Vashti K - Contrasting Birth Experiences

This episode explores Vashti's journey into parenthood, including her experiences with pregnancy, childbirth, and fertility challenges. She talks about her experiences living in other countries and the different levels of support she received after giving birth. She also discusses her journey of struggling with recovery, mental health, and chronic illness after giving birth. She emphasizes the importance of a healing mindset and the need to challenge the bounce back culture.

To purchase Vashti's book, Passports & Parasites, click here.

To learn more about Vashti, you can follow her social media accounts:
Instagram
Facebook

Takeaways

• The postpartum period is a time of significant change and adjustment, and having a support system in place is crucial for the well-being of the birthing person.
• Access to postpartum support varies greatly depending on the country and healthcare system, with some countries providing more holistic and comprehensive care.
• Breastfeeding challenges are common, and it is important to seek support and resources to navigate these difficulties.
• The lack of postpartum support in the United States highlights the need for improved healthcare policies and community resources to better support new parents. Recovery after childbirth can be challenging, and it's important to seek support and address any mental health issues that arise.
• Moving to a new country can be isolating, especially when dealing with illness and parenting young children.
• Having a healing mindset is crucial for managing chronic illness and navigating the postpartum period.
• Writing can be a therapeutic tool for processing and healing from traumatic experiences, and sharing one's story can provide hope and support to others.

Transcript

Chelsea (00:03.019)
Hello! Today I am here with Vashtai. Vashtai, how are you?

Vashti Kanahele (00:08.77)
Hi Chelsea, I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me on.

Chelsea (00:13.143)
I'm excited to have you. I think we'll just jump right into things. Sometimes I like to sort of give my guests an intro, but you do such a better job of that than I do. So I would love it if you could sort of tell me a little bit about yourself and who you were before becoming a parent.

Vashti Kanahele (00:36.698)
Oh, okay, yeah, that's a really good question. Hi everyone, I'm Vashti Kanahaly. I'm an author, a functional medicine coach, a mom, all of those things. I have spent the last 15 years mostly residing overseas in different countries. And so I have a lot of sort of different stories to tell about my two birth stories being wildly different. And so that's a little bit about me.

Chelsea (00:39.74)
Hehehe

Chelsea (01:04.327)
Yeah. And before you were a mom.

Vashti Kanahele (01:07.438)
Oh yeah, before I was a mom I worked in international development. I lived in war zones. I had a very like sort of I guess crazy adventurous life Um, and then I became a mom and it was a crazy adventurous life in a totally different way

Chelsea (01:16.777)
Yeah.

Chelsea (01:22.991)
That's kind of what motherhood and parenthood will do to you. Yeah, but you've been all over the place, which is super exciting. I guess I'd love to know sort of your journey into parenthood. Like what, how did you meet your partner? How were those decisions made? Things like that.

Vashti Kanahele (01:26.058)
Yes! Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (01:40.138)
Sure.

Vashti Kanahele (01:44.226)
Okay, yeah. I met my partner, now husband in 2003, I want to say it's been a while now. And we randomly met in New York City. He was there on business and we had mutual friends. I was also visiting the city. And we just we met and it was about a year later that we, you know, like,

Chelsea (01:53.163)
Hahaha!

Vashti Kanahele (02:14.04)
Seattle at the time. And so it was this very long distance thing right off the bat. And then we just we dated for four years. Well, I should say I moved to Washington DC right after that to be with him. One of those decisions where you're like, Oh, I'm just going to get my car and move across the country and see what happens. Right? Let's just do it. So yeah, I moved from Seattle to Washington DC in 2005.

Chelsea (02:24.757)
Ha ha ha!

Chelsea (02:31.995)
Oh man, yeah, let's just do this. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (02:43.082)
And we dated, he did not wanna have children. So I kind of really came to terms with that. And then we got married in 2008. And he was like, we should have a baby. And I was like, wait, what? We've already gone through this. So that was a whole other discussion, right? Because I had really changed my mindset around having children, because I had always wanted to be a mom. It just was something, you know.

Chelsea (03:02.621)
Yeah!

