#114 - Part III - Ariel and Nitin's postpartum experience: Ayurvedic Postpartum

Postpartum is a crucial part of parenthood. There are many healing modalities that are available to help women heal. Often overlooked, is the emotional aspect of caring for a new life and work with the new changes in the relationship of couple's

What stands out as a learning from Ariel's story is that Preparation for every phase always helps. Ariel planned her food to the care she needed as well the people she wanted to have around early postpartum when women are trying to figure things out by themselves. 

This is their story of navigating the postpartum challenges and the learning they had along the way. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Postpartum Depression and Baby Blues
• 13:12 Social Pressure and Partner participation in Birth Choices
• 21:14 Navigating Postpartum Recovery and Support
• 35:36 Breastfeeding Challenges and Postpartum Support
• 45:10 Postpartum Support and Preparation
• 1:00:58 Early Postpartum Experience and care with Nitin
• 1:15:06 Closing note for Fathers choosing a home birth

Transcript

Ariel: 0:15

um, I had heard about sort of you know this postpartum depression of any kind or any of that. I felt low, but not depressed. I was still very much um present and able to kind of communicate. If I felt like crying, I cried. Uh, there were nights I woke up, uh, and so, so exhausted, divya, that baby woke me up once again and I would wake up and I would just look at Nitin and I would just cry.

Divya: 0:47

And it's fine to just allow yourself to kind of feel whatever you're feeling, and it so helped Nitin for him to know that this is what postpartum will be like. This show debunks the many myths of the medicalized births, showcases the plethora of choices a pregnant couple can make to embark on their empowered birth journey. I'm Divya Kapoor, a certified birth and lactation counsellor and an aspiring traditional birth attendant. Let's get the flames blazing high. This is Ariel and Nitin's Home Birth Story, part 3, where we discuss all about postpartum.

Divya: 1:43

Postpartum blues placenta tincture, placenta tour capsules, nourishing ourselves postpartum as women, recovering the role of partner, journeying the emotional overwhelm as new parents and learning about the baby and the teamwork that parenthood becomes. Deciding to not include family for the first couple of months so they could get the time to learn about each other and the baby and have some hold on this new life. All of that is covered, and this is where we wind up Ariel and Nitin's home birth story and, as we do that, a note of thanks to Aaryl for reaching out to us with her appreciation for the podcast and thereby contributing to the podcast itself. A full circle, yeah, yes, it is so. You were telling us and in the last, last time we sat together about the placenta and the tinctures and how you guys prepared them and all the uses that you know of. Yeah, tell us.

Ariel: 2:52

I had no idea, divya.

Ariel: 2:53

to be honest, I had no idea about I mean, I'd heard about placenta, encapsulation and, uh, the concept was not new to me, it's just I wasn't sure I wanted to explore it, um, but from then, informing myself and educating myself, I felt that it's um, it could be valuable to kind of keep, but it's also symbolic. In many cultures the placenta is treated with a lot of respect right after birth. I think including our own culture has its own treatment of the placenta in a certain way, whether that's burying the placenta in your own land, um. So anyways, I was quite fascinated by reading all of this.

Ariel: 3:43

I came across this article about um placentas and you know how tribes across the world kind of you know have different practices around how they rever, uh, the placentas. That's what got me into researching it first and then really coming into the modern day, I think there's a lot of data around the hormones you know that it kind of stores within itself are pretty much your own hormones that you created. You know within your own body that you created within your own body and so there can't be any other solution that's as bioidentical as that, especially when you go through the highs and lows postpartum. So what I also found out on my research is if I had had a boy, the hormonal combinations would have been different, and so postpartum depression or mood swings are also relevant as much for the father as it is for the mother, apparently. So if I'd had a boy, apparently that placenta that's been encapsulated can be used by your male spouse, like your husband.

Ariel: 5:08

So I found that so fascinating and I got it encapsulated. I went for, you know, the encapsulated format rather than the tincture. The tincture would have lasted me a longer time in life, it's probably a lot more potent. The capsule can be kept in your freezer for as long as ever. I've also heard of accounts where women have used it during menopause and since it's bioidentical.

Ariel: 5:40

It's not just something that you can give yourself, but it's also something that you can give to your daughter, because it's again bioidentical to to uh, to her. So I just found the whole thing fascinating and that's why I thought I should try it. And there was a service provider who's actually linked with there's some bit of regulation around how they process it. Yeah, there's this lady called Tracy and she basically the day of the birth Melanie, my birth doula, basically collected the placenta after the tour and dropped it over at Tracy, and so she processed it for me and then, you know, a few days later, she basically dropped it home. She came and and dropped the capsules in a, in a lovely little container, um, and what was lovely is they'd written a card, um, and they'd also kept a, a small part of the, the cord cut and um dehydrated it completely in the form of a heart shape as a keepsake memento, which was so nice. It's probably something that Ira will appreciate so much, vivian.

Divya: 7:13

This is why I say I think the care I received was so, so, so incredibly special, right and I'd say a grounded care, a care that connects, a care that feels human, a care that's personal, a care that's that makes you feel that you're not sick to be taken care of with the machines, with all the nurses, all the strangers doing things that they will tell you halfway through.

Ariel: 7:52

Yeah, it's not a strange, it's an at home experience home experience and yeah yeah, so custom to you, your needs um, your inhibitions, your fears, your values, um that. I was just super, super taken aback and really impressed with um, just the level of details that were taken in consideration. That made it all so um.

Ariel: 8:24

It was almost like it was a gift in a way to experience that you know because, um, it's a very vulnerable time and how people treat you during that time has a lasting impression on you, whether they treat you with tenderness or they treat you with disrespect. It kind of sticks in your body as a memory and it lives on and it lives on and it's it. This probably is is the, you know, most important reason why I thought I should come back, reach out to you and share my story so that other people hear the importance of planning and preparing mentally, emotionally, physically for the type of birth outcome that they envision for themselves. So that's just fundamentally what it comes down to. You don't have to settle for the options provided to you, which are traditional and typical and a lot of fear-mongering, but also a lot of disempowering ways of informing people what their options are.

Ariel: 9:54

For me, it was so important that if I gave birth to a boy child, I might have still gone ahead and had the same home birth experience. It became far more important the fact that I was having a girl to me. I felt like I didn't want want to pass any trauma down to her, generationally, in a way. So the way she came into the world was in my when I built the initial vision for my birth was very, very thoughtful, right. There was a lot of thought and consideration that went into building that vision, and it started with how does it look, uh, how does it feel, how does it smell? Um, and really building the picture from there because I had no idea, uh, what any any of this would be ultimately right.

