Birth, Baby!

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby!

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a birth doula, hypnobirthing educator, and pediatric sleep consultant.

Samantha is a birth doula, childbirth educator, and lactation counselor.

Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum maturing.

Back to Birth, Baby!

Today, we don't have Samantha with us because she had something that she had to do that was more important, just kidding, but she did have something she had to take care of.

So she is not here and she is missing out because today we are talking about what the heck to do if you find out you do have diastasis.

What does that even look like?

How can you move forward?

It's not the end of the world because Dr.

Melo has a bunch of information on how to help.

So Dr.

Melo, tell us a little bit about what are the traditional treatments for diastasis?

Yeah, so this question is two part because you might find out you have diastasis when you're pregnant and that's going to look very different than if you find out you have diastasis postpartum or you're treating it in the postpartum period.

And by the way, postpartum might mean 10 years after you've had a baby.

We have treated one woman who was 20 years postpartum and she was still having a lot of core and pelvic floor issues.

She was leaking urine when she worked out.

So just because we're using the term postpartum, that doesn't mean just a year after you have your baby.

If you've had a baby, then anytime after that, you can heal your diastasis.

So traditional treatment.

Let's say you're pregnant and you find out you have diastasis.

Most likely you're gonna get referred to someone who treats core and pelvic floor dysfunction, which is typically a PT.

You'll also find there are some specialized chiropractors that are gonna focus in on core and pelvic floor dysfunction.

The traditional way of treating is going to be rehab exercises that are gonna be focused on your pelvis and pelvis stability, your core strength, and your mobility in the pelvis area.

So depending on who you go see, they might take a little bit different approaches to it, but generally they're gonna be addressing your pelvic dysfunction.

And that's gonna include core and pelvic floor.

When you're pregnant, you are not going to be working on closing that diastasis because you're growing a baby.

So what we want to do is just stabilize it.

So if you've got two fingers of separation, we would like your body to be able to adapt as your baby continues to grow without having to separate more.

So in our office, we focus a lot on postural adaption.

So how can we help your posture to accommodate baby so that we don't have to have baby putting so much pressure on the front part of your abs that's separating?

There's also a lot of focus on building up some core strength, especially your transverse stabilizer core in order to help hold baby.

Because baby is heavy along with all the extra fluid.

We want to have enough strength and tone to hold baby up as baby gets heavier.

Now, if you go seek treatment out after you've had baby, then you can really deep dive into closing up that separation.

And again, very traditionally, it's going to be a series of exercises, mobility.

You might need to do some stretching or some soft tissue release, but it's all going to be geared towards closing up that separation.

And that treatment time is really variable.

So you might close that up in four to six months.

It might take six months to a year.

It really depends on how wide your separation is, what your lifestyle looks like.

If you've got four kids and you're lifting up your kids all day long, that's going to maybe be harder to heal because you're doing some activities that are counter letting that rest and heal.

You might be really into bodybuilding.

And in that case, if you're doing rehab for your court and you're trying to pair that with bodybuilding, you might be doing some things that are counter to the healing process.

There are other things as well, like trauma.

Maybe you've had some birth trauma or other trauma, and we're going to touch on that in a later episode, but maybe there's some trauma or some postpartum issues that are also causing your healing to take a little bit longer.

But keep in mind, it took you nine months to grow a baby.

It will take nine months or more to heal your body afterwards.

So be patient with yourself.

We talk a lot about healing diastasis is a long-term process.

It takes a lot of time to build efficiency in your muscles.

We're not just trying to go for growing a six pack.

We're trying to build functionality in the way that you move.

And that takes a long time.

Well, I think we're maybe going to talk about it in another episode, but there are programs that you can do that actually can help make this go faster, right?

Like that silly video that I did online, that machine, the NuX can kind of help facilitate quicker recovery because it's activating your muscles in a different way while you're doing those exercises.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And we are going to talk about that specifically next episode in our office.

We use a machine that helps to activate your muscles more efficiently and helps to rebuild your brain body connection.

So it activates your sensory.

And so when you pair that with your traditional rehab, you can cut down your healing time in general.

There are other things like making sure that your hormones are balanced out.

You need certain levels of hormones to build muscle and tone.

We're gonna talk about that in one episode.

And then we're gonna talk about the trauma and a little bit of mental health things in an episode as well.

All of those things kind of are pieces to a puzzle of your healing journey.

