The Ordinary Doula Podcast
Welcome to The Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning. We help folks prepare for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
The Ordinary Doula Podcast
E69: Empowering Postpartum: Advocacy and Personalized Care through Occupational Therapy with Royce Porter
This episode emphasizes the critical role occupational therapy plays in supporting new parents during pregnancy and postpartum recovery. By focusing on individualized wellness approaches, the conversation enhances understanding of the integrated care needed for holistic recovery post-birth.
• Discussion on the holistic nature of occupational therapy
• Differences between occupational therapy and pelvic floor therapy
• Importance of personalized recovery plans for each client
• Value of home visits in providing practical support post-birth
• Insights on overcoming common postpartum challenges
• The enduring impact of male practitioners in women's health
• Call for ongoing postpartum care beyond initial follow-up visits
Reach out to Royce and explore how he can help enhance your postpartum recovery at empoweredclinic.com or via text/call at 801-215-9789.
Guest: Royce Porter
https://www.empoweredclinic.com/
Visit our website, here: https://birthlearning.com/
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Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker
Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Ordinary Doula podcast. My name is Angie Rozier, I'm your host and today we have a special guest with us. I have with me today Royce Porter, and Royce is an occupational therapist who has a special focus in perinatal care. So I'm going to let Royce introduce himself and then we're going to kind of talk through what he does and the benefits it can provide for those he works with. Royce, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Angie. So, as you said, my name is Royce Porter and occupational therapist for 10 years. Now I'm from the Salt Lake Valley, but we lived out in Roosevelt in eastern Utah for 10 years and just recently have moved back. So my ending time out in Roosevelt I got to know an OB really well out there and started exploring women's health and worked with moms before delivery, during delivery. After delivery I worked with moms the day after birth in the hospital. But it felt like it was time to come home to Salt Lake Valley. So we just recently moved back this last year and wanted to keep doing the work that we enjoyed so much, and so we still want to start our own kind of perinatal therapy clinic. So we have a clinic opening here, a location here, soon in the next month or so, but currently I'm doing home visits.
Speaker 2:Okay, very cool. All right, I love the home visits piece. We're going to come back to that. But as an occupational therapist, I think people are familiar with or it's becoming much more common that people are seeing a PT during a pelvic floor PT specifically during pregnancy. Tell us about the difference between that service and occupational therapy and kind of how they? How does that intersect, maybe, with the cares that are already out there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so physical therapy is a sister career of occupational therapy. We do have a lot of the same goals, but we kind of approach it differently. So I really focus on function, and function comes more from than just your physical recovery. A lot of it can do with sleep, nutrition, mental health, overall well-being. I mean there's just we approach it from every different angle. So, and especially at this time during preparing for birth and after birth, we want to make sure we do all of that. It's hard to encompass all that it comes into, but it's fun because in the end it's whatever my client wants.
Speaker 3:One of the skills that we pride ourselves in occupational therapy is one analyzing activities that are hard to be doing, and then we figure out why we can't do that. Is it because we don't have the range of motion or the strength, or is it because you know we're tired all the time, we're not getting the sleep that we need, or we're just not getting our nutrition that we need? Or am I just going, going, going that I forget to take time for myself? So we analyze what you want to do, we listen, because every person's different. Every person has different needs and wants, and I see myself as we are working together to come up with your plan. You're hiring me as a coach, as a therapist, to help you up with your plan. You're hiring me as as a coach, as a therapist, to help you, not you're not hiring me to subscribe to my plan and my services. It's your plan, it's your services.
Speaker 2:I'm just helping you along the way so you can customize based on the needs of your client. You can customize the care, the service that is given yeah, and it's just a variety of I mean social wellness.
Speaker 3:I've done, I've set goals and we've worked on social wellness after having kids.
Speaker 2:So this is a pretty like holistic. We're looking at all parts of the person surrounding the perinatal period. It's a focus on physical function, as that definitely goes into emotional function and social function, as people prepare for and recover from childbirth correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, so it's also kind of a little bit would be. I also call it behavior retraining.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Sometimes even when we're pregnant, we sometimes pick up maladaptive behavior, whether it be posture or just holding things in with our pelvic floor, you know, just kind of squeezing everything. We need to relax. And so I have a firm belief with my approach that if we can fix and adjust behaviors, then a lot of times physical recovery can take care of itself as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, very cool, All right, so tell me and I know you have you have participated in a lot of this care yourself in your life. You've? I want to. I guess. My next question is I want to hear the difference between what you do and what a doula does. I know those are different categories, but how do those dovetail together? If someone's using a doula, how are your services totally different, or where do they intersect? Because you guys used doula when you had babies, right?