Divya: 10:52

Yeah, yeah and the fact that, um, you'll never have that idea, but you can still make that choice by listening to your heart and also knowing. I think part of the reason in India specifically, that people do not explore what a home birth and what the care can look like it's not mainstream as yet. Second, is they still feel that what, what will happen to them in the hospital, is not disrespectful safe. So, as long as safety is concerned, follow the authority and all our life as children we have done that. Followed the authority.

Ariel: 11:38

For safety, we have yeah, that's true, I was thinking of that. I think to your point. It's so spot on. We have to change the language around birth. I had three people tell me, three very different people one, a colleague at the workplace, another person was completely different, but three people basically say oh, so so who?

Ariel: 12:08

Your husband delivered the baby. Who delivered the baby? Oh, the doctor delivered the baby. No one's delivering the baby apart from the person. That's basically the pregnant person who's going to basically give birth. So the power truly stands with the person giving birth. Um, and by power I mean the power of knowing your body uh, you know, and listening to its signals, and, um, if someone else externally is messaging, something, that's a little bit different to again reconnect with yourself and reassure yourself because you're not experiencing that, you know, because messages can be lost, and so I think that language of somebody else delivering a baby is really quite disempowering in many ways and in a birth situation it can be quite condescending to you know, in that situation, that woman who's actually in labor, right, and I hope he starts saying that the woman births the baby.

Divya: 13:27

And at this point I do want to ask you, because it's important that you brought that out and brought that up. Rather, and one of the things that Bert is, apart from being an autonomous primal process, biological process, it's also social and cultural, wherein the language becomes so important. Like you said, somebody submits themselves to the authority or to the family. It comes from the social pressure and sometimes the husband. It's not always that husbands are on board and that's why the work in pregnancy becomes so important.

Divya: 14:17

But we have also had women in the birth at home community that we have started by the fellow traditional midwife who is pioneering this path in India. We've had women who've envisioned a birth that they wanted and even excluded their husbands from it because they felt that was right for their autonomous body. But it's hard to put that across because you are so caught up in this, in these ties and these threads of life. So what would you, how would you, yeah, how would you kind of help women think about that when it comes to their bodies and the birth choices they make?

Ariel: 15:04

look, uh, you have. You still have options. Uh, you can either choose to take the people and your partner along on the journey with you, specifically your partner, right, and by the end of the day, everybody is entitled to a choice, and so are you. If your partner feels that it's completely, you know, making them very uncomfortable, then they are definitely not the right person to hold space for you during your birth. They might be a great husband or, you know, spouse, partner, etc. In life, as your life partner, but in that situation they and it has nothing to do with you it probably has some something else to do with them and their limitations, their psychological limitations, right. So you have options. One is to take the partner along with you on every exploration, on every piece of research that you do. This is something that I did. I kind of included.

Nitin: 16:15

I asked.

Ariel: 16:15

Nitin if he wanted to be a part of this in the first place. It I asked Nitin if he wanted to be a part of this in the first place and I must say that I really appreciate.

Ariel: 16:24

Nitin for being you know, as open, but also as supportive, but also kind of. You know, they come from a place where men are wired to be the protectors and the guardians of, regardless of culture, right, it's just the way that they are biologically wired to protect you, and so it doesn't come from a bad place. It just comes from a place where there's so much unknown and, like I mentioned Vivian, like the way that birth is messaged by media and movies and Bollywood I'm sorry but it's just not even Hollywood for that matter it's just not how birth unfolds. There's so much beauty in the rawness of it. There's so much transformation for everyone. That's in that.

Ariel: 17:23

Uh, for, for everyone, that's in that you know in that moment, experiencing it with that person, not just the person giving birth um, that it's an opportunity to transform into something quite beautiful, you know. And so, um, you really have choices. One is to take your partner along on the journey. The other is if you really feel and this is why starting with building that vision is so important, because, part of building your birth vision, you will go into a deep exploration to explore who's going to be part of your birth team and sometimes it's your spouse and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's your mom and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's your mom, it's maybe it's not.

Ariel: 18:03

Like I mentioned to you on the last time we spoke, my mom. I love her to bits, okay, but I mean, like, I've been in her womb, I know her inside out as as much as she knows me inside out, right, and I would have loved, uh, for her to have come and been a part of it, but it's just, I felt, um, from the way that she's built, um, she would have brought a lot of anxiety and just have been a lot more stressed out about the fact that I was exploring this in a very different light to her, but when I explained it to her later on, she was absolutely on board.

Ariel: 18:53

Actually, she was going through my birth videos and all of that made her feel like something inside of her had changed. It's not a reflection on her. It's literally what works for you to build those two feelings, you know, which is you need to feel secure, safe, and you need to feel private. Who do you feel that around? Those are the two questions that I constantly asked myself as I've built out the plan where, when, how safety and privacy would I have felt comfortable being, you know, going through all of the motions and sometimes you're not clothed to your, in full glory of birth and kind of where it takes you and you cut who you comfortable doing that in front of, right, like you?

Ariel: 19:51

may not be comfortable doing that in front of your in-laws, you know. So you really have to come at it from more of a primitive sense of discovering yourself and your boundaries, and what you like and what you don't like.

Divya: 20:05

I kind of completely am on that side where it's a choice that a woman makes first because it's her body. It's absolutely okay to want to take people along with you. But although we say birth is a celebration, but it's so primal, it's a very different sort of a celebration. It's not listening to your own intuition and pleasing everybody. You don't have to do that and you don't have to submit.

Ariel: 20:35

That is definitely not a time to do it. Yes, yeah.

Divya: 20:39

Definitely not. Yeah, absolutely, because it's going to impact the birth. Definitely not a time to do it. Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely not. Yeah, absolutely, because it's going to impact the birth, it's going to impact the outcome and it's it's going to impact you and who's going to live in that body forever.

Ariel: 20:50

You yeah, yeah, and scientifically also. Those hormones that you need for labor to progress are not going to freely flow and allow for everything to progress in its natural course if you don't feel those two things, which is security and privacy, absolutely. I think every birth education that I did about physiologic births cemented this in my head, and so those become the pivotal questions around how you build this vision around birth.

Divya: 21:29

Yeah, and we often say that birth is easy, postpartum is hard. How is it for you?

Ariel: 21:45

heart. How was it for you? Oh well, postpartum has, uh, so many colors to it. You know there's a lot of, but a lot of colors, a lot of vibrant colors too. So right after baby was born the first day didn't really it still hadn't sunk in that, um, here, baby was, here, she was, she was beautiful. She still was kind of opening her mouth and making all of these gestures like a newborn can't really see, can't tiny, I think, small little bundle. Um, it was beautiful to observe her. She was um, to observe her. She was um, yeah, she was lovely for me. I took a little bit of time to bond to her, divya, um, and so I say this because this is very normal part of what everybody goes through um, so it was not love at first sight, it was who. Okay, who are you? You've come into my space, you've been in my body all these months. I want to get to know you and hopefully, you get to know me too.