And your journey is gonna be different than your friend's journey, which is gonna be different from your neighbor's journey.

Everyone's healing journey is gonna be very variable.

So try not to compare yourself or your healing journey to someone else because their variables are gonna look so much different than your variables.

It's really interesting too, because within one person's body, they could have a one inch gap, somebody or one finger gap, let's say, and someone else could have a three finger gap.

And the person with the one finger gap could be having more symptoms of dysfunction than the person with a three finger gap.

So it really doesn't, it's just your body.

And like you said, your puzzle.

You mentioned a couple of things that can inhibit healing, like bodybuilding, if you're not like doing it in the right way, or picking up all your chillings, a whole bunch of kiddos and you're lifting, especially if they're really young and still wanting to be picked up.

Is there anything else that we should be, and I don't know, maybe there isn't, maybe those are the things, but is there anything else that we should be making sure we're not doing that would make it worse?

Yeah, so when you're going throughout your daily life, you're not gonna be spending 24 hours a day focused on activating your core in the correct way, but you can throughout your daily life, you can add in things that you're gonna activate your core correctly and you can avoid things that are going to activate your core in an incorrect way.

So one of the big things that you want to avoid in lifestyle, but also in exercise is kind of that crunching motion.

And it's so funny, I had a patient come in the other day and it was her first baby.

She didn't know what diastasis was.

I checked her.

She had a massive diastasis for a first pregnancy and she had a long torso.

I was like very confused at how it was as big as it was.

And then she looked at me and she goes, oh man, I've been doing crunches every day.

And I was like, well, that, you know, as nicely as I could, I was like, please don't do any more of those.

So was she actually making it worse?

She was definitely making it worse.

Wow, so it's not just that it inhibits healing.

It's that you can actually make it worse by doing that.

Yeah, and when there's separation, there is, you're in a like sensitive period where it's much easier to make things worse if you do something wrong.

Once it heals up, it's a lot harder to get it to re-separate out again.

But when it's separated and you have those dysfunctions, it's pretty easy for it to get wider and wider and wider if you're not protecting it and doing the things that you need to, to make sure that it's stabilized.

I'm kind of giggling at myself in my head because ever since I found out that crunches make it worse or inhibit healing, if you're someone that has a separation, for the longest time, I didn't know if I had one, but I assumed I did.

And even like planks is another thing, right?

Because of the way that kind of the pressure that that puts and it makes the coning happen.

And I for sure see like a drop in my belly when I'm doing that.

But just like a blanket rule for myself.

And I'm like, no crunches or planks.

You're like, I'm so afraid of doing it wrong.

So I work out at Hot Works, which like everyone knows because I post about it all the time because I'm obsessed.

And like, I won't do the Pilates class.

And even in the yoga class and stuff, if they're doing a plank, even for a moment, I'm on my knees just to try to take off some of that pressure on my belly.

So I keep doing that.

And I'm just gonna make it like, oh, I'm just really being protective of my body.

I guess that's not a question in this episode, but how do you know if you fixed yours?

I guess just by continuing to check and being able to feel.

Yeah, there's a couple of signs that it's all the way closed up.

The easiest one is to just check it and feel it.

But most people will also see there's less coning.

You don't have that mommy pooch anymore.

Your posture will also get better, typically with diastasis.

You've got a tilting forward of the pelvis.

So it's almost like you're sticking your bum out and your pelvis sticks forward.

Your ribs also flare up.

So it's almost like when you're pregnant, you know how you got that pregnant waddle happening and you're kind of sticking your belly out?

It's almost like that doesn't go away when you have separation.

You still tend to have that posturing.

So one of the cool signs of that going away is your ribs coming down and your hips coming into a neutral position.

And I had a patient telling me the other day, oh, I just thought I had my grandpa's ribs because hers flared out.

It was almost like a second boob.

She had her boobs and then just another thing that stuck out underneath.

It was pretty wide and she had a really wide separation.

And so that was not bringing her ribs down into a neutral position.

I've always said I have four boobs because my bottom ribs have always been kind of sticky outy.

But I feel like it's been all my life.

But that is interesting because it makes you wonder.

I mean, because you don't have to have been pregnant to have separation, I may have just always had some separation, which I'm very excited to talk about in one of the episodes we're doing.

We're gonna touch on kids and how that can be a thing even in kids.

So is it better?

