The MamasteFit Podcast Episode106 – Empowered Birth Through Mindset: Insights with Tracy of GentleBirth

Roxanne: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. On this episode, we’re going to be talking all about the mental preparation for birth and how can we do that, as well as the mindset practice that is not just going to help us during our birth process, but also parenthood, pregnancy, and beyond, to include our children. And in this episode, we’re going to be talking with Tracy, who’s the founder of GentleBirth, and this is an app that is all about mindset and mental preparation for birth.

Roxanne: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. On this episode, we have Tracy, who is the founder of GentleBirth, which is an app that has lots of meditations and guided meditations to help prepare for birth that both Gina and I utilized during our birth prep. Thank you so much for being here, Tracy.

Tracy: Thanks for having me! I am always delighted to, to chat to you guys because you’re both doing such incredible work in the birth space. So it’s nice to combine mind and body in there in one space.

Roxanne: Yeah! And we were so excited to have you come on the podcast to talk about the mental preparation aspect of birth.

So we talk a lot in MamasteFit about the physical preparation with fitness, as well as all of the labor comfort techniques. And we, normally it’s easier to show all of the physical supports, like hip squeezes, what can we do for massage, and all of these tools, but we don’t share a ton about the mental preparation of like doing Hypnobirthing and guided meditations and stuff like that. And so we’re really excited to have someone like an expert to come and talk to us about it.

Tracy: Yeah, so I guess we should define what is mindset and why is it so important kind of coming into, into pregnancy. So if you think of it as being, our mindset develops over the years and it’s influenced by, our, parents, our family and friends. But if you think of it as almost like a collection of our beliefs, our attitudes, and thought patterns that we have become part of us over the years.

And many of us will recognize in ourselves, if you have what’s considered like a growth mindset, which is quite flexible, or a fixed mindset, which is, “no, it has to go this way.” And when we have a fixed mindset, we tend to see quite a lot of attachment to the birth outcome. So it’s having birth preferences that are 10 pages long, it’s trying to control every aspect of it. Whereas with GentleBirth, what we wanted to do is help people wherever you are, when you’re sitting down and thinking about, “What is my mindset?” And just going to notice it throughout the day, or if you have a challenge or something that comes up today, notice how you talk to yourself. That will be a clue into how your mindset has evolved over the years. And, but it’s, we all have to come back to when we are so focused on the outcome, we’re, forgetting about the whole process and how helpful the process can be for us.

So birth is unpredictable and a perfect birth is not the goal. The goal is for moms to come out of this experience feeling empowered that they felt in control of what they could control, which is their mindset, their attitude, how things were unfolding in the moment. So when I’m talking to moms, I’ll usually start with- and you guys know this as well from like the physical preparation cause I always go back to kind of sports psychology, which is a big part of GentleBirth and it’s that- how do you cope when things don’t go to plan?” And it’s building in that flexibility in birth, because it is unpredictable. And then, how do you adapt in that moment? Can you adapt? Do you have that flexibility, that mental flexibility to adapt if something does come up out of left field on the day, or even before the day? Maybe you’ve planned to have a home birth and something has now come up that has now completely changed that plan, and now you are going to somewhere where maybe that really was not somewhere where you wanted to be and you had intentionally prepared for a home birth. And understanding like these questions like, “How do you adapt?” will help you understand then whether you’re going to spiral into fear, and panic, and more pain during labor, or if you’re going to step into more confidence and more empowerment.

So it always starts with the end result being, are we just focused on one kind of birth, or can we help moms prepare for whatever comes their way on the day? And have that mental resiliency and flexibility to be able to stay present with what’s happening in the moment and not believe everything we think. Our minds are just, it’s a muscle, and we have to train it just like we train our body for labor.

Roxanne: Yes. I love that you first started with like the mindset portion, because that is a huge part of the mental prep, but it’s also, I’ve only ever heard like growth and fixed mindset when it comes to like finances and changing your finances or like growing and entrepreneurship and stuff like that, so it was really cool to see that applied to birth. Because everyone says you want to have a growth mindset, just like in all aspects of like financial, but like in birth also, as well, because that fixed mindset could really have an impact when you are only focused on the goal. If your goal is to have a home birth, it’s almost like it’s like home birth or bust. And in some aspects, like it may not be safe any longer to be at home, but if you continue to stay, then it potentially could have some negative outcomes. Because, home birth is beautiful, I fully support anyone’s choice to go and deliver at home. I would love to support everybody at home. But I also am aware that sometimes things happen and we need to go to the hospital, but if we’re stuck in that fixed mindset of the outcome, then that kind of also creates negative outcomes, or like it’s dangerous, almost.

Tracy: Absolutely.

Roxanne: I hate to use the word dangerous, but like it’s a little dangerous. But I also think like sometimes, even as medical providers, like the people supporting your birth can be stuck on the fixed mindset of the outcome of healthy mom, healthy baby that we forget about the process of supporting women in labor because that is a whole huge portion of birth that we’re like, we’re just not supporting because we’re like, “Oh, we need healthy mom, healthy baby,” but like not forgetting about giving them choices, helping them feel empowered, supporting them mentally. So I think I love that mindset application to birth.

Tracy: Well, “Control the controllables,” that’s a mantra that we live by.