Divya: 22:47

Yeah.

Ariel: 22:47

Right. So just like I built my vision for birth, I also spent some time to build my own vision for postpartum. Also spend some time to build my own vision for postpartum, and then again similar sort of questions to introspect on. And as you build this right, Like going back to visualization, close your eyes and just if it was the ideal, how would you? How would you picture it? How would the room look?

Nitin: 23:22

What are you?

Ariel: 23:22

wearing, what do you smell, who's at home, what do you feel like eating? And so just really feeling it to that basic level and no clue. When I did this, I was pregnant. I wrote down a vision and I wrote down how I wanted postpartum to go. I built a team around it to support me.

Ariel: 23:47

Normally in India, I know, typically we have our parents come and spend time with us or we go and spend time in our parents home, right? So for me, I really wanted to be in my space and enjoy my space. I wanted at least the first two and a half to three months to be dedicated to me learning two things me learning my baby and me learning my new self. Because it truly is a is a portal that, from that day on, you become a parent, you become a mother. You now have to learn all the cues your baby is giving you and start to decode that and meet their needs in and and that's a journey right like right, from breastfeeding to everything like are they hungry, are they hot, are they cold? Are they I don't know gassy, like what's going on? Right like you're constantly having to, constantly having to figure this out, like you would anything else in your life, but often postpartum tends to be also a stressful time because there's family visiting, there's probably health care workers, you're probably still in the hospital if you've gone through a c-section, um.

Ariel: 25:20

So there's a lot of external voices again. Pressure, right, do this, do that. Oh, you're probably not producing enough milk. You're. Oh, the baby is gassy because you ate this last night, or I think the baby's not feeling well, or the poop is actually looking this color. We should go, and so it's a lot of external voices which can really disrupt the. Remember the? The placenta was how you and baby communicated when baby was inside. Now it's outside you. There's a reason why there's a term called the fourth trimester. It's outside you. Now, the next three months you have to figure out how to communicate, how to figure out that communication about what is being, what message Babies are, are really, really smart. We as a human race not got this far for nothing, okay so we talk even

Ariel: 26:28

non-verbally, we're expressing things right, and so it's really. I think the mother and the father both have that sense of intuition of knowing what is needed from moment to moment, especially the mother, and so it's a very, very important time to bond with baby, take time to get to know yourself as a parent, as a mother partner, as a parent, as a mother partner, as a parent too, you know, and how they kind of respond to the situation. Get to know the baby. This was my vision, for my postpartum was to go inward, and so my mom was renovating her home back in Bangalore. So, timing wise, it just kind of worked out for us in a way where I could ask that of her and I really asked that. You know, I, I would ideally like to have visitors after two and a half to three months, because until then I just wanted it to be nithin baby, me, my puppy, maximum, just just just the four of us trying to figure out this new circumstance that we found ourselves in as parents. That was the vision, how it planned out, uh was again beautiful, very similar.

Ariel: 27:59

It came with a ton of its challenges don't get me wrong, because it was the hormones going up and down was incredibly, the baby blues hit hard week three, divya, and it made me feel like who am I? What am I? What is this? My midwife had given me some herbal tinctures to take for to help with anxiety and mood. Specifically. That helped really, really well.

Ariel: 28:34

My second degree tear healed without a stitch or a suture needed at all, and so I was so grateful for my body to kind of do that recover in that time. I was sore for the first one week or so and then things started to progressively get better right after that. So I think within week two I had lost all the extra water, all of that and I'd come back to baseline, which was my sort of my pre-pregnancy or actually, yeah, even much better weight than that. So that kind of started to message to me that my body is doing what it needs to right. And Hope came to check on me pretty much every day for the first entire week. So she checked my wound, my perineum, to make sure that that's healing, that was on its way to recovery, which was fantastic.

Ariel: 29:36

She checked on my mood how I was feeling, you know, and she checked on lactating and the positions and you know sort of how I was feeding baby, how I was feeling and if there was any discomfort that I was experiencing. And the first as your milk letdown starts to happen, you know you start lactate after three, four, actually sometimes three, sometimes five days and for me it was around sort of the third, fourth day mark and you notice it because your mood suddenly changes. I had heard this from people that prolactin makes you feel a little bit crazy in a nice way, but, you know, maybe also in a challenging way. Until day I want to say day three, five I was still on the endorphin high. I'd wake up, take a shower, stay in my room. I didn't leave the room, I didn't leave the bedroom for about two weeks. I wanted to take everything very slow. Nitin was amazing.

Ariel: 30:50

We also had, just for that period, hired a postpartum cook who came home and made us meals as a family, which was so important, which normally would be my mom or your sister or somebody who is close to you, but in my situation I'm the only child and also I think it's just a huge part of planning postpartum is food and you know what kind of meals you want. So I wrote an entire postpartum meal plan for myself. I wanted an ayurvedic type of a meal plan, and so I asked my mother for all of these traditional heirloom postpartum recipes from her memory and down the memory lane. And she was like, oh, I remember the house would smell so lovely and we'd make this sort of a pepper, kind of a rasam, but it actually has a little bit of milk in it which would taste so nice. Um in again, it's typical to a part of Karnataka yeah and uh.

Ariel: 31:54

So, anyways, collected all of these recipes, put them all on paper, printed them, put them in a file, um, got our cook familiarized with all of the things that I wanted. It was basically a weekly plan of what I wanted, starting with kichidis to then progressing into your rasam rices, just sort of lightly cooked vegetables. You, you know lots of green leafies, that type of some sprouts. Later on, much later on, maybe even two months, two months tree, but so grateful to have had her. Another person part of the postpartum team was my postpartum doula, who was lovely Divya. Her name is Rosa Vera. She has been serving in this area, I think, close to 15 years and she specializes in postpartum care. So part of you know what I asked her to come and do for me was a little bit they tailor everything that they do to you.

Ariel: 32:59

and so they ask you how do you envision your postpartum right? And so for me it was a few things. One was, um, basically helping me with, uh, the herbal sits bath, and so you know, she would come and sort of boil this concoction of herbs and put it into the bathtub and then I would put, you know, epsom salt and certain other herbs into it, and then I would basically sit and as I sat there she would basically Rosevera had has the calmest energy. She had such a calm energy, divya, that I would hand Ira over to her and she would just put Ira on her chest and Ira would fall to sleep and she would be sitting there like this, like this mother and just baby on her chest and she'd just sit in one place and I would take a nice long soak in the tub and care for myself and feed myself and come back to baby.