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, I wanna touch a little bit more on things to not do at home.

Yeah, so you mentioned crunches and planks.

So yes, you don't wanna be doing those things.

But I also want you to think about lifestyle when you do a crunching motion.

So most people will crunch up when they're like getting out of bed or they're going to sit up and they don't realize that they're doing that motion.

So always you want to do that log roll thing that you did during pregnancy where you roll to the side and push up when you're getting out of bed, when you're getting off the floor, out of the couch.

You also want to avoid doing anything that's a double leg lift.

Imagine the opposite of a crunch is lifting up both of your legs at the same time.

So if you're in a workout class and they have you lift up both legs, don't do that.

Take one leg, lift it up, and then take the other one and lift it up, and then do your exercise just like that.

Oh, so it's okay to lift them both eventually, but you just lift them one at a time?

Oh, see, that's another thing I've been avoiding.

I just don't do any of the double leg lifts.

They do hip bridge or something, right?

And they'll be like, okay, do it where, or you sit, I'm sorry, you sit on your butt and you kind of lift your legs up in the air, right?

I'm always trying to either go really high so that I'm not straining my abdominals too much, or I'll just do like one leg at a time.

It's okay to do both, just only go up one at a time.

Yeah, I'll say it's better to modify.

It is better.

If you can do one leg at a time or you can again be protective of your core, that's better.

Some point in your healing process, when you are feeling like you are able to control the pressure in your abdomen during movement, which can be a tricky thing to figure out, especially if you're not super in touch with your core and your pelvic floor and feeling when they're activating and when they're relaxing.

It can be hard to do, but at some point you do wanna test those motions because in life there are times when you do need to activate your rectus abdominis, which is that crunching or your double leg lift.

So testing those motions out, starting with one leg and then the other leg, and then doing one at a time, take one side down, tap one other side down.

That is okay once you feel like you can control the movement.

So guys, what she's saying is don't be like Ciarra and just forever be like, nah, I don't do that.

Like you can eventually work back up.

I'm just so, always so worried about doing further damage.

Yeah, and the thing is that's a really hard place to be because you're not doing further damage per se by strengthening the wrong muscles, but you are doing damage because you're not building tone in the right area.

So you're just becoming weaker, weaker, weaker.

And then you're really playing into your imbalances.

If you're not strengthening your core at all, but you're working out, you're using some muscle.

And if it's not your core, it's going to be your hip flexors or your back muscles or something else.

And then that pelvic tilt gets worse and those muscles get really strong.

And then you end up with back pain and hip pain, more separation and things like that.

So you don't always want to just avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid forever.

You might need to rest for a little bit in your postpartum journey.

But at some point, if you want to go back into exercise and movement, it's really important to learn how to do that.

And there's lots of resources out there.

We talked earlier about going to see like a pelvic floor PT or a prenatal chiropractor to learn, but there's a ton of resources online as well.

There's programs out there.

There's free videos on YouTube.

You don't always necessarily have to invest in, you know, going to see a provider.

If there's just not someone available or you don't have the resources or the childcare or there's something holding you back from going to see a professional, do some research online.

And I promise you, you're gonna be able to find information out there that will help you in your healing journey.

And it may be that it doesn't get you all the way there.

And at some point in the future, you've got to invest in the professional help, but it's a starting point.

That's helpful.

Did we do everything?

Or did we do everything that you've got to avoid?

And not be like Ciarra and just avoid everything all the time.

So is it better to heal diastasis after your first baby or when you're done having kids?

Like should you just wait until all the damage is done?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And I wish more people would ask it and consider the answer a little bit more heavily.

I would say the majority of people that I see, and this is not everyone, they choose to wait until they're done having babies, especially if they see a lot of, if they see themselves having babies quickly in a row.

It almost seems like, well, why invest the time and energy and resources now when I know I'm gonna have four more babies in the next five years or whatever it is.

But I will say whatever you experienced during your first pregnancy, you're probably gonna experience in a heavier, more prominent way in your second pregnancy and then a more prominent way in your third and then your fourth.

So if you have two finger separation in your first pregnancy and it doesn't heal, you're way more likely to see a three finger in your second and then a four finger in your third pregnancy.

And to give everyone's reference, I say that a four finger separation, which is about, I don't know, what is that?

Three, four inches?

It's pretty wide.

That's like you can stick your fist into your core.