Speaker 3:We did yeah for our second and third one, we had used a doula, so I don't want to speak all for the scope of a practice, of what doula can entail. For sure there's going to be some overlap. It's one of the fun things of occupational therapy is that we get a little training in everything. So, working with a doula, my goal is to support what training and what you are providing. Maybe with a little more medical training that I have, I can understand a little bit more of what's going on the muscles, the nerves, the body, how it's reacting.
Speaker 3:But in the end, when I'm working with a doula, I want to be able to work alongside with a doula and provide further care and, you know, bounce ideas off each other and work together and know like feedback from each other, like hey, like you know, our client is feeling overwhelmed. You know if there's something that you've been working on or you know this, my mom, I have to have talked to her. She doesn't have any meals ready for after after having her kid, or there's something we can work on together, and so I believe that collaboration has been great. I wouldn't have, I mean, with our second and third, without our doula. It wouldn't have been near the positive experience it would have been After our first one the joke in our Facebook picture that our family. A lot of people commented on our Facebook picture saying that why does Royce look more tired than you, rachel?
Speaker 1:He worked hard it was.
Speaker 3:It was 19 hours of counter pressures and holding her and doing all the stuff that we got trained from a holistic approach to delivery, which is my wife's approach, and it was exhausting. I mean it was grateful I loved it. I have never seen a greater demonstration of human strength than watching my wife give birth. So then, with moving out to Roosevelt, where there weren't as much access to such services, we sought out more of what a doula was, and she helped with our second and third and, as a support person, it made my experience so much better so that I could appreciate the moment, instead of being just full of stress and trying to manage now a kid we had at home with you know, and trying to manage now a kid we had at home with you know, not with family, with neighbors, and then to enjoy what we were experiencing together.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it sounds like, and the doula role is quite focused on that day or sometimes it's two days or whatever.
Speaker 2:Right, I've seen three and four, but the actual event right. So doulas of course prepare people physically, emotionally, mentally, bring their team together, support person, they do the birth. That's big. And then the doula kind of backs out like they're still available for some postpartum support, depending on, you know, limited phone calls and things like that. But the expertise then for that recovery piece especially, I liked you said you're more medical background in the physical recovery, physical, emotional and mental. That is more of your focus, correct? Whereas a doula like hey, how you doing, how's breastfeeding going, how you know, we might kind of process the birth. But doulas, unless they're a postpartum doula, and even that is limited to non-medical care, their follow through in postpartum is limited, limited to non-medical care, their follow through and postpartum is limited, right, or?
Speaker 2:shorter than maybe what you're looking at, right, yeah, yeah. So tell me, like your ideal client, like when would somebody start services with someone with your role? So when somebody starts services with you, what does that look like? When is your heavy on the? You know, when are you, when's your big focus on your services with you? What does that look like? Um, when is your heavy on the? You know when are you when? When's your big focus on your services with clients?
Speaker 3:so to kind of walk us through what that might look like so I love working with, with moms who who are pregnant um I love preparing early in pregnancy are we talking like first trimester?
Speaker 2:when do you when? Do they, when do they come into your services?
Speaker 3:so, with everyone being so different, I I say, when you start feeling like you're not being as functional as you want, to be Okay, physically, emotionally functional.
Speaker 3:Okay. So I've had people come in, you know 12 weeks, 20 weeks, saying like, hey, I'm a dog groomer, I can't lift the dogs into the bath anymore. And so we've talked about okay, let's talk about how to lift dogs in the bath the physical part of it Now. A bath, the physical part of it. Now. Let's talk about adaptive strategies. How can we stand so we can tilt our pelvis the right way? So I've had the 20 weeks.
Speaker 3:Generally, I see more at the third trimester time when we start to get a little bigger and it starts to take a little more strain on our bodies and our pelvis. And some get a little nervous when they start to feel or have a history of diastasis recti and they want to be a little more proactive about it. So at any point when someone is starting to feel like they're just not as functional and need a support, person with medical training that they can go to and and work with. I love preparing that and those that have come and worked with me have done prenatal work. Um, all of them have said that that delivery has gone smoother if they've had a history of a previous, not saying that it can't be a 100 causation, you know right, there's just as you know with in birth, you just can't prepare for every situation. But, right, we give it the best chance for it okay, so.