Roxanne: And I love that!

Tracy: It is, because it really brings it down to a very kind of basic level of, “There is only so much I can control on the day and everything else I have to let go of.”

So what can we do? Well, influence what you can. So, okay, so if I’m preparing for labor, I can influence, I can practice my breathing, I can practice my meditation, I can practice my Hypnobirthing, I can hopefully choose where I’m going to give birth, and hopefully have options. But for someone maybe who might not have options and for whatever reason, maybe they have a complicated pregnancy and hospital makes sense for them, and more intervention absolutely makes sense in some cases, but it’s, it’s about being able to let go of the things we cannot control. Because we’re in this wonderful life where so much happens around us that we have no influence on. So yeah, it’s what can we control and what can we let go of?

So we can control maybe our birth team, whether we’ll have a doula with us, how prepared our partner is. So there is a huge amount that we really can prepare and stack the odds in our favor. And when it comes to a mental prep, because again, like it’s, we’re so focused for so long on knowledge transfer when it comes to childbirth education. So you take a class and you’ve learned all the facts about the stages of labor, the length of labor, relaxation, etc, but if we have to recognize that pain begins in the brain. And so, we’re so focused on what’s happening below the neck, but everything that’s happening up here is having a cascading effect on our hormones, on our physiology. So it just makes sense that we train our brain for the best possible outcome on the day. Because we want moms coming out of this experience, feeling that they are, emotionally, physically, spiritually in a really good place as they step into this next huge transition in their adult life of parenting and that adventure. And if they’ve had what they perceive to be a positive experience, then they have such an advantage, going into the challenges of that transition and the everything that goes along with it.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Tracy: And it’s not to say that GentleBirth or Hypnobirthing will prevent everyone from having a challenging birth, but we do know that meditation is a buffer to emotional stress, and anything that we can do to regulate our emotions in labor is going to have an impact on our pain levels. And that’s like in every piece of research pain is what our body usually perceives when we’re talking about labor, not just the physical sensations, but everything in the environment that’s either making us feel empowered and safe, or making us feel unsafe. And if we feel unsafe, the body is just not going to work with us.

Roxanne: Yeah, I loved your first like statement about like the hormones and like our labor starts in our brain, pain starts in our brain, like we have the physical sensation of pain, but those are just like a sensation, like a stimulus of the pain on our body that then goes to our brain to tell us, “Oh hey, that’s painful.” It’s a lot like when you touch a stove, it takes you a couple seconds to be like, “Oh, ow! That was painful,” because it has to travel to your brain. So pain, in our mindset, in our brain, is so powerful in our ability to control the amount of pain that we’re feeling.

And I mean, I don’t know if we like fully understand the brain in the pain aspect, but I feel like when we support birth, there are people who are experiencing their contractions, and they’re just, they’re, I always say it’s like the coping bus, they’re like just rocking it, the coping bus is just driving along, and the struggle- oh no, it’s the coping train. I don’t know why I like trains and buses, but, the coping train, you’re on the train, and you’re on the tracks, and you’re going, but then the struggle bus is always right there, waiting for you to fall off the train, and it’s waiting. But if you could just stay on that coping train, but like someone could say something of, “Oh, hey, are you interested in an epidural? You look like you’re not coping anymore,” or, “Hey, you look like you need some help,” that just pulls people off the train and puts them on the bus for them to be like, “Well, I feel like I’m coping, but they’re saying I don’t look like I’m coping,” and then they just spiral.

Tracy: Yeah. Oh, it’s very easy.

Roxanne: And if you can just pull them back and put them back on the train, then they’re able to rock it. But like for that, like time period that they’re on the bus, their contractions are more painful. Like they’re not as able, they’re not able to relax as much during them. And they’re like, “I, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore. This is… I don’t know what happened, but I, this is so painful now,” because they were like pulled off of that train because their mindset was like, they were pulled out of that mindset that they were on.

And I feel like that’s so powerful to be able to control and stay on the coping train. But it takes some work. Some people can do it. if you are naturally calm, cool, collected in all daily activities and stress doesn’t bother you, I do find like during labor, you probably didn’t need to prep because like your life was your prep.

Tracy: Yeah.

Roxanne: But like for me, I’m a pretty high stress individual and I get anxious really easily.

So I was like, “I know I need to do some sort of prep because I need coping tools to be able to keep me on the coping train and off the struggle bus.” Even during labor, I still like, there are times I still went on the bus, but then I was able to hop back on the train with the tools that I had built up. But I know it’s not always accessible because you have to listen to these tracks or like practice meditation. And if you, with my first, I had no one, like my husband was deployed. So I just would listen to them as I would fall asleep in my house by myself. I didn’t have to wear headphones when I was falling asleep because I would just play it out loud and it would just turn off when it turned off. But then when I had another kid, it was a lot harder to be able to do that cause again, I had to wear headphones cause my daughter slept in bed with us. My husband, he wasn’t deployed, so he was also sleeping in bed with me. So I couldn’t as easily incorporate that into my life. And that was, Gina was like, “Oh, I have three kids. I couldn’t do Hypnobirthing or like practice all of these things because I couldn’t,” she’s like, “I was not comfortable with the headphones in.”

