Empowering Your Clients for Birth: The Missing Piece in Birth Preparation

Birth preparation involves far more than physical readiness. In this episode, Ama K. Karikari, Esq., joins Lynn Schulte, PT, to discuss how pelvic health therapists can help clients build self-trust, find their voice, and become active participants in their birth experience. While outcomes are unknown, clients who feel empowered, informed, and supported often navigate birth with greater confidence and less fear.

Clinical Takeaways For Pelvic Health Practitioners

• Birth preparation should include emotional, relational, and physical readiness.
• Validating a client's experience builds confidence and self-trust.
• Self-advocacy begins long before labor starts.
• Understanding options and support systems can improve birth confidence.
• Partners, doulas, and advocates play a critical role during labor.
• Pelvic health therapists are uniquely positioned to help clients trust their body's wisdom.

Ways Practitioners Can Help Clients Prepare for Birth

• Encourage clients to communicate their needs, concerns, and preferences.
• Help clients identify their birth goals and non-negotiables.
• Foster body awareness and trust in internal sensations.
• Discuss informed consent and available birth options.
• Role-play conversations with providers when appropriate.
• Support clients in building a strong advocacy team, including partners and doulas.
• Recognize emotional patterns or previous experiences that may influence labor and refer for additional support when needed.

Resources & Links Mentioned

Books

• A Silence to Soaring by Ama K. Karikari
• No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz

Concepts Discussed

• Internal Family Systems (IFS)
• Inner Child Healing
• Self-Advocacy in Birth
• Body Wisdom
• Birth Autonomy

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is self-advocacy important during birth?
Self-advocacy helps clients communicate their needs, ask questions, participate in decisions, and feel more empowered throughout labor.

What should comprehensive birth preparation include?
Effective birth preparation includes physical readiness, emotional support, communication skills, understanding birth options, developing self-trust, and creating a strong support system.

About The Speaker

Ama K. Karikari, Esq. is an author, transformational guide, community leader and founder of the Soaring Sisters Circle. She creates empowering spaces that support healing, resilience, and personal transformation. 

Ama Karikari’s website: https://www.amakkarikari.com/

Access her free book: http://bit.ly/42eVDqe

Message me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/instituteforbirthhealing/

Message me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InstituteForBirthHealing/

Email Me: support@instituteforbirthhealing.com

If you enjoyed today’s podcast and are interested in more topics to support your clinical practice and treating your clients, find us on your favorite podcast app and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. 

Visit Institute for Birth Healing to learn more about how to care for the pregnant and postpartum body: CLICK HERE

Transcript

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Birth Healing Summit podcast.

And today I am honored to have with us Ama Karikari. She is an author of A Silence to Soaring, and she is the leader of the Soaring Sister Community.

@11:56 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Welcome to the podcast, Ama. Thanks so much for being here. makeup! of We you that Thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for the work that you're doing and making sure that mothers are supported in their most vulnerable moment when they're giving birth.

Thank Yeah.

@12:11 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Thank you. And so we are talking today to other birth professionals, people working with mothers that are birthing. And so I'm curious from your experience and what you know, what is the best way for us as practitioners to support our clients, to have the most empowered and supported birth, helping them to stay in their authentic self as they go through this most challenging experience probably of their lives, right?

Absolutely. I'm so glad you asked that question.

@12:48 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

I think what's going to be so key is holding space for their discussion of their own experience. As we all are aware, very old

And especially within the context of motherhood and birthing, women are invalidated all of the time. No! Oh, you feel that way?

No, not really. It's just normal. Oh, it's okay.

@13:13 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

You just have the jitters.

@13:16 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

It drives me nuts, Ama, that women go in and go, oh, I'm feeling pushy.

@13:22 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And they go, oh, you can't be pushing yet.

@13:25 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

You know, like, oh, I'm feeling this and they completely disregard what women are experiencing.

@13:33 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And validate as if they are not the experts on their own body.

@13:38 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

So if I had to give any advice, it is listening and validating. Listening and validating. What are you experiencing?

