Birth, Baby!

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a Birth Dula, Hypnobirthing Educator, and Pediatric Sleep Consultant.

Samantha is a Birth Dula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor.

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

On today's episode, we're chatting with Jeanne Reilly.

Jeanne is a Registered Dietitian and mother of two with over a decade of training and experience in nutrition science and application.

She's the co-founder of I Am Nurtured, a holistic nutrition supplement company with the mission of supporting parents from preconception through postpartum and beyond with the ideal vitamins, minerals, and botanicals they need to thrive through every stage of parenthood.

Thank you so much for being here today with us, Jeanne.

Thanks for having me.

So tell us a little bit about how you got into creating supplements.

So we really fell into this.

My co-founder is a dad and we used to work together at a digital health startup.

We remained friends as we started raising our children.

We had little ones at the same time.

And what we realized when we came together was that in our journey to pregnancy and then through pregnancy and postpartum, even as health professionals, with graduate degrees in nutrition, we really struggled to find out what was best for us.

I asked my OBGYN when I became pregnant the first time, what she recommended as the best prenatal.

And she said, oh, anything on the shelves at Target or CVS is fine.

And I knew that wasn't okay with me.

I knew that much.

And I had trusted brands that were practitioner grade brands of supplements, like you might think of Medigenix or Designs for Health or Thorn, those types of supplements that I knew and trusted.

But even when I started getting into the weeds of trying to examine what nutrients do I actually need to support a healthy pregnancy and baby, there were still gaps that I was finding.

And I know that not every person out there has access to these practitioner grade supplements, unless they're seeing certain holistic practitioners, they're not really accessible.

So Skylar, my co-founder, who is still out in San Diego, I'm here in Austin, he and I decided that we were gonna take our brains and our experiences as parents and dietitians and make a brand that was accessible to everyone with the quality that we were looking for.

So you have two products right now, right?

The prenatal vitamin and then there's a postpartum vitamin.

So can you tell us kind of how that combination works?

Yes, so our postnatal vitamin was the first product that we released.

It was called New Mama and we released it in a drink mix form.

We thought that moms really would be excited to not take more pills.

You know, when we're pregnant, I think it's one of those times in our lives when we're supplementing more than ever.

And really after polling our customers who had been using New Mama for quite some time, we found out that they preferred pills.

It was just an easier, more natural, acceptable way of taking things.

So we are currently sold out of our postpartum supplement, the original version.

And we are transitioning to a pill form.

And in addition to that, we have our prenatal, which we just released a few months ago.

It's a super comprehensive labor of love that took a long time to develop.

We worked with a registered herbalist to develop this amazing botanical blend to be really supportive of pregnancy and some of the most common symptoms.

So the idea is that from preconception, when a mom even starts thinking about getting pregnant, she would start a prenatal, which is a recommendation that we're all used to.

You start your prenatal before pregnancy so that you have all of the nutrients built up to support a healthy pregnancy, especially that folate, which is needed to prevent neural tube defects early on in pregnancy.

You continue the prenatal throughout pregnancy.

And then once you give birth, the idea is that you would add on this postpartum supplement to help bolster the nutrition that you need to help your body recover.

So the prenatal is this robust foundation of nutrients to help you and your baby get through a strong nourished pregnancy.

And then the postpartum supplement has a different botanical blend to support breast milk production, breast milk nutrient density, if you choose to breastfeed.

It supports the physical recovery that moms are going through after labor and delivery and growing a baby.

We have moringa, we have curcumin and piperine.

So those are all like very powerful anti-inflammatories to help with the healing process.

And then we also include things like lemon balm, chamomile, lavender to help with the more soothing, the more unpleasant symptoms of postpartum, these hormone roller coasters that are inevitable instead of doing these peaks, experiencing these peaks and troughs of our hormones.

We're hoping to help moms kind of level things out.

So it's not such a jarring experience.

And then we also add in to the postpartum supplement, extra vitamin D, extra vitamin A, C, and some minerals like selenium and iodine.

