Postpartum University® Podcast

Regulating the Postpartum Nervous System | Ja'Neen Jenkins EP 230

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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What if the current "broken" postpartum care system isn't really broken... but just incomplete?

Maranda sits down with  Ja’Neen Jenkins,  a licensed professional counselor, certified childbirth educator, doula, and postpartum nutrition expert through Postpartum University, brings a rare blend of clinical expertise and personal experience to the table. She's changing the game by bridging the critical gaps in our current maternal healthcare system, offering a holistic approach that addresses everything from nervous system regulation to postpartum mental health and the vital role of postpartum nutrition. 

Check out the episode on the blog: https://postpartumu.com/podcast/regulating-the-postpartum-nervous-system-janeen-jenkins-ep-227/

Key time stamps: 

1:42: Janine's unique approach to maternal support
3:11: Identifying gaps in provider collaboration and holistic care
4:08: The critical role of a trusted liaison in maternal health
7:23: The challenges and beauty of pioneering a new care model
8:44: Navigating the tension between diagnosis and holistic care
12:24: The vital need for nutrition education in therapy
13:17: Discussing prevention in perinatal mental health
16:29: Nervous system dysregulation vs. mental health diagnoses
17:33: Deep dive into nervous system regulation for birth and postpartum
19:43: The power of HypnoBirthing and nervous system control
21:58: Applying nervous system regulation to motherhood
24:43: The role of nutrition in emotional and psychological healing
28:07: The power of relationships and collaboration in postpartum care

Connect with Ja'Neen: 

Ja’Neen Jenkins is a Licensed Professional Counselor, certified childbirth educator, doula, and postpartum nutrition expert who specializes in trauma-informed care for the perinatal journey. With a rare blend of clinical expertise and lived experience, she supports mothers through birth prep, emotional healing, and postpartum recovery with compassion and evidence-based tools. As the founder of the Covered Mama Community, she creates spaces where women feel deeply seen, supported, and empowered. Ja’Neen is passionate about helping mothers regulate their nervous systems, process their stories, and reclaim their strength.  Website  



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Speaker 1:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Bauer and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks, so that you can give your clients real, lasting solutions for lifelong well-being. Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Today we have Janine Jenkins. She is a licensed professional counselor, certified childbirth educator, doula and postpartum nutrition expert through postpartum university, I might add, and she specializes in trauma-informed care for the perinatal journey. And this is a rare blend, y'all. It's a very rare blend of clinical expertise and lived experience, and she supports mothers through birth prep, emotional healing, postpartum recovery all with compassion, evidence-based tools all of that. She's the founder of Covered Mama Community. She creates space where moms feel deeply seen, supported and empowered, and she is very passionate about helping moms regulate their nervous systems, process their own stories and really reclaim their strength. One breath, one session, one birth at a time, and I am so, so grateful that we finally have you here on the podcast, because it's been a long time coming. So welcome, janine.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here, very excited.

Speaker 1:

I love, love your background. I love everything that you are doing in the world and you are trained across multiple disciplines. How has that changed the way that you show up for moms?

Speaker 2:

Tremendously. It is something that I honestly wrote about this morning. It has this is a blueprint for me. There's, there is, like you said, nobody is doing this, and so the support that I can give to moms is something that I've only dreamed about. Being able to work with moms from the time they conceive up until the time that they feel that they don't need the support anymore is really a blessing. It is an honor for me. Watching a woman turn into a mother, going through the matrescence involvement with them, is honestly just something that I can't really put into words. I just absolutely love that I get to do this, do this job and this calling with women and families.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much and you, you know being somebody who gets to have, you know, an expertise in all of these disciplines, right, you're, you're a counselor, you support women with food, you're an expert in postpartum nutrition, doula work, childbirth, education, like all of these incredible things.

Speaker 1:

I'm curious where do you see the gaps, especially in, like, provider collaboration, right, like cause. What I witnessed is, and what I have experienced as a mom of four, is like, yeah, I want to go do all of the things for my healing and for my health. I need to go over here for education. I need to go here for pelvic floor physical therapy. I need to go over here to this nutritionist who actually knows about postpartum nutrition, right, I've gotta go see my chiropractor, right, and then, so that becomes a full-time job, right, like trying to manage all of the things, and then you have to, like, tell your story over to each and every one of these individuals, right, and so I feel like there's this big gap in care. But I'm wondering and I'm curious what your experience is with that, because you work in all of these disciplines and you get to care for moms in all of these different capacities.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it is a huge gap, I feel. The gap that I am feeling right now is that trusted person. I don't have to be the therapist, I don't have to be the doula. I don't have to be the therapist, I don't have to be the doula, I don't have to be the nutrition specialist expert. I am a mom showing up for other moms and I do need those roles.