Ariel: 34:08

So that was wonderful, it was really lovely. The other thing that roosevera helped me with was, again, she's not a massage therapist but she helped me with a lot of just body work, bringing me back into my body type of massage care. I used some ayurvedic oils that that I'd kind of purchased early on for it, so that really helped a ton as well to kind of balance out the remaining hormones, reduce stress and really keep me in that space where I didn't experience the lows as badly as I probably would have if I didn't have that level of touch and care and, you know, producing the right again, the right recovery related hormones that you need. Because, yeah, baby blues were hard, divya, you know they were hard because they kind of make you question so many things. You know it's transition into motherhood, it's the fact that you have to do this all over again, it's the fact that you have to feed baby multiple times in the day, multiple times in the night. Your breasts oh my god, I don't want to. I don't even want to. You know I don't want to. You know, look, in all honesty, I was a person who had told myself I'm going to be really practical and maybe do a combination feed or maybe get into formula as soon as possible, but none of that happened In the end.

Ariel: 35:51

One thing that Hope and Melanie had told me was look, do not feed the baby anything for the first eight weeks, actually the first 12 weeks. You're not going to feed the baby anything for the first eight weeks, actually the first 12 weeks. You're not going to feed the baby anything else. If they're hungry, they're just going to go to your breast and that is what you need to keep at. I'm telling you it's going to get hard days. You're going to wonder why you're doing this. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what's happening, because a newborn like they don't they can't even latch unless you're like in the middle of the night, like there's so much head bobbing and you know, like them, just trying to get to your nipple is such a task.

Ariel: 36:39

And then other discomforts of engorgement. Your breast feel like because the milk's coming in and you know it's creating all of these milk producing breast tissue right, and so there's a lot of inflammation that makes you feel uncomfortable. That I had no idea, you know I'd heard about it, but when you actually experience it in your body is a whole different thing, right, and so one thing that she mentioned was anything that's cooling cabbage, just the leaves of cabbage that's kept in the fridge. Don't overdo it because it can interfere with your milk supply, but just use it for the cooling effect for about 10 minutes every morning. That's it for about a week or 10 days when you're engorged and that's. That's pretty much it, right. The rest of the time do not. So she would come, I think two or three times. She mentioned to me and I just took her advice.

Ariel: 37:38

The way I look most practical person, I told myself I'm not gonna, I'm gonna be kind to myself, I'm not gonna be too hard. If it's going to get really demanding, I will. You know I was a person who slept with a box of formula next to my bed in a breast pump, but until I'm in month eight now, I've not used it at all, because the first 8 to 12 weeks, if you can get through that time, it's the most wonderful experience. After that. But the first 8 weeks. I felt like what are they talking about? I don't understand how this can be wonderful, because my nipples are cracked, they feel sore and I have to be awake and I'm needed all the time. When is the wonderful part coming?

Ariel: 38:35

And it did it surely. Did it, did I would say it got so much better, like you know. Did it, did? I would say it got so much better. Like you know, everyone says it gets better. Trust in that. It's not um, it's not um hearsay, it's, it's really true. Things get better. They get better, in fact, from one week to the next um. And so the placenta encapsulation. I I wanted to kind of take some time to take, take that before I. So I never felt the need to take it through postpartum um, I had heard about sort of you know there's postpartum depression of any kind or any of that. I felt low but not depressed.

Ariel: 39:26

I was still very much present and able to communicate. If I felt like crying, I cried.

Ariel: 39:35

There were nights I woke up and was so, so exhausted, divya, that baby woke me up once again and I would wake up and I would just look at Nitin and I would just cry and it's fine to just allow yourself to kind of feel whatever you're feeling. Yeah, and it so helped Nitin for him to know that this is what postpartum will be like, right. So we took another course which is done by, actually put together by, the same person who did the build to birth course. Again, it's um, I need to pull up her name here build to birth. Yeah, who's done a postpartum course called Mattressin. That was super useful for Nitin to kind of understand me and since it's in an online format, it was just easier for us to take our time to kind of explore that, especially during the last few weeks and also after the first few weeks of when baby arrived. So that was important.

Ariel: 40:45

Who else? So we did a cook, we did, we did a postpartum doula and Nitin, who was part of my postpartum team too, he did so much. He made our chaiais in the morning. He basically brought food to our bedroom upstairs where I was kind of confined there for some time. He held baby, put her to sleep.

Ariel: 41:12

When I needed some time for myself. He got up in the middle of the night and hugged me when I cried several times because I just found the whole thing so hard on my body and being sleep deprived to that extent I just felt like everything was just really difficult and he was just there. I needed another cup of chai. He was there to make it and then it was golden for him too, because he had taken about six weeks off work and he just spent that entire time soaking up baby, soaking up this new transition. His own self has also changed right, because he witnessed birth and he's gotten into this new role. Now, what does it all mean to him? There was a lot of time to sit and reflect and that type of thing did a ton of meditation, breastfeeding, meditation on this app called inside timer. There's the app called Insight Timer. There's a lady called Again, I'm definitely not a person for names- Me too, yeah, while you fish for the name.

Divya: 42:34

I do want to kind of add to all that you've shared and which is beautiful and which is strong and powerful at the same time. It's vulnerable, yet it is so strong and powerful, just like your entire journey into birth, into the uncertainties of birth and then coming out powerful. And then the same journey postpartum so we say made into motherhood. This is becoming a mother, and then the initial hurdles of becoming a mother. When you are a mother, like learning to parent a child I often say it's a karmic cycle. Our parents did it, we have to do it. It's just what makes us a better person overall. So I think now, on LinkedIn also, you kind of see parents, mums, writing that this is all that I learned on my maternity leave, so might as well give me the bonus earlier. Um, yeah, he says yeah, there is a bit of um, you know, bias against women, at least in India. I've seen that in my company because I was working when I, when I had Divi, I joined back and I saw that, yeah, very clearly, my, my promotion was due and oh, my god, oh, I can't, even I don't want to go there because it's this podcast is not not about that but yeah, it is, um, it's. It's a journey to make you the person you are supposed to be in this life and nothing comes out the comfortable way. It's always the heart that brings you and you also find joy in it, like you said. I mean, you remember the hard part, but you say it only makes the joy more joyous. Maybe bad, but you say it only makes brings. Makes the joy more joyous, maybe. And yes, the initial few weeks are going to be the learning curve, like we say, and learning curves are not easy. It's full of doubt, it's full of can I do this? Or is it going to be this hard? Or how long will this take for me to become? You know I've done this, I've given birth. Now, how long will I need to still sit with all these uncomfortable feelings? And prolactin you mentioned, which is the milk making hormone, and yes it, it changes throughout the day, it levels up in the night, it fades by the evening and it does all things to you at the same time. There's this oxytocin, the love hormone, which kind of gives you still the beautiful blissful thing, like blissful feeling, and I want to commend you on the fact that you did very consciously, very practically, I'd say, like you're saying, you're a practical person but that it takes courage to be practical. I mean to only have people that will not make it even harder for you. Because in India I do.