Speaker 2:So I hear some um, this is awesome because you know, some of our clients have maybe physically demanding jobs that they need to work in up until delivery or thereabouts, right? So I mean, if you're a school teacher or a nurse or a I had a dance teacher, several dance teachers actually, lately, and they're teaching dance classes right through their pregnancy or there's so many different roles that like employment roles, right, or professional roles that are our clients that pregnant people are going to be filling.
Speaker 3:So what your, what your services can do, is help them do their job more comfortably throughout their pregnancy, like on a physical comfort level, and then you pull in other things as well yeah exactly so that's so cool that's the basis of our our therapy, and we get a lot of people think, when they hear occupational therapy, we think it's just jobs, but it's really just the things that occupy your time is what we focus on.
Speaker 2:How you function in the day. Yep so brushing your teeth to yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:To doing anything. I mean, those are kind of the low level wishes, typically what occupational therapists are thought of. You know, help people get dressed, help people brush their teeth. But I love working with people with higher aspirations and goals that really want to like this is. I know I can do more. I want help supporting this. I want a professional problem solver to really help me with this and I've analyzed so many different activities. I've worked with dancers. I've worked with office jobs. I've worked with stay-at-home moms. I worked with anyone pickleball players, the guys.
Speaker 2:Anyone Okay anyone pickleball players, the guys, anyone. Okay, I love that because a lot of the what we would call common not normal, but common complaints of pregnancy and the physical, like my sciatic nerve some people are like I can't walk anymore Symphysis, pubis is pain, like a lot of those common things that you know as you dig into it you can't. There are solutions to a lot of these things. So care from OT. Okay, awesome, Awesome, all right. So baby's born. Everything shifts now to infant care. But there's like recovery. Recovery is legit, like recovery from any kind of birth right, Smooth, short, simple, awesome to very long, difficult, arduous cesareans, vbacs. Like every birth, regardless of how it goes, is going to have a serious recovery period which needs to be taken seriously, in my opinion. So tell me what that looks like in the postpartum recovery. Seems like that can be a very important piece in postpartum recovery.
Speaker 3:It certainly is, and this is a point, like you said, I love. The point of this is more than just physical. When I would work with moms the day after birth in the hospital, I especially would hit up postpartum depression, anxiety, baby blues, and I would work with moms to make sure they have a plan. Someone would say like, oh, I've heard of this, I don't know what it all entails, but I'm kind of scared for it, and so we talk about the plan that can be there. So that's one of the advantages I have with doing in-home visits is I can be there within the first week.
Speaker 3:And just talking about how are you doing getting up out of bed, getting to the toilet, getting your things. You have support people ready for you. Let's show you a little safer way to do things. Let's talk about how you're feeling and about those postpartum and potentially start, you know, and recommend referrals to mental health clinicians or to you know let's give your, let's give your medical or your birthing provider a call. Let's, let's give them, let's give them that talk and and I've had so many people that just been appreciative I've had a lot of people just with tears come to their eyes when we talk about it. You know, even those. I love working with those who have a history of maybe some anxiety or depression Um cause. Then I will try to empower them by saying like, listen, like you've already dealt with this, for I mean, it's different, but you've already had some. You've learned some skills, you've learned some strategies that helped you. So you're far and beyond, you're more prepared than others who haven't even experienced anxiety or depression before.
Speaker 3:So, let's use those skills. So yeah, when we get into that and then we kind of follow up on that. But then I just love, you know, at four weeks or so three, four weeks just start doing some basic stretches just to start to open that body. We're not exercising really too much yet, so that way we can help the body recover faster. That's what I've had. Moms who worked with me in the past have said that we've. I just enjoy the fact that I remember the very first one I worked with was her third C-section and she said I have just, I've recovered faster than any other C-section that I've had. I'm 30 years old and I can't believe that this is so much better.
Speaker 1:I wish I wasn't anticipating that.
Speaker 3:So I love C-sections. I love helping, you know, we get some tension in there. I love helping break up the scar tissue with that C-section scars, you know do some rolling on the skin to get some separation from the dermis and everything underneath if we're feeling constipated, you know. And just teaching bowel management techniques and you know again, it's I try to.