So do you have any tips for people on how to incorporate like meditation or like Hypnobirthing or the GentleBirth app into their day if they don’t have time to just like sit, relax, and listen to the tracks because we have other responsibilities?

Tracy: Yeah. I always say on the first, if you’re having your first baby, you have just, and I won’t say everyone, but a lot of women will have extra time in their day to practice. But then the second baby comes around, and I hear this all the time when the moms come back to me saying, “I just, I guess I’m trying to, I have a toddler, I work and I’m trying to find the time to do this and…” But it is, it’s, I always say, it’s not about, if we talk to moms about fitting in the practice, we’ll always find a million excuses not to fit it in. But if we build it in, that’s, and again, it’s a little kind of, it’s semantics but…

Roxanne: A little shift in mindset.

Tracy: Build it in. So let’s say for someone, so like for GentleBirth, we incorporate meditation practices, Hypnobirthing, breathing techniques, pelvic floor exercises- there’s like over 140 different training sessions within the app.

So if, so let’s just say today I am 34 weeks and I open up my app and it’s going to give me my daily recommendation, my daily brain training. So, when you’re getting closer to the big day, you might see wow, that’s like a full time schedule here. I’ve got a lot to do today. But it’s like it’s a recipe. I think of it as a recipe that I have tweaked and curated and played around with, like over, like we’re coming up on our 20th anniversary. So for me, it’s like that there’s a recipe and if you can follow the recipe as much as possible, it pays in so many ways.

So, right now, like this morning, it might say, “Five minutes of affirmations.” And I always say, “Okay, so you can’t do five minutes of affirmations before you get out of bed in the morning?”

Roxanne: Yeah.

Tracy: So let’s do five minutes of affirmation. Let’s set the alarm clock five minutes earlier. Let’s do five minutes of them. And there’s one particular, the good morning affirmations, I think are just relevant for anyone on the planet. and there’s content as well for partners, female partners, dads as well, cause they’ve got their own kind of stress levels happening as well, and their preparation. So let’s say five minutes of good morning affirmations, something that’s going to influence your mindset before you even get out of the bed, so you’re more likely to get out of the right side of the bed instead of the wrong side of the bed, as we say.

And then there’s maybe a 10 minute meditation on self compassion, I think that is a really wonderful practice that more women should be using for daily life, nevermind birth prep. But it’s a 10 minute compassion meditation that you can do on your lunch break. And it’s a nice way just to reboot physically and mentally for 10 minutes out of your lunch break.

Then maybe on the way home from work, you’re going to listen to some of the driving sessions. So there’s audio that is for driving as well. So they’re not hypnotic, more upbeat, and again, so you’re on the way home now to your toddler and you’ve had a busy day, so let’s put something on that’s going to be inspirational and get us in a more positive mindset before we walk in the door and see our family.

And then in the evening time, maybe you’re going to do your longer Hypnobirthing, which is maybe 40 minutes. And we’ll put that on as we’re going to sleep. So it is achievable. It is doable, but we have to have the mindset of, “Oh yeah, well, I’m building this into my day.”

Roxanne: Rather than fitting it in.

Tracy: We’re already stressed with our schedules already being full to the brim, so let’s find ways that we can incorporate the practices. And, as you were asking, for someone who may be wondering what other ways can they practice during the day? They can just practice simple awareness of noticing your self talk. Notice how you talk to yourself during the day. Notice where your focus is. Is your focus on what’s going right at the moment or what’s going wrong? Maybe some of the moms that are using prayer as there a meditation.

And so it’s, there’s a really a million ways that we can prepare mentally for birth. Meditation takes a little bit more effort. Hypnobirthing is, it is such a beautiful relaxation tool and helps shift beliefs that really don’t serve us, but it’s very passive. So you press play and you can snooze through it- and I absolutely loved that part of my own birth prep. But the meditation is though, like it’s, maybe it’s a five minute, maybe it’s five minutes, and we keep them intentionally short because you’re training focus. We are training ourselves so you are very much awake, alert, and aware. So if you find yourself nodding off, then it’s, okay, well, maybe we actually need to sit in a kitchen chair, so that we’re not going to nod off, and we just pay attention to what our mind does when we sit in silence for a few minutes.

So, so it’s noticing, “Oh, my mind has just gone off now to think about what we’re doing this weekend,” or, “Oh, I was just thinking about that argument I had with my boss the other day,” and this is all generating stress in the body because our mind rarely wanders off to tropical beaches.

Roxanne: Yeah. Why not though?

Tracy: I know! Well, that’s part of the brain. The brain is focused on threats. It’s a survival mechanism. So it’s not interested in the nice experiences. It’s always scanning for threats and what it perceives to be a threat to us.

