends up being breached and I ended up being a C-section and it all goes out the window. So I am kind of surrendered to that as much as I feel like I can be.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[29:47] Right. Well, that's why. So, you know, what are you aiming for for page one? What's the ideal? And of course, I always say that once labor starts, you're kind of in a hot air balloon aiming for a certain path, but somewhat at the mercy of the winds. Well, I mean, it sounds like a reasonable plan. It sounds like you've built in some flexibility if you need this or that or in the moment want this or that, that you're flexible in terms of getting them and also surrounded yourself with a team, you know, an obstetrician who's pretty open minded and a doula who's got your back and all the ways that I don't got your back. And I'm excited to talk to you on the other side
[30:27] after you have the baby and see how things went for you. Before we wrap up here, I do want to just find out what because you do functional nutrition for this demographic. So what do those services look like?
Jessica Zadeh[30:42] So kind of depends on where you're at. I work with people who are not pregnant yet, who either they are struggling to get pregnant or they're having fertility issues or they just want to, you know, get off hormonal birth control and prepare their bodies to get pregnant. So I work with women in that space, which is really fun. And also it's fun to kind of see them through that whole journey, depending on kind of where they start. And then I also work with women who are any which were, you know, in their pregnancy. Maybe they were just diagnosed with gestational diabetes. So then they come to see me to, you know, rectify that and work on that or some women come to me
[31:21] toward the end of their pregnancy and they're concerned about like micronutrient deficiencies and being able to breastfeed. So we work on that. And I work with women in terms of what to eat, obviously, how to optimize their diet and also make it manageable, maintainable with through supplementation, through functional lab testing, which functional lab testing is something I really love because it's kind of like a puzzle to me. And I don't think a lot of allopathic practitioners really like see the value in it. But that's really fun to me because you get to draw a lot of blood, see where the markers are, see what's missing, see what's too high or too low
[31:58] and kind of it's like a mystery. You get to kind of figure it out from there. And then I also see women postpartum who, like I said, maybe they, you know, are breastfeeding and they can't lose weight or maybe they have low milk supply or maybe they're just struggling with nutritional deficiencies, something like that. So kind of all over that spectrum is where I work. So it's fun, because it's a lot of different things, but then it's a lot of, you know, detective work. And it's really fun to kind of see them through that whole journey because you can actually see the improvements and how excited they are and really, you know, you're not just helping them,
[32:32] but you're helping their family. So I really enjoy that part of it too.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[32:35] That's awesome. Are they virtual? Can you do them virtually?
Jessica Zadeh[32:38] Yep, yeah. Yeah, I actually, I started my practice during COVID so I kind of started virtual.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[32:43] You set up virtual from the beginning.
Jessica Zadeh[32:44] Exactly, yeah.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[32:45] And you have a really informative masterclass currently running on Informed Pregnancy Plus, a world of information about nutrition, and it's both entertaining and informational. I strongly recommend it. Where can we find you online?
Jessica Zadeh[33:02] My website is Holistic, spelled with a W, so W-H-O-L-I-S-T-I-C, HolisticMethodNutrition.com. And my Instagram is at Holistic.Mama.Nutrition.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[33:14] We'll visit you there. Thank you for sharing some difficult topics pretty openly here with me and with the audience, and I am wishing you just a wonderful mind-body experience in the final stages of your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience, and look forward to catching up with you on the other side.
Jessica Zadeh[33:33] Thank you.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[33:34] Thanks, Jessica, and at home, thanks for listening to the Informed Pregnancy Podcast. For more pregnancy and parenting information just like this, visit us online at InformedPregnancy.com. I got a…
Want more pregnancy + parenting? Start your FREE TRIAL of Informed Pregnancy+ and get access to all our curated pregnancy and parenting content — original series, iconic birth films like The Business of Being Born, prenatal workouts and more.
Marianna Burelli is a Mexico City based actress, producer, and entrepreneur. She first joined us in episode 143 to discuss her first birth and how her baby moved out of the breech position. She returns to the podcast to share about the path of ups and downs leading up to her most recent pregnancy and birth.
Connect with the guest:
@mariannaburelli
@amainatural
amainatural.shop
amainatural.mx
Key quotes
“took the teas and I meditated like religiously twice a day. And in those meditations, I visualized myself being pregnant, having another baby, being fertile, being healthy.”
“I had to work harder with my mind not to go there, right? And trust the process and trust that what I was going through right now was a different story, you know? Well, for me, it was easy to kind of, you know, go back to that sense of, oh my God, what if. So, I had to kind of hold the horses and be, no, this is a different time. This is a different situation. This is a different story, you know? So, it's a great mind-spirit exercise to keep yourself away from the fears and allowing this new chapter to take place as a new chapter. But yeah, I have to confess that I had to really make an effort.”
“And Rio comes out really quickly, like so quickly. So imagine the first baby is born and I'm like, oh my God, my baby Rio. I give them a welcome. I hold him, you know, I do it skin to skin. And my husband cuts him the little cord after however long. And I'm in this middle of this romance with Rio and my doula is like, we need to, we need to, we need to get on Mateo. I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah. I have another child.”
“Also, you know what? It really helps when you know that it's not going to last so long. When you know that this hell time that I'm going through right now, the little hell tunnel, it's not going to be that long. I already know that it's not going to be that long because I've already passed it with Sienna. So knowing that, having that in the back of my head really”
“It's really great. It's doing really, really well. I think this is the future. I think we need to really take care of the planet because if we keep on doing things at this rate, I do not want to think of the future we're going to have to face or our children will have to face. So that's my gift. I have twin boys, but my gift is no bottles.”
AI-generated transcript with speaker labels — may contain errors, especially names and medical terms. Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC appears in blue; Marianna Burelli in orange.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[0:36] Welcome to the Informed Pregnancy and Parenting Podcast. I'm your host, pregnancy-focused carb writer, Dr. Elliott Berman. My guest today is an actress, producer, and entrepreneur based in Mexico City. She was with us on the podcast all the way back in episode number 143, to tell us about her first pregnancy and birth, as well as her then brand new eco-friendly personal care company, Amai Natural. Today, she's back to fill us in on some incredible updates. A lot has happened since we spoke to her last. Mariana Borelli, welcome back to the podcast.
Marianna Burelli[1:10] Thank you so much. Such a great pleasure to be here. The last time I spoke to you, I think was probably, I don't know, months before the pandemic broke out.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[1:21] You're right. We were oblivious then. We had no idea what was about to happen. We were just partying within two feet, or even one feet, of other people. We could see each other's faces, not that it matters for me. I was probably spitting on your hands or something, right? I don't remember that, but you could have been, and I wouldn't have been freaked out. No, on your microphone, for sure. On the microphone, yeah. Now we have the masks. Yeah, I mean, then we had, after that, everything went crazy. And then I lost touch with everybody, including you. And then I turn around, and after all the dust settles, you have this incredible story that you've lived, and I didn't know anything about it.
[2:02] So I'm here to learn and hear and share at the same time. I'm glad you're back.
Marianna Burelli[2:07] Yeah, thank you. So excited to be back to my favorite place.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[2:13] So your first birth was also kind of interesting. Just as a recap, you had a breech baby that we were able to make some space for, and moved into a head-down position. But then you wanted to have an unmedicated birth, but at the hospital. Correct. And you did it. That's right. And I did it. It was really beautiful. And it was beautiful. And it's like, you know, that episode, that first one, 143, is pretty popular because there's not that many stories that we have on here. Usually you either have the home birth that's all natural and willy and unmedicated, or you have the hospital birth that's a bit more sterile and medicated. But yours was the in-between. Yeah. Mine was the hybrid. The hybrid. So before we get up to the most
Marianna Burelli[2:59] recent events, how was your past four years? Oh my God, it's been beautiful. We moved back to Mexico a year ago and yeah, lots happened. Work here. I first came because I was doing a TV show and I thought that I was going to stay for six months. And then those six months became a year and now a year and a half. So were you producing acting both? I was acting in this TV show and I'm right now producing a movie that hopefully will get to set the beginning of next year or end of this year, depending on funding. But yeah. And I just started another show that will be seen on Netflix at some point next year. So yeah, it's been busy and I had twins. Okay. There we go. Spoiler alert. Mama had twins.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[3:50] Now that's fine. I mean, that's what we're here for. These twins. So I want to get into
Marianna Burelli[3:55] that journey a little bit. At that time, were you looking to get pregnant? Yeah. I started getting kind of like attempting to get pregnant in 2022. At the end of 2022, I found out that I was pregnant at the same time as my father passed, which was kind of an intense period of time in my life. You found out both at the same time? Well, pretty much. I flew to Spain once I found out that my father had passed. He had been sick for a few months and we kind of knew this was going to happen at some point soon. And that day always arrives. And although you think that you're kind of ready for it, you're never ready for it. So we flew to Spain and while I was there for my father's cremation
[4:42] and, you know, all of this, I had a pregnancy test done and I found out that I was pregnant. Wow. In Spain. Yeah. Very intense. So that was kind of the happy news in the middle of something, you know, a very difficult situation and a big goodbye. And then very soon we found out that the baby had a malformation in her heart and doctors told us that the rate of survival of embryos with that were kind of very slim to none. So basically the baby was incompatible with life. How many weeks when you figured that out? I figured that out when I was after the structural, which was 12 weeks. You know, I had a medical abortion on week 13. It was really, really, really tough,
[5:30] much tougher than I ever expected. Thank you. So that was that. And then after a few months, that was in December, 2022. And after a few months, around April, we were like, okay, we're ready to start again. So we did. And up until then, every time we tried to get pregnant, we got pregnant. And this time didn't work that way. You know, we tried to get pregnant and we used hormone trackers, didn't work. We did the whole, you know, calendar, when was my period, you know, all of that. I found it incredibly, I don't want to say boring, but you know, it's hard to kind of like get to business on a day, you know, specifically on, you know, I'll be waiting,
[6:16] let's do it right now. It's kind of not so great. Where are you? Come home. Yeah, come home. We need to get to business. So that didn't work for us at all. And I was kind of worried that I wasn't getting pregnant and months were passing. So we went to a top fertility doctor here in Mexico and he asked me to do some blood work before the consultation. So I did. And when I saw him, he basically had really bad news for me. He said, look, your hormone levels are on the floor and you barely have any eggs left. You have endometriosis. He also broke that news to me, which had never been diagnosed with ever before. Yeah. So suddenly I was facing a whole
[7:04] new scenario. And because of my low account, I wasn't even a candidate for IVF. Now that I wanted to do IVF, but that's what he actually said to me. And I was shocked, Dr. Berlin. I was shocked. I was like, what, what's going on? Like my life, how I knew it totally changed. What age are you at that point? I just turned 40. Okay. Yeah. I'm 41.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[7:29] Oh, well, obviously somehow you got pregnant. Okay. Keep going.