Speaker 3:The best way for me to tell me what I do is to tell stories of those that I've worked with, because it's so hard to encompass all of all of what I've done, because I've just had so much fun, and that's what's fun about it is that it's everyone is so different, everyone has different goals and then just empowering them to.
Speaker 2:And everyone is so different Everyone has different goals and then just empowering them to get it back going. Okay, so tell us a favorite story of yours. You know a client success story. What's?
Speaker 3:one of your favorite situations that you've been able to provide services for. That's a tough one, but I'll tell you one, your top three.
Speaker 3:One that pops to my mind right now. I've had a mom who heard about me on Facebook and she reached out to me and she's like I am eight months postpartum. My OB says I have prolapse. Intercourse is painful for me. I pee my pants all the time. I think she was a C-section as well, so she would come in because she loved me doing the C-section scar massage. She just loved the feeling on that. She loved how she has diastasis recti constantly. She had about everything, I guess. Um, her insurance at that time only allowed six visits so we really rushed, not rushed. We made sure to cover all the bases, to get teacher to the skills that we could have so she could go on her own afterwards. Um, but she left pain-free intercourse, was able to control her bladder was able to just enjoy um life again.
Speaker 3:And she, I don't know that was a. That was a really fun one, that everything really got me going at the beginning you.
Speaker 2:You can see the impact that that has.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Very cool. So this eight months postpartum right, that's I mean you can? How far out postpartum can you help people Like probably years right yeah, I mean as long as I mean again, you're not functional.
Speaker 3:You're peeing your pants, or right.
Speaker 2:A lot of constipation, same thing yeah, so many people I know I'm getting close to, I'm in my high 40s at this point, um, so postpartum is long behind me. But I do have so many colleagues and friends around my similar age who say that, again, common, but but not normal dysfunction, right, so bladder bowel, yep, okay. So you can help not just your pregnant people, but those who, anyone who has the effects of pregnancy, postpartum years, even.
Speaker 3:Yep, I just finished working with uh. She was in her mid forties and she knew that it was time to be discharged from therapy. When she said that her husband made the comment that she's like I know I haven't heard that you've peed your pants in a while. Success. She's like that was one of my goals and so she had that goal. And then she's like I think we're done here. I'm like that sounds great.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you say, like I heard you say, six visits, what I know. Every case is so different, but walk us through. It sounds like you can serve people at so many different points of life, which is awesome. But if you have a pregnant person let's say you have a pregnant client they're pregnant, they meet you, maybe second trimester. What are visits? Frequency of visits, when do we time those visits before birth and then after birth, and how many are we looking at?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's all. Uh, it's hard to because it's so individualized. Some, some people feel like they need more support, right? For example, we all know that we need to diet and exercise, but sometimes we need to go talk to a nutritionist and talk to a personal trainer just to kind of give that for us, and so some people need more of the support. So weekly visits um beforehand are really supportive. Some are just like you know, I just need someone to really talk to run through some things.
Speaker 2:And so I'm going to come so they can drive, like they can drive their needs and kind of it's different, okay.
Speaker 3:So I again. I see people who want to hire me, as they're hiring me to help them. They're not hiring me from them to follow my plan, like I am here for you, customized to hiring me from them to follow my plan, like I am here for you, so customized to the needs?
Speaker 3:Yep, and I'm not going to pressure anyone to because, again, my my whole goal. So my business is called empowered health and wellness, because I want my clients to feel empowered afterwards, like I'm here and I can't call myself a coach, but I'm the therapist who's wants to to give. Have you gained those skills understanding so that when we have future problems or issues we know what to do, because we were trained how to do that. So so yeah, before, before birth, you know it depends on what person in the cup. That one person came in at 20 weeks. She came then and then she came once a month and the tail, the very end that she came a couple of times. Um.
Speaker 3:Another was a ran cross country at Utah State. She came every week from her third trimester on because she was really she had a history of the diastasis recti and then had the umbilical hernia, but then say we don't do any of that. And then we start seeing people after. Whereas I like to check in if we can as early as we can, just because I want that early check-in, I've had people comment how they enjoy he just having someone to talk to, because they don't unless they have the obi will say, if you have any issues, give me a call, but how many are actually going to give a call?