So, yeah, you have that five minute meditation and it’s work because you notice like a million times your mind has gone off in different directions and then you notice, “Oh, look, I’m replaying something, or, I’m now I’m in the future.” We just bring it back to the present moment. And that’s the moment of mindfulness. It’s that awareness of, “Oh, I, I lost, literally lost my train of thought here, and I’ve gone off road where I don’t need to be going,” because as you were mentioning about the trains and the buses I think about, meditation really helps become more aware of your train of thought. So our train of thought almost always will take us to stress town. So as we start to pay more attention to what’s going on up here, we start to recognize sooner, “Oh, I’m on the train to stress town. I’m hopping off and I’m going to bring my attention back to my breath, bring my attention back to how my body feels sitting in the chair,” just that present moment. And then we’re in that present moment, we’re, not engaging with that stress response. We’re just breathing in this moment, for this one contraction. We’re not thinking about the last one, or what’s coming. All we’re doing is this surge in this moment and it’s, it’s so… it frees you up mentally for so much more. Like as parents, the less time I spend on a train of thought taking me to stress town, the happier everybody is. So it’s not just good for me, it’s good for everyone around me as well.

Roxanne: I feel like it’s such an important practice, not just for birth prep, just for like life in general. I mean, like just in this podcast episode, I like completely lost my train of thought earlier and that happens so often! But I do feel like because I had a meditation practice prior to kids, cause well, it was just me, so it was easier to definitely be able to build into my day. I didn’t have children like being like, “What are you doing? Stop sitting there being silent and play with me,” and I’m like, “Okay.” But I feel like when I was doing it, I was definitely a different person. And it helped with my birth preparation because I knew I loved meditation. I mean, I don’t know if I would ever say love because it’s still very hard. But I really enjoyed meditation, I knew I liked who I was.

I had done like the lemon test, where like someone reads that lemon test and if your mouth waters and you can taste the lemon after they read it, then like you are more susceptible to like hypnosis. So I was like, “I think Hypnobirthing really would be amazing for me because apparently I’m incredibly susceptible to hypnosis,” and I feel like it was so easy to implement in my first pregnancy, but I do feel like it’s still carried over into my subsequents. It’s like I built the foundation and then even though I wasn’t able to listen to the tracks daily in my second pregnancy, or even my third pregnancy, I would listen to the GentleBirth app. The five minutes in the morning, or like randomly throughout the day, I’d like to be able to listen to them. I do love that you have driving because that’s the biggest thing with Hypnobirthing is you cannot drive because they’re like, “It’s dangerous. Please do not listen to these tracks while driving a vehicle.” You can be if you’re the passenger, but not the one driving the car. And I was like, dang, that’s like a majority of my day if I’m not at work, is driving to and from work! But I love that you have driving ones because that is something that someone could easily implement into their day because we all drive at some point.

Tracy: Yeah. And there’s other ways, like if even, even without ever taking out the app and like driving even, there are, again, ways that we can incorporate this into our daily practices, just being present with whatever we’re doing. Whether that is, we can be driving, we can be loading the dishwasher, we have some sessions in the app that are for mindful walking. So it’s just mindfulness can be a way of life, not something separate from, that we have to go do. And it becomes part of that mindset.

And what I really enjoy about it, and one thing that I can’t stop talking about when I talk about mindfulness and this practice is that it’s- and I don’t think you really appreciate it when you’re having your first baby and you don’t know what’s on the other side because you’re so focused on labor and getting through labor- but when we have this huge transition that is coming up for us, if we don’t have any skills in being able to regulate our emotions, then our emotions will run our lives for us, and usually not in positive ways. We’re seeing it at the moment if you’re just here in the U.S., there’s huge amount of flux, there’s huge amount of changes and uncertainty. So for me, like this is, it’s even more important now to be practicing our meditation because ideally I would love these, I want these skills to be taught starting in kindergarten. Let’s help our four year olds emotionally regulate themselves! Because birth is, for many of us, it’s our first real engagement with hospital services and maternity services, and this huge event of labor and birth, but we’re going to have other significant challenges in our lives further down the line. So that could be illness, it could be divorce, a job loss. These are all part of the human experience. But if we don’t have any tools or any skills, then we’re just buffeted around by the news and everything else that’s going on around us, instead of being able to stay focused, stay grounded and emotionally regulated. Because in labor, if you can’t regulate your emotions, that adrenaline is flying around, it is shutting everything down. So if we can be in a space where we’re focused….

And I don’t know if you used it in the GentleBirth app, like the one audio that everybody raves about is The Labor Companion, because it is, I am in literally in your ear talking you through each surge in such a focused way. And it’s part of our surge timer, the contraction timer that comes along free with the app as well. It is focused on this, on that in narrowing the focus down. So you’re not listening to whatever is going on if people are talking in the room as much as possible. We’d like our partner to facilitate communication when we’re in that deep state of labor land. Because it’s about, I always say, it’s the voice in your ear telling you, “You can do this,” has to be louder than the voice in your head telling you, “You can’t.”

Roxanne: Yeah.

Oh, I love that because I know like words of affirmation just in general in labor is so powerful. People, like whenever we talk about it, we’re like, just telling someone that they’re doing an amazing job and that they’re so strong, and you love them is so powerful. And people are always like, “Okay….” And then every birth afterwards, they’re like, “Oh my God, like you guys were complimenting me so much and telling me I was doing so amazing and it was so helpful!” And I was like, “I know!” How much do you like it when someone tells you you did a good job just like outside in like daily life. Like we all love external validation even though it’s like, even if that’s not something we like are driven by, like external validation, if someone tells you like, “You did an amazing job today,” that still feels really good and it brings you into this oxytocin surge. You’re like, “Oh my god like people appreciate me for what I’m doing,” and it makes you feel good.