And those are really to support hormone and thyroid health, specifically in the postpartum period, which is a very common complication in postpartum or thyroid disorders.

And vitamin D, we add enough in there so that moms don't have to worry about the vitamin D drops that are recommended to give babies when they're breastfeeding.

When you take our postnatal supplement, you're getting enough vitamin D to transfer through to baby, and you don't have to worry about the mom guilt that comes with forgetting to give the baby the D drops.

Did anyone ever really remember all the time?

I also, you know, when I first met with you and we were talking about all of this, you just thought it was so cool, the concept of having your regular prenatal vitamin and then having this platform that you use once you've had the baby, because so many people are just told to keep taking their prenatals through their postpartum time.

It's not the same as when you were pregnant.

Your body is changing.

So is there anything else like that even on the market?

I don't know if I've even ever heard of a postpartum supplement.

No, and I think that's one of the common misconceptions out there is, you know, our nutritional needs are more demanding postpartum than even during pregnancy, especially if you're breastfeeding.

There are other supplements out there.

You know, you can go to the store, the store and find on the supplement shelves, things like breast milk boosting supplements.

A lot of moms will supplement with like biotin and B vitamins to stop the hair growth, the hair fallout postpartum.

But I mean, at that point, it's not.

The hair loss is a natural process because biologically, your hair stops, the hair loss process stops while you're pregnancy.

And eventually after you give birth, it picks back up again.

What we have heard from moms who have used our postpartum supplement is that the hair loss is minimal and it's very a very slow process.

It's not like you're getting these huge clumps of hair every single time you take a shower.

So there are other products out there that do support specific symptoms for postpartum.

But at the end of the day, our goal was to make one comprehensive thing.

I mean, personally, I have never taken more supplements or had more bottles of pills on my nightstand than when I was postpartum.

I had a really tough time with it.

And that was part of the inspiration for creating this is, you know, I knew there had to be a better option.

I'm sitting here giggling to myself because when my daughter was really little, she's 13 now, but there was a thing that went around and you probably have heard it.

It was this lady going, ain't nobody got time for that.

My daughter would say it all the time.

I'd ask her to do something and she'd go, I got time for it.

So that's how I feel about taking all of these extra random supplements.

You know, nobody got time for that.

We cannot be, we're busy enough as it is without having to do that.

I mean, I think I started taking so many different supplements that were recommended to me when I was pregnant and I've continued taking them since I've had my babies and I'm still taking giant handfuls.

I laugh every night as I'm, you know, pouring out my giant handful of vitamins and supplements and I'm like, oh, here, here, this is it.

This is thirties.

Yep.

Right there with you.

So can you walk us through what makes your prenatal different than what we can get on the shelves at the grocery store?

Yeah.

And I think a lot of that goes back to the baseline fact that the supplement industry is largely unregulated.

You know, you see brands that are like one-a-day gummies and it's just, supplement industry is really a place where you get what you pay for.

These companies are looking for big, like the margins on these profits are usually 70 to 80% profit.

So that's something we knew going in that we weren't looking for.

We wanted something that was higher on the quality spectrum.

So we knew it was going to be an expensive product to produce, but we also wanted to make it accessible, as accessible as we can for most moms out there to have a high quality supplement that they can trust.

On the very high end, you'll see supplements out there that are like eight to six to eight pills a day of prenatals.

We did our darndest to get everything that we wanted down into three pills a day.

So our prenatal is three serving, three capsules a day, and you can spread that out.

You could do like one with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I don't have an issue with pills, I'll just take them all at once.

And then the postpartum would be, we're hoping to get it down to one capsule a day, it may be a two capsule add on.

But when we're talking about the quality and the content of these pills, we look for the quantity of the ingredients and the form.

So when we're looking for something that is optimal, our products are all the active forms of the vitamins and minerals and organic botanicals that are in the most effective form.

So when we're talking about active vitamins and minerals, that means you take them and they are immediately active.