Speaker 2:and when you do call, you don't talk to your ob, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah so I've been there for that um and then you know, we start up four weeks and then usually, if it's everything kind of a standard and things are going well, usually four to six visits afterwards. But I've had people who did extensive work maybe beforehand and we only had just a couple of visits afterwards. And then again, it all depends on aspirations and goals. So I've had some people we get to that fourth or fifth visit and they're like you know what, I'm not peeing my pants. I feel like I've gained the skills that I need. I've exercised a lot before. I think I feel good about going on from here. Sounds great, like we can be done. I'm not going to pressure you to do any more and then others will say, like you know what? I used to run a lot. So I want to keep coming because I want to keep asking questions and following up and getting back to where they want to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so everyone has different levels of of aspirations and expectations and again, I let them drive it how they want it.
Speaker 2:Very cool. I love that. All right, so what this is like, I don't know. This is awesome. I think. What a cool service that can affect the whole lifespan. Right, this is a uh over a long. This isn't just a one visit type of thing generally, but sounds like over a longer period of time we can make a huge impact. So, all right, royce, like, tell me what it's like being a man in this space like this. This is, you know, women's health care, maternal care um, many of our providers you know there's a, there's plenty of male OBs, like that's common. But tell me what it's like being a man in this space. I know you've been through this personally yourself, like with the children you and your wife have had. But tell me what that's like.
Speaker 3:It's different. It comes with some roadblocks. It's just a natural thing. Being a man working in women's care, you know sometimes I get people asking me why I do it in the first place, and I've just.
Speaker 3:I have such the utmost respect for anyone who's willing to, let's say, sacrifice their bodies or have their bodies go through a traumatic experience to bring life into the world Like again. I love watching sports, I love watching anything but the. Still, the greatest demonstration of human strength I've ever seen is my wife giving birth and someone who's willing to go through that I have so much respect for, and so to be able to help a population that may feel like they're being overlooked or forgotten about. You know, we've heard many people talk about how I give birth and then, all of a sudden, everything's about my baby. Now, nothing's about me anymore. I don't feel like that's the case, and so I've seen such turnaround, such joy come back into people's lives because of this, where at one point they felt like you know, for one lady, I'm a school teacher and I'm peeing my pants all the time like I don't. I have to have a spare clothes in my backpack when I go to school because I can't manage this and finding those, those, those tweaks, those to the day.
Speaker 3:and you know, for her, we set her a bathroom schedule that she could follow while she was teaching and then she comes back the next week saying I'm not painting my pants anymore because now I know how to hold in my urine, how to void all my urine, how to you know when to go, and so just those, you know. Sometimes that's what it is. I've had some people come in for just a couple of visits because I'm like okay, like here's how we here, here is the behavior we're not doing well and here's how we fix that. And I've had people come back saying that's, that was it. Like I had a mom come in with some. She thought it was some carpal tunnel, but it was really some ulnar nerve pain.
Speaker 3:And after talking with her and having her show me because I'm a functional therapist what she's been doing at home, I found out that she was lifting her car seat into her car wrong, and so I was able to show her some stretches to help with with those muscles, with the nerves, some ulnar nerve glides and some other stretches. And then I'm like, let's practice how to put in your car seat correctly, and so we showed her a different way to grip it, how to hold it, the body mechanics, and then she comes back a couple of weeks later for a follow-up and she's like the pain's gone. That was it. So sometimes it's just. I don't know. I hope that's now.
Speaker 2:I'm going on tangents, but I hope that answers the question about being a male, absolutely okay, yeah, yeah, that's cool, um, and I think there definitely is place, uh, definitely a place for that, which I think. Thank you for doing this work. That's amazing. And then you brought up for me too, like, um, what an. I think a lot of people want an approach that's not surgery or medication first, right, like let's see what we can approach ahead of that to avoid those um, bigger procedural, um or pharmaceutical fixes.
Speaker 2:so a lot of what you can do just with adjustments in life can help with that Very cool, correct Yep. Okay, awesome. Another question like pelvic floor PT, a lot of people are getting services from pelvic floor PT. Now, how does this, how's this different? Like tell you know, walk through, how are we totally two different animals here? Like tell me what that looks like.