How are you experiencing it? What is it that you want to come out of this with? Just listening and holding that space because, unfortunately, in most cases, they're being

They invalidated in other ways. They may be invalidated by their spouses. They may be invalidated by even their well-meaning moms and aunties.

I mean, I remember going, you know, like dealing with all these contractions and my ex-husband saying, you're so dramatic, you're so dramatic, et cetera.

And it's like, you don't know what I'm experiencing. I know, right?

@14:23 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Well, I'm thinking of, um, so I'm thinking of like some people. So, so a couple of scenarios here, right?

We have the women who are meek and mild and, you know, and they're, they're, they're going to be quiet and they're, they don't have the, you know, I really think in birth, we have to release the roar and we have to get into our animalistic part of our- Primal.

Primal, yeah. Which is that this is what's happening to me and being more assertive in, in their, their experience.

And then another scenario of, I'm in this medical system, the doctor is God, and the nurses are here to take care of me, and I just need to be a passive participant in this experience.

And so how do we, as practitioners, better support our moms to help them to find that animalistic part of them, to find their ability to express themselves in a way that gets them heard?

Yes.

@15:32 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

We have to encourage them. We have to encourage them and say, this is your life. This is your baby.

You're bringing life into this world. This is the time to speak up, to scream. This is not the moment of suppression.

This is the moment of expression. I remember even my own mom, who's a phenomenal human being. She was so, I would say, inculcated by the medical system, that even though she was a midwife in Ghana, and I'm sure...

Had she, she went to, I'm sure, like a school that was set up with the British, but had she tapped into Indigenous midwifery in Ghana, she would have been able to not be so medicalized in her thinking.

I remember when I was having my second child and the only way that I really was able to manage a contraction to feel better was by getting on all fours.

So I'm there getting on fours and I want to give birth that way. And my mom goes, you can't give birth that way because she was so used as an obstetrics nurse in New York for women being on their back, legs up, which is convenient for the doctor.

And I gratefully had a midwife and the midwife said, yes, she can. She absolutely can't give birth that way.

So that's an example of my intuitive body wisdom said this way on all fours is going to allow, for some reason, my contractions feel better that way.

@16:52 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Like I just knew in my body that my contractions felt better.

@16:55 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

But I was being told, my mother said no, until the midwife corrected and said, absolutely. And I gave birth to my second son on all fours.

I love it.

@17:03 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

That's the best position. Yes. Absolutely. I love that. And so the most important piece you said there is that it felt good to my body to be in that position.

And that's one thing that I'm sharing with my clients all the time is your body knows. Your body knows how to get this baby on out.

And if we can follow that path of ease and comfort, and I put comforts in quotes because birth is very uncomfortable.

In many circumstances.

@17:37 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Right. Again, we want to leave ourselves open. I'm praying my next birth will be orgasmic. And whenever I meet women and they're like, they're probably like, what's wrong with this freak?

But I text them. Like I'll meet a pregnant woman and then I'll text afterwards and be like, wishing you an orgasmic birth.

@17:53 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

You know, and they're like, what? Yeah. But people do can have orgasmic birth.

@17:57 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

And then give all that oxytocin to their baby. So I'm putting it out there that not all birds are the same.

Certainly for me, my first son versus my second son, very different experiences. However, they can all be beautiful and we can trust our body in the process.

I'm not saying don't listen to doctors and midwives at all, but also trust yourself. See yourself as having unique expertise.

@18:23 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Absolutely. Because nobody knows your body like you and nobody knows what you're experiencing. And so I, you know, you're all about communication and, and, and getting your point across.

And so when a client is saying, I'm feeling pushy and the labor nurse is like, oh, you can't be pushing yet.

What's the response? How do we encourage our clients to, to.

@18:48 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

This is why I'm so, I'm so grateful that doulas exist. Yes. Because this is when a doula can intervene and serve as a liaison.

Like I am. I'm going to put the onus completely on mothers during this time of so much confusion to be like, hey, I said I'm feeling pushy, like, I'm not, I'm not.

@19:09 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Well, especially first time moms, they don't know, right?

@19:12 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Exactly. They don't know that this is actually a pushing thing, you know? No. But that's where the doula can be the intermediary.