Tracy: Yeah.

Roxanne: So that makes sense, during labor, that also feels really good. I mean, like I’m telling that to myself usually in labor, “Oh, you’re amazing. You got this. Just one more contraction,” like just in my own head, but like having someone tell you that. And a lot of people will listen to tracks that are like specific for, “you are in labor right now.”

So I love that you have that. I think you had told us about it, but I like completely forgot about them during labor, cause I was like, “I just want this baby out of me.”

Tracy: And we know that when we look at the sports psychology again, like looking at athletes and professional athletes, we know that positive self talk improves endurance and pain tolerance, so.

Roxanne: Yeah!

Tracy: It’s like, come on, let’s use the brain to our advantage on the day. Because if we haven’t trained it, it’s going to go do what it normally does, which is train to stress town.

Roxanne: Yes. So I love that. The importance of the mental prep is not always harped on, and we obviously teach a lot about the science so you understand what is happening in your body. And I think that helps people be able to cope with it, cause like we’re very like concrete where we need to know, “Oh, this is what’s happening with your body and this is causing this, and then this is going to eventually lead to this.” But that doesn’t always help a lot of people to be like, “Well, I’m still in pain. Like these contractions are painful to me. This is how I would describe it. Like how do I cope with that?” And so then you get the physical stuff and that helps decrease the pain, but if we can decrease the pain that’s being perceived here, that could be like a like a freaking game changer completely.

I mean, like pain free birth, do I believe everyone can have a pain free birth? I don’t know. Not all of us can. I did Hypnobirthing, I’d still describe it as slightly uncomfortable, a little painful. But some people can if they can change their mindset and do that, all those mental games, almost, in your mind to change it.

Tracy: It’s a hack!

Roxanne: Yeah, it’s a mind hack! Life hack.

Tracy: Because I even, I was speaking to someone about this recently and for my, I had a home birth on my second and I do remember there were some points during the labor that were very intense. And I did have some back labor, and I would consider that to be intense, but it was painful. And I do remember having moments of thinking to myself, I heard an ambulance in the distance and I thought, “Get them here. I’m done with this! Let’s just go to hospital!” And then I realized, okay, that’s not going to serve me right now, and it’s going to pass, so if I can just focus on this. It’s keeping with my breath, it’s going to pass. And then it was over and I was like, okay, we’re good.

Because I think one of the really nice aspects of the GentleBirth approach is that our philosophy has always been that a positive birth comes in many forms and is only defined by mom. It is not defined by my best friend, my sister, my OB, or my midwife, or my doula. So when mom’s sign up for the app, they get to choose their journey. So, let’s just say a mom is choosing or maybe has no choice and has to have a planned Cesarean. She is also about to go through a very anxiety provoking couple of months preparing for surgery to meet her baby, and, this huge transition after into parenthood. Doesn’t she deserve to have the same tools? Or that mom who is the VBAC mom, or I just, I wanted to make it to really hand the power back to the moms to say, “I will define what a positive birth is.” And if that is the epidural where in 10 minutes after I’ve arrived into the hospital, who am I to say that’s not the way to do it?

So really, our approach is that we can’t always control our initial reaction. Something comes up at a left field, our initial reaction is going to be what it’s going to be.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Tracy: But we can then have a moment of, okay, well, I can continue down this, with this reaction, or I can adapt my response to something that is healthier for me, healthier for my baby.

So it’s, there’s just so many ways that we can really prepare for the rest of our postpartum, and in a way that will be really supportive to ourselves, for our own mental health and for our baby’s mental health, too.

Roxanne: Yeah, because I feel like by doing all of the mental prep of Hypnobirthing meditation during pregnancy, it was really important for my postpartum journey. And I noticed like when I stopped doing it, my anxiety got worse, slowly, as well as it was harder to stay in the moment.

But with, like we keep talking about like the stress, and like the hormones that like release when we’re feeling more stressful, so like you’re on the struggle bus, but during transition, I feel like the mental prep makes the biggest difference in transition. During labor, you can use physical comfort to overcome it, for sure with the contractions and the surges. You can use a lot of physical prep, like a TENS unit, hip squeezes, to overcome and make it to transition. But transition in particular, which is a question that a lot of people ask me when I teach my class at the birth center is like, “How do I deal with transition?” Or like, “When I can’t do it anymore, what do I do?”

Tracy: Yes!

Roxanne: That’s when we’re releasing all of these stress hormones, and this is a good and natural response. You’re releasing stress hormones to prep you to push a baby out, and your baby’s got to do a lot of stuff when they come out so it’s prepping your baby to like breathe and transition to life outside of the womb. Cause I mean, they’re changing their entire circulatory system, they got to breathe, they got to eat on their own, they got to do a lot of things. So we want these stress hormones, but if you don’t have the coping tools to deal with stress, you’re probably going to be on the spectrum of more chaotic. Or you’re going to be on the spectrum of calm if you have those coping tools. Most of us are usually in the middle, and this is a lot of self doubt. People have a lot of self doubt, or they’re like, very questioning of their thoughts, and this is when they’re asking for help.

