Help Your Doula Clients Prepare Their Bodies (and Minds) for Birth with Emily Stanwyck
Did you know that exercise can positively impact your doula clients’ births BEYOND just the physical stuff?
In Episode 13 of the Birthworker Podcast, I'm joined by Emily Stanwyck who is sharing her insight and experience from working as a birth doula, birth educator, and fitness instructor for pregnant and postpartum women.
In this interview with Emily Stanwyck, we chat about:
The unconventional way to prepare for the intensity of birth….
How Emily incorporates fitness training into her childbirth education classes…
The advantage competitive athletes have when it comes to birth…
… and a whole lot more!
Emily Stanwyck: You can only talk to someone who's gone through it and been like, "Wasn't that crazy?" I know, I know, right? But I remember with my second, I had even more awareness. I could feel, because I think I was just less afraid, because I was like, I'm ready for this. I know it's going to be intense, but there was no fear of pushing the baby out the second time, so I could feel so much more in my body, and I experienced the fetal ejection reflex the second time. And just being in tune with my body was so cool, because I truly had no fear at all, I was so excited, mostly because I was much earlier than I thought I was going to be, I was like, yes, let's go.
Kyleigh Banks: I'm ready.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah. But when you work out, when you lift, when you have a coach who's explaining, "I want you to squeeze your glutes, I want you to put your shoulders down, bring your shoulder blades together, flat back, eyes up," whatever. You can respond like that, you don't have to think about it. I'm at the point now, 12 years into my fitness journey, where if someone queues me to do something mid lift, I'm not like, what does she mean by that? I can just do it. So that's so important in labor too, when you just know your body and you can be in tune with your body, I think it really takes away some of that fear, really.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: You trust your body.
Kyleigh Banks: And especially someone who's used to testing their limit, used to testing their one rep maxes, or their distance, or whatever, yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: Something else, this just came up, but I share this in my birth education class when I talk about pain. We don't have positive associations with pain in our culture. Pain is a bad thing, always, unless you're in the fitness world. And I want to caveat that by saying injury is bad, but sometimes that soreness, or lifting something super heavy, you might equate that with some sort of discomfort, let's call it, rather than pain. I know that I can withstand a lot of discomfort because of my training. I'll call it discomfort instead of pain.
We do not have positive associations with discomfort in America, at all. We are a very convenient society where we just want to band-aid things and take medicine. But if you understand discomfort and how to push through it and work through it in a sense that is not as intense as birth in the gym, you are going to be much more mentally prepared for labor, for sure, and I think that makes a huge difference.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. If someone's not an athlete like that before they get pregnant, is it too late to get that mindset during pregnancy?
Emily Stanwyck: No, because I've known so many women who have never worked out who had amazing births. So definitely not. Birth calls you to just dig deep inside of yourself. I think the reason why I love the training aspect is because it's just very relatable if you like working out, honestly. Some people don't like it and I'm like, cool, just go on walks. Just go on a long walk during your pregnancy. Just move your body. You don't need to be lifting weights.
But I think for people who have never had that experience before getting pregnant, if you want to, absolutely start weight lifting in pregnancy, because it adds so much confidence to your life. When you learn how to strength train, and you learn how to lift a barbell, and you learn how to move your body while you're growing a human, that is badass, and so that empowerment and that confidence is also going to directly positively impact your labor and delivery.
You don't need to have competitive training in your life to really get something out of movement and moving your body. My fitness conversations, again, when I teach my classes are more about do something that makes you feel good and happy, and if that's starting a brand new thing… Like oh, I heard about BIRTHFIT, I kind of wanted to do BIRTHFIT. Like hell yeah, go do it. You're going to be lifting the 10 pound dumbbells, I might be lifting the 35 pound dumbbells, you're going to feel amazing, I'm going to feel amazing. That's the point. And if you're like, I hate that stuff, I hate being at a gym, I'm like, great, go to the beach and walk on the sand for two miles. Do something that makes you feel happy and good and confident in your body so that you trust your body's ability to move.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. I love how you say it's not about me versus you, who's heavier or longer, it's yeah, I'm going to do it to feel good. And it's not even me against me, it's just here I am doing this thing, and it's healthy, and it's helping me prepare for birth physically and mentally.