We call that a surgical consult.

So you might have to go see a surgeon to sew you up.

That being said, there are, we have helped two women in our office close a four finger diastasis.

So it is possible.

It is just very difficult and it took more than a year for both of them to get there.

And they had to be really consistent.

I mean, that was like a host of full-time job, I'm sure.

Because like you said, there are things you're having to think of when you're at home.

You're having to roll over a certain way in bed.

You're having to make sure that you don't pick up your kid a certain way.

Maybe you're like sitting down and they're climbing on your lap instead of picking them up.

I mean, that is really a...

Yeah, it is.

So my answer to the original question, should you heal after each baby or should you wait, is it is imperative for you to heal as much as you can in between each baby.

A couple of reasons for this.

If you have a really wide diastasis, optimal baby positioning can be more difficult because your pelvis is going to be tilted more forward during pregnancy because of the muscle imbalances, which is going to tilt baby forward when they're in utero.

And it can be harder for baby to engage.

It also puts all the weight of baby on the front part of your core, which means if you separated during your first pregnancy and it didn't heal this pregnancy, you've got more weight up there because your pelvis is now tilted forward.

Your pelvic floor directly responds to your stabilizer core tone.

So when your core is pressurized and your abdominal muscles are contracted and putting pressure into the abdomen, your pelvic floor responds by building tone as well.

So if your core is really weak, your pelvic floor is gonna be really weak as well.

So if you don't heal between pregnancies, you're way higher risk for pelvic floor issues like prolapse, incontinence.

Yeah, anything that is pelvic floor related, if you don't heal between each pregnancy, this is probably going to get worse.

You're also more likely to have low back pain, round ligament pain, all the pregnancy pains that we know have happened during pregnancy very commonly.

You're more likely to have those even earlier on if you don't heal between each pregnancies.

Oh, that's so interesting because oftentimes people say like, oh, I'm feeling so much more uncomfortable so much earlier with this pregnancy.

And we always just think it's because, well, your body just knows what it's doing and it kind of does it again just earlier.

But it could be that you just have more pressure in those areas because your body didn't heal.

So that's really interesting.

And then you're saying the thing about kind of the way you're sitting, like sacrum versus sits bones sort of deal.

In childbirth education, I'm always teaching people to make sure you're sitting on your sits bones and not leaning back on your sacrum because of optimal positioning of baby.

And so this goes hand in hand with that y'all, because if you're someone that's really wanting like a vaginal birth again, or maybe you had a C-section the first time and you're really wanting to be back.

This is positioning of baby is huge.

We actually have a mom right now that is going for a V-back in February.

And she, her first baby was over 10 pounds and she got to 10 centimeters, pushed forever and finally went back for a cesarean.

And she wants to have a vaginal birth this time.

But we were talking to her about like, it's not that you couldn't push out a 10 pound baby necessarily.

We see six pound babies that can't be pushed out because of positioning.

And some can and some can't.

So the OP, the baby being kind of looking the wrong way or the not optimal way.

And so that means that your baby's looking forward.

We also call it sunny side up, makes it a lot harder for it to come down through the birth path.

And a baby's head, if you measure it in an OA position, which is the baby looking to your back, it actually measures smaller than an OP baby's head.

Same baby's head, but the measurement of what's trying to fit through the vagina is larger when the baby's not in an optimal position.

So if you weren't motivated by anything else you said, it really does make a more comfortable birth because you'd have less back pain and things like that when your baby is positioned properly, but also would be a difference between being able to have a vaginal birth or not.

So that is so huge.

And we have people all the time that are like, I just don't think that I need to do XYZ.

I don't think I need chiropractic care.

I don't think I need pelvic floor therapy.

And we're just like, it can make such a life changing difference in the pregnancy and the postpartum of comfort level for the mother's body.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

It second and third pregnancies, if you do the work between them, they can be just as comfortable as your first pregnancy.

So if you've had multiple and you're like, man, a second one was really hard or my third one was really hard, maybe take a look at what your recovery looked like in between them.

And yeah, for babies, comfort, positioning, for labor and delivery, there's so, so many benefits to recovering between each pregnancy.

And if you're going to do them quick or maybe surprise, you're going to do them quick.

Yeah.

And or not.

Yeah, yeah, you still should be doing what you can in the time that you have between them.

And then once you get pregnant, do things throughout your pregnancy that are still going to be very much protective of your core.