Vashti Kanahele (03:12.226)
but yeah, I definitely want to be a mom. And so then I had taken that step back and thought, okay, you know, I'm cool if it's just the two of us and we go through life together. So then we got married in 2008 and we quickly got pregnant actually. And then I had a miscarriage. And, you know, that was really the sort of shocking entry into a sort of American prenatal.

care if you want to call it that, you know, like there's no heartbeat, sorry, you know, try again in three months. And then you go home and you know, I remember laying on the ground just sort of on a I think on a futon mattress, you know, just crying for days, you know, you're in pain, you're miscarrying, your dreams are sort of disintegrating. And, you know, just kind of coming to terms with that. And in thought, okay, well, you know, they said wait and try again. So we'll just

Chelsea (03:41.618)
Yeah.

Chelsea (03:47.733)
Ugh.

Chelsea (04:02.284)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (04:10.59)
we'll just do that. Not really giving it, I mean, I gave it a lot of thought at the moment, but not that it wouldn't be a hard thing. I didn't know what was in front of us. And I guess that's life, right? You don't know. And then 2009, we went to Iraq. He had gotten his next job. He works for the State Department. So we're in the Foreign Service. It's the diplomatic corps for the State Department or for the United States.

Chelsea (04:15.656)
Yeah.

Chelsea (04:21.821)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (04:41.466)
I thought, well, I'm not pregnant. I can apply for a job at the embassy there and I can go with him. So I applied for a job at the embassy in Baghdad. And this was 2009, so we're still at war. And I went and I dropped myself right into a world I had no understanding about.

You know just the State Department life living in a war zone all of these things my stress level was off the off the charts you know the beginning of living with really complex stress or chronic stress, I should say and After that we had that year there and we thought you know what we're gonna start trying to have a baby again Not in that situation

Chelsea (05:12.262)
Yeah.

Chelsea (05:26.607)
Right, right.

Vashti Kanahele (05:26.626)
clearly, I would have been on the first plane home, there was no, you know, no support for having a baby in a war zone at that time. And so our next assignment was Beirut, Lebanon. And so we moved there in 2009. And we started trying to have a baby and quickly found out that I had no problem getting pregnant, but I had problems staying pregnant. Which is a story that I know.

Chelsea (05:51.535)
Mm.

Vashti Kanahele (05:55.238)
many, many people can relate to. And so maybe, many months had kind of gone by at that point, like, okay, miscarriage, waiting, and then I decided, okay, I'm gonna see a doctor here in Beirut, and it was this amazing endocrinologist, who, a reproductive endocrinologist, that I started seeing.

Chelsea (05:57.576)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (06:22.582)
And he was like, you know what, we're not waiting to test you, which I can tell you right now is very different than in the United States, where they wait and they wait and they wait and you just have miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. And they're like, so sorry, you know. And so he immediately tested me for MTHFR and blood clotting disorders, because he's like, the fact that you're getting pregnant and you're losing every pregnancy at like eight weeks tells me that there's something going on here. And sure enough,

Chelsea (06:29.376)
Yeah.

Chelsea (06:36.759)
Yeah.

Chelsea (06:50.688)
Right.

Vashti Kanahele (06:52.438)
positive, I guess for MTHFR and also for latent factor five. So I was like, we're like, okay, we have, you know, we now know that what's kind of going on and we can make a plan from this. And so I really credit, you know, the healthcare system in Lebanon for really being proactive.

Very Western oriented for the most part in their medical practice I mean that my doctor had gone to think to Harvard and somewhere else. So, you know, he was, you know Western Trained doctor, but he was just like we're not waiting and you know, I really think that he's the reason that we have kids now So we were able to then Have a plan in place where I was taking you know blood thinners every day

when I, as soon as I had a pregnancy test, you know, doing all of these different things. But there was this moment there where I had a miscarriage when we were in Lebanon. And it was, it was just so awful as most all miscarriages, you know, are. And I was away from my best friend, I'm away from my mom, but we had really tight community there. And I have to say it was...

Chelsea (07:51.048)
Yeah.

Chelsea (08:05.653)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (08:15.71)
an amazing experience in the fact of like, people supporting me. You know, I was very far away from home and hurting so badly and my husband was leaving for Syria as the war there was starting and I was just like, wow. Like I, you know, one, I had this amazing support system and then two, and I think a lot of people, and women in particular feel this,

Chelsea (08:21.087)
Mm.

