(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Welcome to the birth prep podcast. I'm Taylor, your birth bestie, who's here to support you as you plan and prepare for the unmedicated birth of your dreams. If you're ready to ditch the fear, conquer the hospital hustle, support that bump and bod, and walk into the delivery room like the HGIC you were born to be, then buckle up, babe.
This is where it all goes down. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the birth prep podcast. It's time for another episode of the HGIC hotline, where I answer your questions right here on the podcast.
Today, we've got some good ones. We're going to be talking about what to do if you need to fire your provider. Yes, that's totally a thing.
How to set visitor boundaries postpartum without the guilt and also balancing faith and preparation, because let's be honest, sometimes that can feel a little bit like a tight rope walk. So we're going to dive right in. Kelsey asked, have you ever had to fire a provider or switch doctors during pregnancy? What happened and how did you do it? I've actually never had to personally do this because I didn't really realize my providers were awful until my baby was coming out of me.
Um, so I got to choose a new provider for the next experience and really loved the person that I chose for that and, um, chose her again for my next experience afterwards. But I have interviewed somebody about this. Um, a sweet friend from church, actually, she switched providers very, very late in the game.
Mind you like where most people will be like, oh, I can't even switch now because it's so late. She was late in the game and she decided to switch from her actual provider. They just, they were not listening to her.
And she spotted the red flags and she made a decision that she felt was best. And she said, bye. And then switched to a birth center and went on to have a beautiful, magical, amazing birth experience.
It's episode number 56 from season one. Um, but I'll link it for you in the show notes. So if you want to hear somebody's personal story about switching late in the game and how she felt about it and how she went about it, there's that available for you.
But even though I haven't been through it, I'm educated about it. So first we're going to determine how to know if it's time to switch. So here are some things that I would consider, um, little like warning signs, like beep, beep, beep.
Like your body is telling you like, Hey, this is not okay. This is not the vibe. We need to, we need to change this up a little bit.
You feel dismissed, belittled or ignored. You're scared to bring up certain topics because you know, they'll roll their eyes or that they'll push back. You're even scared to ask questions because you know how it's going to go.
Um, their default answer to everything is induction intervention or control instead of actually listening to you and having a conversation with and the big one, the absolute like run for the Hills. If you leave your appointments feeling worse or feeling more confused after asking questions, instead of feeling empowered and confident and like you actually got what you needed out of the experience, they're, they're not supporting you. They are, they are tolerating you at this point.
Like they're just, okay, we need to just get to the end so we can get the paycheck and just be done with this girl. If you decided that this is done, this partnership is over. You're going to find a new partner on this journey.
Someone that's actually going to be supportive of your birth experience and the goals that you set for yourself. And we'll be there to answer your questions and help you get to that confident place where you can walk into the delivery room, ready to tackle that day. Then here's how to actually fire your provider.
You're going to call the office and you're going to say, I'd like to transfer my care. Please send my records to insert new provider here. And that's it.
No explanations needed. If you're nervous, remember that they work for you. This is not personal.
You are firing somebody. You would not keep going to a hairdresser who doesn't listen to your desires for your hair. And they just did whatever they wanted to do.
And they just thought they knew better so that they were just going to do what they wanted to do. And then you left there disappointed being like, okay, you would never go back. So we're not going to keep going back to a provider who has made it very clear that they are not in support of what you're trying to pull off.
Okay. This is not personal. This is somebody that you hired and you can absolutely fire them.
And then finally find a provider who aligns with your birth goals ASAP. Start with word of mouth recommendations. I think honestly, truly, that's the best way to go about things.
Listen to other women's experiences. And sometimes it's very hard to find like honest, true reviews on the internet. Um, but you know what I've seen a few times before in my local like groups and stuff, like I have like my city, like what's happening in my city kind of thing.
Um, like a Facebook group. And honestly, I know Facebook groups are kind of weird and all that, like no problem, whatever. But even if you posted an anonymously and just be like, Hey, I'm looking for an OBGYN or a midwife, whatever the case may be who delivers at said hospital.
If you're choosing a specific birthplace or said birth center, whatever, I am looking to hear other women's experiences with these providers. You can list out some options. You can just ask them for recommendations, whatever the case may be.
And you're going to get like real raw, actual answers. Okay. Unfiltered actual people's experiences with these people.
I strongly, strongly recommend that you have a sit down with your provider before you hire them, have a consultation, ask your questions. You can learn so much just by asking the right questions and understanding how this person operates, how they're going to support you, what their thoughts are on unmedicated birth, how they actually support that in the delivery room. And don't stop your search until you find the, how we call it in the birth prep courses, the perfect for you provider.
They're out there. They exist. Switching providers can feel scary, especially if you're late in the game, but staying with somebody who doesn't respect you is much worse.