Marianna Burelli[7:32] Yeah, somehow I got pregnant. Yeah. So I was just about to turn 40 then. He kept talking about my age and how when women turn 40, you know, things got a lot harder and that I should have gotten my eggs frozen and, you know, all of those things. And so I walked out of his office feeling devastated and got into the elevator and my husband said, do you believe him? And I said, well, if I believe him, then that means that I have zero chance. He also said there's a chance for you to choose like an egg from an egg donor. So you can start thinking about that because I don't think you'll be able to have your babies from your eggs. However, Roberto's sperm is on point. He emphasized that, you know,
[8:21] and that was great. I was like, oh, this is getting better by the minute. Yeah. Sometimes doctors really, they don't have common sense. Anyway, he didn't. So I walked out thinking, okay, I'm not going to go down this route, not going to check on an egg donor. I'm not going to do any of this. And I said to my husband, are you happy having one child? And he said, I'm absolutely happy having only one child. I was like, great. That's all I needed to know because I'm not going to go down this route of fertility and doing all these things that these guys, you know, presenting to me, but I'm going to do my own stuff. And he said, perfect. I'm going to do something much more, you know, alternative.
[9:08] And so I started to do some meditations and I started training for a marathon and shaman from village in Namibia, who is a friend of my friend. I saw a picture of me and I asked my friend to ask him what he thought. And he said, look, I think she's perfectly fine. I think she seems really stressed out. And he sent some herbs, like some herbal teas that I should take. So I took the teas and I meditated like religiously twice a day. And in those meditations, I visualized myself being pregnant, having another baby, being fertile, being healthy. My ovaries having eggs, et cetera. Right. At that time, are you still tracking your ovulation? No, no, no, I totally dropped all that. I relaxed. I was like, I'm not going to do
[9:58] this anymore. I'm going to have sex whenever I feel like it, whenever he feels like it, as business were before. Because you know what I think happens? Women's brains start getting really like obsessed with the idea of getting pregnant. So you have once a month, the opportunity to get pregnant and you really go for it. And you're really obsessed about it. And I think that that state of mind wasn't doing me any favors, you know, was actually, you know, it's a form of fight or flight. So your system is so jacked up that it's counterproductive. Absolutely. You're in a state where I don't think anything can happen, but run, like protect yourself from danger because you're in that, like what you said.
[10:44] So I dropped everything and I was just taking these teas and I was meditating and visualizing and enjoying the fact that I was actually meditating every day, twice a day. And it almost became more about the pleasure of meditation rather than trying to become pregnant. It kind of shifted. And I said, okay, by the 1st of December, I'm not pregnant. I'm going to start training for a marathon. We were all going to do a marathon in Rome. Have you done before? No, never. But I've always run, but this time I was like, okay, I'm going to run marathon. And my three brothers, my husband and I said, okay, let's do it. And there came December 1st and I wasn't pregnant. So I was like,
[11:29] okay, I want to have the best watch, the best gear. So I really got myself ready for this marathon. And I started training like crazy. You really have to run. If you want to run a marathon, you really have to train hard. And we went on that Christmas, we went to Puglia with my family-in-law and Roberta and I were running like half marathon, like on the 25th of December, feeling really fit and healthy. And then we went to Berlin with my family. And then there we ran maybe like 12 miles, like 20 kilometers at 10 o'clock at night, so cold in January Berlin, running, feeling amazing. Anyway, so I get back to Mexico City on the 9th of January. And after a very long run, like I ran for maybe two and a half hours as part
[12:24] of my training, I felt really sick. I was like, oh, I feel like a real athlete. I feel very tired, very sick. I must have run too much and kept feeling kind of weird. I was like, I'm going to entertain myself with this. Did a pregnancy test, came out positive. I was like, no, come on. Wow. This is a joke. I've been running like crazy. I don't even remember having sex that much. This is kind of weird. So I did another one, positive. So I called Roberta and I'm like, baby, I think you have to come down here. And he got really excited. We went to the gynecologist and in fact, the doctor goes, well, congratulations, you're pregnant. And his face was kind of suspicious and I could see two dots on the screen. And I said, okay,
[13:19] so if that's a baby, what's the other little white thing? And he was like, well, you know, it seems like you're having twins, but don't get too excited. Don't get too excited because, you know, they have a, how do you call it? The Vanishing Twin Syndrome. It's a thing, which means that one of the babies gets absorbed by the other really early on. So it could happen. So don't get excited. And I knew, I was like, these guys are not going anywhere. These two guys are staying. And yeah, so the pregnancy-
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[13:52] Wow. I mean, how did that feel finding out you're having twins? Is this back in Mexico also?
Marianna Burelli[13:58] This is back in Mexico. Yeah. With a new gynecologist, I didn't even have a gynecologist here. So it was a new guy who was incredible, a young guy. So when he said twins, I was like, what? Imagine I came like three months ago, I'd just been told that I had endometriosis, that I wasn't able to have babies, that I was too old to bear a child and that I had no eggs. So I was like, okay, wait a minute. I have two eggs now.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[14:27] Yeah. And they're fertilized and they're growing.
Marianna Burelli[14:30] So I turn around and I look at my husband and he's fully crying, like weeping. And I'm like, what are you crying about? Yeah. I found it harder to kind of digest. And I said to the doctor, well, I just want to let you know that I'm training for a marathon. And he was like, no, you were. I was like, no, no, no, I am. He's like, no, Mariana, you cannot run a marathon. I mean, you're pregnant with twins. So yeah. So I run another marathon, which was a totally different marathon. It's a whole different story.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[15:04] Let's take a little break there and then find out how your pregnancy was and what you had in mind for birth. We'll be right back.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[15:22] Welcome back. We're talking to Mariana Borelli. Oh, wow. So I was just trying to go through all the emotions in my mind for a second. Your father passing, finding out that you are pregnant, finding out that the baby has a medical defect, not compatible with life, having to have a medical abortion, and then finding out that your fertility window is closed, told to you seemingly with a sense of definitiveness, you're not going to have babies, becoming satisfied, making your peace with having one and moving on to marathon training around the globe. And then finding out that not only you're pregnant, but you're having twins. So, you know, my mind goes in both directions. Twins, like, when do you start
[16:07] thinking about what this is going to be like in terms of a pregnancy and birth and raising two babies at the same time? And also, are you concerned that, I mean, you said you felt like these two are not going anywhere, but having had that other issue in the previous pregnancy,
Marianna Burelli[16:21] do you have any concerns about medical issues? Sure. I mean, I was very much aware that I had to work harder with my mind not to go there, right? And trust the process and trust that what I was going through right now was a different story, you know? Well, for me, it was easy to kind of, you know, go back to that sense of, oh my God, what if. So, I had to kind of hold the horses and be, no, this is a different time. This is a different situation. This is a different story, you know? So, it's a great mind-spirit exercise to keep yourself away from the fears and allowing this new chapter to take place as a new chapter. But yeah, I have to confess that I had to really make an effort.
[17:16] On the flip side, when did you start thinking about what this might look like in terms of carrying twins, delivering twins, raising twins? Elliot, I actually had no idea until I actually gave birth to two boys. Like, you can try to imagine it, but it's so unusual to have two newborns. I mean, it's so different. It's so much work, so much work. And it's so beautiful at the same time. I wouldn't want it any other way, but it is so much work that even if I try to entertain the thought of me imagining, I would fail constantly. What were the different trimesters like, the different phases of the pregnancy and especially compared to having one? Well, first trimester was pretty much the same as Sienna. I felt kind of sick, but I never
[18:04] actually threw up, never. It was just like, you know, a sense of, oh, I don't want to eat anything. So, that was the same thing. And also, I walked into this pregnancy being very fit. I was running for a marathon. So, I had abs. Can you imagine? I had abs. For the first time in my life, I had abs. And then they were about to go with a huge, massive belly. I had really strong legs. Yeah, the contrast. Life laughing at me. I had really strong legs, so I was good. So, first trimester was kind of pretty much the same. Second trimester, I was getting really worried because I was getting really big, really quick. And I was like, I still have 10 weeks to go. Like, this is scary. My belly was pretty huge. And I had
[18:51] already started feeling, you know, the pressure in your pubic bone. The thing that I felt with Sienna when I was 39 weeks, I started feeling when I was 25. I was like, I'm so screwed. Like, how am I going to even live the rest of this pregnancy? So, I started visualizing 37 weeks. I was like, come on, we can do it. 37 weeks. And yeah, the last trimester was intense because I wasn't able to sleep. What about two babies moving around inside you? Crazy. It's science fiction right in your belly. So weird because also you start getting to know their personalities. One of them, their names are Rio and Mateo. And Rio was a kicker. He was like… Mateo moved very kind of seldomly, but when he did, he turned. Like, he was
[19:46] determined. He wasn't going to do like little kicks or punches. When he moved, he turned, so it was really intense. And they would kick each other. At night, if I lay on one side, on the left side, I felt like I was squeezing and like stepping on Rio on, you know, it was hard. Like, the third trimester was not easy. Also, I started dilating before, you know, in week 36 or 35 and a half, which meant that I felt like their legs were sticking out. Like, things were coming out. Did you know their names? Had you already selected their names before they were born? I had an idea. You know how when you go to the gynecologist and you have twins, they refer to them as baby A and baby B.