Emily Stanwyck: Totally. Oh, and I have a great story, to answer your question. I had a woman who was a friend of one of the members at the gym I used to work at, and she texted me and goes, "Emily, I'm 36 weeks. I want to get BIRTHFIT, is it too late?" I was like, "Let's go, come tomorrow." And we worked out two to three times a week, and I want to say she was close to 42 weeks, and we just did the most basic stuff. We would do low step up, we would do some dead lifts, just getting her glutes and her back strong, and we would row a little bit, and really just honestly moving, squatting, range of motion, just moving your body.
She had a really long labor, and she texted me and was like, "The nurses couldn't believe how strong I was." She's like, "I just think even doing those four weeks of fitness made a huge difference for my ability to handle a three day long labor," and I was like, "Yes, it does, it really does." Moving your body energizes you, it continues to help you get stronger, even in the final weeks of your pregnancy, and it really prepares your joints and your muscles to be able to get to that place where you get to in labor.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, especially for women like us who choose home birth, or even just unmedicated birth in general, being able to get into weird positions and stay there for a very long time, not easy, it's not easy.
Emily Stanwyck: No, it's not.
Kyleigh Banks: Exhaustion is a big reason for a transfer.
Emily Stanwyck: Absolutely, and you want to make sure that you have the mental capacity to—again with the body awareness, to be like, yeah, I can do this. I can keep going. Or to be like, I cannot keep going. That is an important piece of body awareness when you're in labor, so you don't go past a breaking point.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, that's so true. That's something I never considered, but it's true, just in my own history of being an athlete. You know when you shouldn't do another rep just because of that body awareness, you can hear your intuition and you can listen to your body. And birth is, yeah, it's a physical event, but it's also a mental event, so what a great way to balance the two and do some sort of fitness in pregnancy.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah, so for doulas and partners, if you know that your wife or client is the kind of person who understands their body, maybe you've recommended they continue doing their yoga class or their spin class or their swimming, whatever it is that your client likes to do, come back to that in birth. If they get that deer in the headlights look, they're like, “Oh shit,” you can just be like, "Hey, you know how to do this. You can do this." And sometimes that breaking point is only mental, it's not physical. So it's helping these moms understand that most of the time it really is mind over matter, aside from the real reasons that might need to transfer.
And of course being in the hospital is the same situation, you have more hurdles in the hospital. If they're going for a very specific desired birth plan in a hospital it's like hey, mind right, stay focused and get to the place where focusing is not a real thing anymore. It's just that encouragement of your body knows how to do this, you're strong. I remember I was a Strongman competitor, so I competed in Strongman.
Kyleigh Banks: Cool.
Emily Stanwyck: And yeah, it was awesome, and one of the events was pulling a 13,000 lb dump truck. I shit you not.
Kyleigh Banks: Oh my God.
Emily Stanwyck: It was awesome, and I won that event.
Kyleigh Banks: That's so fulfilling, yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: It was so cool. And I just remember my friends being like, "You pulled a dump truck, you can obviously have a baby." And I would think about that in labor because I'm like, I can push a baby out, I pulled a freaking huge dump truck, I can do this. So coming back to something relatable, something that they know. As a doula, if your client loves to swim, "Hey man, you used to swim for hours and hours on end, you can do this." Just coming back to something that makes them feel good to make the labor mentally better so that they don't mentally tap out before their body does.
Kyleigh Banks: Absolutely, yeah, relating it somehow to something they've been through before, totally.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah.
Kyleigh Banks: Because a lot of that, the mentally wanting to tap out is fear of the unknown a little bit.
Emily Stanwyck: Absolutely, yeah. And that, for me, was a huge win. Being at home was a huge win in that respect because I was like, “Is this normal, everybody? You guys aren't calling 9-1-1, so I guess this is normal. I have no other options, okay, I guess I'm just going to do this. This is crazy.” And that trust in my body was huge.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm. So what came first, your love for fitness or birth?
Emily Stanwyck: Oh, you know what? My love for birth came first.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah?