And that’s most people, it’s like they don’t have the coping tools, like you’re saying, like compassion for ourselves and also confidence. I feel like meditation builds confidence in ourselves to be able to be like, “I got this. This may suck in this exact moment, but we’re going to get through this and I got it,” And like you’re less confused and less doubtful of your abilities. Or like, I know I’m not going to be in labor forever, but for a lot of people they are like, ” This this is it. This is just who I am now. I’m just going to be pregnant forever, in labor forever, transition is going to last forever. Like maybe I can go to the hospital and get an epidural,” and they’re just spiraling. But if we could develop these coping tools during pregnancy to be able to stay on the calmer side during this transitional process, regardless of what is going on around you, because like with birth centers and home births it’s usually a less stressful environment, there’s less people, you have a lot more control. But if you deliver at a hospital, which 95 percent of people are delivering in hospitals, it’s a lot less control. So if we have these tools to deal with that increase in stress hormones, which again is normal and good but it can feel overwhelming, so if we have the tools, it can make that transition process way less stressful for us, mentally.

And so I mean, I’m obviously in agreement with you that I think like the mental, and like the meditation, and the Hypnobirthing, and just like the mindfulness practice is so helpful, but it is really hard to build into your day if you’re not intentional about it. But I do love the saying of changing the wording- build it into your day rather than being like, “Oh man, I got to fit in my meditation practice,” because that just makes it seem like a chore and no one wants to do chores.

Tracy: Yeah, it should be something that you really enjoy doing, that you look forward to doing, because you are doing something like that’s not just really good for your own mental health and physical health, but your baby’s as well.

There is, and I always, I come back to this study, there was a study done in San Francisco a couple of years ago, working with a vulnerable population of expectant moms. And they were given, I think it was six weeks worth of meditation practices, so I think it was like 15 minutes a day. So really, I mean, I’m like, cause I will say, “Okay, spend 15 minutes less on TikTok and 15 minutes more on your practice!” And what they found was, and this was around mindful eating as well, which again, in pregnancy can be very helpful. So what these moms were practicing was very simple breathing techniques, and they checked in with these moms then at six months later. And what they found was not only were these moms mentally in a really good space compared to the moms who didn’t around their own stress levels, but the meditation practice had an impact on their baby’s stress response. So their baby’s returned more quickly to the baseline than the babies who weren’t exposed to meditation during pregnancy. So for me, that is, that’s just astounding that this mental prep is not just affecting this generation of moms, we’re influencing the mindset of the next generation. So that’s, for me, it’s phenomenal.

But when we talk about stress, we do assume all stress is bad. But as you mentioned, there is a time when stress hormones are absolutely normal and encouraged, and we want them there. We’re not trying to, I mean, the idea of we could just all go live on a deserted island during a pregnancy…

Roxanne: That sounds stressful, honestly though.

Tracy: The idea of not being exposed to stress because some people are like, “Yeah, no, thanks” but what I, I guess what I want moms and partners to understand is that during pregnancy, our babies are marinating in stress hormones, or hormones of love, oxytocin, endorphins, or they’re usually getting a balance, a bit of both. But if, so for somebody who’s chronically stressed, their baby’s brain is different.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Tracy: We are shaping the architecture of our baby’s brain. It’s been shaped by the environment. And this is not another stick to beat ourselves up with. It is just like years ago when we thought, “Well, smoking, sure. What’s the harm?” And then we realized, “Oh, smoking can really affect our baby’s development.” We know that chronic stress can do the same to our babies. So that doesn’t mean we’re going to beat ourselves up because we’re in a really stressful job or, we just had a bad day yesterday, and then we’re wracked with guilt because what did we do to our babies? It’s having that information and then realizing, okay, so, stress is going to happen. But I can pay attention a little bit more closely to when I’m getting stressed and I can shorten that stress response. But if I don’t know that this stress response is really not good for me when I’m playing it over and over, it is affecting the architecture of our baby’s brains, which is going to affect their stress response. And I think in today’s world, I want all of our babies to have self compassion, to be resilient, to have flexibility. And I just think we can tolerate so much more when our mindset is adaptable and, and we have the knowledge to understand that: Yes, there’s a certain amount of stress that is natural and normal and good for us, but so many of the moms today are stuck in a stress response that has been normalized, and pregnancy can be a time of joy and connection with your body. And yes, you’re going to have a changing relationship with your body, especially in postpartum, but it just can, our mindset can really influence like how we are in the world. And for most of us, we need a little bit of help of shifting that mindset from fixed and everything has to happen this way to more adaptable, flexible and self compassionate.

Roxanne: Yeah. I do think I read a similar study about like anxiety and stress during pregnancy and postpartum, that like people, like we are afraid, almost, to seek help for those things. We think it’s like a normal part of life is to be anxious and stressed, but that it does affect your children, and that your children are then more likely to be more stressed and have increased levels of anxiety and depression as they get older. So that by you being like mindful of your state and getting treatment is actually really not just helping you, but also helping your children. Because I think with my second, I was incredibly anxious and had postpartum anxiety and depression, and I was just like in a dark hole, but I was just like, “This is just normal.” But had I like sought help, I think my son was also incredibly stressed and anxious, his like, he didn’t sleep well. Like I saw the difference between him as a baby when I wasn’t getting help and then with my third, I was like, seeking therapy, had more coping techniques, and I did have a lot more support, but I was being able, I was being proactive with my anxiety. And she had definitely a different newborn life for the first year of her life compared to my son. And I’m obviously going to have some guilt about it because had I sought help, he could potentially have had a different first year. But it’s in the past, I have to let it go, and just be better from like now on and be like, more present and work on myself, so that he can now have a better childhood from now on.