[20:35] It's kind of impersonal. So Roberto and I were like, okay, we're going to call them water and earth. Bear with me. That's beautiful. It's beautiful. Ah, because in Spanish, A, agua. So we were like, okay, agua and the other one, earth. So water and earth. So the one that was head down was water and the one that was kind of upper here, and it was breach. Oh, yeah. One on one. Yeah. Like in that exact position. It is a space saving position
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[21:09] for twins. Like if you only have a cramped space, it's kind of a sensible fit, a sensible way to
Marianna Burelli[21:14] hang out in there. Could you always feel like the different parts knowing which one was water and which one was earth? I think so. I mean, I would never know if I was right or not, but I would think so. Water was head down from the very beginning. Like after week 20, he never moved. Like his head was down. And actually, when he was born, his little head looked like a little alien head. Yeah, like a cone head. And Mateo, he was breach and his head was totally different shape. He was like a flat head. And I said to the chiropractor, why was his head that shape? And she said, well, basically because he was carrying all the organs on his head. Yeah. On his head. Yeah. All of my organs were actually on top of his head.
[22:02] So their heads looked very different. But anyway, so are they identical? No, they're fraternal. They're di di. Oh, nice. Okay. Totally separate everything. Yeah. They're dike. Each one has its own placenta and each one has its own amniotic sac. And his own. Yeah. And the amniotic sac. Yeah. So it was a very safe pregnancy. Like every time I went to the doctor, my amniotic fluid was good. The guys both were growing at a very similar rate. Their position were good. I didn't know what were the complications that could happen because seriously, Dr. Brittain, I tried to find out information when I found out that I was pregnant. And there was so much info about how complicated it was a twin pregnancy
[22:49] and how all the things that could go wrong. But I was like, I'm not going to go down this route because I was already working really hard with my mind not to play any games on me. And I felt really well. So I was like, okay, I'm going to go with this feeling. And I know what it is to have like a really beautiful pregnancy.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[23:07] Yeah. Your first birth, you wanted it to be in a hospital, but all natural. And you had a really beautiful experience. Now, anybody listening right now who might have twins, I would say probably half of them are going to be told that they can't even have a vaginal birth, let alone a natural birth. And the rest will be under a lot of, okay, maybe if X-Wings happens, we'll give it a shot. You know, it's not widely available in the obstetric community in the United States. You can find it. It's just more often than not, you're going to have to look for it and push for it. Did you have a plan in mind for how you wanted
Marianna Burelli[23:40] to deliver the twins? Yeah. I mean, I wanted a vaginal birth, two vaginal births. And that was the first conversation I had with this guy who I didn't know the gynecologist after he told me that there were going to be twins and that I wasn't going to run a marathon. I was like, okay, can you deliver? Are you willing to do vaginal births? And he said, absolutely. And I was like, okay, we can be friends.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[24:04] That's awesome. Okay. Now what about the fact that one was head up and one was head down?
Marianna Burelli[24:09] Was that a concern for either of you? No. Well, no, I was like, if you tell me that you can deliver a bridge babies, I can do it. He said, look, normally doctors would prefer both babies to be head down. But as long as the first one is head down, everything else, you know, I can go with. And I said, deal. So I talked to our baby water and I was like, you better stay down head down all the way. And he did. So yeah. So my doctor was pretty open. I mean, pretty chilled. He said, as long as the difference of weight isn't that big, most doctors prefer the big baby to be the first one to come out. But he was okay. In fact, my big baby was the second one. Oh, how different?
[24:59] 200 grams less than half a pound different. So it wasn't a huge difference. And he kept the same every time that we do like a scan. There wasn't any signal that one of them was growing faster than the other. They were pretty leveled up. Like they were pretty similar. And. Well, that's great. Yeah. And he never used the word dangerous. 40 was never mentioned. Your age. Yeah. Age was never mentioned. Everything is going really well.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[25:28] Do keep doing whatever you're doing. It's kind of interesting. We have an episode of our podcast called pregnancy over 35 with Dr. Emiliano Triviera and he's an OBGYN and an MFM. And he basically says, every person has a clinical health profile and on it, there are a bunch of data points. One of them is your age and it's the one that you can't change. It is what it is. But when you look at all the other data points, the more and more you have data points that are in the healthy or super healthy zone, the less the other points matter. So you're strong, you're fit, you're healthy, you're training for a marathon, you don't have diabetes, you don't have hypertension. So the age kind of just fades
[26:07] away, especially after you get out of the first trimester. So yeah, you're a strong, healthy person who's pregnant with twins. And I love your doctor. I want your doctor to move to Los Angeles. So to be sure, your doctor was okay as long as baby A is head down and not substantially smaller than baby B. That's right. Ideally baby B is also head down, but if not, you still give it a try. Going into labor, was that the position still?
Marianna Burelli[26:32] That was the position still. And it was really funny because we talked about everything before birth. I had so many questions. He had the time and the patience. And you know, he was so accessible and he really was interested in me having all my questions answered. I always say what good is a doctor with no patients? Yeah. Well, there's so many of them out there. It's crazy, right? So I asked him, I said, okay, so what if baby A comes out, what happens to baby B who is breech? And he said, okay, well, there's several scenarios. There's one, which means that he doesn't turn and he kind of stays with his butt down. And I will have to because he is bigger than baby A.
[27:17] The second one is bigger than baby A, heavier. I would have to do a maneuver that I stick my hand inside and I help the baby turn around. A gynecologist and OB-GYN outside will be helping me doing that. Like with your belly from the outside, helping me from the outside, not to allow the baby to come all the way up here, but like helping me keep the baby down. I think it's called the Leopold maneuver, right? Yeah. But essentially they would try to turn the baby head down or they would head down. No, no, no. He was going to try to turn the baby head down, like sticking his hand inside me and then turning the baby head down and the baby was stealing his
[28:02] sack and then put the baby in the right place so I could push him out. Or there was another possibility where once the baby A came out, baby B would sort of like turn, you know, gravity naturally. And there was a final possibility, which was the one that we didn't want to happen, that the baby would get stuck. Like, yeah, you know, in that scenario, there would have, you know, be the possibility of doing a C-section, an emergency C-section to get baby B out. And that's why so many women do not want to try vaginal birth when there's twins because there is, yeah, one in one. I've had two patients over the years that had one
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[28:44] in one. Oh, really? One of them actually, I should have her on the podcast. She's talked about coming on. She says even if she had known it would have been one in one, she still would have done it that way. Oh, really? Yeah. She was grateful to have the vaginal birth with the first one. Yeah. I guess not. Absolutely. Most people, when you say one in one, they're like, okay, I'll just do this or that, not both. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll find out how your birth experience with these twins went. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We're talking to Mariana Borelli. Okay. So you're at the end of a twin pregnancy, uncomfortable, but ready. And baby A is head down. Baby B is breech and baby B is a
Marianna Burelli[29:37] little bit bigger than baby A. How does the labor start? Well, I was already five centimeters dilated. Wow. And for about three days. That's got to be weird walking around. So weird. Literally. It looked like I was open. I mean, that's how I walk. You can imagine. It's not great. Not very elegant. It really felt like I was kind of being split in half slowly but surely. Wow. I was so scared of going back home, Dr. Berlin. The last night I stayed, it was a Monday. I went to the gynecologist. I was like, okay, come on, tell me that we're ready. And he was like, no, you're five centimeters dilated, but because the uterus is so extended, but not because the labor has started yet. And I was like, oh my goodness. I mean, if you want,
[30:27] we can kind of start it, but the babies are perfect. And hold on a little longer. I was like, sure, I'm going to hold on because, you know, I'm all into non-medicated, you know, not little intervention, as little as possible. Two questions. Where are you in the week count here? How many weeks are you? 36.5. Okay. So almost on target there for the twins. And then also, I remember last time you had a doula and midwives, right? Yeah. In the hospital. Did you have a doula this time? I had an incredible doula. I mean, yeah, I would have had Kata again, but I mean, we are in different countries. Yeah. I remember you gave her the nickname Kata. Oh, so sweet. Yeah. I had an incredible doula and I was kept talking to her all the
[31:12] time. And I said to the doctor on Monday, I was like, doctor, if I go home, is there a chance that my baby, once the contractions start, my baby's born in the car? I mean, because I'm terrified. I don't want to have a car birth. I really don't want to have that. It kind of makes a better episode of the podcast. I'm so sorry, Dr. Berg. It's okay. It's all about you. Yeah. So I said, I don't know what to do. I don't want to go home because my house from the hospital was kind of like a good, solid 25 minutes. And I was already five centimeters dilated. I was like, this can happen in two seconds. And he said, look, there is a hotel right across from the hospital. Many women do that. They spend
[31:54] the last night there and then when they're so close. So I was like, that's what we're doing because my bag was with me. Everything was with me. So I stayed with my husband and a hotel across from the hospital. Oh, interesting. Were you doing things to try to get labor started? Oh yeah. My doula was like, guys, we need to create some oxytocin. So watch stuff, watch really great stuff, laugh, comedy, get romantic, buy some chocolate, you know, do that. Is romance a thing? 37 weeks with twins? Absolutely not. I mean, you know, we said nice things to each other and kind of kissed, but you know, like neck down, you can't really do much. Yeah. You're just a big balloon and five
[32:48] centimeters open, sort of dilated, very weird. Don't recommend it. And yeah, eventually that night I started labor. It was the right move to stay at the hotel, to stay at the hotel and at six in the morning, lots of chocolate. I mean, yeah, not good for the birth part, but loads of chocolate and spicy food. It was such a great night. And it was also the last night that we were just three of us. Right. So it was a really romantic, sentimental last night for both of us before we met each other as parents of three. That's really special. It was really beautiful. We wrote letters to each other. It was really, really special. We knew that the next day our lives were just about to change.