They are able to be absorbed and utilized in your body.

They do not have to go through a million conversion steps.

And then you're left with what's left over after they go through conversions in your body to reach the active form.

So a perfect example of that is folic acid.

You consume folic acid.

It has many conversion steps.

Let's say you consumed 100 milligrams.

By the time it is the active form of folate, you have like, this is just an example, maybe 10 milligrams of that 100 milligrams that is actually usable and active.

So our supplements start out in the active form.

The other part of things, the other side of the quality spectrum that we look at is the amount.

So the RDAs, the recommended daily amount of nutrients that are used to see on the Nutrition Facts label of vitamins, those were established in the 1940s based on men.

There were no women in the studies, there were no pregnant or lactating women in the studies.

They are, it's outdated science, and that's much of what you see in this industry.

It is outdated.

So we look at the most recent research that includes women, that includes pregnant and lactating women.

And we based our amounts of the nutrients that we included in that.

So, some of the amounts you see in our RDA column, it'll say like 3000% of the RDA, because we base the amount that we include on current research and the RDA is old research.

So it looks like it's a lot, but we wanted to include these therapeutic doses where you actually feel a difference.

And we get that response from our moms over and over and over again that like, wow, I can feel a difference when I take this, I feel a difference in my energy, I feel a difference in my mood.

I just like it is the testimonials that we've gotten from our customers are so reassuring that they actually notice how they feel when they take these or not.

I'm going to be a stinker for a second.

We just recorded another podcast with someone and she's like, oh, what's the one that you're recording after me about?

And I was like, oh, it's about prenatal and postpartum supplements.

She was, oh, make an expensive pee, you know, that's what they say about supplements.

And she's kidding.

But people do.

They say that a lot.

They're like, you know, if you take a supplement, your body only can take so much of it, it just pees the rest out.

But that is what excited me so much about having our first conversation and learning about your product because having what you need in that, I think it's called like a bioavailable form was so important.

And I have been taking them because you were kind enough to give me a sample and a whole freaking sample bottle.

And you're supposed to take, I think it's three a day, and I've been taking them.

And I am somebody who has a very sensitive stomach, very, like when I was pregnant, I always had to take my pre-needle at night right before I went to bed.

And I had to hope that it didn't wake me up when it started to make me sick.

And I always have to take things with food.

I'm not kidding.

Well, first of all, I started taking the ones you gave me in the morning because I wanted to know, was it going to make me feel like crap or not?

And then I also, you know, just like I always do, I always take my pills with food.

So I would take them and then I would go eat.

Well, this morning I took them.

It's kind of funny that it happened today.

I took them and then I didn't eat.

I ended up going on a walk.

So I was like, oh, I don't want to eat yet because I'm going to go on this walk.

I'll be too full.

I didn't get sick at all.

None of the days that I've taken these since you've given me, I've never gotten nauseous.

How in the heck have you done that, that these people with super sensitive stomachs are able to take this?

Yeah.

I was so happy to hear that because there was definitely strategy behind this.

It's one of the most common complaints you get from moms or the reason they don't take their prenatal is because it makes them sick and they're already experiencing morning sickness.

So we were very conscious of this as we're going in.

One of the biggest reasons that moms experience morning sickness related to taking prenatal vitamins is usually due to iron and magnesium.

These are two ingredients that tend to have GI effects.

The form of magnesium that we chose to use is again, the bioavailable active form, magnesium glycanate.

It is the most gentle on your GI system and it is not the cheaper versions that tend to be included in many prenatals that often have laxative or like distressing effects for our GI system.

Iron is the other one we use, ferrous bisglycanate, which is known across the industry to be the most gentle form on the stomach.

We also include vitamin C in supportive doses, which helps with iron absorption.

And spirulina is another ingredient that we use to ensure that the blood building complex that is needed to increase the blood volume during pregnancy is supported by spirulina, so we don't have to include as much iron.

