[Mini] Preconception Panels & Your Pregnancy Dream Team | Ep. 80

This episode explores the significance of optimizing health before conception, featuring insights from midwife Morgan Miller on essential nutrients and creating a supportive pregnancy team. The conversation highlights the importance of establishing healthy habits early and encourages proactive care for future parents.

• Exploring the role of midwives in preconception care
• Key nutrients for pregnancy preparation: magnesium, vitamin D, iron
• Importance of nourishing the body for reproductive health
• Assembling a supportive pregnancy team, including doulas and lactation consultants
• The relevance of pelvic floor care during and after pregnancy
• Questioning why health measures are often delayed until pregnancy

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:15

Hey team, welcome to episode number 80 of I'm Hormonal. I feel like we got to 80 quick. I'm your host, bridget Walton, and in this mini episode I'm going to be talking about the conversation that I had earlier this week with Morgan Miller, who is a midwife, lactation consultant. She's an activist, she's an author and the owner of a birth center out in Maine. I loved talking to her and we really focused on preconception and pregnancy. Of course, midwives work closely with their clients during that time, and one thing that I learned myself is that even if you're not pregnant or maybe you're not like imminently pregnant, on the cusp of conception you can still work with a midwife to optimize what's going on with your reproductive system and make sure that your hormones are all in balance. So I really learned a lot, because midwives aren't as common as they were 100 years ago, and I don't know about you, but I wasn't around 100 years ago, so I didn't have that context. Anyway, let me tell you about a couple of nutrients that Morgan mentioned that are really important to make sure they are repleted as you go into pregnancy. She mentioned magnesium, vitamin D and iron. Now, of course, there are many other nutrients and vitamins and minerals that we need to be feeling our best. But those are three that she called out. And if you are thinking about conceiving, or if you maybe kind of want to sort of do that sometime soon-ish, then it's totally worth a trip to your doctor or your provider or whatever practitioner that is right for you, or midwife, to do a preconception appointment where you can just say, hey, let's run through and do the panels, let's check my thyroid, let's check my CBC Some panels that your doctor you know, of course, depending on your insurance here in the US, will probably automatically do when you have your annual checkup with them. But just to make sure that everything is in good shape, right, you also want to think about, you know, if you're having, if you have pregnancies that are really close back to back, you know it'll take your body some time to replete those nutrients, vitamins and minerals that were lost in the first pregnancy. So, keeping that in mind as you're preparing to conceive and of course for a lot of those things, a prenatal will do you some good but you can also focus on getting those nutrients through your food.

Speaker 1: 4:05

If you've listened to the podcast before, then that is certainly not a new concept to you and that's something else we talked about was really nourishing your body. Nourishing your body for yourself, but also because, of course, you don't need me to tell you that it's going to take more nutrients to grow, you know, to 3D print a human inside of your body. So making sure that you are nourishing your body appropriately is going to be key. Now that brings me to talk about assembling your team, assembling your support system as you are going through your pregnancy journey, to make sure that you have all of the resources that you need. And yes, before anybody has any other thoughts about it, of course you can have a totally lovely pregnancy and birth experience without having this full kind of complement of a team.

Speaker 1: 4:59

But when I asked Morgan what was her dream team Like, if she could, you know, wave her magic wand, what would she say that all pregnant people should have as a part of their support system? This is what she said. She mentioned having a doula, so a doula who can help, really advocate for you, educate you, help you with emotional support, among many other things, and also having, you know, working with a midwife, too, who can do a lot of those same things that a doula does, but she clarified that they're also there for the kind of clinical aspect of things, so they have a slightly different. Well, of course, the midwife has an expanded scope in the way that they support. You can order panels. You know it's like delivering, catching the baby. But coming back to the team composition a doula, a midwife you also want to see where can you get support when it comes to nutrition. What do you want to do when it comes to lactating or having a lactation consultant that can support you, and then also having a pelvic floor specialist or pelvic floor physical therapist who can support you postpartum through that healing, because this is something too.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Maybe you feel the same way, but in my circles, with my friends who I'm 31, so a lot of my friends are pregnant or have had kids recently that talk about pelvic floor care and seeing somebody who can help you, help support your pelvic health, is really important because there's so much connected down there. I was going to try to say some fancy words. Yeah, I don't know the fancy pelvic bowl words and how they connect to your hips and all of those things but I've even noticed myself right of course, separate from being pregnant or giving birth that if I hurt my hip, maybe it's actually my pelvic floor, okay, anyway, little tangent there. But the last thing I want to leave you with kind of a question for you, and this is where Morgan and I where we closed out our conversation too. But we were just talking about this concept or practice of holding off until pregnancy to be optimally healthy, right, why is it that?

Speaker 1: 7:35

During pregnancy I mean for good reason, during pregnancy, yes, don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat fish that could have high levels of mercury. That makes sense. Of course. That's good, that's good practice, but why do we wait until we're pregnant to do those things, when we could just avoid the stuff that's bad for us on a more regular basis things, and we could just avoid the stuff that's bad for us on a more regular basis? I don't know, is that something that you've thought about? Or I guess, now that you've had the question posed to you, does that inspire you to make any changes to your health, just for your long-term well, for longevity, but also for feeling good.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Now Let me know what you think about that by connecting with me on Instagram at Bridget Walton. I would love to hear your thoughts and if anything that I just said was interesting to you then check out the longer form episode for sure with Morgan. She had so much good information to share. Her book is out this week the Cycle Book. You can check it out at wwwthecyclebookcom. You can check them out on Instagram at the Cycle Book. I've also linked up Morgan's website and Laura, her co-author's website, if you want to get to know them more. So check those out in the show notes. Thank you guys, so much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed this one and I will look forward to seeing you on the next long form one on Tuesday. Okay, thanks guys.