And I think that a lot of people then get caught up in the past of, “Oh, man, I’ve ruined them because I didn’t know,” and like, spiral. But if we can, again, mindfulness, stay in the present. Like, that was in the past. Let it go. Just focus on now. And then this will make the future better, so.

Tracy: And self-compassion.

Roxanne: Exactly!

Tracy: Self compassion is just, it is such, such a core part of, our approach. You know, we’re done beating ourselves up anymore. There are ways we can forgive ourselves for what we didn’t know exactly and accept that we were in a different place. But that self-compassion for me, for new moms in particular, especially like coming into breastfeeding, and again, it’s kind of tied into mindset, is the understanding of, “I do not need to believe my thoughts in the first couple of weeks of breastfeeding.” Because our mind is going to take us in a direction, generally, that is not going to be supportive of our parenting goals.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Tracy: So, I have a joke: the double hip squeeze is a brilliant tool to have in your toolkit, but it is not going to help you at 3:00 AM when you’re trying to get your baby to latch and your partner is asleep, and you’re thinking, “Is this my life?” It’s starting, it’s having that self-compassion, and that noticing your self-talk at 4am, because it’s, in postpartum, that emotion regulation, if you don’t have it, because your hormones are on a roller coaster, you know this, and then if you’re trying, if you’re having breastfeeding challenges, you’re more likely to stop breastfeeding before you really wanted to, because you don’t have those coping skills to notice, “Oh, I’m believing some nonsense.”

Roxanne: And that affects oxytocin and then that can affect the milk supply and the letdown reflex. So, I mean, I feel like we could talk about this for just hours and hours because we’re both pretty passionate about it- and Gina knew that this would be a good conversation for me, because I love this kind of stuff and mindfulness and meditation and Hypnobirthing- but just to like round it up:

During pregnancy, mindfulness practice is beneficial for pregnancy stress, anxiety during pregnancy, but as well as helping you be able to cope during labor. And then it carries on into the postpartum. So having a mindfulness practice, yes, it’s a birth prep technique and a very effective birth prep technique, but it’s also a life hack to be able to navigate all of the stressors that we have throughout our entire life. Especially now in 2025, we all have some sort of stress in our life, whether it is good or bad stress, but being able to cope with those stresses so that it doesn’t affect us because anxiety and stress and depression is at a higher level in 2025. So if we can develop these tools, yes, it’s good for us, yes, it’s good for our babies and our births, but also like for our long term health, these practices. And it can be just like you’re saying it’s five minutes when you wake up in the morning. Just put it on as you are starting to wake up. And like the worry of like headphones, wearing headphones, like, it’s beneficial for everybody. If your kids hear it, it’s good for them. Just put it on your little speaker in your room, everyone can benefit, even if it’s like birth specific, just put it on, you’ll all be lulled to sleep as you get ready for bed, you’ll all be like woken up in a great place. If you’re driving and all your kids, instead of listening to like Baby Shark, which might like just cause you more stress, listen to some driving meditations and like this could help just create long term coping skills to again, obviously the most important for all the people listening, birth prep, but lifelong, like stress management.

Tracy: And for yourself, you know what, I love Hypnobirthing, but I do think adding meditation, mindful meditation to it just takes it to another level.

Roxanne: I do.

Tracy: Because with Hypnobirthing, your, think of your first couple of weeks postpartum, when do you have time to go lie down and do a 40 minute relaxation session?

Roxanne: It was only when I would fall asleep.

Tracy: Yeah. So, so we don’t have, you don’t have the headspace for it, but when we’re practicing mindfulness you will have a gazillion opportunities to practice mindfulness with your baby every single day. You’re going to change a million diapers. Why not do it mindfully? Why not connect with your baby in a different way? Because it is mind numbing changing diapers all day. And if you’re at home and maybe you don’t have, and you’re a new mom and you’re feeling isolated, we know that self compassion reduces feelings of loneliness. So even just offering yourself some self compassion, being present when we change the millionth diaper today, when sitting and just when we’re nursing our baby, just feeling our breath, noticing our baby’s expressions, keeping our focus in the moment.

But it’s not like we’re all these Zen experts that are just sitting and chanting all day. We’re humans. We’re going to have moments when this is really tough, when we lose our temper. And I think again, that self compassion should be the first thing we reach for when we feel like we’ve we’ve fallen off the bandwagon a little bit, because beating ourselves up is wasted energy. That loving approach to ourselves will make such a difference and is a great example, I think, to set up for our kids.

Roxanne: Yeah, I love that because I mean, self compassion, just a side note is like loving our bodies as they are after having babies. Like you don’t want to look in the mirror and be like, “Oh man, I wish I like, didn’t have this here,” cause your children hear that, especially our daughters and they see that. And they’re like, “Oh, I shouldn’t, I should look a different way. I should try to look this specific way because that’ll make me love myself more,” when that’s not what matters. It’s the self compassion that we have inside that matters.