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah, ever since I was little, a kid, I've always been fascinated with birth and pregnancy. I used to always watch A Baby Story on TLC. Do you remember that show?
Kyleigh Banks: I never saw it, but I hear about it all the time.
Emily Stanwyck: Okay, I watched that show obsessively as a young child, and my sisters would be like, please change the channel. But I was always obsessed. Always obsessed. And obsessed with babies. But I always had a love for sports too. So sports was my thing as I grew up, and I loved pregnancy and babies. Maybe they happened together, I don't know.
But professionally it was fitness, because I didn't know what a doula was. So I became trainer in 2012, and I mean, I wasn't experienced at all, I just started, very, very new. And then Lindsay, who started BIRTHFIT, we would work out together, and she is a chiropractor, and one day I heard her say, "All right, bye, I'm going to go train some pregos," and I was like, "Wait, what?" I was like, "Wait, you train pregnant women, that's a thing?" She was like, "Yeah."
She worked at this facility that a bunch of actors and athletes would go to, and all the women would get sent to her, and she started training pregnant women. And I was like, "I need to do this because I love pregnancy and babies," I need to be in that world. And then she was like, "You should be a doula," and I was like, "What's that? I've never heard of it."
And that was in 2014 when she told me what a doula was and I was like, "Well, that is me. I didn't know that you could attend births and not go to medical school, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life." So I got my doula certification, although I was never nationally certified, I just did my own thing ever since. And incorporating fitness has really been such a gift. It was much easier when I worked at a gym because I would get all the pregnant women. Lindsay and I would get all the pregnant women at our gym, and we would train them through their pregnancies, and then often they would ask us to be their doulas, it was amazing. So that's my ideal client, is someone who wants to train with me and then I attend their birth.
Kyleigh Banks: That's cool.
Emily Stanwyck: It's so awesome, because it's such a great relationship. You really know their personality in the fitness mindset, the physical place of the gym, and then you know who they are when they're in labor, to a degree.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, you're with them as they're doing hard things before birth.
Emily Stanwyck: Exactly.
Kyleigh Banks: And then you're with them through the hard thing that is birth.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah, exactly.
Kyleigh Banks: And most doulas, even in my own practice, I see people twice before they give birth.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah.
Kyleigh Banks: Imagine seeing them, even if it's on Zoom.
Emily Stanwyck: Every week, every week, it was amazing.
Kyleigh Banks: That's really cool.
Emily Stanwyck: So cool. I would like to start doing it. We recently moved, so that's my goal here in Texas, but I’ve got plenty of time for that.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. So you have a birth course, right?
Emily Stanwyck: I do, yes.
Kyleigh Banks: Can you tell us about how you incorporated the fitness part and the birth part together to make your own perfect offering?
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah. So my class is really, it is a birth education class. I don't actually teach fitness in that class, but I talk about it.
Kyleigh Banks: Okay.
Emily Stanwyck: And the conversation around fitness is really about doing something. This is my evolution in fitness and with my personal births is doing something that makes you happy and that you will actually do. I think that is the most important thing is do something that you're going to do. Don't tell yourself, "I'm going to do cycling three times a week because I have a Peloton," if you hate doing your Peloton. Do something you like. And so for me, the conversation around fitness is do something two to three times a week for 30 to 60 minutes.
We talk about the importance of pelvic floor health, not overdoing it, being really gentle on yourself, but also learning how to build strength in appropriate ways for your body, and then the what nots to do, and those are really simple. That's really mostly just ab stuff, don't do ab stuff. We're not doing crunches or sit ups or twists, anything like that, it's just not necessary. And then you're not redlining your workouts, you're not doing a hundred percent max out sprints and max out lifts because you don't need to do that. We're training to success, not to crash on the floor afterwards.
I really just highlight the importance of movement, of range of motion, because when you're in labor it calls you into those positions that should be innate human positions, bottom of the squat, lunge position, on hands and knees, rotating your hips open, moving your back and your spine, the ability to just move your body with ease and comfort is what I really, really want women to feel good about when they work out. You don't need to do CrossFit if you don't like it, just do something. So I don't spend a ton of time on fitness in my course, but that is really what I highlight.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm. And you do teach the BIRTHFIT, is that separately in person, or how do you incorporate the BIRTHFIT fundamentals?