Divya: 45:25

Part of my preparation is postpartum and I'm like husbands Okay, you don't want to sit for the birth part? Okay, your choice. I'm not going to let you go away from the postpartum part. The mother will do, she'll give birth Again. It should be non-negotiable for partners not to sit for classes when it's about birth, because it does go down the very same path of you have to go through that impediment, that hurdle, and then the postpartum, but postpartum, you can't evade it. And then, when it comes to families, I'm sorry, yes, they are going to make it harder for you emotionally where everything sits it's really hard, you know yeah, those external noises, the power dynamics with women.

Ariel: 46:15

Um, it's not their fault, they lived and survived not telling you one thing, your mother telling, and sometimes you know what. It all comes from a great place, but trust me, you have to learn this. It's a skill of being a parent. You have to give yourself that time to learn it right. It's like, um you know when you, when you witness a, a bear or you know some animal giving birth, they're not listening to all their peers telling them what to do they they're connected to their instincts and are basically guided by whatever messages they're getting from their offspring and they're basically regulating their behavior to meet their needs.

Ariel: 47:03

And so it's just, you know, it's that right, and I think our families, no matter how big or small they are, they're all. It can be a very, very delicate time in someone's life. So, although I love my mom, I loved the fact that my mom came after two and a half months and it gave us, as a family unit, time to process what had happened, you know, and to process, you know, the journey and figure ourselves out and figure baby out, and it just gave us a minute to breathe in our own pace before we layered on all of the other support, right. So mom came, she spent some time with me, she cooked me, she cooked a ton of meals for me later. But one thing I will add Divya, I continued to do the breastfeeding meditation, stayed on top of my self-care, which is I showered every day, and I made sure that I did the sitz bath, the herbal bath, part of my self-care sort of routine, which really, really helped my mind.

Ariel: 48:27

The massages that Rosa Vera gave me were like your grandmother massaging you. Okay, it's not like this, I don't know, like the massage therapist, but that touch, you know it releases more oxytocin, you know, gets your stress hormones regulated and you're feeling like, you know, a human being, you know and that was so important to ground me.

Ariel: 48:52

One thing I will say is I also had a therapist on call in case I wanted to talk and say things to them and take some talk therapy, uh, which I didn't really want to end up, I don't know, like blurting things out to nithin and for guy he doesn't have to like play, but he's already playing so many things that he I just felt that that would be another uh area in which I felt that I would have enjoyed a bit more support from somebody coming from a very neutral place, you know, and really validating your emotions in a way where you know everything's been processed and taken care of.

Divya: 49:38

So that was important to me.

Ariel: 49:40

That's also something that I layered in. Didn't have to be something major, in fact I got so interrupted, with Ila crying in between, but even those few 20-25 minutes were a huge relief because you know what you can share things with somebody who is not a family, who's not a friend, who will give you their impression or their experience of it and kind of you know then make it not not make you feel heard or understood right, so it's kind of part of that as well.

Divya: 50:17

It's very wise, I'd like to add. It's very wise of you to also think that it's not necessary that somebody who's close to you might be able to do that for you and we often over time, but maybe not, maybe not. I like this person. Just the way the person is, is right now, and why? Why I want him or her to do so much more, and it's so wise of you.

Ariel: 50:51

I just want to say that thank you so much, divya I journaled a lot, because this time will never come back and you're not going to remember every thought.

Ariel: 51:01

You'll remember the events, but you're not going to remember the thoughts. So I wrote them down and at one point I was like I can't write more than two lines and baby just wants to be on me all the time, and so something that I did was just carry her around the house wherever I was, like we normally do in India. She slept next to me, she slept best. We moved our cot downstairs to our second bedroom and we basically put our mattress on the floor and we had set ourselves up in a floor bed situation, and so it was cozy settling and so has the type of feeling yes, so hassle-free, I don't have to worry about a thing. Right, so it was.

Ariel: 51:57

It was don't get me wrong there was a lot of tears, right, like life doesn't give you things that you can't necessarily process, right, and so just um, putting everything into perspective, I spoke to mom on the phone. Every day. We did video calls, show baby, uh, we connected at a very different level. It was wonderful experiencing Nitin as a father for me, experiencing myself as a new mother, experiencing my mother as a first-time grandmother was another wonderful experience, initially over the phone and then, when she came here, initially over the phone and then when she came here, um, but as I shared my birth videos and my postpartum plan, she came to the kitchen. She saw a pink file with all my Ayurvedic recipes, including the ones that she'd given me and my postpartum meal plan. She was just. She was like wow, you guys have had an adventure. You did and that is how I would sum it up is that it was an adventure.

Divya: 53:11

I'll use that for the title. Thank you, love that, love that, ariel. I can't thank you enough for all these detailing. I think you do that. You know it's just who you are and it's not just beautiful and wonderful. It's so helpful and compassionate to think through how do you want to put that across to people who are listening and how they will be impacted. So to go down to that detailing part to help them is compassionate. So I keep saying you're passionate, so I'll add to that compassionate and I'm so grateful for you to share all of these things with us and our listeners, and I'm certain it's going to hit a chord and it's going's gonna, if not anything, at least propel them to think in a different direction that they already are maybe, and that's a win. That's a win in itself. And from here on, ariel, I would also like Nitin to join in and share his part of the absolutely, I would love that I will bring him in.

Ariel: 54:30

But thank you so much, divya, I appreciate you. Thank you for all the stories you've basically asked questions of people and their stories that they've shared too. It's had a huge impact on me, so thank you thank you so much hi divya yeah so we've heard about you all through the recording.

Divya: 54:55

we, of course, sat together in the beginning listening to your version of birth and your journey into it. Now we've heard from Ariel her version of how she was deeply impacted by you standing by her through all this, and there were certain moments that I wanted to highlight and especially ask you about and where you were in your mind when all that was happening. One is when, of course, labor was going on and on and on and uh, we have, in general, heard of stories right, oh, the labor starts and then the baby's here and there's a bit of a noise in between. It's just that. But to lift that um in an elongated time, how did you feel that? And then, adding to that, the moment where there came a time that Errol was like can we move out of this place? Can we make it a little more easier? How did you feel then? Because now the decision was being like you know, you were asked to make a decision for her, with her, of course, being involved, but yeah, yeah.