I promise you deserve a provider who makes you feel heard and supported and empowered point blank period. That's it. The end.
So if you are on the fence, really think about it really like really decide, is this somebody that I actually want in my birth space? And if the answer is no, then they need to go. Okay. All right.
Janissa is next. She said, how should I handle visitors after birth? I want my space, but I don't want to hurt feelings. I love this question because your girls had to learn this the hard way.
This is basically called setting a boundary. So you're going to decide where the line in the sand is. And it doesn't have to be anywhere that you don't want it to be, but you get to decide where the line is.
You get to draw the line. So I'm not going to tell you how you should handle the visitors after birth, but I'm going to tell you how you can decide how you want to handle the visitors after birth, because postpartum is not the time to be hosting guests. Like you were throwing a brunch.
You are recovering. You are adjusting. You're bonding with your baby.
This is a special sacred time. And guess what? The people who truly love and support you will respect that and will honor your wishes and their feelings might be hurt and that's okay. They're allowed to have hurt feelings and they can still be supportive of your wishes.
So here's some practical steps to setting boundaries. First, you need to decide ahead of time what feels good for you. No visitors at all.
Just your close family. Maybe you need to take a short waiting period. Maybe after you guys have been settled at home for a few days, maybe you're just going to leave it up in the air and just be like, listen, when we're ready for visitors, we will contact you and set something up.
We're so excited about it. We're just not ready yet. Once you decide ahead of time, maybe you're having a conversation with your partner about things and deciding what is best for you guys in this season, then you are going to set the expectations before the birth experience gets here.
I totally get the appeal of like wanting to just keep it a secret and not deal with it and just letting people know like, oh, hey, we had the baby and we're now we're ready for visitors. I get that. I've done that.
Okay. It blew up in my face. Like it was not okay.
It was honestly the worst visitors experience I've ever had in my, in out of all five children. And then with my fourth child, we did things much differently. Um, we, you know, it just, it just, it was a whole thing and it wasn't even people visiting.
It was the constant phone calls and the, it just was people getting very angry with us, but I was in labor and that was not the time to be dealing with it. So learn from my mistakes, deal with it ahead of time, but you can just send a simple message. Hey everybody, we're so excited for baby to arrive.
We know you are so excited too. We love that. We just wanted to give you a heads up that we'll be taking the first X amount of days, X amount of weeks to rest, to recover, and to soak in newborn life as a family.
We appreciate your love and support. And we'll let you know when we're ready for visitors, very simple, very straightforward, and definitely sets the tone in advance. And guess what? They're allowed to feel however they want to feel.
You don't get to decide how they feel about that. And I know that's hard, especially like I'm a recovering people pleaser. I still have my days where I'm just like, gosh, like Taylor, please.
Um, and it's hard to have people mad at you for decisions that you've made. But if you are going to choose to change your boundaries to accommodate them, that is then saying that their feelings are more important than your feelings. And I'm sorry, I, there's no, there's no way that their feelings are more important than your feelings when it comes to your postpartum experience and your brand new newborn.
I can't think of a single circumstance where someone else would be more important in that situation. I always hated when people just wanted to come and see the baby or gosh, who I had some people be like, come bring the baby to us. It's like, okay, are you okay? Are you fine? Because I feel like you're just, just like severely out of touch, you know? Um, but maybe instead of just coming to see the baby, you can offer ways for people to help ask them to bring a meal or come do some tasks so that they can still visit and get to see the baby while you get to take care of the baby and have something done for you as you're recovering.
Because it's not just about baby. It's about you too. You can't love a baby without loving its mother.
I'm sorry. You can't. When baby is dependent on mother for literal survival, you can't have one without the other.
So loving you is loving baby and loving baby is loving you. Taylor, what happens if someone shows up uninvited? Honestly, I would have a partner answer the door and be like, Hey, they're napping. You need to leave.
You were not invited. We didn't, we set the boundary in advance and you are stepping over that boundary and I do not appreciate it. And this is not okay.
If it escalates, call the cops, honestly, like at that point, if they're not going to listen, they're not going to back down. They're going to try to keep pushing to come in, um, call law enforcement, let them deal with it. And I have talked to mothers who have quite literally had to call law enforcement.
So this isn't just like some far-fetched idea. This is, this is the advice. If it's going to escalate to that extent, if they're truly, honestly not listening to you and not respecting your boundaries, get someone else involved.
Your healing matters more than someone else's feelings. If they get upset that you're prioritizing your mental, emotional, and physical recovery, that's a them problem, not a you problem. Do not make it your problem.
Do not worry about stepping on toes. This is a, this is a season where you don't have to worry about that. And if you don't learn how to set boundaries now, you're going to learn it the hard way as you're setting boundaries for your children in the future.
And it's not fun set, learn how to do it. Now learn how to do it when the stakes aren't that super high. Okay.