@19:20 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@19:20 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

That's why we're a midwife who is, what should I say, pro mother, conscious, holistic, et cetera, can say, okay, let's figure out how we're going to do this again.

@19:34 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

But we know, I know, and we know that, you know, 99% of people are giving birth in a hospital.

And I hate to say that my trust in the hospital system to support us, and especially in birth, is really going down the tubes lately.

Just from the experiences I'm hearing from my clients and what they went through. And so I'm, you know, I .

I feel like this hospital system, and I know every hospital is different and every provider is different and every labor nurse is different, and I do know that what a woman experiences in her birth is not the first time they've experienced that situation.

It's usually a repeated situation. So if you as a child were never listened to by your parents, it's going to show up in the birth unless we've done the work to empower ourselves and heal that part of ourselves.

And so I think as practitioners, one of the things I want people to understand is that we need to help our clients, our pregnant clients, to do their own work.

@20:46 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Yes. Yes.

@20:47 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

so, yeah, what would you recommend? What is that? What does that look like for our moms? How can we best support them to be empowered?

I am so grateful that you asked that question because it's never.

@21:00 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

It occurred to me until now, you asking that question. When people ask me, what's the best thing for someone to do, make sure they do before getting married?

My answer is heal the inner child. I'm going to say, what's the best thing for someone to do before giving birth and having children?

Heal the inner child. It's the same answer. Because I've actually even read about postpartum being severe or more severe for women who have a mother wound.

Wow. Because it's like them becoming a mother triggers that mother wound.

@21:35 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah, I just got the chills with that.

@21:36 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Yes.

@21:37 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@21:37 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Yes. So the answer, and I'm just so grateful that we're having this conversation, because just like I realized that it was the same diet to a certain extent.

Like for example, it's like, what's the diet for heart health? What's the diet for liver health? What's the diet for hair health?

And you keep on seeing the same things. Oh, lots of leafy greens. Oh, walnuts. Oh, fish, omega-3s. things. It's knowing

It's the same diet. What's the same diet for emotional and spiritual well-being and happy, healthy relationships? Healing that inner child, doing that inner child work.

Realizing you're not that three-year-old or four-year-old anymore who used to be disregarded or who would get a spanking, who would get a screen that for speaking your voice and making requests.

You are now an adult. Come into your authority as an adult and say, listen, mom, I love you, and you may not talk to me that way.

Mom, I love you, and I'm not doing what you want to do. I mean, for me, for example, my mom came from that medicalized environment, and so she wanted me to give birth in her hospital.

I wanted a birthing center environment, but I wanted the best of both worlds. So I wanted to be at a hospital that had a birthing center.

So I decided to go to this hospital that had a birthing center.

@22:56 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

My mother's complaining to me, and I can't believe you, and this is so embarrassing.

@22:59 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

So And all the people in my job are going to know my daughter's pregnant and she's not choosing our hospital.

And someone at my job said, I give all my money to Beth Israel by having all my, you know, relatives come here.

Look at you who's letting your daughter go elsewhere. But I said, listen, I want a different experience. Yeah.

@23:20 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And it's not about you, mom. It's about me. It's my choice, right?

@23:26 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Come your authority. Come into your authority as a human being. And I'm not saying you disregard your parents. I think the wisdom of the Bible and saying, honor thy mother, thy father is true.

But we honor them for what they give us. So I, like, for example, I love my mom. She gave me sensitivity and empathy.

She showed me what unconditional love looks like. She showed me what it means to stand in for another human being and say, this person is my person.

Whatever happens to this person is happening to me. But she had a problem speaking up in her She had a problem speaking up in her relationship.

She had a problem with boundaries. She's someone who, someone would come to visit from our homeland of Ghana. And I'd say, mommy, how long is the person staying?

And she'd say, I don't know. And I'm like, excuse me, mommy, you're having someone come to your house to live with you and you don't know how long?

How come you haven't asked? Oh, I can't ask that. Maybe they'll think I'm trying to push them away.

@24:25 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Like that.