Nitin: 56:08

Okay. So, yeah, it was. I remember it went on forever. It just felt long and long that entire time. And there was one time where, you know, when the lip, the cervical lip thing, happened is, ariel was actually almost giving up and she just wanted to like. She just wanted to like. She was asking me can we like go to the hospital? Can we, like you know, do something? And uh, I, I was, we were trying to also get the feedback from uh, uh, from from the midwives. So we were looking at her and, you know, she kind of said at that point that like you're so far ahead it's, you know, there is nothing different that they would do than what we are like doing here. So, from my, from my perspective, I really trusted, like I trusted what she had to say, uh, and they were like kind of confident, like we're getting close to it.

Ariel: 56:59

So, uh, so so I, I kind of you know let it.

Nitin: 57:02

It was uh, although I was also. It was painful for me to see it in so much of pain, uh. So I, I also wanted it to be like done and done and over with uh, but but you know, we had to wait. At that time I, I think I I relied a lot on what uh hope had to say point. So I was just trying to reassure ariel, I was just trying to hold her hand and, you know, trying to like massage her a little bit and trying to, you know, kind of soothe, herothe her, and so, yeah, I was just trying to be of as much help although I wasn't much help, I think You- were in hindsight yeah, no, you were and all those little words of affirmation and encouragement.

Divya: 57:43

They are what women need to give birth. Basically, it's just. It's just a like I say, it's a wave, um that hits the shore and then it comes, goes back and then comes back again. That's what we describe contractions as, but it's pretty much. The journey is pretty much like that. No, so somebody to say yeah, somebody to say that you can serve this, we, we can serve this together. Let's do that, let's hold your hand, we're not going to fall off and it's going to be okay. So, nitin, when you saw the baby, the head, emerging, what were your feelings like then?

Nitin: 58:24

It was very, very surreal. I was like right next to her. Hope was behind. I was in front of her. It was very surreal. It was difficult to believe that whole experience. It went on for so long that when it was actually happening it was like is this really happening? The head came and it came out like kind of it.

Nitin: 58:49

All that all happened like quite fast and I was like my hands were like it just came into hope's and she was just manipulated. I thought she was doing something, but actually it was the baby. She didn't. Later she told me that I didn't do anything. You know, it kind of came out by itself and she got it and like it was like a fraction of a second, in a second it was. She transferred it to my hand. Like it all happened in one motion and we actually captured it on a video, that whole thing and it like it just felt so surreal, like the baby was, you know, all kind of slippery and like I held it in my hand. I didn't even know how to like hold it and kind of moved it to the bed and yeah, it was it was very surreal it was for a moment like we couldn't, and the baby was crying as soon as she came out.

Nitin: 59:33

So it was, it was a very magical moment in its own way. We both, ariel and I, both had like tears in our eyes, like it was, you know, it was like this is now over and there were like so many mixed. It's even difficult to describe, like you know, why we like, why we had tears and what we were thinking, because it was like a lot of different feelings going through us in that moment.

Divya: 59:55

Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine the numbness, the overwhelm, the high adrenaline and all of those things doing things to you and being so present to feel it all in one go is yeah, yeah. And then how did um the postpartum feel, like nathan and um caring for the baby, um, the first few days figuring out a new human being, and your thoughts about being like fatherhood. How had you imagined it earlier and how did it seem to me after?

Nitin: 1:00:31

Yeah, so we were by. I think the most special thing about it is we were by ourselves, like we didn't have any family or anyone, and I think that made it very, very special because we were trying to figure things out. So, hope and Melanie, our midwife and our doula, they stayed for a couple of hours or so. Afterwards we had gotten them some sandwiches and they ate.

Nitin: 1:00:52

They cleaned up the entire place like nothing ever happened. You could have said that you couldn't tell. They just cleaned it to the most finest detail and they just left and we were by ourselves. It was, I think gale was still delicate. She was, you know, there was pain and there was. You know, her movement was a little bit restricted but overall she was, you know, she was doing fine. So so we were. I was trying to hold the baby and there was no problem. The baby latchedatched on, started drinking milk.

Nitin: 1:01:31

I didn't even know how to hold the baby properly. I was taking some turns to hold her, but for the most part she was with Ariel. She slept with us in the bed. That's how we planned it. We had Hope and Melanie come and visit us the next several days. They would come spend like, and they would come separately so that they would, you know, spend time with us separately, and they would like tell us a lot of different things. And you know, breastfeeding was a big thing because Ariel was, you know, she had her doubts about how that would go and he just told her just feed her for the next however long you can. So she was just trying to follow the instructions.

Divya: 1:02:22

And.

Nitin: 1:02:23

I think it was very enjoyable. When I look back, I didn't find any part of it like stressful or difficult or hard or you know I was. I quickly learned from the way how the midwife was holding the baby. So she would hold it like this with the, you know, with the head here, and so she I forget what she she called it something tiger, tiger, hold, yeah, yeah like a like a tiger hold and in one hand I could like hold her.

Nitin: 1:02:48

She was like really small and she would fall asleep in my arm in that, in that position, and I you know when I sent pictures of that to my mom.

Nitin: 1:02:56

She didn't even know that you could hold the baby like that or like you know. So it was and and my mom has had like two grandchildren she is whom you know my sister's had two babies and she's actually been there for the care and, and that's when I realized that, even though we think our parents and you know, they know, but it's you know that it's nowhere close to what the midwives and you know, these people who have done it for long, like when Hope would come, and the way she held the baby, the way she, everything was like so smooth, they were so skilled. You could see the way, like you know, they were doing all that.

Nitin: 1:03:27

So there was a lot of little things that they taught us. They were every time they came. They would, you know, give us a lot of different information. Uh, she would like weigh the baby and like kind of play with the baby change her and so.

Nitin: 1:03:39

So it was very nice to have like to us. That was like family for you know, for the next few days that they came, and we also had uh signed up for a postpartum doula, who was also a recommendation from the same team. So it was a lady called uh rosavara and she also had a very, very calming effect on the baby. She was, she was somebody who would come and just hold the baby, just rock her a little bit and say something soft and she would fall asleep in a in a hand. So it was nice for us to see these highly skilled, attuned people you know handle the baby and I was trying to pick up as many skills I can. So she taught us how to.