And again, we could talk about this for forever, but do you have one last like piece of advice or tip for someone who is preparing for pregnancy, or birth, or just like motherhood in general that you would like to give to our listeners?

Tracy: I guess for anyone who’s listening or watching and is feeling overwhelmed by everything we’ve just covered, like how stress can be bad for you and it changes your baby’s brain- for today, all I want you to do is just notice. Just notice where your mind goes. Does it go to places that are going to be supportive of a positive birth, or is it going to places that are not supportive? We have another kind of mantra that I think it would be really helpful, especially for anyone whom this is the first time hearing about Hypnobirthing or GentleBirth.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Tracy: Ask yourself when you’re on social media today, I’m not saying give up social media, but I’m asking you to be a little bit more mindful when you’re on social media, ask yourself is the video, or account, or birth story I’m about to read or watch or listen to, is it going to make me more excited about my baby’s birth or more anxious?

And then you have the power to decide. You might just say, “Well, let me, I’ll try it for a few minutes,” and if you start to feel that anxiety creeping in, change the channel, keep scrolling.

Roxanne: Yeah. I love that because, yeah, social media can really increase a lot of anxiety sometimes, I feel.

Tracy: Yes.

Roxanne: It’s because there’s a lot of, yeah, wide ends of the spectrum. So I love that advice.

And thank you again, Tracy, for coming on to the podcast to talk all about mindset, not just for birth, but like life in general. I feel like that like little tidbit and like just shift, and all the little shifts that you like recommended to make it like, again, not a chore, but something that we can build into our life to make like our entire life better is so nice.

So where can our listeners learn more from you and also about the GentleBirth app?

Tracy: Yeah, so they can download the GentleBirth app from the App Store or the Google Play Store. They go to GentleBirth.app, you’ll see everything that’s available and more information about the program. And then I have, I have just recently launched a new program that is a mindful breastfeeding program. So it is taking kind of everything that I’ve learned about preparing for birth and that emotional regulation, and put it into a breastfeeding program. And so it’s $49 for six hours of video content and includes Nancy Moorbacker’s, laid back positioning and starter positions, which is so important for, especially for first time moms, because we can almost eliminate most of that expected nipple pain if we lay back with our babies and use biological nurturing rather than the mechanics of 20 different prescriptive nose to nipple chin, and all of this, that is so confusing in the first few days of breastfeeding and help moms, again, get off to a good start and recognize when they’ve, they’re on that train of thought to stress town so that they can, get help and hopefully reach their, breastfeeding goals with a lot more self compassion and grace.

Roxanne: Right? I mean, Gina and I both used the app, maybe not as much as we could have, but definitely loved the app and we recommend it to everybody that reaches out about Hypnobirthing and meditation. So if you guys want to check it out we recommend it ourselves. And thank you again, Tracy, for coming on the podcast, this was so fun!

Tracy: Thanks, Roxanne! It was lovely to chat with you because we haven’t connected before. Talked to Gina many times and that was lovely to meet, the other partner, partner in crime for MamasteFit!

Roxanne: The other half! Thank you!

Roxanne: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed recording it with Tracy. This is one of the things that I really considered and practiced in my own birth preparation, especially with my first. And it’s something that I really probably need to implement into my daily life currently, so if you want to check out the GentleBirth app, it’s something that Gina and I both really liked during our birth preparation, and it has so many fun features within it. And it’s only $4.99 for some apps, but it’s also, if you have Medicaid, it’s covered by Medicaid so you can get it for free. So a really great resource for you to check out if you’re preparing for birth, or just like in the throes of parenthood and wanting to try it out.

If you’re pregnant and looking for more support, check out our childbirth education course, which breaks down the science of labor and birth to make it a little bit less scary and intimidating, so we can cope with labor a lot easier. We also discuss different labor techniques, so labor support, labor positions, as well as labor comfort options. So these are all different things that we can utilize to help make our birth more empowering, and so that we understand the options available to us to be able to make different choices during our birth, as it takes maybe different roads than we originally planned.

We also have our prenatal and postpartum fitness programs. Our prenatal program is designed to help keep you strong and pain free throughout pregnancy to prepare our bodies for birth and postpartum. And it comes in two main formats. We have our list based format and then our on demand format.

Our list based is just a list of exercise with demo videos that you can work throughout your own pace and it comes in a full length version and a mini version. And then our on demand version is a video that you watch and follow along with us and you work out at the same time. So both of these options are available in a bundle with our childbirth education course as well for an additional savings. And then our postpartum prep is a fitness to help return back to the sports that you once enjoyed, to include just general fitness and weightlifting, running, Olympic weightlifting, and then a return to duty for our military members. And you can check out all of those things on our website at mamastefit.com and then use code STORY10 to get an additional 10 percent off.

And this podcast is sponsored by Needed, which is a nutrition company focused on the perinatal timeframe that both Gina and I also utilize during our pregnancies, postpartums and beyond, and it’s something that we really love and recommend to a lot of our friends and any of our followers that messaged us and asked for a recommendation for a really good prenatal vitamin. And if you want to try them out, head to thisisneeded.com and use code MAMASTEPOD to get 20 percent off your first order or the first month of your subscription.