And even if you're pregnant and you're not trying to heal an old separation, try to stabilize it where it's at, because it's probably only going to get worse if you're not trying to help stabilize it.

If it's not a conscious effort, it's probably going to go the opposite way.

Yeah, and I tell my patients five to 10 minutes of core activation a day makes a world of difference in your recovery time postpartum.

And you can find five to 10 minutes in your schedule.

It does not have to be an hour, five times a week, five to 10 minutes.

It can be on the floor when you have a kid crawling next to you, work through some breathing, work through some basic core activation, work through pelvic positioning, find a five minute YouTube video if you need to, that'll just walk you through it so you don't even have to think about it.

But that five to 10 minutes a day makes a huge difference for you both now and in future pregnancies.

That's awesome.

So when you are postpartum, once you've had this baby and you're trying to recover and potentially even already maybe starting to try to heal, what are some ways that you can kind of hold or handle your newborn?

Are there like breastfeeding positions that make this easier to recover?

Do you have any kind of advice on that?

Yeah, so of course after you have the baby, one of the primary things you're gonna be doing is caring for that baby and picking that baby up.

And anytime you're lifting something, even if it's only a six pound baby, your core is what turns on first.

So if you are not lifting your baby up with proper biomechanics and being protective of your core, you're more at risk during that period to develop some really weird muscle imbalances or pain.

And it reminds me of a patient that I came in and she was probably two weeks postpartum and she had picked her baby up and she had done it in a way that was not correct.

And she had torqued her pelvis.

She had no core strength.

It was her fourth baby and she hadn't done any rehab between any of them.

And she could not walk for six weeks.

She got wheelchairs into my office.

It was horrible for her.

Every movement was like sharp, sharp pain in her pelvis.

It was one of the most difficult cases for me to work with because everything we did hurt.

So we had to really limit what she could do as far as even just sitting down on my table to work on her.

You would think you were broken.

Like, yeah, she probably was like something's broken in there.

For sure.

For sure.

I mean, she went to the ER and the ER is like, oh, you just here's a muscle relaxer, which didn't help at all.

And good luck.

So when you say she picked her baby up and not a proper way, what does that look like?

What is the wrong way?

So leaning forward to pick baby up and standing straight upright is the worst way that you can pick baby up at the beginning.

You really want to use your leg strength because you just don't have any core to lift with.

So if you go to lift with leaning forward like that in an abnormal way, your low back is probably going to kick on and your hip flexors are probably going to kick on really hard.

And a lot of people early postpartum, you'll feel the instability.

Like you feel like it might be hard for you to lift.

And if you're feeling that, I want you to think about, well, how could I lift this in a better way?

And the easiest way is like squat town and gravity.

Now, if baby's going straight into like a crib situation and you're having to lean over the crib to pick them up, that's really not ideal.

If you can get someone else to pick baby up or if you can lower the side or have baby in a different place to sleep, that leaning over and then lifting something that's weighted in that way is really, really not ideal.

How long?

So six weeks to three months, I would say you really want to avoid that.

And that means it just keeps getting heavier.

It just keeps getting heavier.

And that's like a pretty short time period.

If you have diastasis and you know you do, or if you have pelvic floor dysfunction, you really don't want to be doing that sort of lifting until you're healed.

But that being said, you know, you've got a baby, you got to lift baby sometimes.

So modify as much as you can, have people help you as much as you can, especially the first couple of weeks, and then start to add in a little bit of core activation.

And I think next week we're going to talk about, you know, what that looks like, but you know, go low and slow and listen to your body.

Really.

You asked about breastfeeding and positioning.

Really, when you're sitting in a holding baby in a breastfeeding position, only thing you really want to avoid is a ton of slumping.

You're tired.

And so it's going to be really easy for you to just kind of slump backwards and have baby on you.

But that is pretty poor pelvic positioning.

And so if you're in that position for long periods of time, those muscles that are shortened are going to stay short.

And the ones that are longer are going to stay longer.

And you just perpetuate this muscle and balancing by being seated in a weird position for long periods of time.

And you'll find sometimes that if you go from a seated to a standing position, that that will pull on your low back and you might have an issue.

Yeah, that is like, it's so much to think about, right?

It's so intimidating as a new mom.

Like I can just imagine someone listening to this podcast going, it's nearly impossible.

Like this is so much to think about and I'm already gonna be so tired, you know?