Speaker 3:So that's where I got my start was studying pelvic floor, so this is a lot of what we do as well, but an approach that I have that I got from my clinic out in Roosevelt was I don't do any internal work. For some that have really felt like that's what they need, I've been able to pass them on to other pelvic floor therapists who do internal work. But again, my, my business is empowered health and wellness, because I want to be able to empower those to be able to manage their own, and so I've been able to go on their own.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so that was a I mean granted at some point. At some points, some cases, there needs to be some internal work to do some diagnosing. But I've been able to coach moms to use pelvic wands to kind of relieve their tension and kind of feel what's on there. I have most of my clients do if they want to as well, we bring it up a self-examination. I have a kind of a four-option method for those that can go home and do their own examination. They come back and tell me what that feels like.
Speaker 2:Again empowered. Right, they're empowering them in their own health, yeah, cool.
Speaker 3:So dilators again, I have coupon codes and whatnot for different dilators and equipment that you can get and there's great YouTube videos out there and I'm a resource to ask. And if I don't know, I have plenty of mentors I have across this who have supported me. That that I love when I we reach out and talk to each other, with each other. So I cause again say we, we work on this right and we feel a lot better. But then a couple of years down the road we may forget some of our habits, we slip into previous habits and then we're like okay, I remember the steps, I have my pelvic wand still, like I can go and work on these things. So I don't need to go back and do pelvic floor therapy because I know how to do it myself.
Speaker 2:Right, cool, okay Awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's my approach.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then home visits. Tell me about home visits. I think you know, as I work as a postpartum doula and lactation consultant and I do home visits, you know in those two categories but I see people so often they have to. They get home from the hospital. They got to get out the door the next day at a certain time, get to a pediatrician appointment or maybe there's a chiropractic appointment they're going to, or hopefully they don't have to go back to the hospital or their provider yet. But sometimes there's a lot.
Speaker 2:We impose a lot of appointments on immediate postpartum people that are challenging to meet. So the fact that you offer home visits in the comfort of their home with those around them, right, like it's hard to haul everyone off to the doctor's office or whatever clinic visit we're doing, so they can have their support person there they can have. You know the babies are, you're seeing how they're moving in their own space, right? How are they getting? What is their bed? Are they hiking up a ladder to their bed? And I honestly have had clients on bunk beds. One particular client her bed it was a queen and she would hike up to her bunk bed and I'm like, wow, okay, that's a neat place to do postpartum.
Speaker 2:So when you see them, I imagine when you see that, first of all, the benefit of not having to go anywhere with a newborn and we say now stay home, take good care of yourself and then come to these appointments and in our culture and society I'm gonna get off on a tangent if I'm not careful we want people to get right back to it. Right, like you're at soccer on Saturday, you're, you know you're at work three weeks later in some cases, like um, get right back at it. There's demands of life that our postpartum recovery is so short, way too short. So talk to me about home visits Like I. That is so enticing, I think, and what a great service. But tell me about that a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I love going to people's homes. I love seeing clients in their natural context. That's the fun of it. So you know being a functional therapist in a clinic setting, which is great too. Some people love the feeling of the clinic setting, but we simulate what home may be like. We say like okay, here's the skills, we're practicing them Right. Here's how you sit on a toilet, like now, go home and tell me what that feels like where you know at home, we can see what your toilet exactly right.
Speaker 3:We can see what your bathroom set up is like, how we get on off our toilet, how we get in and out of our bed, how we manage our kitchen, how we do all the stairs.
Speaker 3:A lot of people are living upstairs, downstairs, right like yeah, couches, beds, yeah, kind of all that context of the environment plus the comfort of not having to pack up and go, yeah, and just feeling that. And so I mean I, part of my training out in Roosevelt and rural Utah, did home health for most my time out there. So, and I've done pediatric therapy as well, like I've have, I've done, I've done pediatric therapy as well, like I've have, I've done, I've done everything. So even if there's questions about development or like how my kids functioning or how my kids developing, those are, again I'm not for me. So one thing I haven't talked about so I'm, as a cash-based business, I'm not taking insurance and I'm not tied down to what an insurance company is telling me to do or tied down to what a doctor is telling me to do.
Speaker 3:So in a typical hospital setting. If I seek insurance reimbursement, I have to stick to what the diagnosis says and what the insurance says is allowable. But, in this setting I'm able to. You know I have-.
Speaker 2:Full services. Nothing's inhibiting your services.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I can practice the top of my license so we can again to about early intervention and just kind of the developmental stages my kid doing what reflex testing so you can pull some baby stuff into this, like I can't. I haven't an area that I've marketed it much as well, but it's been. I mean it's it's trainings that I have. I have the resources.