We need to set them for our birth experience, our postpartum experience. We need to set them for our newborn care experience, all of the things I would love to know your plan for visitors after birth. If you want to shoot me a DM, I'll put my Instagram info in the show notes for you.
I would love to hear how you plan on handling things or how you've taken steps to make sure that your wishes are honored. This is a big topic, you know, and people feel some type of way and people get offended and people get their feelings hurt. And, and I see moms all the time, compromise what they actually want to, to give their family members what they want.
And it's like, I I'm just curious how you're going about it. Let me know. Okay.
And last question of the day, Mabel wants to know, how do I balance surrender to God and preparation? I get that both are important. I just don't know how to do that. Practically speaking.
I love this question. The short answer that I have for you, trusting God and preparing for birth are not opposites. They work together and I get it.
Like there's this tension between God's got this and, but I still need to prepare. And let me tell you, this is the exact balance birth requires faith and action, trust and preparation, surrender and strategy. Now inside the birth prep course, I have the Mary method and I, I made that because the Lord told me to make it real quick.
I'm going to read you the, um, what it's based off of from Luke 10 38 through 42. Um, this is at the home of Martha and Mary as Jesus and his disciples were on their way. He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.
She had a sister named Mary who sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what he said, but Martha was distracted by all the preparation that had to be made. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself. Tell her to help me.
Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed or indeed only one Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her. Now, the basic idea of the Mary method is teaching you how to lean on the Lord and how to trust and have faith and surrender and like that whole process. But the main message is do not skip Mary's method.
Like do not skip that part. Do not let the preparation consume you so much that you forget what's truly important. And it's, the preparation can very easily become an idol and can keep you from pursuing God in this experience.
And that's not okay. That's not what we're doing. The best thing that you can do is invite God into the process.
So you can be praying over your birth prep and inviting God into choosing your provider and in what you are pursuing for your education and making your birth plan and all of that. Pray about it. You can do the work and then release the outcome.
So I, we hear it all the time, right? The outcome is the Lord's problem. The obedience and the action is my problem. I can be obedient.
I can do what is asked of me to do, and then the rest is up to the Lord. So I'm going to do the work and then I'm going to trust that he's got the rest. So you're going to train, you're going to prepare, you're going to advocate, you're going to do all the things, but then you're also going to trust that whatever happens, God is in it and he's got it.
You focus on what you can control. So you control how you prepare. You don't get to control every twist and turn of labor.
And that's where the trust comes in. That's where the surrender is really at. It's like, okay, I have done this work.
I want it to look a certain way, but if it doesn't look this way, I've trust that he's got it. And I trust that I've done the work to be able to navigate it well and gracefully. And just remember that biblical surrender isn't passive.
I hear so many times, it's like, well, I've just surrendered it all to the Lord. And then they're not doing anything to change the experience or to set themselves up for the experience that they want. Like Noah in the Bible, God told him a flood was coming, but Noah still had to build the ark.
It wasn't like, oh, okay, well, the flood is coming and that's just what it is. And the Lord's got it and everything's going to be great. No, he had to do something about it.
So he didn't just sit there saying, okay, God's going to handle it. He partnered with God. He did the work that he could do.
I'm like, we do the natural so that he can step in and do the supernatural. And I think that that is where the balance is. It's like, we're going to do what we know we're supposed to be doing, which is the prep work.
It's all the things that I'm teaching you. And you're going to do those things because those are the things that you can handle, but the rest of it is all God. He's got all of that.
And you're going to just pursue him as you prepare and seek the Lord on what he's going to have you do and invite him into your birth space. It's life-changing. You can have a beautiful, wonderful, Holy spirit filled birth, invite him into that room, girl.
He wants to be on your team. And honestly, who's better to have on your team than the Lord God almighty. I don't know who, if you find someone, let me know, but I ain't go hold my breath.
So my final thoughts on this surrendering to God, doesn't mean you stop preparing. It means you prepare with him. You do your part and you trust him with the rest.
So I hope that answers your question. I love that question a lot. Thank you for hanging out with me today.
I wanted to tell you, I have something coming and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's a surprise and I can't wait to tell you about it. So tune in. I'm going to tell you about it very, very soon.
I'm wrapping up all the little details behind the scenes, and then I'm going to be ready to tell you. Okay. But you're going to be excited about it and it's going to be amazing.
And I cannot wait to share it with you. So, um, and if you want to submit questions for future HGIC hotlines, the link will be in the show notes for you. Um, I would love to hear from you, love to hear your questions.
Also, if you want to share anything with me, DM me over on Instagram, I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to hear what you're working on. I'm wishing you a beautiful, wonderful weekend.
Do some self care, take care of yourself. It's so important because taking care of you is taking care of baby. I'll chat with you guys again next week.
As always, happy prepping.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