@24:26 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

So we take the gifts, we take and we, and we alchemize the curses or the negatives, right?

@24:32 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I love it. The alchemy. Yes.

@24:35 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Let's do that. So you come into that birthing experience from an empowered authority over your own life. This is your territory.

This is your jurisdiction. Of course you take wise counsel, but you realize at the end of the day, this is your body.

Yeah.

@24:52 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And, and I love that. We really do not only encouraging our clients to heal that inner child, and we also have.

We to heal ourselves as practitioners, right, like that truly is, you know, I keep telling my clients that our job is not to be the perfect parent, you know, we were not meant to be perfect for our kids and and whatever we do, you know, I'm going to put that in quotes do to our kids is is there for their learning and their growth, you know, like the if we're all perfect, there's no growing.

And and so we if we can go and, you know, parenting is a lot of I'm either going to do exactly what my parents did or I'm going to do the exact opposite of what my parents did.

Right. So it's reactionary parenting until we actually heal ourselves and then we can come into it from a conscious level of doing and being in this world.

Yes. And and and that's truly what we need to be doing and we can only do that if we've done our work.

@25:59 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Absolutely.

@26:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And so we've got to help our clients to see that the way that they empower themselves, the way that they get the birth that they want is to really look at themselves, look at their inner children.

And I am a huge fan of IFS, Internal Family Systems by Richard Schwartz. His book, No Bad Parts, is incredible.

And he does have some exercises in there that you can do yourself to try to process parts of you that are getting activated and understand yourself more because it truly is from this greater understanding of self that we can enter into whatever experience that we're doing, whether it's birth, whether it's working with people in our, in our practices, whether it's interacting with our partners in a relationship, all of that comes through and, and the different parts of us are getting activated.

So we've got to deactivate those parts and help to heal them, and I really do appreciate that, that that is healing that inner child really is the answer for not only ourselves, but also our clients for in- A percent.

@27:16 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

A quote that I really appreciate is, what you don't do, you leave for the next generation. And so our goal is to really make sure that we engage in the work so that the next generation comes out lighter, and their souls are able to ascend, and they're able to avoid some of the horrors of the prior generation, that they're not stuck in cycles of trauma repetition.

But that is the real inheritance. More so than money, and I love money. More so than homes, and I love home.

@27:47 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

More so than cars, and I love cars.

@27:49 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Not that much, but I love cars a little. So the emotional well-being inheritance of healthy, wholesome relationships. I'm glad

Thank you brought that up because I am a fan of IFS myself. I have not read much, but I just like put things into AI and they gave me the whole, what is it, the roles, like the mascot, the hero.

And I mean, it was like, I was crying. I was like, this, my family fit in so well to the model that I could just read the descriptions to friends and they'd be like, oh, that brother's the this, that's the that, that's the that.

And it's like, yeah, whoa, it's real. It's real stuff. It is.

@28:32 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

It's and it's so, so good. And so I just think that, you know, I want practitioners to understand that we can best empower our clients to speak their truth, to stand in their power during their birth.

And, you know, unfortunately, I have to preface when I'm talking to my pregnant clients. It's like, if you really want to have the birth that you want to have, you may have to fight for it.

Yeah. And, you know, you've got to stand up for yourself. And I've had one client that her, she really did not want to give birth in a hospital, but her partner wasn't okay with her giving birth anywhere else.

@29:16 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

So she was going to the hospital because of her husband. Partner, yeah.

@29:21 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yep, because of her heart partner, not because of her. And so I was, you know, I'm like, then let's get you a doula.

Let's make sure that you've got the support you need. Because, you know, when our clients walk into that hospital, they're on the hospital's timeframe.

They are, you know, there's standard operating procedure that happens. And you know what really irritates me, and this is what I'm hearing more and more from my clients, because I tend to see clients that are more outside the system, that, who's, who's, who's, they're the and the

And when you get into that hospital system and you refuse their standard of cares, now you're labeled as a difficult patient.

Yeah.

@30:12 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

And now you've got attitude coming from the staff because you are going against what the norm is.