So between those three things, the magnesium, the iron form that we use, and the spirulina, you're getting all of the effects that you need without the typically upsetting ingredients.

Also, from our wonderful registered dietician, her name is Jessica Meyer.

She, I'm sorry, she's a registered herbalist.

We partnered with her on the botanical blend, but she also advises us on some of the forms of nutrients that we use.

She's a functional medicine practitioner as well.

And so we included ginger.

Ginger is anti-emetic and it's a pro-kinetic, so that means anti-emetic.

It tends to like just quell any nausea and stomach upset.

Pro-kinetic, it just keeps your GI system moving.

So it helps with absorption.

It helps with keeping things moving along.

And oat straw is another one of our botanicals that is a nervine.

It helps calming the nervous system.

Our nervous system extends to our gut.

It's all connected.

There are so many good things in there that we considered on this specific symptom, this upset related to taking a really nutrient dense multivitamin.

It's truly working.

That sounds like I'm just being some fan girl or whatever.

She's not paying me, guys.

She didn't pay me to say this.

I am not a paid sponsor or whatever.

I really have been very impressed with not only do I not feel nauseous, I don't have anything.

I don't feel anything.

I forget that I even took it that day.

Just again, everything makes me nauseous, I feel like.

My poor husband is always like, I can't smell coffee.

It makes me nauseous.

I know that's crazy.

But it's really impressive.

You did a good job.

Pat yourself on the back because it is really, really cool.

I was a huge skeptic.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing.

So something that I hear people talk about a lot is the type of folic acid in prenatal vitamins, specifically people with that MTHFR mutations, having to be kind of careful about what they take.

So what type is in your product?

And what's the thought process with that?

Yes, we use the activated, the methylated form, which is five methyl tetra, it's hard for even me to say, five methyl tetrahydrofolate.

So this is the form, again, you take it and it is active in your body.

It does not require any conversion steps.

And that's what that MTHFR mutation is.

It's a genetic variant where it makes it difficult to convert folic acid to folate, to the active form of folate.

And up to 60% of people have this variant.

So, you know, many people have gotten their genetics tested and they can know and say for sure that, you know, whether or not they have this variant.

If you haven't gotten your genetics tested and you're not interested in spending the money on that, just default to something that has the active methylated form of folate in it.

And, you know, it's not, it's not something that I would even take a chance on because again, that folate is necessary for neural tube development very early in pregnancy, like from conception.

And if you are taking something inexpensive that has folic acid in it, you are not getting the amount of folate that you think you're getting.

So that for me is a red flag.

Like if your postnatal supplement or I'm sorry, your prenatal supplement has folic acid in it, it's time for an upgrade.

They're not paying attention.

That's funny.

Yeah, you hear people talk about this a lot now.

And you know, shocker, you can actually just do good things, even if you don't know if your body needs it.

You know, why don't we all just do that?

I bet it would be better for us.

And I'm really excited that you're talking about this too, because just like a little teaser, we do have a past client who is a nutritionist, and she's just incredible.

She's like a wealth of knowledge on so many different things.

And she wants to come on and talk, but she has been, when she had her baby, she was talking to me about supplements and how crazy it is that everyone doesn't pay as much attention as they should to it.

And that she thinks that a lot of it is linked to postpartum depression and anxiety symptoms based on not taking the proper things that you should be taking for your specific needs.

So I'm really excited to have her come on and talk about that as well.

If someone doesn't use your products, but they have kind of their own vitamins that they're taking, can you give some advice on what they should be looking for to make sure it's a quality product?

So like kind of buzzwords or whatever that they might look for on those shelves.

Yes.

And tying this back to what you just mentioned about the nutrient deficiencies being related to having such a big struggle postpartum, that is real.

And the jokes about expensive pea, typically if you're eating a really nutrient dense diet, like we are food first dieticians, like we love when people make a great effort to get all these nutrients from a very nutritionally dense diet.

