Welcome to the place where the magic happens. These tools represent hours of reading, researching, designing, creating and updating to put the best information directly into your hands.
The tools are free if you share your email. We’re trying to build a nation of people that want safer, better birth for the USA. Copyright protections apply.
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BEFORE YOU BECOME PREGNANT
The Preconception Guide
What’s preconception care?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2020) has the best definition of preconception health care that I’ve seen:
Preconception health care is the medical care a woman or man receives from a provider that focuses on the parts of health that have been shown to increase the chance of having a healthy baby.
Care BEFORE you become pregnant is important. Use this tool to screen yourself for changes you can make before conception. Active hyperlinks offer more preconception resources for women with asthma, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, and obesity.
Safe Over The Counter Medications & Products During Pregnancy
Wonder what over the counter medications are safe during pregnancy? You are not the only one!
This list is sorted by common discomforts – a quicker way to see what medication is indicated and safe for pregnancy (even before you know you are pregnant).
This handout is unique because it offers guidance on when to contact your provider to review your medications (as soon as you find out you are pregnant) and resources to find out more information about medications or products you plan to use during pregnancy or breastfeeding. On download, hyperlinks are active. App recommendations included as well.
AS SOON AS YOU BECOME PREGNANT!
Your Pregnancy Roadmap
Sometimes it’s nice to have a bird’s eye view of where you are and where you are going during your pregnancy. This roadmap does exactly that. It’s full of resources and hyperlinks to get you as prepared as possible. Put this roadmap in your back pocket for pregnancy ASAP!
FOR YOUR PREGNANCY VISITS
The First Pregnancy Visit
This is my favorite and most used tool in the clinic! The front of the tool reviews the due date, labs completed/recommended at the first visit, FAQs about your prenatal care and pregnancy education. The back side of the tool offers follow up, goals during pregnancy, when to present to the emergency room, and resources/FAQs tailored to the first trimester. Look no farther for the best education and most frequently asked questions during your pregnancy!.
The Too Good to Be True Pregnancy Guides: Your Roadmap to Every Visit During Pregnancy – *For Mamas, Students or Providers!*
- Feeling overwhelmed about pregnancy and not sure what to read or where to start?
- Do you wonder what is supposed to happen at each of your pregnancy visits with your provider other than your vital signs and listening to your baby’s heart beat?
- Are your visits only 5 minutes long, then you leave feeling like you didn’t even get to talk to your provider and you forgot all the questions you had?
- Want to buy a product that is an investment for you and your baby instead of another book? One that you can use across EVERY pregnancy?
These 9 guides will guide you from your first pregnancy visit to your 40 week visit and provide you the education, resources, FAQs, and roadmaps that you need for each visit. Whether your pregnancy is high risk or low risk, these guides will deliver evidence-based care right alongside your scheduled clinic visits.
FOR YOUR BIRTH PLAN
How To Prevent Lower Extremity Nerve Injury During Your Birth
There are wrong ways to help you push: pushing in one position for more than 30 minutes, having someone push back on your legs while you push, holding your knees with your hands so firmly that you leave fingerprints in your tissue. These don’t have to happen to you! Include this infographic in your birth plan. Read more about what nerve injury is here or hear it from Chelsea (a dear friend of mine) in her birth story.
FAMILY PLANNING
Contraception and Family Planning Tool
This tool was developed in 2020 in effort to improve contraceptive screening in a military population of pregnant women. The tool has since been updated and offers evidence-based questions to guide family planning, an option grid listing most to least effective methods, and a shared decision-making guide for the provider and patient to review about the chosen method(s). A SURE test offers the option to complete patient satisfaction at the end of counseling and additional resources are listed for more information.
Any one can print it and use it! Print it, fold it in half and make your family plan. Even better, review the tool before a provider visit and then bring it to your visit at the clinic!
*This tool was published in the Jan/Feb 2023 Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health journal. Read the quality improvement article for free here.