Speaker 2:

I believe, to talk with providers, I do need the expertise in order to hold conversations so that providers can trust me as basically a liaison between, I like to say, the village and the system, and so what I do and what I've kind of turned myself into is that trusted person on both ends. I want providers to trust me because I live in an area where we are very like hospital system heavy. We birth in hospitals, that's just how it is. We don't have any birth centers anymore in our area, and so I had to find a way of bringing in this holistic approach because I know that that is what is needed in a way that providers can trust me to know that I am, you know, doing the best care for for moms, and also moms can trust me to know that I have their best interests at heart as well, and so I honestly have a lane of my own that I feel I'm navigating the needs and the gaps in the system.

Speaker 2:

I met with a provider on last Friday, so my goal is to meet with providers all different types, so lactation OBs, honestly nutritionists and find out what are their needs, what do they feel that they can't necessarily say due to ethics and due to the jobs that they hold? And how can I put that into my community? How can I get that information and make it plain for moms so that they can go into prenatal care, postpartum care with confidence, with knowing how to honestly navigate these systems in a way that feels really good and natural to them? I like to think of this as villages, and you know, in the village you had one provider that took care of all the needs, or they just had a feel of knowing their community. That is the feel that I want to bring back to maternal care, maternal health, because we know that that is what's missing right now. We're missing the village, we're missing that personal care, we're missing the community of recipes and different foods being brought down just through motherhood and generations. We're missing that, and so I'm really working to bring that back in a way that is 2025.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Do you find that that's kind of difficult to do, like you're put, you're stuck in between two places, like trying to honor moms and also trying to honor and support providers Like that's a really hard place to be. Because I also think, like this is not something that anybody has done before. We've never had to navigate these changes, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

It is something that I honestly have been going. I'll go to sleep thinking about and I'll wake up thinking about, and I will also say that it's been a beautiful journey. It's been a tough and challenging journey, but it really has been a journey where I don't have to, I don't, I don't have a blueprint. So nobody is saying you're doing this wrong. I know you've. You've been there, you know like you're there now.

Speaker 1:

That's like the whole business right.

Speaker 2:

Nobody can say you're doing it wrong. Nobody can say necessarily that you're doing it extremely right, and I think that there's beauty in that that we are curating something that is so needed and it's so authentic and it's coming from places where it's backed with evidence, but there's not much out there. So I think, yes, it's very challenging, but I'm totally up for the challenge. I enjoy doing what I do.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much. I have to ask, as, like a licensed health care provider, how do you navigate, like, the tension between diagnosing for care versus actually seeing the full story of what's going on in a mom's body? Because we know that a mom can't just come to you as a counselor or whatever and say, hey, I'm just needing some additional support, like I know this is going to be a tough time, like unless they're really affluent and can afford those sessions on their own. Like you have to have a diagnostic code, you have to make a diagnosis in order to bill insurance to get that covered. How, how does that like shift things for you? How does that? How does that work for you?

Speaker 2:

It didn't, and that is why I am, that's why I'm the founder of Covered Mama Community. I've I've stepped out of the therapy room for the most part doing what I do, because I know that not all moms need therapy and it's either I need therapy or I have nothing, and there should be something in between. Everyone is there. We know that there is not a diagnosis for I need support right, and insurance is not paying for I need support. I need somebody to talk to to get through this pregnancy. I need someone to talk to to just really deal with the internal and external factors that many moms go through, and so that's a problem and you're exactly right. If they cannot afford over $100 for a session, then a lot of moms are left with nothing. And that was my biggest issue. And in the therapy room when I was working with moms that specialize in maternal mental health and deal with a lot of PMADS and a lot of psychological birth trauma, infant child and loss, and what I was finding was a lot of this is preventable. Some moms just needed a little bit more childbirth education. I built relationships with OBs and PCPs and before moms would even come in, I would say, hey, if you can go get your labs ran, and because I know a lot of times, a lot of things that women go through, especially during their perinatal journey and even after, can be hormone related. It can be nutrition related and if we're not eating right, then I like to start there, like, what are you putting in your mouth, how you know, or what have we tried? And I found that in the therapy room, honestly, ethically, there were a lot of things that I wanted to do and a lot of you know treatment that I wanted to incorporate, that ethically I could not, and I like to say I stepped out of the therapy room so that I could treat women holistically. I can treat women, you know, with nutrition. I can treat women with physical exercise and really get to know the woman and who she is and what she needs individually, through a support type of like feel and through the, through the community, and that's that's what I do. So now I like to call myself a perinatal coach and I work with women from the time that they want to conceive until they feel that they're covered and they are good to go.