Speaker 3:It's not my again primary focus, but I've had to do that in roosevelt because there weren't there wasn't an therapist to work with young kids and so they would come in and see me and I pull out my books and training and sit down and let's figure this out together and let's go through this and let's soundboard and so, yeah, I can, I'm willing to do and able to do just about, just about anything.
Speaker 2:And I can also see where this will be beneficial for breastfeeding moms. I, as a lactation consultant, I get people often and I I am not I mean, I'm a trained lactation consultant, of course, but um, and I try to get good support of the wrist and the hand and so many people with breastfeeding you spend a good deal of time holding something that's seven or eight pounds right in front of your body, right?
Speaker 2:so people have like oh, my back, I didn't know I had that muscle and I'm aching here and there um same thing dad, sometimes, like just from holding that baby or rocking that baby, getting that baby back to sleep, are having some you know physical discomfort that they're talking about. So I imagine, uh, what you work the work you do as well will enhance the breastfeeding experience on a physical comfort level, right and functional level.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, I just the client I'm working with right now. She um one of them. She said that you know when the first visits or second visits once she got the idea of one occupational therapist is like she brought up back pain during nursing, so we brought up a couple of different tactics to help with that um, and again we come back the next visit and she's all like, yeah, they're not hurting anymore. Now that I kind of know what to do afterwards.
Speaker 3:So it's again sometimes just those tips. But we learned that then and then she brought it the next week. Here's another functional question I have. What do I do with this situation? Like, oh, I love these questions, let's talk about it, let's figure this out. I come back the next week. She's like yeah, that's not a problem anymore. Now let's talk about this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's move on to get better and better all the time.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 2:So cool. Oh, what a great service. Okay, this as I've been doing this work for over 20 years and I love to see, as we're expanding services, that things become normal, right, like as we do look at the whole picture, the whole lifespan of the woman having a baby. I love that you can provide services for people years postpartum. I can see a huge benefit to people who are in their 40s and 50s and having you know common but unusual. You know physical effects, from sexual dysfunction to incontinence, bowel or bladder. That's awesome as well. And, of course, you know I guess my passion is the perinatal period as well.
Speaker 2:So, I love to learn about additional services, just to improve this time of life for people. Royce, how can people reach you? Are you comfortable sharing like how people might be able to reach out to you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I guess empoweredcliniccom is my website. Um, by, I have a contact form on there. I do free consultations, so there's a form on there you can fill out. Uh, you can call or text me, you know, 801-215-9789. And we can set up a time that way to do a consultation on Facebook. I'm Empowered Health and Wellness, so it's around.
Speaker 2:Okay, they can find you Okay and then do you do any virtual work If folks live outside of your service area, if they're far away and we do have a national and international audience too for this podcast, so do you do any virtual work? Is that something? That's? What can you provide virtually, if anything?
Speaker 3:yep, so I can provide the virtually as long right now as it's within our state okay, so in the state of utah, yep so we have in it, but for those who are nationally, you still reach out um I can find you places, especially occupational therapists, within the area good referrals but we do have an interstate compact coming out, hopefully rolling out this summer, where I can serve I think last I count was there's 31 States in this compact allows me to serve others.
Speaker 3:So just within the licensure laws I have to stay right now within my state. But for those listening now or at later times, reach out, cause again, I have networks of occupational therapists around the nation that.
Speaker 2:I've already found some in Florida for other people, so it's cool, okay and good to know that this, this service from occupational therapists is available. I don't I don't think, as I've worked with thousands of families, I don't think people say, oh, my OT, so I love that that's becoming available for people. That is incredible, because I love the full span it looks at to help, service and improve lives.
Speaker 3:So I love it too. I've had so much fun with it.
Speaker 2:I love and I can feel, as we've spoken before as well, I love the passion you have for this work and thank you for doing this work. It's important. It's important work this period of life and for women's health care. Any parting thoughts, roy, any last things you want to leave as we wrap things up?
Speaker 3:I just I want to express gratitude for this. Like it's just, I love talking about why I love what I do, so I love that fact. But I do want to end with a quote. This is the quote that I think got me into women's health in the sense of once I read this to our obstetrician in roosevelt he was fully on board with it. So this is a quote from the american college of obstetrics and gynecology.