@30:20 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And that's what I think is so frustrating for me is to hear how my clients who don't want to follow the typical procedure, who want to have their own autonomy and do it the way they want to do it.

But yet in doing so, they're really getting bullied and they're getting this attitude towards them that is not conducive to a woman feeling safe and being able to open and let go, which is what needs to happen for birth.

Oh, my goodness.

@30:56 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

That's so powerful. What I really appreciate also about what you said. This is how I'm going to interpret what you said.

There's always some level of agency. So when you just said that they have a partner and the partner is interested in a hospital birth and doesn't want to go to a birthing center, doesn't want to have a home birth, and that is completely legitimate.

Let's be 100 percent honest. Sometimes things have gone wrong in home birth. Sometimes you need a medical procedure. Yes, the hospitals may be overly interested in that medicalization.

They may be overly interested in C-section. Like I remember this woman saying that in med school, they literally said, they can never blame you if you just section them, just section them, just section them, right?

@31:39 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And that's not necessarily what's best, right?

@31:42 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

It's wonderful for the children to go through the birth canal. They swallow a little of the poop and that gives them some antibiotics and they get that rush of oxygen.

Like there's so many wonderful things. I mean, just, oh my goodness, even just as a woman, birth, magical. I've only had vaginal birth in my two words.

words. For me it was a magical experience. But what you said is, even in that, you can say, get a doula.

You can potentially bring music. You can potentially do all of these different things. So never give up your agency.

Always recognize that you have cause in this matter and that you are co-creating your reality. To me that is huge.

Yes, I love that.

@32:27 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

We are co-creators of our life. I totally love that. And I think what's coming up for me is for these clients that do want birth done in their particular way that maybe goes against most standing SOPs of the hospital is that you can ask.

You can always ask. And we need to let our clients, our pregnant clients know this. They can ask for a different provider.

They can ask for a different nurse. If you are feeling the...

@33:00 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

The animosity, hostility, condescension, whatever it is. Yes.

@33:06 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

If you're feeling that from your labor nurse, you can switch labor nurses and you can call on the charge nurse to call them in and say, hey, this isn't working with this labor nurse.

Do you have someone who is more open minded to working with someone who wants to do things in their own way?

@33:26 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Yes. Yes. And see what happens with that.

@33:29 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

But even if that, Ama, what would you tell your clients that are being treated this way and there is no other option?

Like, how do we help our clients who are getting that animosity, that disdain, that, you know, from a provider, how do we stand up for it in that moment?

@33:56 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

In that moment. I mean, I think we have voices. God gives us voices for a reason. And I think that, you know, this is from my diversity, equity, inclusion type work that you can, like, someone says something rude to you.

Sometimes you can just literally repeat it and the person would snap back into reality. So someone makes some comment like, you know, oh, surely it can't be in pain.

I'm sorry, did you just say surely I can't be in pain? And sometimes the person's like, oh my goodness, I'm over here telling this person what they're experiencing.

@34:28 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Like, sometimes you literally can just even repeat what they're saying and they will snap into reality and say, I'm sorry and I apologize.

@34:36 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Many of these people, my mom was a labor and delivery nurse, 12 hour shifts, three days a week, sometimes more.

If she did more, was overtime every other weekend. They're going through a lot sometimes. And they've been taught in a way, which is more factory assembly line ish than it was back in the day.

Like when my grandmothers had their kids, lot and they were like, And someone, an elder woman from the community came and helped them and gave birth.

@35:04 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And it's women in a room. That was my grandmother's error.

@35:08 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

That was my grandmother. That's not our error right now.

@35:10 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay.

@35:11 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

And so they are human beings. We can sometimes literally just repeat what they're saying. And even if something happens where the moment is gone, you can speak to the person respectfully and say, excuse me, you know, nurse so-and-so.

You said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It didn't sit well with me. You can always speak about this. You can sometimes ship the atmosphere by bringing it to their attention.

It may not have been the most conscious, intentional moment. I also would recommend, and I'm grateful that we're out of the COVID era, that you go in with people.

There are biases in the medical system. Let's be honest about it. I'm a diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioner. I would be remiss if I came I'm team on this podcast.