Speaker 2:

But I do think that that is a huge gap. I really, really wish more therapists that work with women in general would get more nutrition education, because what you teach us, what I learned in your program and what I'm learning again as a refresher, it's so imperative, so important. There were so many aha moments that I had when I did your training the first time and I was like this just makes so much sense. You know, like why is this not in our curriculum? You know in school, like this makes so much sense, and so I really hope that we do, and maybe that's something you can bring Marina. You know, like that that is something that is really curated into the curriculum for all providers who work with women that are childbearing.

Speaker 1:

So thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for saying all of that. And, like whoa, I have goosebumps that you, you know, recognize these massive gaps is what I call them. I know that you call them that too. And like this was not something that you could work in, and I hear so often too, like you, you mentioned prevention. Like so much of this is preventing, and I know in my work oftentimes, especially in the mental health field I this is where I see it the most the moment I mentioned prevention and perinatal mental health, it's like all of perinatal mental health providers come roaring out saying how could you say that?

Speaker 1:

What a what a privileged thing for you to say yeah, which is so frustrating and so hard, because there is, there is that privilege piece to it. I get it, I absolutely do, and there's some things that I won't get, especially as a white woman, but at the same time, there is so much that we can do and I just want everybody to be able to see that and to understand that and know that. So I appreciate you so much for bringing that up. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I like to say I used to say I want to work myself out of a job and and to really hear you say that that when we go to school, we're we are, we're learning, and we're taught that we're working on a problem. Right, Somebody is coming into our office with a problem. So, yes, prevention is an icky topic. One, because it'll put some people out of business and, two, it's not what we're taught to do. You know, and that's in all realms of healthcare, right, we're not necessarily taught how to prevent many things anymore, and so we are always working and we are always reacting to illnesses and just any kinds of conditions, when in actuality, there's so much that we could do if we just prevented things right and worked on prevention. I love that.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I have to tell you that a lot of people don't know this, but I actually went to school for a degree to become a counselor. Uh, and.

Speaker 1:

I and I dropped and I was like I had spent way too much money that I'm still paying student loans on on a background. Because it was, and not only that, like I, you know, I'm a mom of four kids. I was a foster mom for a really long time, so, like counseling and therapy was something that I was really in a lot in my, my personal life for my foster children and things like that, and it was. It was crazy to see like what do you mean? And it was. It was crazy to see like what do you mean? Like you don't believe in prevention or like this is just going to happen because of genetics, or there were, there were, there was a course this is the moment that I had left school was the professor said there was no such thing as birth trauma.

Speaker 1:

And I and I I know I know that this is not standard teaching, right, but I lost my mind and I was. You know, here I am taking courses on how to protect my mind and the others, you know, and I was just like this is absolutely crazy and being a foster mom too, like I would walk away from you know, psyche evaluations with you know the the children that I was, I was caring for and seeing these as diagnoses and I'm like is that made up? Like who? What in the world is that? You know, it was absolutely fascinating for me to see, oh yeah, in the world, and I was, and then, and of course, I left, so um, and then I, and now I'm doing what I'm doing, which is really focusing on the root, and this is something that you do. You talk about nervous system dysregulation and how that shows up in pregnancy and birth and postpartum, how it's often mistaken for mental health diagnosis. Do you want to talk about that a little bit more?