But especially in pregnancy with food aversions or morning sickness or just lack of energy to repair and shop for these really healthy meals, we are not getting what we need.

And it's such a demanding time that you do end up in a deficient state when you give birth.

And then there is an even greater drawdown if you're breastfeeding afterwards.

So the nutrient deficiencies are tied to symptoms.

And so to answer your question about what to look for in a quality product, there are some that are crucial, not only for baby's development, but also to set mom up for success entering into postpartum.

One of those being EPA and DHA, it is so essential for baby's brain development, but it also has a huge impact on mom's mental state postpartum and her ability to recover.

So you may notice that we do not have EPA and DHA in our product, and that is for a very specific reason related to quality.

These are oils, they're fish oils, and they degrade and they go rancid, and they can actually have a negative impact on your health if you're taking something that is degraded and not in its optimal, it's not in intact form.

Mind blown.

So many of them on the shelves have that.

You're right, they do.

And the EPA and DHA degrade at different rates, and especially when they interact with other nutrients, vitamins and minerals, and they degrade based on light conditions, temperature conditions, so it is not recommended to include EPA and DHA with other nutrients.

They're advised to be taken separately.

So that's another thing to look out for when you're buying prenatal.

Can you take them at the same time of day, or should they even be taken separate times of day?

You can totally take them at the same time of day.

We're just talking about like shelf stability here.

So they should not be combined.

You see like Ritual is a brand that has like those two layer capsules where the oil is separated from the nutrients on the interior capsule.

I can't speak to whether or not that is actually beneficial, or it makes a difference, but they're still in a clear container and being shipped in ways that are standard for like non-fish oil, like stability.

So, you know, people can't see me at home, but I'm sitting here like with an eat face on like, oh, what you say makes sense, but it's something that a lot of us wouldn't even think about.

Yeah, I mean, think about the olive oil containers that you have in your pantry, right?

If you open it and you smell, you can tell when it goes rancid, and it doesn't take long.

So, buy your oils in small bottles.

Yeah, whoa.

So, yeah.

But going back to nutrients that I think are an absolute must have, if you're looking at prenatal, choline is also having a hot moment because it is coming out in research as being so essential for babies' brain development, their memory, their spinal cord development.

It reduces the risk of neural tube defects, and it plays a huge role in cell division and gene expression.

Choline is a game changer.

And let's see, selenium and iodine are a couple of other minerals that are often left out.

And as I mentioned earlier, they have a huge impact on thyroid health, not only for baby but for mom in the postpartum period.

And I don't know if you guys have much experience with this as doulas, but thyroid disorders postpartum are extremely common.

Even for women who have never had issues beforehand, the hormonal cascade that happens as a result of pregnancy and postpartum can often send things into a squirrely loop that the thyroid has trouble recovering from.

So someone in the iodine.

Iron is another big one.

I think some new supplements that are coming out are excluding iron.

And that's because some moms do need more or less than others.

At the end of the day, iron deficiency anemia is a big deal in pregnancy.

And when you don't have any to support your blood volume increasing up to 50% during pregnancy, it's not a good scenario to be in.

So we have not the full recommended RDA amount, the 18 milligrams a day of iron.

We include 12 milligrams a day plus the spirulina and vitamin C to boost absorption.

But it's one thing that I don't, based on all of our research, there is no evidence to support excluding iron.

That's interesting.

So I actually have something called hemochromatosis.

So when I am looking for vitamins of any sort, I do look for vitamins that exclude iron.

But as a doula, I see that happen all the time where moms are having low iron in pregnancy, and it turns into a major deal.

If your iron is low, you're becoming anemic, you're having these things that are happening in your body, and it can actually end up excluding you from being able to get epidurals and things later at the end of your pregnancy.

That can be a pretty big deal.

So making sure that you're getting the right iron, and definitely increasing the absorption and your body's ability to do what it needs to do with it, and enhancing those natural abilities that your body already has sounds like the right path.

Mm-hmm.

And for you, you're somebody who has, yeah.