Nitin: 1:04:19

You know how to, how to roll. I forget what that's called. You know you put the cloth around the baby like a yeah, the swaddle. Sorry, it's been such a long time, it feels like a long time ago yeah, there are so many jargons and you can't remember everything, yeah yeah, and she would swaddle and the baby would be so cozy and she'd just fall asleep.

Nitin: 1:04:41

So so I was picking up all these little skills, you know, looking at rozavera and how she was she had a very calming presence. She calmed all of us, you know, when she came and she kind of sat around, spoke to us and she also did.

Ariel: 1:04:55

It was like a cool idea.

Nitin: 1:04:56

Ariel thought that she had all of these Ayurvedic oils.

Nitin: 1:04:59

So she just postpartum care, like Ariel asked her to give her some kind of like, you know, soothing massages and things like that, so which was like, like, very good, I think it was a great resource that we had, uh.

Nitin: 1:05:13

So so, yeah, it was our plan, was, I think, top class and credit to a like like the way we planned it. Like we had, uh, ankita, you know, who came and cooked for us, like a couple of like. She was coming thrice a week, like every other day kind of a thing, and she would come and Ariel had given her recipes, like postpartum kind of recipes, and she was also fascinated I never knew about this when I had my baby, I wish you know so. So she cooked and it was amazing. She would make fresh food for us and we didn't even sometimes we'd be so tired we'd be inside, she'd come in and go out, we wouldn't even like know, and then we go like everything you know ready and like kept ready for us to eat, and we kind of manage with that for the next, you know that day and next day, and then she'd be there like the day after so that was like a perfect.

Nitin: 1:06:02

it took away so much of our like headache. And then we had Rosa Vera come, we had you, you know, melanie, and all these. So so we had although we didn't have family, we had these people who were like family, who'd come in, you know, supported us really well, and we also had some other people who, you know, who came and like kind of cleaned the home, so so we didn't have to, you know, worry about worry about things.

Divya: 1:06:36

So all we had to do was focus and just take care of the baby. Yeah, yeah, wonderful, um, and do you remember the? While you were kind of explaining all that I thought of? Do you remember the baby's? Sorry about this, the baby's first bath.

Nitin: 1:06:48

Do you remember how? Yeah, so.

Nitin: 1:06:49

Melanie came and showed us that. So we had to wait until the umbilical cord came off, and it took a little bit longer. So it took a few days longer than that, and so Melanie came. She had told us what kind of a tub we should get and what kind of an arrangement. So we had bought a couple of different options from Amazon. We kept everything ready for her. So again, it was just, you know Melanie's super skilled she has, like she's had three kids of her own and the way she, like, she told us how to, you know, handle the baby, how to, like you know kind of, you know, pour the water or leave in the tub, and how to. So we pour the water or leave in the tub, and how to. So we had like these uh, I think it was like basin powder and rose water or something we had that we're not using any kind of a soap, you know natural stuff I think it was mixed, I think we mixed that with coconut oil or something she gave us some ideas.

Nitin: 1:07:39

We did all of that and, uh, you know it was very very delicate, like like the way she was doing it.

Nitin: 1:07:45

It was kind of scary, like when I was uh look seeing that. Uh, but interestingly for ariel it was no big deal like after that the next day or the day after when we were, it was she was a pro already. Uh, she has. Actually. When he was, when she I don't know if she mentioned that, but she was like a teenager she had uh watched and you know kind of helped with her cousins like infants and you know babies. So she had some actual, you know real life experience in in dealing with children. So it kind of came naturally a lot of things that she was doing. I was very, very surprised I was seeing a new side of hers where it just seemed like so easy for her and she was doing it her, I played the role of a helper who stood by and supported, I didn't venture into giving the baby a bath.

Nitin: 1:08:34

I did later as a little time progressed and she was becoming a little more stronger, and we do it together and I also would give her a bath.

Divya: 1:08:44

Wow, incredible. The delicate part is something that I want to highlight again. Babies are whole human beings and sometimes in traditional settings, like we do here in India, we are very rough with bathing babies and we just pour water. Crying is normal. You're like, ah, crank is normal, but it's not. It's a way of communication. If the baby is communicating that it's uncomfortable, you're just making it normal for them to be treated roughly by another human who's just a little more powerful than them.

Divya: 1:09:18

So that's not a good imprint. So it's wonderful that you had that gentle, nice, loving care, very primal, very natural. And there were moments that Ariel said that she was low from time to time, but overall she was, of course, sailing through very well with all the work that you guys did earlier on. All the preparation came in very handy. But the moment that she was low and she said, you just hugged her. You know you gave her the right kind of support and did the preparation help you? It was just instinctive to you as a father that this is what I'm, this is what I can do and this is how I can help her, but maybe just giving her a hand or just hugging her at the moment, because it will become fine, yeah.

Nitin: 1:10:14

Yeah, so it's. Even for me that was a little bit confusing. You know her lows. To be honest, she's being kind. It took me some time for me to learn how to deal with that. I don't think instinctively. I knew that I was trying to be my natural, usual self and trying to use reason and logic. At times it would. Typically she would feel that towards the evenings I think the end of the day is this when you could kind of she'd start feeling low and she'd start talking and all of a sudden I could see that there was a shift. Initially I didn't realize. I was trying to cheer her up and then I realized all I had to do was kind of be there and not not try to reason with her and you know, just kind of be there and hold her and, you know, make her, make her feel that she's loved and she's understood. And I understand what's going on and I'm there for her.

Divya: 1:11:11

I'm so joyous when you say not reason with her, just be there. That is the thumb rule to caring for women when they are going through their even menopausal lows and things where they are not sure what's happening because it's so much going through them.

Nitin: 1:11:37

It's lovely, uh, to put that across, and, yeah, for others too. Yeah, it is um, because, uh, it's. I'm a person who reasons and that's my nature, like you know.

Divya: 1:11:42

I, I, I have sometimes word. They are supposed to reason and use logic because they are supposed to protect.

Nitin: 1:11:50

That's their job to do, and you were only doing what your job is yeah true, true, true, yeah, one of the things is, uh, what, what happens is like particularly postpartum. You know the. It's called the evening blues or you know it's, it's called something I forget it's a postpartum blues, yeah, and it's a very tricky period because if you, if you don't know about it, you can react negatively to it without understanding, like and I was in a spot where I might have reacted a little bit negatively and I was trying to, you know, may, put my point across and trying to shut Ariel down, and because what happens in that time is there is a lot of negative noticing and in my, from my, perspective, it's like why the hell are you being so negative? Like everything is okay, and sometimes she would pick, like you know, she might say, hey, this is like I would take it personally, like you know, you're trying to find fault with me, or, and it took me some.

