Empowering Women in Chiropractic - Fourth Trimester Wellness Care Part 2

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Hello everybody. I'm Dr. Claudia Anrig. I am maybe what one would call Queen Bee pediatrics and prenatal chiropractic. You may know me from my first, second, or third edition of the textbook, pediatric Chiropractic. And we're just super excited about this development here and something that's available for our profession.

I want to thank ChiroSecure. It's what a wonderful opportunity to share with amongst my colleagues. And my topic today that I'm gonna be talking about is called the fourth Trimester Wellness Care. And so we're gonna go to our slides at this time. One of my favorite books. It's Real Food for pregnancy.

I love that book. Lily Nichols has done a really great job of it. What's unique about Lily's work? She's a nutritionist that went up against the, all the dieticians and nutritionists in the US and her work was clean and so well documented that now she's becoming the bible when it comes to prenatal and postnatal eating.

So that should be a book good in your lending library and good for the docs to read for themselves one of the areas that needs to be built up. Is and again, I'm a fan of any kind of bone broth. I think that in preconception first, second, third trimester, all women should be drinking bone broth as a part of their daily activity.

But they, we need to figure out how to get the collagen building amino acids in their systems. We need to get their electrolytes up and if whether it's from soups, Hardy stews or curries. This is something very easy to, and also to what? It could be pre-prepped, it can be frozen and then pulled out.

It's a, this is one of the easiest things you could do, and this is where, you know this, everybody with their crockpots, you can have two or three crockpots going on at the same time. Yeah. You can have a, you can have a . Food party, and invite all your friends to come over. You could even be prepping it in your third trimester.

Everybody brings over the crockpot. Come up with the, the 10, 15 recipes you need for your family. And everybody sits together, chops up stuff everybody but the pregnant mom could have a glass of wine and you basically prep. Food over a 2, 3, 4 hour period, you could prep almost a month in some ways, just having a prep party.

Just something fun to do for someone. Another one is high iron. Again, iron deficiency. It is really frightening. And so again, it would be the slow cook meats, so that's gonna come from pot roast, pooled pork, and so forth. But we gotta keep our gals irons up. It's healthier for restoring their body and health and wellbeing.

Another area, again, with, when it comes with iron liver is, it's just a fabulous resource of it. I, again, generationally, the last two generations, . They're growing up. It used to be a time, if you talk to somebody who is 40, 56 years old, often they're at their family at least once a week or once a month, people would oof fry root a liver with, I think it was onions and so forth, be because the culture knew that you need to have the iron in the body and so forth.

But in our culture today unless there's certain cultures that they do eat continued liver on a weekly basis, we lack it in most of our North American diets. So you could, get a, like a liver pate camouflage it with a car with veggies or camouflage it with some crackers with some put in a bed of lettuce.

That's a good way of doing it. But again, legumes, red meats, broccoli, pumpkin seeds down with the broccoli, right? I gotta be careful. It's like a Brussels sprouts. It could, a cauliflower that could it cause indigestion affect the baby's breast milk so she can tolerate grape if the baby can tolerate grape.

And then a dark Turkey meat is another place that we could find it. Doc fat, fat. More fat and one more time, a little bit more fat on it. I'm just a fan of butter. I think they should slap that butter everywhere they can. Butter up everything. Our women have gone such an extreme, oh, we can't do this.

We can't do that. Be fat free. And what, what happens when we were sugar free, fat free, everybody get, became more fatter in North America. And and if you go to Europe I travel a lot back to Europe. 'cause of my my family connections to Switzerland and everybody, I, nobody's overweight. Everybody does a lot of walking.

They eat a lot of healthy butter, fat. They just, they're just a healthier, and they just . Eat a balance of stuff. Their portions are smaller out there, but fat is a part of their diet. The pork fatty fish, nuts and seeds. So we just need to just be mindful of using docs the fat in their diet.

Also two omega threes and of course eggs, grass fed beef. And seafood and honestly a person could have at least two to four eggs in a day. That's, they could do soft boiled eggs, whatever, that scrambled egg. But another one is hard-boiled eggs. I have my women just boil a half a dozen to a dozen hard boiled eggs for the week.