[33:39] For a long time. Yeah. Yeah. For a long time. Well, how did your labor progress? You know, different to what I thought, it was very slow at the beginning. I was actually embarrassed. I was like, doctor, sorry. I mean, stayed in the hotel across from the hospital. And then my labor went in like really slowly. I was like, Oh God, what's this? When is this going to kick in? Started like from six to 12. It was like I had contractions, but they were really soft, really mild. I was like, come on. I wanted to get weird. Come on. Wait, six to 12. Were you talking about six in the morning till noon or when you went to the hospital? You're at the hospital now. I was at the hospital like at seven and I had like really
[34:27] mild contractions and the doctor checked me and he was like, well, you know, it hasn't really started yet. Like I know you want it, but I'm then at 12 something happened. Like things started getting, you know, weird, like as we like them. And I started getting really strong contractions. However, because my water didn't break until right before birth, they never felt really intense, you know, with Sienna, my labor started because my water broke. So it was really intense for six hours with them. It was like, Oh, I felt really good. Like the waves were coming in and out, but it wasn't as intense. Was your plan to go unmedicated with the twins? Yeah. I mean, one of the things that a doctor had to do was to open up the, how do you call it
[35:20] for the epidural place it, place it, because if there was a point where they need to cut that needed to be there already. So like an easy access of the epidural. And I agreed, of course, because that was kind of one of the conditions for me to be able to have a vaginal work seems fair. Okay. So the labor is picking up and it's not as intense. You know, the word for me that I like to use is productive, but they could be productive, even if they don't feel so strong. Yeah, absolutely. It was kind of progressing, but not as fast as two sets of monitors. No one for each baby or one for each baby. I had like a belt and I had like two monitors, one in each. I had two belts, but they were kind of
[36:10] putting them on and off because the babies, both of their heart rates were really good. Like no worries whatsoever. And at some point the whole thing started at 12 midday and then at six o'clock doctor comes, checks me and my doula is we're doing all these magical things. I'm sitting on the Mayan chair, you know, I'm, I'm trying to connect with, you know, this other place where babies are before they're born. And my husband has been such an incredible help, like he already knows. And suddenly the doctor comes in and I'm like, why don't you pop this? Why don't you help me accelerate this? And why don't you pop this bag? And he turns around and he says to me, you're a goddess. I'm not going to do
[36:55] anything. You're doing great. I'm going to have a coffee. So off he goes. And my doula says to me, do you want to have a deadline? And I turned around and I said to her, like, I'm not going to put myself any deadline. So I'm in this sort of place where you don't have any filter. And I kind of walk forward. And that point, when I walk forward, I feel that my water breaks. And that like five seconds after the doctor told me, you're a goddess, you're doing fine. I'm not going to accelerate anything. It's going to happen when it needs to happen. And yeah, it happened. And the moment my water broke, that was it. I was like, I need to push, I need to push, I need to push, I need to push. It was such an intense
[37:38] feeling and need urge to just push. So they took me to the operation room because that's part of the deal too. That's part of the deal too, which I hated. But also I kind of managed to get music into the operation room, like speakers and lights down dim lights. So I've never seen that in the hour, but they're not doing surgery. They're just
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[38:04] catching a baby. Just in case you need to turn up the lights and act quickly.
Marianna Burelli[38:09] Exactly. They're just in there because yeah, because the second baby, what he said to me is that normally the first one comes out really easily. And sometimes the second one gets complicated, gets stuck or whatever, and then they have to act quickly. But I said to him, in the meantime, well, things are good. Can we dim the lights and can we put some music? And then my doula recommended something that I recommend to everyone. And I really kind of got it that I didn't do that for Sienna to choose a song for each baby. So Rio had his own song when he was born and Mateo, we changed the song when he was born. So each one of them have their own soundtrack of their birth. I never heard that before, but that's such a
[38:54] great idea. It's so beautiful. I have the video. So you see them being born with their music in the background. So yeah. So at that point, the doctor who already knows me by now says, okay, Mariana, here is your, he puts a, an eye mask on top. He's like, we're going to take it to the operation room and the corridors have these horrible white lights. So I don't want you to come out of this beautiful zone. So he puts his eye mask on top of my eyes, kind of like it rolls me down the corridor. And really quickly we get to the operation room, which is really kind of dark and the music is playing seriously. So beautiful. And Rio comes out really quickly, like so quickly. So imagine the first baby is born and I'm like,
[39:39] oh my God, my baby Rio. I give them a welcome. I hold him, you know, I do it skin to skin. And my husband cuts him the little cord after however long. And I'm in this middle of this romance with Rio and my doula is like, we need to, we need to, we need to get on Mateo. I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah. I have another child. That moment of, okay. So by that point, the lights were a little brighter and Elias was also, he's like you, not Elliot, but Elias says to me, okay, Mariana, we're going to do what I told you that we're going to do. Mateo didn't turn, so we're going to do a maneuver. And I'm in this sort of like, I'm drunk with oxytocin and all these happy hormones. So I go like,
[40:30] sure, go ahead. Like, I mean, so he stick his hand in and I feel all this movement going on. And at some point suddenly like in my right pelvis, I feel something like a really intense piercing pain. So I'm like, and the guy goes, sorry, that's Mateo's head. He got stuck there. So we need to pull up your leg. So he pushes my leg all the way up here. I feel the popping out of Mateo's head. The most painful part of the whole birth was that moment. And after minutes, yeah, I would say minutes, Mateo is in the right track, head down and ready to come out. So suddenly he goes like, okay, we can change the music. Mateo's coming out, change the track, Mariana push. And 28 minutes later, Mateo was born, head first.
[41:26] And they were both really well. They were breathing really well when they came out. They looked good. Everything was good. Wow. That was really special and very unique.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[41:37] Again, I think most people here would have a hard time finding a practitioner to support that kind of birth. I'm really glad you're able to have it and to share with us. I have a few more questions for you. Let me just tell you one thing. I said to
Marianna Burelli[41:50] the doctor, because after the babies were born, I got taken to my room and the babies with me and everything was really beautiful. And everybody would come into my room and say like, congratulations. Oh my God, I heard about your birth and about Dr. Charula's maneuver. You guys both rock. And they kept talking about what the doctor had done and what I had done, like as if it was something really unique. And I mean, I felt pretty damn good for how things worked out. But I said to the doctor suddenly, I was like, okay, tell me how many times have you done this? Because it seems like a big thing. It goes like between 30 and 40 in my whole career. I was like, oh, wow, that's not that many. And I said,
[42:35] did you learn this in medical school? And he replies, no, I learned it from the midwives in the indigenous women in a state called Chiapas in Mexico from the indigenous midwives. And I
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[42:49] was like, I love you more. That's amazing. They don't do any trainings here, which is probably why these things are not so available here. Wow. That's extra incredible. We don't have so much time left, but I want to find out like now raising twins. What is that like? What is it like to everything? I mean, having one kind of knocks your normal cycle off. What
Marianna Burelli[43:12] does having two do? It knocks it twice. Yeah, it's complicated. Honestly, it is complicated. I'm not going to romanticize it. It's beautiful. But breastfeeding at the beginning was complicated, especially because before your milk comes down, you're feeding two babies with colostrum with drops. So what happened was that my boys dehydrated on the first day because they didn't get enough. So I had to help them with a little bit of formula for the first week. Also, the soccer sort of position of like breastfeeding two at the same time was very helpful. It took a minute to get used to because you're basically holding them like that side to side. And, you know, like they're learning to like, they're getting used to your nipples. So
[44:01] yeah, it's tricky and you don't have another hand. You only have two. So it gets complicated. But it's funny how you get used to everything. That's one thing about humans that it's fascinating in women. That is absolutely fascinating. Moms in particular. Also, you know what? It really helps when you know that it's not going to last so long. When you know that this hell time that I'm going through right now, the little hell tunnel, it's not going to be that long. I already know that it's not going to be that long because I've already passed it with Sienna. So knowing that, having that in the back of my head really helped my psyche because with Sienna, I was like, my life is over. And then you realize that it's
[44:45] not. It's just beginning. And Sienna has been queen of the palace for a while. Having two new ones in there must be a big adjustment for her. Yeah, it was. It was big. She said to me, because she wanted a sibling, a sister to be more precise, but you know, voice game. And she said to me like, mama, I wanted it so badly that they sent us two. I was like, there you go, my baby. And then she said one night she was like, I wanted this, but I didn't know that it was going to be, you know, this way. I didn't know that I wasn't going to have time with you. And she said to me, you know how I feel? I feel behind. I'm getting a lot of that sort of stuff. Fortunately, she's very mature and I'm able
[45:28] to talk to her and, you know, tell her that she's not behind it. We're all holding hands together and the boys need a lot of our attention, but sooner than later, they're going to be part of the pack and we're going to be able to, you know, do everything together
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[45:42] in a different way. Yeah. She'll love it in a different way. Once they're interacting with her better. Okay. So now they're three months old. Yeah. It's also a pivotal point. Are you exclusively breastfeeding them now that you stopped that formula after the first week? Yeah. Wow. I'm like in awe of you again. Okay. So I'm curious how the next year unfolds for you, but I'm really happy for you that you were able to, especially after all the kind of struggle and bad news pendulum had swung in one direction that it swung at, you know, equal but opposite in the giving direction and the joy direction. You deserve it. And it's just really heartwarming to hear your story and to talk
[46:26] to you again. Before we go, I want to talk about My Natural, which was the company you started right before the pandemic. Tell me about the products and how the company is going.
Marianna Burelli[46:37] Yeah, that's my other baby. The fourth. The fourth. Yeah. Amai keeps growing. It's a company that we basically sell products that have to do with like shampoos, conditioners and makeup removers, body creams, soaps that use zero plastic. So the whole idea of having Amai was to creating products that work, that work well on your hair and on your skin and that don't have any bottle behind. So as in today, we've saved the planet about 1,260,000 something plastic bottles. Oh, wow. How do you do it? We make them all solid. They're like triangles and the ingredients are slightly different. When you buy a bottle of shampoo, you buy 80% water and 20% whatever ingredients.