For someone who has that condition, yeah, absolutely.

You know what you're looking for.

And at the end of the day, it's a less common issue, right?

So we're going for the most moms, the most applicable version of this prenatal, where we're looking at what are the most common symptoms.

We're looking at iron deficiency and anemia.

And that part of you having less iron but then doing the spirulina, that's, I'm assuming, also what's helping it be easier on the stomach and not causing all the crazy constipation and all of those things as well that people get from prenatal vitamins.

So we've talked a little bit about your products.

I don't know if there are any, but are there any teasers or any other things on your horizon?

Or are you guys kind of staying niche with these two products?

Oh, yeah, we've got big plans.

So the first thing that we are working on getting out there, ASAP, is our postnatal reformulation into pill form.

So we are working on that.

It's in production now.

So hopefully in the next six to eight weeks or so, we can have that back live and for sale as an add-on for postpartum moms.

As I mentioned, we're looking at doing an EPA and DHA that are in ideal forms and ideal amounts for moms that can start taking them pre-conception through postpartum.

Our vision is to take this from pre-conception, like starting to think about trying to conceive through postpartum for both moms and dads.

What that might look like is egg, boosting egg quality, boosting fertility, making sure that we have a clean system if we're detoxing from birth control.

This is on the mom side of things.

On the dads, there's so much that can be done to support male fertility.

We want to come out with a male fertility support.

We also want to have something available for dad support postpartum, because I think we can all agree now, traditional dad roles are very different.

Dads are up with the babies too.

Dads are experiencing a lot of stress.

What we want to come out with for new dads is something that can help them in a stressful, life-changing event.

Probably a lot of adaptogens and nervines and things that help them be a better partner and can show up for moms in a way that feels really supportive.

Oh my gosh, I love that so much.

I'm thinking in my head of some of our past clients that the dads would have been so into that.

And there's one specifically that came into my head.

I'm like, I'm going to text him and tell him that this is something that people are even thinking about.

Gosh, I love that you guys have this kind of big vision of supporting families that whole way.

That's so cool.

And all the fertility help.

That's such a huge missing piece right now.

Everybody's told to take your prenatals as soon as you start trying to get pregnant, but that's formulated for something different.

And having that support in that conception period is awesome.

So excited about that.

Yeah.

So how can people purchase your products and how can they find you?

So right now, we are only sold on our website.

We're e-commerce playing that game.

Our website is just iamnurtured.com.

We're also in some Austin area practitioner offices.

So if you want to, you can check in with your local practitioner, or they can reach out to us if they want to carry our product.

Or even outside of Austin, if you're a practitioner and you want to carry our product in your offices, we would love that.

We're trying our best to start getting into some smaller pharmacies in the area that have more holistic offerings.

So we're still in the growth phase.

We are aiming to get back up on Amazon as well.

But right now, the best way, most reliable way you can find us is our website.

Thank you so much.

This is awesome.

I was so excited after I talked to you, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago or whenever that was.

I was like, do you think you would want to be on my podcast?

Because I'm not necessarily trying to sell your product.

I just want the people to have the knowledge of what might be missing.

And it was so eye opening for me when you were talking about all of this and so life changing for me to not be nauseous.

I mean, I'm going to be honest with all of you.

I have not taken a vitamin will blame over a year because it just makes me feel gross.

And I'm like, I'm just going to try to eat better.

I don't know.

But I was able to take this and I feel really good.

And I'm so excited for people to have the opportunity to have these products.

So thank you for all of the work you've put in and the heart.

And we just can't wait to see your company grow and thrive.

So please, you guys, make sure you are looking them up.

Follow them on Instagram.

I'm going to put all of that in the show notes.

And she does so many little informational videos and reels and things like that, too.

You guys have a really great social media presence.

So go check them out.

Thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, thank you for talking.

Okay, Jeanne.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!

Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.

You can look him up on Spotify.

Remember to leave a review, share and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

See you next week.