I And did not talk about the Black maternal health crisis. Yes!

@36:04 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I just pulled up the stats.

@36:06 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

In 2024, Black mothers in the U.S. experienced a maternal mortality rate of 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. Roughly three times higher, three times higher than white American mothers and significantly higher than Hispanic and Asian mothers.

So this is real. Bias in the system exists. My mother always would tell me, don't go into the hospital alone.

Try your best to have family, friends, people around you. Because she said, even as a medical practitioner, there's some extra on guard, a notice you're on, when you see that this is a well-loved person who has people who are looking out for them.

Oh, I love that.

@36:56 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

So please, come in with...

@36:58 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

And again, I mean... ... ... Both silences soaring about healing from chronic silent treatments, toxic relationships, and abuse, I think it's important you know, even if you're unpartnered, you are not alone.

Yeah. Bring in those sisters, those cousins, those sister friends, a mother from a church, anybody. There are retired people who would love to assist you.

You are the child of the Most High God. There are eight plus billion people on earth who can find supporters.

Don't go in alone. Yeah.

@37:35 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Pray on it.

@37:37 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Get those resources. Bring people to the hospital so they know this is someone who's cared for. This is someone who's loved.

There's someone looking out for this person. I hate, I would love to say, you know, that my mom told me, you can show up looking busted, in bad clothing, smelling, and alone, and you get the same treatment as Princess.

... ... As Diana would. I wish I could tell you that. Yeah.

@38:03 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

It doesn't happen. Yeah. There are these biases.

@38:06 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

There are these biases. Racial bias, socioeconomic bias, lack of family, you know, system, family support biases. So, and regardless of what it is, you are able to, I'm not saying alleviate all of that, but modulate it through these things, you know, showing up, showing that you're in the presence of your mind, bringing your advocates, bringing your doula, do it all.

This is one of the most important times of your life. This is life itself.

@38:37 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yes. Amen, sister. I love that. I love that. And, oh my gosh, it just kills me that our, the maternal mortality rate is so high for black women and that, you It's a crisis.

It is. It is. And, and what are we going to do about it? And I really feel that our medical system.

and creating doctors is the root of it.

@39:04 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Interesting.

@39:05 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And that I hear from labor nurses, them hearing residents and them hearing the attendees talking to the residents and going, oh, that person wants to do it naturally.

We'll see how long it takes for her to have a C-section or an epidural or, you know, like just the, the, the attitude towards women who want to do this more empowered.

You know, it's just such a system. It just gets passed down from attending the resident to, to student, you know, and that's where the attitude needs to shift.

And I'm not sure how we do that. I think a part of it is more people speaking up.

@39:47 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

And again, I know that this is a litigious society. And as I mentioned, part of the reason why they are doing that is they believe that it will shield them.

to a certain extent. of malpractice lawsuits. So again, they have their agenda. I mean, I've experienced this with the medical system all the time.

They have their agenda, they have their statistics, but you are your own agenda. And that's why you have to come in.

I love that. I was just going to state that too, that as practitioners, we need to let our clients know that the doctors are coming in from that perspective and they have the statistics based on this percentage of whatever the population was.

@40:31 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And you are your own percentage. You are your own statistic. And so it's okay for us to encourage our clients to ask the questions, to question the advice and really think of it as this is their own journey.

How is my baby doing? How am I doing? What happens if we wait? doing? if I love those questions that we, we love

We ask or that we can share with our clients so that they can be empowered to say that. And, you know, and I really also want everyone to remember that in birth, when a woman is laboring, they really should be not thinking.

They really should be in a supported environment where they can just go into that reptilian brain that knows how to birth this baby and get this baby out.

And when they come out and have to think, they're walking away from that. They're stepping away from that. And so it is that support person's job to to think, to ask the questions.

It's the doula's job to help support that mom, to help them to stay in that state that is best going to serve the birth itself.

And so helping our moms not to have to think so much, having their wishes known well ahead of time in that birth plan and and again, just if.

they do not feel supported by that labor nurse, they can ask for a new labor.