[47:34] We sell you the shampoo without the water. You put the water in your shower and we sell you the ingredients, the actual ingredients that wash your hair or the actual ingredients that condition your hair. And the cream is great because the body cream, that it's a triangle as well. And the moment you have contact with your skin and the heat that you produce makes the cream melt. Oh, that sounds really cool. It's really great. It's doing really, really well. I think this is the future. I think we need to really take care of the planet because if we keep on doing things at this rate, I do not want to think of the future we're going to have to face or our children will
[48:14] have to face. So that's my gift. I have twin boys, but my gift is no bottles. I love it. Even for them, no bottles because you're exclusive. That's amazing, Mariana.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[48:29] So tell me where we can find Amai online and then in general, where can we find you online?
Marianna Burelli[48:36] Amai, you can find it. We sell it in the States now online and in certain stores. It's amainatural, amainatural.shop.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[48:47] I like how you translated for us natural to natural.
Marianna Burelli[48:51] Yeah. Just making sure, you know. amainatural.shop, A-M-A-I. A-M-A-I, natural.shop. And you can find us in all of the stores of this amazing shop called Re-Grocery. It's a store that sells everything in bulk, like with no plastic, zero waste. And you can find it in LA. They have one in Ventura Boulevard. They have another one in Venice. They have another one in Highland Park. So you can find us in all of their stores and yeah, and online soon to be in Amazon, I believe. And in Mexico, you can find us everywhere. So we're doing really well. And I think this is the future. The good thing about Amai is that not only is vegan, cruelty-free, plastic-free,
[49:42] zero waste. The little triangles are wrapped with rice paper that is actually edible, you know, if you really want to eat it. So the beautiful thing is that you finish using your bar and there's nothing left behind.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[49:57] I'm going to get some.
Marianna Burelli[49:59] Get some.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[49:59] I sure will.
Marianna Burelli[50:00] I'll send you some, Dr. Berlin.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[50:02] I would be happy to buy some in sports. All right. What about you and all these projects that are coming up? How can we find you online?
Marianna Burelli[50:10] You can find me on Instagram, Mariana Burelli. I don't have TikTok.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[50:14] I don't have TikTok either. No, I just couldn't make that. I just use the little mints, TikTok. Instagram works fine. I will check you out over there as well.
Marianna Burelli[50:26] Yeah.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[50:27] Mariana, thank you again for coming back. Congratulations on all the success and new joy in your life. I hope it only continues.
Marianna Burelli[50:34] Thank you so much, Dr. Berlin, for having me again here. I can't wait to visit you in LA when I get back.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[50:42] Yes. Tell me when you're here and I'll carve out a half a day for you. Amazing. At home, thanks for listening to the Informed Pregnancy podcast. For more pregnancy and parenting information just like this, visit us online at InformedPregnancy.com.
Want more pregnancy + parenting? Start your FREE TRIAL of Informed Pregnancy+ and get access to all our curated pregnancy and parenting content — original series, iconic birth films like The Business of Being Born, prenatal workouts and more.
In Part II of our holiday countdown, Dr. Berlin discusses numbers 5 through 1 of the top 10 most popular episodes of the Informed Pregnancy Podcast in 2024.
Links to the Informed Pregnancy Podcast and other media mentioned in today’s episode:
BellydanceBirth® with Maha al Musa Learn easy and gentle belly dance movements for pregnancy and birth. No previous dance experience (belly dance or otherwise) necessary!
Baby Book Nook a video book review series dedicated to exploring informative books about pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and early parenting IP+ original
Empowered Mama an IP+ original, Empowered Mama with host Arista Ilona was created to empower and inspire mothers by highlighting stories about pregnancy, birth, and motherhood through a lens of celebration and honor.
My Birth an IP+ original, MyBirth invites you into the intimate world of real mothers sharing unique birth stories through their own voices, with photos and videos capturing raw, emotional moments along the way.
One Way or A Mother a new serialized visual podcast coming soon to IP+
“I think this episode is really interesting, and I think that it's such a great contrast to a lot of our other episodes. She's a trained birth professional, so her doing a free birth on her own without anyone else attending is, of course, completely different than someone like me doing that, which I think is important to note.”
“And I wonder about the dystocia and about the length of time that the baby took to emerge with five people's eyes and hands on me at one time. And so that's how I really processed and unlearned and just rewrote the story of, was it a shoulder dystocia? Was it an energetic dystocia? Was it not a dystocia at all? Was it just a completely normal birth?”
“The home birth experience was probably one of the most important experiences of my life but certainly of my career where all of those things that I had been conditioned to believe that it's irresponsible to have a baby outside of the hospital, I mean I'm a heretic as an OBJYN to have a home birth.”
“I've been very open with my fan base about when I got on antidepressants which was at a quite young age I was about 14 and a half, 15 and I knew that that was something that was gonna help get me through the pregnancy where I could function and not have this like depression kind of take over and paralyze me in my day to day life”
“this is the first time I haven't been chasing back to work and I'm really trying to enjoy that work is also something that is a part of my identity and I need to be happy and to feel whole and fulfilled and like I'm someone else besides just a mom”
AI-generated transcript with speaker labels — may contain errors, especially names and medical terms. Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC appears in blue; Rose Hart Landsberg in orange.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[0:12] Welcome to the Informed Pregnancy and Parenting Podcast. This is the second part of our two-part series, the top 10 countdown for the holidays of the Informed Pregnancy Podcast 2024. I'm Pregnancy Focus Chiropractor Dr. Elliot Berlin, and I'm joined by our amazing producer Rose Hart Landsberg. If you missed it, we did episodes 10, 9, 8, 7, and 6 in part 1.
Rose Hart Landsberg[1:00] And now we're up to number 5. I even de-medicalized my whole house. I took the Doppler out of the house, I took the meds out of the house, I took anything that would be considered a medical intervention that I carried in my midwifery bag out of my space.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[1:19] OK, this is an interesting episode with Catalina Clark. I love her. She was on the podcast earlier when she had her first baby, and she was a student midwife at the time. And she was very active in attending birth, a lot of home birth, training with midwives. And she had her own birth with the midwives that she was training with. And there were some challenges in that birth. And I think that in the recovery from that first birth experience, it shaped her a lot in terms of both her personal philosophies and approach to childbirth and also her professional approach to childbirth. So with her second baby, she had a free birth. Free birth is essentially where she would describe it as fully autonomous and
[2:09] unassisted. So you're kind of at the birth without medical professionals there, although in her case, there was one medical professional there, Catalina Clark.
Rose Hart Landsberg[2:19] I think this episode is really interesting, and I think that it's such a great contrast to a lot of our other episodes. She's a trained birth professional, so her doing a free birth on her own without anyone else attending is, of course, completely different than someone like me doing that, which I think is important to note. But I think it's funny that in her quest to move away from a lot of interventions that feel forced on her and other women and just in general, that she took on an air of rebellion almost. And so I felt from her that some of her choices were almost specifically to kind of go beyond what was expected. For example, she refused, you know, a certain kind of check.
[3:10] Dr. Berlin, maybe you can help me. I'm blanking on what it's called.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[3:14] I mean, it's not just a free birth. She had a wild pregnancy, which is a term that basically indicates you kind of choose which diagnostics you want to do or not do. Do you want to do visits during the pregnancy for wellness checkups or anything else or not do them? And, you know, she opted to do some and not others. I don't remember if she did like a gestational diabetes check and other things like that. I think she pretty much opted out of most of them. And, you know, these ideas of wild pregnancy and free birth, they challenge the conventional narratives around childbirth in today's medical birth society that we live in. It certainly seems foreign, but I think it's important and it highlights the kind
[3:56] of importance of personal autonomy and the trust in the physiological process. And she's a great advocate for those ideas. And if you really want to get to understanding Catalina and her point of view, I think it's important to listen to her first birth episodes. It was a before and after. There are episodes 97 and 98. And she really brings us into that experience in those episodes. And then you can understand the processing that took place afterwards and what kind of work she did to bring herself to overcome fear and to really try to understand what happened at her first birth and to sort of have a different experience the second time around.
[4:39] I think that a lot of times people come on the podcast and have ideas and desires and experiences that are not the ones that I would choose for myself. And maybe not the ones I would recommend to patients. But I really think it's important to have a platform where people can speak their ideas. And to be honest, free birth and wild pregnancy are gaining in popularity. They're becoming more popular. More people are saying, I want to take full total control and autonomy for what happens to me in the most natural, unintervened way. And also they're not blind to the idea that things can go wrong. They are very much aware of those things and they're making choices nonetheless.
[5:20] It's a powerful concept and it creates I think the opportunity for powerful conversation and dialogue.
Rose Hart Landsberg[5:26] Yeah, it was interesting for me too. Her initial episodes were way before my time working on the show. And so I actually had a conversation with her and then went back and heard about her previous births. And I think just like a lot of our Cesarean and VBAC episodes that it's one influenced the other. Like you said, it was her processing her first style and complications and choices that she made during that that really almost led her to a place of fear of fear or rejection of any type of fear is maybe a better way to put it. And like you said, I don't know if that's a choice that I would make, but I think it's really interesting.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[6:11] I think if nothing else, there is a lot that Catalina did in terms of self care and prenatal care and even postpartum care. And I think on the postpartum side, she did have more support because she wanted it. And I think also it's a really powerful expression of self. There's a couple of documentaries that also one that comes to mind is These Are My Hours and basically this mama loaded up her house with cameras and microphones and she gives birth. And it's not a free birth in the sense that there are support people there, but she wanted minimal interaction with them. And she has minimal interaction with it there in case she needs something. And otherwise you're watching her go through all the stages,
[6:54] the natural beautiful drama of the various stages of childbirth. And along the way she narrates what's going on. And another one is orgasmic birth, which sort of is a click baity title, but it's really about the power of giving birth with a lot of oxytocin in your system. Oxytocin being the hormone that is the gas pedal for the uterus that makes it contract productively. It is a magnifier of all things pleasing in the body. So anything that's mentally or physically pleasing becomes magnified when you have a lot of oxytocin. And also makes you quite stretchy. And so more likely to stretch than tear, which reminds me of an older episode. There's a three part series called Labor Day Surprises.