Speaker 2:

I love, I love all these topics birth trauma, my intent, all those things. Yes, yes, absolutely. Where do you want to start?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's. Let's talk about nervous system dysregulation real quick. Let's talk about you know, I love how you bring it together and I was looking at some of your content about how it's often mistaken for mental health diagnosis and it's not, and I'd love to like understand a little bit more of your thinking for that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I love talking about nervous system regulation for several different aspects. I do a lot of birth preparation. One of my main goals is one to not have the or lower the risk of PMADS Right and also lower the risk of psychological birth trauma. And so that brings it back to just really doing a lot of preparation and prevention work and also nervous system regulation. We live in a society where many of us, many moms, don't even necessarily know what it feels like to truly day to day be regulated. They don't. They may not know what that feels like in their bodies, and so I found in my therapy room that that was a lot of work. That I was. That I was doing was nervous system regulation and also, um, being a teacher of a hypnobirthing. So hypnobabies is what I teach my, my students or people, moms that come to me, which I absolutely love.

Speaker 1:

I love that too. I just want to say I did hypno babies when.

Speaker 2:

I was pregnant? Yeah, absolutely, oh, my gosh, I just think that it's, it's the foundation of life. Truly, If you can have a regulated nervous system, you can do anything. If you know how to regulate yourself and know when you're not regulated, you can do anything. And so oftentimes we talk about you know, fight, freeze, fright, Lordy, I just messed that up Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Yep, you got it.

Speaker 2:

I love to add fawning in there, and I think it's so important because that is what a lot of women that I work with find themselves doing, whether in prenatal visits, postpartum visits, right In their relationships at home, we internally are saying no, but externally we're saying we're fawning to it. We're saying, okay, you know, that's fine, I don't mind being induced, but knowing internally they don't want to be induced. Or or even in relationships, you know they're fawning with significant others, partners. And one thing that I love to teach is that, in order for you to be the mom that you want to be, in order for you to be the partner that you want to be, you have to know how to regulate yourselves and regulate your body, and knowing that that includes nutrition, that includes physical wellness, that includes mental wellness. That is why it's the foundation of truly the Covered Mama community. We do a lot of just understanding what the nervous system is you know, knowing when you're in that sympathetic nervous system, knowing when you're in that parasympathetic nervous system and understanding that there's a balance right, and it's a beautiful balance. And you need to know when I need a little bit more of this or when I need a little bit more of my parasympathetic. How do I get there? And that's what I love to teach.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned hypnobabies. I was teaching it before I even used it. You mentioned hypnobabies. I was teaching it before I even used it. And this last birth that I had with my now one year old she made one last Friday that was a full, just circle of why I do what I teach and how important it is.

Speaker 2:

When you can regulate your nervous system, you can control pain, what Like. Who would have thought? You know, I would not have thought that I would have had an unmedicated VBAC, right. I kind of defied a lot of odds with that and that was through nervous system regulation. And now I can talk about it from a different, passionate piece of my heart because I actually lived it and knowing what it can do to be regulated, even in motherhood, through toddlerhood, through, I'm sure you know, having teenagers and preteens. You definitely need a regulated nervous system. My goal for moms is to have fun in motherhood and to thrive and to be able to enjoy motherhood, and I know that that is not everyone's story. I want that to be everyone's story, though. I want them to have control in, you know, loving being. You know postpartum, you know babies cry, yes, but I know how to regulate myself during that crying, because that's what babies do, you know. And so I want moms to be regulated so they can actually enjoy and love being a mom.

Speaker 1:

I am listening to you talk and thinking, man, I need to go back to hypno babies and I don't even have a baby, right, like my, my youngest just turned six and it was such a, it was such a beautiful thing for me, Like.

Speaker 1:

I specifically remember one part in my my labor with my first, where and actually I had this with a couple of them where I would I I just remember going into like this blank space. It was like just this super calm and I would have contractions and I would have big contractions, right, I'm talking, I'm in transition and my body, I could feel the waves in my body, but I was just like you know, I don't even know how to explain it and it was. It was very specific moments in my labor where this happened, where it didn't happen in other parts of my labor, right, but it was when I was able to like really get into that and I need that in my life right now. I'm going to be real with you, right, but yeah, that's, that's an amazing thing. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And, of course, you're trained as a postpartum nutrition specialist. Yes, I would love to know what do you wish more mental health providers understood about the role of nutrition, especially in an emotional and psychological healing and psychological healing.

Speaker 2:

I wish more therapists and, honestly, providers in general understood that at least we can understand the key nutrients. One rabbit hole that I did go down when I was in your training and probably a little after, was understanding different diagnoses and how nutrition can affect those diagnoses. I have a lot of moms that come to me of course women and you know Starbucks is the thing, and it did not really dawn on me, honestly, until I really started digging more into nutrition, that if a mom is coming to me and showing symptoms of anxiety and then we're also talking about her favorite you know Starbucks coffee or drink that she thinks holds her together Absolutely. But you know, hey, let's look at this nutrition. If you are highly anxious, then we may not need to be adding a bunch of caffeine to your morning diet, right? You know not.