And maybe even just like a side lying breastfeeding position where you're not really having to use your abdominals much.

And if you do have a partner or a family member or something that's like she said, willing to come and help facilitate this a little bit, in the long run, it's going to be so helpful.

So are there any other practical tips or things that we haven't mentioned for healing diastasis or like lifestyle kind of advice?

Yeah, the one thing I do want to touch on in this episode is that breathing is the most important thing to learn when you're healing up from diastasis.

So we talk a lot about diaphragm breathing, which is a little bit different than straight belly breathing.

And that is the first thing you want to learn when you're healing up diastasis.

It's the first thing you want to do postpartum, even before you're cleared for exercise, you can use your breath to start healing your core and your pelvic floor.

You want to push your air down and all the way around, like you've got an inner tube, push your air down, and then I want you to contract your core against that and feel what it feels like to be activated when there's pressure in your core.

Not me trying right now.

She's talking or sitting here like inhaling and like see, you really, it's a lot paying attention.

Yeah.

Your body.

And there's a bit of disconnect right after you give birth with your activating your core because you just had a baby there that was moving around and you were probably pretty in tuned with that.

And so being able to activate your core can be hard.

It's like rebuilding those pathways.

I now have to really think about what it feels like to turn my core on or to activate it.

And if we're going to be honest, most people don't know how to breathe properly anyway, like pregnant or not, I teach breathing in hypnobirthing classes.

And it's so funny how if you don't give somebody any guidance and you just tell them how to do a breathing technique, if you ask them to inhale and you watch their belly, they suck in.

They're like, wait, but where'd all that air just go?

When you're inhaling, your belly should actually come out.

So getting that kind of in your brain flipping into that is, it's just, you have to pay attention.

It's mindfulness and not all of us are good at that.

I always say, I'm type A, it's really hard.

I'm sitting there making a grocery list, when I'm trying to do something and I really have to, some people, it's harder to be mindful than others.

So taking that, I say the same thing, five or 10 minutes is easy to find in your day.

And I have certain breathing techniques for birth that I recommend.

I'm like, if you could just sit down and right before breakfast, lunch and dinner, every time you sit down to eat and people laugh, sit down to eat, practice each breathing technique twice before you allow yourself to eat.

It's making that habit and it's going to be a big difference.

Yeah.

And I tell people, if you're really struggling with this, to push your air down to your belly, and people do.

So if you don't catch on to this, just know, I have patience, it takes them two or three months before they can even breathe semi-correctly.

But if you're really disconnected, and it's happened a lot in C-sections, because they cut through all of your sensory nerves.

So you're literally rebuilding neural pathways that were cut through in order to get your core activated the way we want it to activate.

But if you take your fingers and you touch your core where you want the air to go as you breathe, that tactile stimulation, that gets to your brain quickly, and that can really help to help you activate your core if you're struggling.

Yeah, that's great.

I mean, I never even thought about that, kind of the touching of the spot where you want to bring energy to, but that makes sense.

Yeah, and that's just giving your body sensory stimulus.

That's all it is.

So that can be really helpful.

I find that people tend, when they're learning to breathe, to push their air forward to their belly, and that tilts your pelvis forward.

And what we want to do is think about pushing your air down and out to your sides and your back.

So if you're really good at that forward belly breathing, put your hands on your hips where your belly is above your hip bone, and try to push the air out to the sides and behind to your back.

And this is also something they told me to do when I was trying that new X machine.

That was definitely, they were like telling you how to breathe, and it's just amazing.

And the Defeat Diastasis program, which we'll talk about, it has like a whole section at the beginning kind of teaching you what to do when you're doing the exercises, because it's not just the exercises.

The breathing is such a huge piece.

So I'm glad you touched on that.

Is there anything else for this week that we want to tell anybody before we tell them what we're going to tell them next week?

I think we're going to save the rest, and there's a whole lot more for the next couple episodes.

All right, so next week, we're going to talk about Defeating Diastasis, which is Dr.

Milo's baby that she has created, and about trauma and how that can affect the whole healing process.

And then also your pelvic floor, because all of this stinking stuff is connected, and it really is so interesting when you start to piece it together like a puzzle.

So thanks so much for being here with us, and we are excited to have Samantha back for the next episode, and have a great week, y'all.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!

Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.

You can look him up on Spotify.

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See you next week.