@42:04 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

They can switch. Now, would it be the first, would it be the last? But I'm sure it doesn't even occur to people sometimes.

So I'm glad that you are raising their consciousness that this is something you can do. Hey, and it doesn't have to be in a nasty way.

Hey, you know, I'm so grateful. I'm getting, you know, great service at this hospital. But me and this nurse, we simply are not aligned for whatever reason.

We are requesting that the nurse be switched. You must be empowered. This is your life.

@42:32 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

This is your baby.

@42:33 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Yeah, and for those of our clients that might be more meek, more well-mannered, I'm going to put it in quotes, you know, because if we're well-mannered, we don't ask for a different nurse, right?

@42:44 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Like that's the thinking.

@42:46 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

That's the thinking for these people.

@42:48 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And I encourage our clients that are that way to have a tiger in the room, to find a dual it is that's not afraid to speak up.

@42:59 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

Yes.

@43:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

For them, to get to know the partner. And I love when partners come in with my pregnant mamas and I can educate the partner and I can help them.

It's like, look, you need to be the tiger in the room. You need to make sure that your partner's wishes are being met.

And it's not her job to have to speak up for themselves. That's your job. You're the protector here of this space.

And this is sacred space. When we are giving birth, it is sacred space and medical systems don't always recognize that.

That's very, very true.

@43:36 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

And absolutely. I mean, yeah, I just loved it. I just loved giving birth. My first birth, even though I had an epidural, when they said, pull your baby out, I pulled that baby and put that baby on my chest.

Oh, magical. So I'm wishing all of your listeners, all of the moms, all of the practitioners, may they experience and witness just

Magical, sacred births.

@44:01 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I love it. And thank you, Ama, so much for sharing your wisdom with us and helping. I love that.

Just reflect back to the provider what they just said, if you don't like what they said. I think that was gold.

I really think that that is works.

@44:17 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

It does. And what can they say you did wrong? All you did was repeat what they said. Like, it is.

And very often, not all the time, the light bulb will go off in their eyes. That was rude. That was wrong.

They weren't their best selves. They were speaking from their, you know, amygdala and not their prefrontal cortex or what have you, right?

@44:38 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And it'll be fine.

@44:39 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

So I'm just so grateful for the opportunity. I pray that your practitioners will check out the book, Silence is Soaring, and that they'll join our wonderful circles every week.

We have circles of women providing support, accountability, and mastermind. Women get together every week in community. And we ask questions such as, what's showing up for

So you have that ability to release that. Then we ask, what are you creating? And what did you do this week in order to aid that creation?

Because I really believe that healing happens when we step into our power of creation. But many of us have dreams.

And without the support of a community saying, what did you do? Did you write any of the pages of that book?

Did you go on LinkedIn and connect with anyone about that job? Without that accountability and that mastery, mind, the dreams really often either don't happen or they take a longer time happening.

So I will send you the link to the school community. I hope people will join and they can read the book for free there.

@45:41 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And I'm so grateful for the opportunity to share with your community. Awesome. Thank you, Ama. And we'll have that link in the show notes.

So everybody, can check that out there. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We, I am all about empowering women, empowering our clients, empowering ourselves,

To be better so we can do better and we can do birth better so thank you everybody for listening in and we will see you all in the next episode share this episode with those that you feel would benefit from hearing it and we'll see you all later take care everybody bye bye bye okay great thank you so passionate I love it I love how how much energy you have that was great so thank you thank you thank you yeah I mean I think it went well I mean yeah I think it went well and I'm grateful for the opportunity we got into a lot of different topics medicalization finding your own voice maternal mortality thank you for bringing that up oh my gosh yes so important so I think the episode was rich awesome I do too thank you so much Ama I wish you the best okay hey could you send me your headshot and then that link

ACTION ITEM: Email Lynn headshot, short bio, Skool link for show notes - WATCH

and a short bio.

@47:01 - Ama K. Karikari, Esq. (she/her)

That would be great. We'll Okay. We'll do right now. Thank you.

@47:05 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay. Awesome. Thanks, Ama. You take care. Okay. Bye-bye.