[7:38] And it's two sister-in-laws who give birth and they each had a little surprise at the end. One had a breech baby and one had an 11 pound baby. And the mama who had an 11 pound baby did a hospital birth, but she knew that you can have an oxytocin rich birth. And she really studied how to be able to do it. And she did it. I was there at that birth and she gives birth to this 11 pound baby, eventually unmedicated. And Rose, are you sitting down?
Rose Hart Landsberg[8:06] I am.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[8:07] You are. She doesn't even tear. And it's because of the oxytocin rich birth. And you can really get a lot of insight into that from Orgasmic Birth, the film, and also from These Are My Hours, both streaming on Informed Pregnancy Plus. If you wanna hear Sarah's story of the 11 pounder, that's gonna be Episodes 20, 21, and 22, Labor Day Surprises, Part 1, 2, and 3. If you wanna hear from the powerful Catalina Clark, here's a quote from her episode on free birth.
Rose Hart Landsberg[8:36] And I wonder about the dystocia and about the length of time that the baby took to emerge with five people's eyes and hands on me at one time. And so that's how I really processed and unlearned and just rewrote the story of, was it a shoulder dystocia? Was it an energetic dystocia? Was it not a dystocia at all? Was it just a completely normal birth? All right. Another thing that I think is interesting about this episode is that traditionally, at least in my mind, midwifery care and doula care are these natural societal communal spaces where women care for each other. And in general, at least my ideas surrounding that are very positive. And so I think it's really interesting to kind of go in the other direction,
[9:31] away from community to a solitary birth. And I don't think either one is negative or positive, but it strikes me as a different direction. And so I think that's really interesting.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[9:45] Yeah, it kind of is interesting because I do like watching animals give birth in nature.
Rose Hart Landsberg[9:50] Do you?
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[9:51] I really do, because I try to learn from them and see what birth would be like if it was totally undisturbed. And some of the most beautiful things, there's an elephant birth that sticks out in my mind. You can get it on YouTube probably, it's called Risky Business, R-I-S-K-I. And this elephant gives birth and she is all by herself. And apparently they do that a lot. They leave them back and go give birth all by themselves. And she is confident, you could just see, there's not fear on her face. She's confident, she's poised, she does this little dance, almost like she watched belly dance for birth, which is also streaming on Informed Pregnancy Plus.
[10:28] With Mahal and Lusa, an incredible adjunct for people who like to move their bodies in ways that are conducive to babies coming down. This elephant was doing the dance and she kind of bears down and gives birth to this, I don't know, 240 pound baby. And then immediately turns around and starts doing neonatal care. And she realizes that the baby's not breathing and she has all these different remedies. She kind of kicks the baby, which would be kind of like when we slap him to try to get him breathing. It's still not working and she's assessing with her trunk. It's really powerful. And then eventually she does this maneuver. I'm not kidding, you have to watch this video.
[11:05] I'll put a link in the show notes where she wraps her trunk around the baby's tiny little trunk and then yanks up on the trunk and you hear the baby's neck crack, this little baby elephant neck crack. And all of a sudden starts to breathe. And then-
Rose Hart Landsberg[11:19] Wait, she gave it a chiropractic adjustment?
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[11:21] She gave it an adjustment. She did all those things and she didn't have a podcast. She didn't have any documentaries. She didn't have a childbirth education class. A nurse, a doctor, a doula. She did a free birth. She did free neonatal care. She did a free chiropractic adjustment. Then she says, hey, get up and walk around. And 10 minutes later, the little baby is on all fours. The cutest thing ever. Anyway, so that's a great way to round down our number five pick. Moving on to number four.
Rose Hart Landsberg[11:53] Ultimately, it's my job to keep the mother alive. Sometimes that might even suggest or presume at the cost of the baby. So I look at the whole health of this person. Is this person going to survive childbirth at home? And is their number one priority to stay alive through childbirth?
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[12:11] Another interesting pick. I guess they all are. That's why they made the top 10. This is Dr-
Rose Hart Landsberg[12:16] I hope.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[12:17] Nathan Reilly is the most unusual OB-GYN. He's a holistic OB-GYN. I met Nathan Reilly a long time ago. Our film, which is called Heads Up, the Disappearing Art of Vaginal Breach Delivery, also streaming on Uninformed Pregnancy Plus. You get a lot with your subscription to Uninformed Pregnancy Plus.
Rose Hart Landsberg[12:35] I'm just starting to realize.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[12:36] You're just starting to realize.
Rose Hart Landsberg[12:38] I might actually subscribe and buy a gift subscription for somebody else, which is a thing.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[12:44] I think that would be a great gift for a new mom who's sitting up nursing at night maybe and needs something to watch. Yeah, it's really quite inexpensive. The whole goal was to make all this visual empowerment available to anybody anywhere, anybody who has an internet connection. It's on Apple, Android, Roku. You could stream it straight from the web. It's on all devices. It streams really well. The functionality is great. And it's meant to be inexpensive. And it's a valuable gift. Go onto the website and click Send a Gift Subscription, and you'll be helping somebody out. As you can tell from all these episodes, the more information you have, the more empowered you are,
[13:21] the better experience you can set yourself up for. Now, back to where I was. Heads Up, The Disappearing Art. When it first came out, we were invited to several medical facilities to screen it. And one of them was Kaiser Permanente here in Los Angeles. We screened it for a room full of labor and delivery people. There were OB-GYNs, there were residents, there were nurses. And it was one of the first places we screened it in a big audience in a medical setting. And I was like, I wonder what these guys are going to think. And the feedback was pretty positive. There were a couple of skeptics and a couple of people didn't like how we portrayed this or that.
[14:00] But there was one person who was really actively touched by it. And he asked a question, and I remember his question kind of created a really intense conversation, almost a little debate, because Kaiser Permanente at that time was not offering vaginal breech delivery as an option. And one of the points we make is that if vaginal breech delivery is considered, which it still is today, a viable option for a way to deliver a breech baby if you meet certain criteria, then if they don't offer it, are they obligated to tell the patients, hey, we don't offer it, but there are people in town who do offer it. And because they're an HMO network, that means they would also have to pay
[14:43] for people to go out of the network. It's called gap exemption. So if you're an HMO and people can only come get coverage within the HMO, but you don't offer something that they need, then you kind of have to pay for them to go get it someplace else. And it created this massive debate. Is it necessary or not necessary? This person is saying, hey, I just want to give birth to my baby without having surgery. And you're saying, no, you must have surgery. And they're saying, well, there's other people who do without surgery. Is avoiding that surgery something that Kaiser would have to take care of? And it just created this kind of intense dialogue
[15:15] and debate. And I was like, that guy's gonna be a cool OB. And that is Dr. Nathan Riley.
Rose Hart Landsberg[15:22] Yeah, I feel like that speaks very well to his style and his philosophy. The main thing that's interesting about this episode is that it's not one male birth worker, but two. There's two of you and you found each other. Kind of a holistic male birth workers.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[15:39] Holistic-y, meaning partially holistic.
Rose Hart Landsberg[15:42] Hashtag holistic-y. Is that a thing? Can be now? It's gonna stick. There's two of us. I think as part of his episode, he and his journey, he talks about, as he went through training and, kind of similarly to you, he thought he was gonna go in a more medical way and realized that isn't the way to prevent. That isn't the way to practice holistically. And your anecdote also, I think, speaks to his discovery that patients don't have autonomy. That patients can be bulldozed into a direction that they don't want or that they're not comfortable with. So I think as he was going on his journey, figuring out the ins and outs and the problems of the birth world,
[16:35] I think it's important to note that most women are already very familiar with the idea and the experience of being bulldozed into something you're not comfortable with or something you didn't agree with. And that even though men, of course, are parents, that it's a little bit more academic in some ways because it's not your body. So I think it's interesting and important to kind of think about and talk about the roles that men play in these very female-centric and female-oriented industries and what advocacy looks like and kind of practicing what you preach looks like. And so I think it's interesting from that perspective to listen to male birth workers
[17:20] talk about their experience.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[17:22] Yeah, I think especially Nathan Riley because again, there's a lot of male birth workers who are obstetricians or have been since the age of time, but ones who are more focused on patient autonomy and holistic wellness and well-rounded health care. So I think there's this idea of health care which is in the US is actually a misnomer. It's really disease care. The system is not there for you to help you stay healthy. It's there for you when you have something wrong and bring you back to neutral. And I think what Nathan realized is that the hospital system applies that to pregnancy which is just a normal stage of life. And our goal is to maintain
[18:00] and support your health and wellness and not just in a mechanical way or physical way like pee in this cup and let's take your blood pressure but in a holistic way, your whole mind, body and spirit. And I think after seeing a home birth that was like the final piece of his light bulb going off and then he left the hospital system and he collaborates with midwives and he does home birth including quote unquote, high risk home birth, whatever that means. It's telling people that you have options and you have choices. I think it's popular because it reminds me a little bit of how drug companies made baby formula and they improve their baby formula
[18:38] and they kind of led this campaign that not only is it new and improved, it's actually better than breast milk. And they sort of made women feel bad for breastfeeding and not using this new and improved formula. And over time, that crap became translucent. They saw through it and women started to seize back advocacy and power for breastfeeding. And I think to a degree, the same thing happens. All of a sudden, everybody's given birth at home with midwives surrounded by loved ones. Then where you're told the only way to give birth is in the hospital with all these machines and interventions and then it slowly starts to come back towards a middle
[19:13] or back towards the other direction. And that's what's happening but sometimes it's hard to find those elements in terms of support. And I think to your point, Rose, support from dudes. And Nathan Riley is really exceptional in the work that he does. It's episode 390. And I'll tell you what, he reminds me a lot of Jennifer Lang, who's an OBGYN, who was on the podcast a while back. Her episode is number 147 and she was planning to have a C-section, not because she was afraid of childbirth from things that she had seen as an OBGYN but really fear based on how she was trained as an OBGYN that everything's a train wreck waiting to happen. And emergency. Exactly.