AFTER THE BABY + POSTPARTUM
Postpartum: 2 Weeks After Birth
Ever wonder why there’s only one visit to see your birth provider after you’re discharged home from the hospital? It’s because there is ONE postpartum visit covered under the global fee that pays out for all of your maternity care. And the healthcare system is slow to change – but that doesn’t mean your postpartum care has to slow to catch up. Your Postpartum: 2 Weeks After Birth guide will help you learn what to expect, save you time with tips, tricks and resources, and make you feel like you’re right where you are supposed to be 2 weeks after a birth. Bonus, your warning signs are listed on the guide too in case you think something might be wrong and you can’t remember what they are (the memory thing is also totally normal). Get your free guide today!
Postpartum: 6-8 Weeks After Birth
The 6-8 week postpartum visit is the *standard* visit but only 40% of women go to their visit. 40%…what does that tell you about what the visit offers? Not much. This guide sets out to review the most common complaints and milestones, while simultaneously offering you a plan for then things aren’t going like they should. Even if your birth was fantastic and your postpartum visit was completely uncomplicated and you have no complaints, the visit is still an opportunity to discuss, screen and counsel about family planning, cervical and breast cancer screening, exercise, nutrition, physical therapy, mental health, annual check ups (cholesterol, thyroid, vitamin D screening, etc.).
Make your visit above and beyond the standard postpartum visit. Get your free guide and tailor your postpartum visit to what you need – not what the system offers you.
The Phenomenal Postpartum Guides: Your Roadmap From Birth to Baby’s First Birthday – *For Mamas, Students or Providers!*
You are one step closer to being a prepared and educated mamabear. Even though there are some things that will be unpredictable in your postpartum journey, these guides are your roadmap through a system full of problems. The maternal health care system is broken and mom and baby statistics continue to get worse each year. You might not have access to a midwife or a birth provider you like and you might not even have support from local friends or family. You might feel overwhelmed and unsure about postpartum stuff and that’s understandable in a culture where birth and postpartum are not viewed as normal events in a woman’s life.
As a mama of four little ones born between 2016-2022 (including a home birth baby), a certified nurse-midwife who has attended over 1,000 births and completed 10,000 clinic visits, I’ve seen all the ways the maternity healthcare system needs to improve care from the inside and out. I’ve walked the postpartum road four times now and I have wisdom to share as a mama and a midwife.
The Phenomenal Postpartum Guides are your answer to your upcoming trip through the postpartum period. The 11 guides and 5 bonus resource guides offer an overview of each postpartum period your trip will take you through (think of each postpartum period like a different town you are visiting along a highway system), helpful shortcuts to make nursing, mothering and household care tasks easier, and encouragement and support for planned and unplanned rest stops along the way.
Guides are made for mamas to use on their own as an educational resource through the first year after birth, providers to use in their clinic or hospital setting, or for students to study and fine tune thier counseling about the postpartum period.
FOR MIDWIFERY STUDENTS
The Successful Student Midwife: How To Rock Midwifery School and Set Yourself Up for Success After Graduation
Midwifery training will give you the skills to be a midwife and pass your certification exams, but won’t teach you the skills you need to succeed after graduation and create a sustainable career as a provider. The Successful Student Midwife guide offers in-depth success tips for school, after graduation, and in your first few years as a provider. There are extensive reading lists to build a strong foundation of midwifery skills, time management skills and health care history. There is an interview prep guide with interview questions to help you prepare and rock you interviews – and when you get the job, there are guides to get you through your clinics and 24-hr shifts with less stress, more efficiency and plans to get you back home to your family and couch for recharging and rest.
The guide is a lifetime purchase – you buy it once, you get access to every updated version as long as it is updated. You could complete midwifery school without the guide – but you’re going to have to learn all the lessons in the guide on your own: through your own experience. It has taken me a decade to learn how to practice efficiently and so that I don’t burnout as a midwife. Don’t miss the opportunity to get the lessons I missed early and start your midwifery journey prepared.
This guide is the first step to helping you rock midwifery school – get yours today.