Speaker 2:

Of course you don't want to talk about elimination off the bat, but let's see how we can, you know, move it somewhere else during the day where you might actually benefit from it a little bit more than in the morning first thing, until we really see the effects of possibly not having it and how your body might respond to it, and then you might find that this is not something that I needed, or maybe this is something that I should not actually have at all Same with depression actually have at all Same with depression, right, just understanding that, oh, food really does affect your mood.

Speaker 2:

And I think that if we started there you know a crash course on the key nutrients and how the key nutrients can help someone's mental wellness I really think we might start a little revolution in mental wellness and in you know just our maternal health in general. That's where I would start that. That is truly something that I believe providers need to know, especially therapists understand nutritionally what could possibly help with that diagnosis or what may be a hindrance, you know, with that particular, those particular symptoms and or diagnosis in general. I really think that that's that should be taught, that should be textbook for us.

Speaker 1:

It should. It absolutely should, and you are. You are doing this work. You are doing some incredible things. What would you say to the providers who are listening in and they feel, man, I'm stuck in a broken system? I'd love to talk about nutrition, as you know a counselor or a therapist but it's not in my scope. I feel like I'm going to get in trouble. These are people who care deeply, but they aren't sure how to show up differently. Do you have any words of wisdom for them?

Speaker 2:

Yes, relationships, because I understand that certain professions and professionals cannot say certain things, and that is when you build partnership, that is when you that's the power of collaboration. It should not be a one off, you know situation. I believe that OB collaboration should be it should be so multidiscipline. You know like there should be so many referrals happening even within those offices. We should have different disciplines in hospitals. You know that that's, you know, my perfect world. But I would say my biggest piece of advice is really to build those relationships with, with those that can do and say the things that you may not be able to do or say.

Speaker 2:

You know, making and keeping things very positive around different disciplines and understanding that there are different strokes, truly for different folks, how we say it down south, and it's not a one way for everyone.

Speaker 2:

There are so many different pathways to truly get to the best outcome and the best outcome for us all in this discipline and working with moms should be healthy moms. Healthy moms means we have healthy families, and so I would definitely say relationships and building those partnerships with disciplines that maybe can complement what you do and build a relationship so you know what they do and you know their work because there is so much power in warm handoffs, there's so much power in me telling a mom hey, as I did this morning, hey, this babysitter is amazing. It's an automatic trust, right? Or this provider, this OB, I know they're going to take good care of you. It's an automatic trust, right? Or this provider, this OB, I know they're going to take good care of you. It's an automatic trust. It's a no brainer for moms, and so being able to do that back and forth, I believe that can really chip away at what the gaps that we're really trying to close.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much and really it sounds like getting to know these people too. Yeah, getting to know what. What would they do? How would they handle this particular client with a specific need? So that you learn to trust them, so that you can overhand over that, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I often hear, like, well, how do you do that, miranda, in an environment where there's not those people that you can trust? Right, because we all know there's different strokes for different folks, right? I'm from the South, too, and how do we manage? How do we do that?

Speaker 1:

And I would say, like there's like this whole online world where providers particularly, are no longer stuck supporting clients from just their private location, like they can work with moms all over, would you say that's true too.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I live it. I personally live it right when things are not in my own body I deal with some thyroid issues and when I could not find the provider that I could trust in my own area we have to drive six hours to do it and I found her online. And so, yes, yes, we have a whole new world and, of course, we want you know things to be local and, if we can you know, because of limitations and barriers that some moms may have, but definitely if you have the means and we can you know, because of limitations and barriers that some moms may have, but definitely if you have the means and you can, the internet is it can be a beautiful thing, and it is a beautiful thing when we use it appropriately.

Speaker 1:

I love this conversation. I can sit here with you forever and ever and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here and for sharing your wisdom and all of your experience. This has been a golden episode, so I'm very excited to share this with the world. So thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for the invitation.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for being a part of this crucial conversation. I know you're dedicated to advancing postpartum care and if you're ready to dig deeper, come join us on our newsletter, where I share exclusive insights, resources and the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. Sign up at postpartumu the letter ucom which is in the show notes, and if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving you.

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Maranda Bower

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