[19:58] And we have to intervene early and often to prevent something from happening all the time. There was no trust of birth. And when she realized that she did a fear release with Alicia Tamburi, who's a local hypnobirther, guru, Yoda. And she let go of all that fear and she's like, you know what? I'm gonna try to have a vaginal birth. And she had the most epic birth at the hospital. I'm not gonna tell you her whole story. You're gonna have to tune into episode 147 with Jennifer Lang, very powerful. But here's the spoiler alert. She has her next two babies at home with a midwife and then she starts to turn very holistic in her approach to childbirth, much like Nathan Riley.
Rose Hart Landsberg[20:33] Something else that's interesting is that Dr. Riley's philosophies to me greatly mirror Catalina Clark's from earlier in our countdown. I think that they sort of both have taken the quest for low intervention to what I would consider to be fairly extreme that really no intervention or virtually no intervention is the goal. So I think it's interesting to see how far you go if you take it all the way to the other side of the pendulum.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[21:09] Yeah, it's a support for total autonomy meaning you know the risks, you know the benefits, you know the outcome possibilities and you get to make the decisions and have them respected regardless if that's not the decision that we would make for Catalina doing it herself and supporting her clients in that way and also for Nathan, same thing, supporting his clients in that way. To bring us into commercial, here's a quote from Dr. Nathan Riley, Holistic OBJYN, episode 390.
Rose Hart Landsberg[21:41] The home birth experience was probably one of the most important experiences of my life but certainly of my career where all of those things that I had been conditioned to believe that it's irresponsible to have a baby outside of the hospital, I mean I'm a heretic as an OBJYN to have a home birth.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[22:10] All right, welcome back to the Informed Pregnancy podcast. It's me, your host, Dr. Elliot Berlin and our amazing producer, Rose and we are counting down the top 10 episodes, the top 10 stories, moments of 2024 and we're up to number three.
Rose Hart Landsberg[22:30] We, we, we, we, we, we, we. You know, the only thing that makes this like slightly complicated is that I'm making this record, you know, with my sister in Topanga Canyon literally like days up until my guest date but we kind of need to have like a backup plan for if I was early and I am in Topanga. So we kind of had to figure out like, okay, I have Ivy, my doula, who's able to like come to me and she's flexible, you know, she's based in Ventura County and then the woman that she works with, that's basically her kind of partner that would relieve her if she's there for hours and hours and needs a break is Mary, who's really wonderful, Mary Skinner
[23:12] and they're like, we're good, we're there if you need us and it happens to be early.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[23:17] Pick number three is Ali Mashaka, another dynamite of energy, an incredible person, somebody who is dynamic and vibrant. She is an actress and musician. She was on the Disney channel as a kid and then she is together with her sister, one half of the music duo, Ali and AJ. She's very talented, sharp, well-spoken and curious and her episode is really cool because of a lot of things but one of them is that she's one of those people that mid-pregnancy started to do research and get more informed and empowered and totally changed her birth plan.
Rose Hart Landsberg[23:53] I love her story for two episodes because she tells it in a way that is so detailed and useful. I feel like she really explains her reasoning behind a lot of the decisions that she made and she explains the feelings that she was having and the logistics in a way that I think if I was a first time mom wanting to listen to a podcast to get an idea of what pregnancy and labor was gonna be like, I feel like these episodes are especially good for that. She's very thoughtful and thorough and she's someone who had a lot of resources and was able to plan really well for multiple scenarios and then of course ended up kind of needing to do that actually
[24:46] and so I love that and the other thing that I think is extremely important about this episode even though it's not covered a lot or these two episodes is that she takes antidepressants and she had been on them for quite a while and ultimately through some experimentation with her doctor and some changes decided to stay on them during her pregnancy and I think that that's something that's really important to talk about because there's a lot of judgment around decisions like that and again she's just really thoughtful and level headed so I think she's a great person to listen to talk about all of these things.
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[25:27] Yeah, she's also very funny and it's interesting to see because they were recording an album during this pregnancy and then the baby came not exactly when they were expecting the baby to come and how and when she found out and she shared her pregnancy with her sister AJ and how they recorded this album is all a very entertaining story all by itself and even more so because she's a great storyteller and very funny. To what you said Rose, I remember back in the day in the early days of the Informed Pregnancy podcast we had a guest Amanda Seyfried and it's episodes 31 and 32 she talked about taking her medication during the pregnancy and some blogger ran with it
[26:11] and kind of gave it to her for putting herself before the baby and it just became a big news story and I felt bad and I thought she was you know, you came and you shared so openly and now it's turning on you but the truth is every credible source came out in response to that story indicating how important it is to take medication how the medications have changed and they are safe and sometimes it's a lot more safe than stopping to take your medication and we heard at that time from mental health advocacy groups and foundations about how important it was that Amanda spoke freely about it to help work against the stigma that's out there regarding mental health
[26:50] and regarding medication for mental health and Ali you know, drove it home again not everybody is willing to talk about it especially if you're in the spotlight you know, it's sometimes harder to talk about it because you know, your whole career is your personality and Ali very boldly chose to speak about it because she knew it would help other people and already we got feedback on that that it has been helpful along those lines, Dr. Kirsten Thompson has been a guest on the podcast she is a psychiatrist that works almost entirely with women's health or I would just say focuses hard on women's health and a lot of our clients you know, if we make a referral
[27:28] they go to her because she is intimately familiar with the concerns of pregnancy and breastfeeding so Ali, thanks for sharing your story and I kind of miss her a lot she's one of those people that she doesn't live super close and I got to see her a lot during the pregnancy and I'm hoping like man, she gets pregnant again
Rose Hart Landsberg[27:47] well the other thing that I think is hilarious about that episode is there's a stereotype in LA about discussing you know, like what route you're gonna take you know, what the traffic is like in the freeway and you know, different locations and I feel like the whole episode she's like, and then we had to go to Topanga and then we were in the car for 20 minutes and then we had to decide and I was like, yep, yep, this is LA like, anyone's wondering if the stereotypes about LA are true
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[28:21] I love watching TV shows that take place in LA for that reason also here's a quote directly from Ali
Rose Hart Landsberg[28:27] I've been very open with my fan base about when I got on antidepressants which was at a quite young age I was about 14 and a half, 15 and I knew that that was something that was gonna help get me through the pregnancy where I could function and not have this like depression kind of take over and paralyze me in my day to day life
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[28:50] and to listen to her episodes they are numbers 413 and 414 a very fascinating before and after birth story and that brings us down to number two
Rose Hart Landsberg[29:07] oh, do you have to number two? So what was the difference if somebody goes oh, the feeder first oh, oh, you're gonna have to your C-section scheduled at 35, 37 weeks, whatever maybe I'm exaggerating there, yes but instead the first one happened and the feet came and somebody went oh, that's so cute I'm gonna go get a camera well now the mom is not gonna seize up and clamp down because she's not committed the crime of having a breech baby they're admiring her and that baby just slides out, you know so once that happens and you have a bunch of witnesses to it the baby's dad, the other midwife students well then they know something that obstetricians have never had a chance to see
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[29:56] this was a huge honor a highlight of my podcasting career to interview the famous midwife, Einame Gaskin it was our 400th episode blowout and I do need a blowout a number two blowout classy Einame Gaskin's a renowned midwife she's an author she wrote powerful books like Einame's Guide to Childbirth and others she's an educator and she's known as the mother of modern midwifery she founded the farm it's a midwifery center in Tennessee and it's internationally recognized as a community for natural birth that people fly into from all over the place all over the country for sure if not all over the world and she celebrated for her work in preserving midwifery skills
[30:41] and teaching her innovative approaches to childbirth I know so many people who have watched the business of being born which is, yes you guessed it streaming on Unformed Pregnancy Plus and read Einame's books and between the two one or the other or both made them extremely empowered no matter where they were going to give birth whether they're at home in a birth center in a hospital in a strawberry field very empowering stuff
Rose Hart Landsberg[31:07] you know she is so awesome I loved chatting with her doing a pre-interview and I think the main thing that really strikes me about this episode and her wisdom is that everything she does is so immersed in common sense it's not complicated it's not fancy she has decades of experience and she's seen so much but you know really even from the beginning she took what she saw and she learned and she's able to cut through the noise and keep the parts that are useful and the parts of the interview that I especially like are you know when she talks about using these simple conversational techniques to work through fear or create humor and it's all just human solutions
[32:03] to human situations and I really admire that
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[32:07] one of the things that I read from Einame Gaskin that I think really had an impact on me in the birth work that I've done is the idea of how a smile can help change everything so I remember multiple times where we'll be in labor and somebody is really struggling and you can kind of see that they're fighting their surges they're fighting their contractions and when they come they'll say like no no no no no and they'll hold their breath and tighten up their body and sort of grimace angrily and sometimes you can just say hold on when the next one comes instead of saying no because you're telling your body this is something that is bad that is not good for us
[32:54] we don't want it we want to fight it we want to run away from it maybe just say yes or smile and it can make such a huge difference just that one thing and I remember one birth in particular her name is Yale Cohen Braun and we have an episode about it it's episode number 92 she's a powerful person who's very well accomplished in many different ways but I remember we were laboring at a hotel across the street from the hospital where she was going to give birth and it was exactly that scenario she would say no this is intense I can't no and then at one of them I'm just like just smile smile into it say yes accept it welcome it know that you're not in danger
[33:33] know that you're not in pain and that difference she describes just made everything better like all of a sudden it would come and she's like wait a second I can't do this I can't tolerate it it's just that one shift in mindset and Einemay has so many different things from just years and years of observing and helping people find their strength and helping people see their natural power and reading her books and there's a movie about it that is not on Informed Pregnancy Plus despite my best efforts about the farm and Einemay is really powerful it's super empowering and even for me to just read her stuff and watch it gives me incredible insight and perspective and paradigm
[34:12] on childbirth that is outside of typical and she also shares like how she got into it from a very early age it's a fascinating story the whole thing from beginning till now
Rose Hart Landsberg[34:24] yeah you know her whole life just learning about how her family was treated by a nurse librarian instead of doctors and you know just picking up little tidbits about birth from various publications not the typical road to legendary birth worker that one might expect today