And then that way if they don't have time to get a protein, they can grab that hard boil. They at least there's some protein getting into their body as well as the omega threes. Doctors, another thing that we need to do is more iodine and it's lacking because we don't necessarily eat all these foods.

Again, the roasted nori, that's always easy. That could be a grabbing food, very easy to get ahold of and just have, the sheets of it right there. Or put those in the Ziploc bags, have it prepped for them. And so that they could just like we said, grab, go food thinking simplicity and so forth.

Of course, cod . Dairy, and again, we cotton in other products like that. This is where again, it's better to eat as a whole food, but many of you may be working with a great supplement company that you would say, okay, if they won't eat this , Alright, then we're gonna support you. But you should supplement this way as well.

Egg yolks and so forth. And a lot of times people are, it's really odd, they think they still in this day and age have to eat egg whites. No. The way God designed it, it's the yolk and the white go together. They're not supposed to be separated because you get something good from each one of 'em.

Shrimp, tuna. And of course when in doubt if somebody's having some issue, dry prunes is another. Great way . Of getting the iodine into our individual's bodies and so forth. And then sometimes we think about, oh, we should eat a lot of veggies. But I think the using soften the veggies by steaming and so forth, or maybe in some cases sauteing it in a butter so they get the butter and the veggie in there because you need the fiber.

All that roughage should go through the system, but sometimes if you go raw, it's just too much for her to digestive tract. It might actually upset the breast milk and so it'd be better to try steaming it, softening it easier for her to digest it. Another area too is we gotta get back into the healthy carbs.

Their blood sugar might go up and down a little bit and, what do we do with it? And whether it's oatmeal or certain kinds of rices or sweet potatoes, I'll let them know. Those would be the healthy curbs to go to, not, not the junk food or, and by the way, when we talking about it's, that's not rice cakes.

It should be rice itself, not anything that's been processed beyond already just the cleaning of a grain. You don't wanna have it overprocessed as well, but the healthy carbs and they should . Have it throughout the day a little bit. So when they're starving, they go into starving mode.

That's because of what their blood sugars drop down or their energy is dropping down, or they get really crabby or moody blood sugar going down. If they could just sneak in a little carb throughout the day, get a tablespoon of rice or just a tablespoon, a sweet potato, it's not a half a sweet potato.

It's taking the portions and I call it grazing. You're grazing with it. Throughout the entire day. So that just some food for thought there. And of course beyond is water. Postnatally, what could we do? And a lot of times, people, these women are wandering around with these big water jugs and it's just, and sometimes people get tired of just drinking water, and so please fall back on any kind of warm liquids.

And then that could be your bone broth as well. Broth, broth. And then, because sometimes you go, just put something else in there that is broth and maybe a little food in there, but it's just, it keeps them hydrated. I love the teas, any of the chail teas peppermint tea, if they need a little energy look into the tea family there.

I would a avoid anything with caffeine. So green tea, I would avoid black teas or anything that would, again, we don't need to add caffeine if we're breastfeeding. So that's just again thoughts that you wanna share. A simple thing you can ask. For your women to do, and we talked about this in a previous podcast.

It's just write down the things, how you eat and drink for a week, and then have them bring that back. It's not so much the quantity, it's the quality of their eating style. And if you could just follow their patterns a little bit, doctors that will give you an idea how to coach them, how to mentor them into a better eating even before they give birth.

And then who's their postpartum team? Man, everybody worked all the way up to delivery like the obs. Like maybe the post, op visit and so forth. Or the midwives doing the follow up. And sometimes the doulas are having some follow up, but who's really gonna be there in a month from now?

Who's gonna be there in two months from now? And I just think a postpartum team is really important. Look, if somebody has a midwife and you're in an area, there's not a lot of doulas, why don't you hire her to work another month? In the two months with you. She's been with you all this time.

Who better to help you or just to support you emotionally and physically, but to hire your midwife to go a little longer? It wouldn't be that much more expensive and she's already has a built in relationship with you. Even you could even teleconference with her, but just getting that kind of support and anybody who has a doula.

One of the things that you could do is hire her to stay on again another couple of months. And with even doulas there is, it's affordable. It's not it's not that much more expensive 'cause they're there more for the pregnancy, but, and there's now a growing area of postpartum doulas, so they're there for the fourth trimester.