Emily Stanwyck: Oh, so yes, I do those in person. I just haven't done that in a while because we moved and I'm not working at a gym right now.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: That is one of my goals for sure, is to get back to the in person classes. But what I would do is I would typically do one-on-ones prenatal, and that is just private training. The reason I did one-on-one prenatal is because most pregnant women are still working, so getting a class time that works for all these women was impossible. But then I would teach a postpartum group class, I loved that so much, that was my favorite thing, because all the babies came too, which I loved.
Kyleigh Banks: Oh, that's special.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah, it was so awesome. So I would teach one-on-one prenatal classes, but I always just encouraged women to continue taking the classes that they took, or the things they liked to do before getting pregnant, just keep doing that. If you don't know what you shouldn't do, ask one of us, ask a BIRTHFIT coach, "Can I do Pilates?" "Yeah, just don't do sit ups."
So that was really huge because private training isn't really accessible for everybody. If you're doing something that you love to do, keep doing that. Don't be afraid to move your body in the first trimester. I know it's exhausting in the first trimester, and sometimes you feel horrible and so you don't want to out, permission to rest. But just continuing what you've done, because I think that's the best way to maintain consistency in your workouts throughout pregnancy is to just do the thing you always do.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm, yeah, it sounds like consistency is the thread that goes through all of this.
Emily Stanwyck: Absolutely. And someone comes to me at 14 weeks, they're like, "I literally haven't done anything, have I ruined my life?" And I'm like, "No, if you're exhausted your first trimester, that's when you should rest, that's okay, but let's get back to it. Start going on some walks, going on some hikes, if you have a Peloton, do a 30 minute easy ride, or go to your yoga class that you love, or go back to the CrossFit gym and tell them that you need to modify whatever.” Just get back into the thing that makes you happy. I think that really is the key, is do what makes you happy and confident in your body. That's it.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. And do you think if someone creates that consistency in pregnancy it's easier for them to do it postpartum too?
Emily Stanwyck: Oh yeah, absolutely, because there's familiarity. And BIRTHFIT does offer the online programs, so we have the prenatal programming, which is specific to weeks of pregnancy, which is really cool. Then there's just their online programming that anyone can do it, no matter if you're prenatal, preconception, postpartum, and there's modifications for everything. That's a monthly thing.
And then there's the postpartum package. So if you have been following the BIRTHFIT programming in pregnancy, for example, you're just going to do the postpartum one, because it starts with the 30 day lying in, which you can start at a few days postpartum, I believe, maybe two weeks, I can't remember exactly. But the lying in is literally breath work and maybe baby wearing for a couple minutes, and then it progresses after that.
But yeah, moving in pregnancy will give you the head space to be like, okay, maybe I have no idea how to move this body, but I know that I can start doing something when I'm feeling really good. Maybe three, four weeks postpartum, start going on some walks, or seeing how getting up and down from a chair, squatting, just practicing my diaphragmatic breathing, and not overexerting anything. We don't want to exacerbate bleeding or injure anything. It's really gentle, but it just puts you in a good mindset when it's just something that you do, it's just part of your life.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm, yeah. And it can feel really empowering too.
Emily Stanwyck: Absolutely.
Kyleigh Banks: You can feel grateful for what your body did in birth and pregnancy, growing a human, but also what it's capable of day to day.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah, for sure. And we really, really highlight the importance of resting postpartum. Literally not doing anything for a month. Which is hard for a lot of people, especially second, third, fourth time moms where the next day they're like, oh, I guess I had a baby yesterday. That's how I felt after my second, I had to force myself to not do anything because I felt so great, it was awesome.
But we really, really stress the importance of that lying in period, of that resting and healing period and really just letting your body come back to some sort of neutral before any intensity. And so if you have that mental toughness mindset of fitness in pregnancy, and then the mindset of holy crap, I just did the craziest thing ever of giving birth to a human, that carries over into postpartum of, well now my body needs to rest. After a big competition you don't just go train the next day really hard, you take a week off sometimes. That's like postpartum, is taking that time off to just let your body get unsore, get back to some sort of normal and neutral, and then rebuilding.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah.