Speaker 2:This is their recommendation good old a cog yep, yep so it says to opt.
Speaker 3:It's a little bit long but I I try to shorten it, but it still encompasses anyways let's hear it yeah. To optimize the health of women and infants, postpartum care should be an ongoing process rather than a single encounter, with services and support tailored to each woman's individual needs. It is recommended that all women have contact with their obstetrician, gynecologist or other obstetric care providers within the first three weeks postpartum. That summer sometimes doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:Right Hardly ever, I would think.
Speaker 3:So here it continues to say that the initial assessment should be followed up with ongoing care as needed, concluding with a comprehensive postpartum visit no later than 12 weeks after birth. Again, that, more often than not, does not happen.
Speaker 2:The comprehensive part. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Even my obstetrician that I was with. He said he had about 50% of his moms come back for the six week of follow-up.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 3:Wow. And then, as I've gotten into more research, that number supports national numbers as well, interesting. And so I have some moms that say, like I'm feeling fine, I don't feel like I need to go back in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 3:To finish the quote, it says the comprehensive postpartum visit should include a full assessment of physical, social and psychological wellbeing, including the following domains. So here's all the domains that should be in that 12 week visit Mood and emotional wellbeing, infant care and feeding, sexuality, contraception and birth spacing, sleep and fatigue, physical recovery from birth, chronic disease management and health maintenance. So I asked him like I goes, how's that postpartum with comprehensive visit that your ACOG is is recommending? And he's like well, you know, if they come and gave me the kind of the runaround, but I said I can help and address every me kind of the run around.
Speaker 3:But I said I can help and address every single one of those besides contraception and birth spacing, right, but I can, I can address every single one of those and I'm not afraid to address them. It's not just a physical recovery, they say health maintenance, those you know with other comorbidities, diabetes or some heart failures or something we can incorporate as the medical training all that into there. So I've addressed every single one of those domains. And so when I told him like, instead of people you know filling up your schedules and your list, like, send them on to me and we can free up your schedule and we can get the as comprehensive and better care, really like right, because you can look at the whole picture, whereas those six week sounds like only half people get to that, which is interesting.
Speaker 2:It's a quick touch point right. They're like 10 minutes, 15 minutes maybe and they I would say they do not touch on nearly all you know. There's very few of those things they touch on. So that is your role and you're going to see them. Sounds like far before that be in contact before and after and the continuity of care that you provide yep so cool.
Speaker 3:That's why I love that quote that is awesome and it's kind of dismal where we're at right, like yep there's a lot of work to do and you're, you're, you're doing that work, which is amazing, so yeah, and I I like that too that I coached a lot of moms to be proactive about their their health care. Um, I'd have some that would come and complain that, yeah, yeah, my OB never addressed any of this. I'm like, well, did you bring it up? And they're like well, no, no, I was waiting for him to. I'm like well let's, let's practice, you know. So we work on self-advocacy skills Like let's let'sadvocacy is not a developmental skill.
Speaker 3:It's a learned skill. And so I would. I would set self-advocacy goals for kids in the school district when I was there, so yeah, so let's talk about how to and having lists. Anyways, I could keep going on.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it.
Speaker 3:That's let's let's be, let's be proactive about about it. Let's ask our birth providers these questions and and be ready to talk about them, instead of just saying like, oh, they didn't bring it up, so I didn't bring it up. Well, I didn't know it was yeah so I've helped people prepare for that postpartum visit as well. Yeah, saying what, what?
Speaker 2:questions to take what? Yeah, I love that cool well voice. I wish I was still having babies. This sounds like a great. I know a lot of people that are, but still having babies this sounds like a great.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of people that are. But, yeah, um, I I appreciate the service that you provide um here in Utah and, um, yeah, hopefully, people, as people learn about this, I hope they can take advantage of that, cause it sounds like it's it's going to benefit their lives, have a huge impact on not just that postpartum recovery but all of life. So very cool. Well, I appreciate the time. It's been a lot of fun. Well, thanks so much for being here with us Again. This is Angie Rozier, closing up this podcast episode with Royce Porter, who's an occupational therapist serving the people of Utah. I hope you can go out today and make some good human connections, like contact someone, a virtually eye contact If you can get physical contact. Make a good connection, human connection, today and help improve the life of someone around you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being with us and we'll see you next time thank you for listening to the ordinaryinary Doula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth. Thank you,