So there's a growing industry there. . With doulas who will take on after the baby's born, coaching them and having a healthier birth post birth, helping the mom and baby bond and so forth. So please if you can see if you have any postpartum doulas in your community, get to know them. So you could create a referral sheet for them so you could pass that great information to others.

Docs. What we wanna do is, again, retention and we're not talking a couple weeks, I think at minimally, at least two months. . So when they're back on their feet and so forth, that would be so helpful. And by the way, when you would have somebody like this as a part of their team, this will diminish because there's gonna be emotional

Assistant because they're not a family member giving advice. It's somebody who's worked with babies and moms and so forth. She's gonna and so there's emotional and there's a kind of a third person. The, it's the intelligence part of it, the confidence that she's gonna give. So that's why these, this will decrease the likelihood of postpartum depression because she's got all that support around, or somebody, like I said, the go-to person too.

And then . What if you get a a, a what? A hiccup when it comes to breastfeeding. What's your breastfeeding plan? Who's your expert? Do you have a lactation specialist signed up and not to somebody who quote unquote, comes from the hospital. They barely have time to even get to know your baby's first name.

Who would, who's your backup? Talk to the midwives, talk to the doulas. Find if there's somebody separately that could be hired. So if there's any issues with that, you would have somebody on your team as well. And then once again, as we look, go into the postpartum stage of it, who is gonna be the expert leading into all this?

Who's going to check the baby out for the tongue? Tie is a pediatrician qualified to do it. Sometimes they miss tongue lip cheek tie. So who's gonna check it? Typically, midwives are very good at it. So if they're part of the team. So maybe the midwife will be the doing the checking.

What if you're concerned and they don't have any support? Is there a pediatric dentist who does the revision? Would that be worth the consult? Who come up with the team who's in the tongue? Type check. If any of you have been , To any of our seminars and so forth, or you have the textbook, we have a beautiful chapter on tongue tie and breast and a second chapter on breastfeeding and so forth.

But often the chiropractor, you could just put a glove on and you sweep the mouth and you could just see if there's a tightness there. So you might feel like, you know what, I'm proficient there. I. Feel like I, I could do an evaluation and at least maybe let 'em know. Yes. Rule it in or rule it out for them.

It might be something that you would offer to do. And are they ready for postpartum chiropractic care? We need to. As soon as they can get driven to the office, these babies the moms need to get checked. 'cause it's almost like their pelvis, right? It is gone through a rodeo. And we need to have a post checkup and you have to let 'em know you are so important.

That's why I say you are so important. You just will give him birth and you're gonna think. That baby's most important, but your recovery is most important. So I, this is the key thing. Who's going to be your driver? I need a person. Give me two. I wanna know who's on the accountability li accountability list.

They're gonna drive you over and we'll plan a time where it'll be quiet at the office that you can come through the back door or whatever you wanna do, but you quietly come over. I, we know some of our chiropractors, right? They'll actually do a home visit. Hey, it whatever suits you. But I wanna know who's the driver who's gonna drive you there?

I always have that conversation in the third trimester. Who's your our driver? I want driver one. I want driver two. Because as soon as you can get outta the home, I want to be checking you. So your recovery is that much faster. And again, we know this . For my fellow chiropractors, the ones that you have done this in the past, the women who don't come in and they wait a month or two versus the ones who come almost immediately afterwards.

The two groups are very different. She who comes in right after the birth of their babies do a lot better than the ones who wait a month or two. And then a lot of that group too, Postpartum depression tied into it, and then we gotta line up this baby's first checkup. Okay. Baby, baby a boy or baby girl needs to I tell my parents,

I'm sending you home with the paperwork in advance, particularly if the parent doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl. And I said so baby James, if that's a family's last name we have everything ready for baby. We are just, we just need to have this front and back page filled out and we're gonna set up we are ready with hours to see your newborn baby.

And Almost plan that the baby's already a new patient before they give birth plan. Okay? Baby baby James is going to, we're gonna have him check. So we we'd like to check 'em within the first week to two, three weeks of their birth. And by the way, all you have to do is once you get a driver, let us know and we will work your baby in.