Nitin: 1:12:49

And that's when I realized I'm just overreacting to this and taking it personally. All I need to do is just make her feel heard and just make her feel comfortable. So that education is very important to have. If you don't, you can just create some unnecessary friction and, you know, waste both energies of you know, of both the husband and wife. Um, so yeah, so I think it's good to expect that and and know that all you need to do is just just be there, just support, and it will just pass yeah, women sometimes don't need answers.

Divya: 1:13:20

They just want presence and a? Um sense of safety from their man.

Nitin: 1:13:25

And, yeah, all you need to do is hug, listen and carry on, and this is wonderful which is something that she sometimes I think the way to put it is you might feel in that moment to go away, but actually you should go closer and show that you're there, right. So you know, a typical reaction for me is you know I can, I just want, I just don't want to be in this thing and I want to go away because I start taking some things personally, like I didn't do something. Is you know I can, I just want, I just don't want to be in this thing and I want to go away if because I start taking some things personally, like I didn't do something good enough or you know, so that's. It's the time not to go away and avoid, but to like go closer and kind of you know, hold her hand and make her feel that she's everything's okay. What she feels is like valid it's, you know it's it's. It's hard, but we'll sail through this yeah.

Divya: 1:14:09

So how has it transformed your relationship? Because a lot of things change between a couple. You go from a couple to a team, as parents and overall over time, so not just the early days of postpartum. Over time it transforms and it changes through. So how would you say it has impacted your relationship as a couple as well? Has it strengthened it? Has it added more layers to it? Yeah, how would you like to describe it?

Nitin: 1:14:38

I would say it has really strengthened it. To just put it simply, we have known each other for 20 years now actually it's not a short time and we have been through a lot in our own, in our own way. It's been a quite a journey. We've moved around the world and you know we've done a lot of things together. This just added, like you know, another thing that we we did together probably the best and the coolest thing of all everything that we've done. So it has definitely strengthened us, like it's made our team teamwork even even stronger. I think we have a better understanding for each other now. So, yeah, lovely.

Divya: 1:15:21

So what would you like to say as a closing note for fathers out there, um, especially people in india, because in india, uh, there's a lot of um everybody goes to the hospital for birth. Right, it's the norm, and it's there quite across the world as well. It's not a non-global thing, it is a global thing, but at the same time it's difficult. Women sometimes very intuitively, very easily want to go for a home birth because it speaks to their primal selves. They want to explore that. But for men it's a very different perspective to come across and to align with. How would you help the fathers listening to this episode, or the fathers-to-be couples who are expecting? How should they approach it? And if there is something that they feel you know from your own experience, how would you like to help them find a direction?

Nitin: 1:16:33

experience. How would you like to help them find a direction? Yeah, I think, end of the day it's people can have a choice of whether they go to a hospital or you know. I think both there's no wrong answer there, or you know the right thing to do.

Nitin: 1:16:43

I personally felt a hospital is a safer environment because you have all the, you know, all the gadgets and the experts there. Um, what, what I would say is one thing that I would you know my advice, or you know my, um, I would say, is that the more education you get about birth, uh, the better it is. Uh, you know, we went through a lot of different like online training and our own conversations, because we went through this the midwife and the doula. There were so many conversations that we had from you know, these people who have so much experience, and I'm fully convinced by now that these good, you know, these midwives have way better experience, like real life experience, than any average OBGYN. Now, there may be some exceptions to that, to what I'm saying. We didn't even meet an OBGYN in our entire experience. It was only through midwives.

Nitin: 1:17:40

So, if you have the right team, I think the home birth is like one of the coolest, the most special things that you can do as a couple. It is it's not for everyone, because it is it requires preparation is like one of the coolest, the most special things that you can do as a couple. It's not for everyone because it requires preparation. It requires you to be mentally strong. It requires you to have a good team. You need to have a good understanding, and if everything goes smooth, it will be the most special experience that you will ever remember. And I think everything should go smooth. It's really an exception, even statistically speaking. I think that's how my driver, strength, explained to me that everything should go, should go smooth. You've got to be strong, really, I think, to make a choice to not have access to epidural or you know any kind of, you know, pain management tools at that point. So you have to be strong.

Ariel: 1:18:33

But at the end there is a fruit.

Nitin: 1:18:35

I think it's very special. So couples who want to do something special, they want to remember their birth in a special way. I think hospitals could be. I don't know how memorable it can be. I'm sure it could be somewhat memorable, but this would be a lot more memorable.

Nitin: 1:18:53

I almost was thinking that, hey, this is like a little another adventure that we are up to now, and I remember when I was telling my colleagues that, hey, that sounds like adventurous, like, you know, like quite an adventure, and in a way, maybe it was, it was, it did feel like it was something different. It's not the path that's, you know, usually taken. So so, yes, so my advice would be get as much education as you can and I think people will know what's the right thing to do. You know for them, which can vary between people.

Divya: 1:19:24

Absolutely so. Birth requires the woman to feel safe. So wherever the woman feels safe is primarily the best place for birth to unfold in its best outcome. So if she doesn't feel safe in the hospital, we are actually jeopardizing the entire experience, the process for her. And then, of course, interventions do come in and, like you said, statistically where you live is the most safe place because the chances of infection, which is one of the primary cause of problems that happen to either the baby or the mother. So at a home birth setting it's minimal.

Divya: 1:19:59

So, yeah, it's statistically it's a safer environment and the plan B can always be that one goes to a hospital when things go out of the hands of the periphery of the midwives, and midwives, yes, are experts in natural birth in the range of normal that there is. And yes, with all this, I would still agree with what you said Do what feels good to you With the information. If it still feels like hospital is for me, it probably is, but if all of your being feels like home is for me, then explore further. Maybe that's something.

Nitin: 1:20:47

Yeah, that's a nice way to put it.

Divya: 1:20:50

Thank you so much, nitin. I'm so incredibly grateful, like I said to Ariel, to you guys to come on board to share your story, to share your part of the journey with us and I'm sure, with all the vulnerability and the humanity that you guys have put it across, I mean, I'm sure everybody will benefit a great deal out of it. I'm so thankful that there were so many little things that you just casually said, but it has an impact, it's so moving and it's so real and, yeah, I loved it, thank you.

Nitin: 1:21:26

Thank you so much. This is a great opportunity to share with you, Divya. It's been a pleasure and the more people it can reach, the more people it can inspire, encourage to try a home birth and grow natural. I think that's a win.

Divya: 1:22:11

There is a field beyond fear. Thank you, wwwbirthagnicom. Or scroll through all available prenatal and postnatal preparation classes. Thank you, you.