Kyleigh Banks: It's hard, it's hard to take that rest, like you said.
Emily Stanwyck: It is really hard.
Kyleigh Banks: And I've only had one, and even still then after a week or so you're like, yeah, let's just get up and go to the mall, and whatever. And yeah, you need that self-awareness to be like, I'm probably going to want to go out, but I'm not going to go out, and I have to just be hard on myself about it.
Emily Stanwyck: Absolutely. Another one of our BIRTHFIT sayings is slow is fast.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: It's hard, it's really, really hard. For both of my births, I was like, I'm going to give myself, and this is what we recommend to women, give yourself a year, a year postpartum. Consider immediate postpartum one year so that you don't compare your body to your pre-baby body until ever, but really just giving your brain and your body, that full year of healing and rebuilding and coming back to neutral before you even stress a little bit about anything.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: Your body will thank you if you move slowly.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm, yeah, because imagine going hard at the beginning and then having to stop for a pelvic floor injury.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah, exactly, and that is common when people go too hard too soon. So yeah, it's really just training your mind to match your body.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, I like that.
Emily Stanwyck: That softness.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, yeah. That body awareness, and especially with that pelvic floor as you're training, of course don't train your abs, like you said, but that body awareness, and being able to have strength, but also release when you need to let go.
Emily Stanwyck: Yes.
Kyleigh Banks: Most people have no clue what that feels like.
Emily Stanwyck: Zero clue. I had no clue what that felt like until my son was crowning and I was like, oh, I shouldn't clench everything closed, got it.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, right. I remember I went to a pelvic floor therapist after I gave birth, seven months postpartum, and she's doing an internal exam and she's like, "Okay, squeeze," and I'm like, "I'm squeezing," she's like, "You're literally, no muscle is moving down there." So sometimes you have to feel for yourself and literally put your fingers in yourself and figure out how you need to move to make your pelvic floor move.
Emily Stanwyck: Yeah.
Kyleigh Banks: It's not something you'll just instinctively know a lot of the time, almost all of the time.
Emily Stanwyck: Totally, yeah, I have that same experience. So yeah, just highlighting, fitness doesn't have to mean going hard at Golds Gym with all the bros, it's really just training for the biggest athletic event of your life in the way that makes you feel good, feel your best, and something that you will keep up with. It's going to look different for everybody.
My first I did strength training four times a week in my pregnancy. My second, because of COVID, my gym was closed for a lot of it, and I was miserable because of the lockdown, I just went on walks. I had no motivation to lift weight, I was like, I could not care less about this, I just went on walks, long walks, and did some stairs, and I felt amazing going back to the gym.
Kyleigh Banks: That's awesome, yeah.
Emily Stanwyck: And I didn't go back until five months postpartum. I was like, I'm not worried about it, I know how to move, I know how to work out, I'll go back when I'm ready. Five months postpartum felt amazing. So it's really just doing what you can and what you want and what makes you feel good, that's it?
Kyleigh Banks: Boom, that's it, mic drop, seriously.
Emily Stanwyck: As a doula and as a laboring woman, as a partner, encouraging that. Meeting women where they're at. I know a lot of women get really down on themselves when their body changes, and when they're feeling tired and sick and it's just like, grab your wife's hand, go on a walk with her for her mental health, and she will feel better, she will. She might need some handholding, and just encouraging baby steps, and again, doing something that makes her feel happy and feel good about herself.
Kyleigh Banks: Mm-hmm, I love that. Yeah, grabbing her hand and helping her do it, because sometimes that first hurdle of just getting started is the hardest part.
Emily Stanwyck: Yes, for sure.
Kyleigh Banks: Before we go, where can people find you?
Emily Stanwyck: Oh yeah.
Kyleigh Banks: Your website again, and where can people find you?
Emily Stanwyck: Yes, I am Emily Stanwyck, @EmilyStanwyck, S-T-A-N-W-Y-C-K, and then my website is EmilyStanwyck.com. And I do doula, if you're in central Texas I'm taking clients, and I do birth education, and that is online, you can live anywhere, and I rant about births and other things online.
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.