Be flexible. That's what first time moms need is that flexibility from their chiropractor. And then also too, talk to 'em about the power of the first adjustment. There's nothing more powerful when we get to lay our hands and that newborn that has a subluxation and even . Whether the baby's in the wrong position in utero constraint, or the baby goes through the birth process and there's a low spraining that goes on it can cer, it can certainly happen.

Docs. One of the things that we need to do is to talk to 'em how important for show 'em over and over again. We just gently touch the baby here. We do some te gentle touching here, and if we find that there's a restriction, then we gently adjust that area at putting the motion back into the joint and it'll calm all your baby's nerves down.

We should be talking about what mom's and dad's report back. And for anybody that's out there, it's my generation's client. Six signs of subluxation, right? What we can do, we help a colic and reflux, constipation, sleeping, feeding becomes easier. Better tummy time. Just a calmer hop your baby and so forth.

And so we just let 'em know we want your baby to have the presence of all of that and not be stressed out whatsoever. And so that's how we give back to them. And then there's another team member . That we should every woman should probably have a post check and it's a pelvic floor physical therapist.

I think that would be so important for everybody. So you need a, if you don't have a somebody in your community, find somebody in the town over or city over because we need our women to if we were in certain countries, like in France, that's a part of their postpartum care is to see a postpartum

Pelvic floor physical therapist. And the quality of the function of restoring tissue health down below through exercises and so forth. And so do you have somebody that you can refer to them so the recovery might be a little bit more smoother for them, and then there's a point of encouraging to go back to exercise.

Then maybe the first 40 days, that would be too early. And but we have to encourage 'em. 'cause sometimes they'll get such out of routine of exercise that it might take six months or a year to get back. And then again, we know that exercising is so important to prevent also postpartum depression, walking, when the easiest things you could ever get are back to two.

Just again, walk out 10. This is my easiest plan. I've been teaching for decades. Walk out 10. Yeah, and I always just tell my patients, oh, just go I only need you to walk 10 minutes in one direction. And then of course they're gonna come back 10. It's a 20 minute walk. I said, let's just start with walk out 10, come back to him, and then you see if her mind could wrap around that.

I can do that. And then you could do two walks at 10 and 10, and so all of a sudden 20 minutes becomes 40 minutes. Or the 10 minute walk becomes 15, which is a half hour, but start supporting with the walking program. I think that is really super important. It's just good for body movement, circulation and so forth.

And I think we have to be really careful. Some women are. Jump right back in. They wanna be a physical fit. They wanna jump into abdominal exercises to flatten their tummy. And I think you should actually be calmer there. I think to do abdominal exercises right after giving birth is a huge mistake.

I think it, it should wait typically a couple months before you would do that. That's my personal opinion. I've watched women do one way and the other, the ones who waited, I thought did better than the ones who try to jump in doing the abdominal exercises as well. Another thing that we can encourage 'em to do, So with three pound weights, five pound weights, work with their bicep, triceps, chest and back.

Easy enough to do. And then I'm a big fan of wall pushups. Now if you do your fingers up in wall pushups, that's more really your bi biceps. But a good one for chest and back is fingers, point to each other and doing the wall pushups like that. And so just a simple thing like that they could do at their Hoag in their home.

That would require, but just a few moments when the baby's down for a nap and I just say, when somebody comes home, go walk out 10, come back 10. So I got, I've just now got a 20 minute walk in with, in between feedings or the baby's breast, go wall, do wall pushups, use your weights a little bit, and if the body's in motion and so forth, it's just gonna be really just a helpful tool to have.

And then of course, who do they talk about to the for their workout is their midwife. Doula. Typically by now, the OB could care less the OB is not gonna be involved with it. Or it could be the person to talk about. It would be us, the chiropractor. So who better than us if we start with preconception care?

If we started with post prenatal and then postnatal we're with this family for a year and a half, up to two years, this whole process beginning to happen. So who better than us? And I just wanted to thank again ChiroSecure for this opportunity just to share with everybody, just that opportunity of just caring for others, caring for our community, for us, for, to make that kind of a difference.

So again, thank you ChiroSecure. And you can again check me out at Dr. Claudia Anrig. Dot com check out my seminars. I have a wonderful mentoring program called Generations where we just do everything turnkey to grow family practice. And typically within under two years, we have everybody being basically the, and the number one family wellness practice in their community.

So check out generations.

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