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[34:49] she's legendary she's an advocate and she has just like Ricky Lake in the business of being born her name comes up so frequently from people who are on an informed and empowered journey in childbirth here's a quote from the episode
Rose Hart Landsberg[35:04] it hasn't been that long I mean okay I'm still alive thank you that I'm still here to witness so much change in such a short time and then to find out the word midwife was actually removed from people's they didn't know what it was anymore most of the people and then we revived it again now it's a verb you know but it doesn't mean that we have very many midwives we ought to have a lot more midwives than we have and if you live in a time when there aren't very midwives when you're greatly outnumbered by obstetricians then you're in trouble
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[35:41] we're gonna break for commercial and when we come back we will be down you waited you listened you anticipated for our number one pick don't go anywhere we'll be right back welcome back we are counting down the top 10 stories moments highlights of the informed pregnancy podcast from 2024 and we're finally at
Rose Hart Landsberg[36:17] number one if one more person text me or said to me like oh it's gonna be any day now oh you're so close I was gonna rip their head off like I had to like tell Matt he'd be like bah you're there you're there and I was like hey I love you so much can we please change the dialogue around like you're right there because we actually don't know like it could be two more weeks and for some reason it's really triggering to me so can you just be like hey every time I complain you just need to be like you're doing such a great job that's all I need to hear
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[36:59] and who doesn't love Hillary Duff Hillary with one L I love that about her and two F's yes one L and two F's Hillary Duff is such a charming girl next door who is super successful and super down to earth interesting combination she's incredibly easy to talk to and a great storyteller as many of our other guests but really just a great storyteller and she was on the podcast first right before she had her second baby and she kind of goes into it it's I think the most popular before and after story she with her first baby was very young she was planning to have a C-section because she was terrified of birth and then all of a sudden she like meets with her psychic
[37:41] and her psychic says oh wait the baby's telling me he wants to choose how he's gonna come out of your body and then she says okay I'm gonna try for a vaginal birth and she has a great vaginal birth experience with all the drugs and she tells the story but then five years later she's pregnant again and she feels like she wants to be present like she might have missed out on the whole birth experience not feeling it not being able to move around not being an active part of it because she was afraid of the whole thing and she decided I'm gonna try to do this one on medicated and then she said I know myself if I'm at the hospital I'm going to get the drugs
[38:17] so she set up for a home birth and I interview her ten days before that baby came still kind of excited but afraid of the intensity and the pain and how she's gonna get through it and then ten days afterwards and she had another great experience and the great storyteller that she is she tells both experiences you know a lot of times you hear somebody who had both a home birth and a hospital birth and they hated one and they're an advocate for the other and really she's just had two great experiences and it's great for someone who's mulling over their options trying to figure out what they want to do or might be interested in I think why it's aside from being Hilary Duff
[38:52] it's such a popular birth story and then she came back after spoiler alert she has her next two kids at home just like Jennifer Lange and she comes back so if you want to hear that first story that everybody's in love with it's episodes number 317 and 318 is a great way to listen to it then she came back after she had her third baby and then she came back after her fourth baby and that is our number one pick episodes 416 and 17 it's two episodes it's not before and after but it's two parts and she again gets super real about the things that were hard about pregnancy and birth the things that were rewarding about pregnancy and birth she talks a lot about parenting
[39:35] what's considered these days a large family with four kids in tow and she talks about it from mental, emotional and physical perspectives and says a lot of eye-opening things it was actually supposed to be only one part episode and then we just were talking I'm like oh my gosh an hour has gone by and we decided to keep going and make it into two because she also talks about how it's her last birth her last everything the last pregnancy the last birth and the last breastfeeding and how she's kind of experiencing that
Rose Hart Landsberg[40:08] yeah, you know what I really love about these episodes I mean, I love her attitude I feel like she loves being a parent she loves having a big family and she loves a lot of aspects about what leads up to that and she doesn't live all of it and she's not precious about it she's not traumatized she's real and she can talk about it in this kind of open and positive matter of fact way I really like the part where she's just talking about how uncomfortable she is at the end of pregnancy and she's just so done and in contrast to a lot of our past guests who really just wanna let the pregnancy go as long as it needs to or as long as it wants to she was like get the baby out
[41:04] I want the baby out and I just thought that was hysterical and relatable and just really kind of speaks to someone who's on baby number four which of course you relate to and I thought it was fun to listen to you guys talk about having four kids which frankly sounds exhausting I've heard so yeah, I get why her episodes are so popular
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[41:31] yeah, she also talks about even though she loves doing home births she talks about how right before the baby comes she says, you know what maybe I'll just go do this at the hospital like it's a very real kind of back and forth in her mind and it's a journey each time she reminds me of somebody who's climbed Mount Everest and it's a real intense climb and you do it and you do it for a reason and a purpose and it's an experience of a lifetime but she doesn't sugar coat it and make it seem like oh yeah, that's the easiest thing I ever did for example, here's a few quotes from Hillary from these two episodes
Rose Hart Landsberg[42:03] this is the first time I haven't been chasing back to work and I'm really trying to enjoy that work is also something that is a part of my identity and I need to be happy and to feel whole and fulfilled and like I'm someone else besides just a mom the thought behind it is like taking that moment to appreciate your body expanding for you and like kind of closing that chapter it's super emotional I'm like thrilled to never be pregnant again and then there's so many crevices of like corners of my mind and my body and my like just expansion process that like you just can't compare to anything else in life you can't get that experience anywhere else
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[42:48] I also love how honest and funny she is I remember asking her in one of the episodes I asked her I'm like okay so like what kind of things do you do to calm down relax and entertain yourself and she's like murder I love all the true crime I'm like oh okay, murder
Rose Hart Landsberg[43:04] that I asked yeah I just feel like you know a lot of our guests have these profound pregnancy and labor experiences and that you know they abandon their careers and become birth workers which I think is amazing and I'm glad people do that and the vibe I get from her is that she's in it to be a mom like she wants to get those kids out and she wants to enjoy them and enjoy her family and enjoy her life and you know I find that very very charming I get the vibe from her that she really enjoys being a mom
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[43:39] yes you can absolutely tell she loves it struggles and all and I also do think it's kind of incredible how she balances those things you know people sometimes ask me wow how do you get all done we have four kids and a practice and the media and I'm like I know how you have employees like
Rose Hart Landsberg[43:58] that is what I was going to say
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[44:02] that is true we have an incredible small but mighty team here but what I was also going to say is anybody who wants a secret and how to be able to do all these things I would say have an incredible wife and my wife makes it really easy for me to be able to go out and do all these things that I want to do and I'm home I'm around I'm active I think I'm a good dad but she takes like such good care of all of us and really nails down the home and all she works here full time also and kind of like watching her do that be able to have this successful career here as a psychologist and as a cookbook author and also really do the lion's share of the work at home
[44:46] blows my mind all the time and it's kind of like a Hilary Duff she's very successful in her career but she's also not the mommy who like delegates everything for her kids for somebody else to do she is there you know like I have other patients who their kids are in dance class with her kids and she's there and I'm like how are you in a million places at the same time I think she has a twin sister
Rose Hart Landsberg[45:07] Yeah well and actually one of the other parts of your conversation that I liked was talking about how you know once you have four kids sometimes saying no to something is not a choice it's a necessity that there's so much going on that you prioritize you have to prioritize and that's something else that I liked about these episodes because of course most of our episodes are about you know the baby making and the baby having and so most of the conversations don't go further into the kids getting older and what that looks like down the road and so I think it's interesting to get a glimpse of that especially from someone who's doing both she's still having babies
[45:51] and you know finding out what it looks like down the road and you know like you said all of the complicated divisions of labor and family dynamics and everything that comes after
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[46:02] Yeah you're so right we're mostly about pregnancy birth fertility pregnancy birth and postpartum and maybe very early parenting and this is a glimpse into parenting as the family continues to grow and the kids get older from a very real raw and funny perspective and she'll always be a favorite of mine because again she's just so surprisingly real and easy to talk to she's like a unicorn in my mind Are unicorns easy to talk to?
Rose Hart Landsberg[46:33] I've never had a unicorn that was hard to talk to
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[46:37] Touche On that note thank you very much for tuning into our holiday top 10 picks for the Informed Pregnancy podcast before we sign off Rose we're working hard we're peddling as hard as we can at Informed Pregnancy Plus and we have some Informed Pregnancy originals such as Baby Book Nook Empowered Mama, My Birth and two new things coming out in 2025 one is the postpartum series we finally took a look at postpartum I think that it's under observed under talked about under supported and we made a web series that is going to offer more spotlight on it and more things that you can do for mind body and spirit health during that transition so look for that On Informed Pregnancy Plus
[47:23] and we're launching an all new podcast if you like this you're gonna love that it's called One Way or A Mother and because the birth stories are so popular and some of the feedback we get on them is could you take us a little deeper in sometimes an episode has a 40 hour birth story told in 40 minutes which is like one minute per hour of action and we don't get to get into super great detail and the feedback is take us in deeper so what we've decided to do is take stories that are a bit more involved and do a whole season on that story on a much deeper level interviewing the person who is pregnant and their partner and their parents and support people and doctors
[48:07] and weaving it all together the first season is Ariana's story and it's quite interesting fascinating and entertaining and there's a couple of other great seasons that are coming right after that it's done in a serialized format so if you've listened to Serial the podcast it's kind of like that the whole story is told over 10 episodes yeah I was originally gonna call it Baby Serial but I didn't want to get sued so it's called One Way or A Mother and it'll be launching soon from Informed Pregnancy Media what else did I leave anything out?
Rose Hart Landsberg[48:41] No lots of good stuff
Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC[48:43] we are working hard with a small but mighty team and we appreciate you as our audience and listeners if you want to engage with us feel free to look us up on social media at Dr. Berlin D-O-C-T-O-R-B-E-R-L-I-N or you can access all of our media online at InformedPregnancy.com
Want more pregnancy + parenting? Start your FREE TRIAL of Informed Pregnancy+ and get access to all our curated pregnancy and parenting content — original series, iconic birth films like The Business of Being Born, prenatal workouts and more.