Vashti Kanahele (08:44.29)
They don't have time to actually grieve and think about the loss that has occurred. We're just expected to go on to the next thing. You might get a couple days off work, but you better not take any more than that. Or just life just keeps happening and you don't take those moments to really sit and grieve and move through that process, which then just continues to carry on with you.

Chelsea (08:49.288)
Yeah.

Chelsea (08:54.108)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (09:14.606)
through life and it wasn't almost a decade later that I really realized that I had never dealt with any of this before. I just was like, it just compounds, you know? So, you know, in that instance, my husband went to Syria, we had a very, very stressful situation with him there. And then I just moved on to the next thing, life, you know, work, all of this, and I thought, okay. So then it was later that.

Chelsea (09:21.723)
Yeah, it just compounds. Yeah.

Chelsea (09:37.618)
Yeah, yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (09:44.09)
year on Christmas Day actually we had gone to Thailand for Christmas and we had this positive pregnancy test on Christmas Day which was so amazing but then I started immediately panicking.

Chelsea (09:57.97)
Right.

Vashti Kanahele (09:59.43)
immediate. I couldn't even really enjoy the moment because you're thinking, well, what's going to happen?

Chelsea (10:06.331)
Exactly. Is it gonna last? Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (10:09.214)
Is it gonna last? What should I do? Should I, you know, like, and you're just like going through all of this sort of like real panic state, at least I did, you know? And I'm like, oh, I don't even wanna have to get on the plane because that's gonna be stressful, you know? And like, just all of this stuff was going through my head and I realized like, I'm not even enjoying this moment. And every, and that really carried on through that, that pregnancy, we kept that pregnancy, thankfully.

Chelsea (10:18.771)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (10:36.93)
But every time I went to the doctor, I would have this fear. Something gonna be wrong. Are we gonna lose the baby? Will there be a heartbeat? And I really talk about this in my book because I think it resonates with a lot of women, this fear that just carries on with you, even when you are ostensibly having a healthy pregnancy. Right.

Chelsea (10:41.698)
Yeah.

Chelsea (10:58.855)
Yeah. Well, and how can it not? Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (11:03.346)
you know, one, you've had that support with you, maybe if you're lucky, but you still probably haven't processed it all. So you're still carrying that fear and previous grief with you. So I was, I was thankful to have then, you know,

a pretty healthy, well, I should say I had a TIA at 16 weeks. So I guess there were things there that were not, you know, I almost forgot about that. So I ended up in the hospital in Beirut overnight. And because of the security situation there at the time, like my husband couldn't stay with me, like I had bodyguards and was just like in the hospital by myself, bodyguards at the door, bodyguards downstairs, you know, by myself, and having to kind of go through this situation.

Chelsea (11:43.644)
My goodness.

Chelsea (11:50.697)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (11:53.698)
Thankfully I was okay and our daughter was okay, but it was scary. They just needed to adjust my blood thinning medication. So then, you know, the pregnancy progressed and I had to leave Lebanon because I wasn't able to give birth there, but my husband was not able to go home with me at that point because he had to finish his tour in Lebanon.

Chelsea (12:02.7)
Yeah.

Chelsea (12:19.387)
Oh my gosh.

Vashti Kanahele (12:19.754)
So in, that was May, I left and moved to Seattle. And I moved in with my best friend, which was so fun in so many ways, but I was missing my husband for sure. And I never had my own house. Like with either of my pregnancies, I was like, I've never had a place that's mine to come home to. Now my best friend would say, well, my house is your house. And that is so true. And she has taken care of me in so many ways.

but still it's like not having this place that's yours to go home to, right? So I stayed with her. My husband was able to come back at the end of his tour and then we were induced because of the latent factor phi. They really wanted to watch how my delivery went. They were concerned with that and it went well. And then I had her in the evening and the next day they're like, okay, bye.

Chelsea (12:50.866)
Yeah.

Chelsea (13:07.334)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (13:14.851)
Oh my gosh. Like, like 24, was it even 24 hours?

Vashti Kanahele (13:16.554)
And I'm like, no, like it was the next afternoon. And they're like, you're doing well, baby is latching-ish. No, no, we were having like serious breastfeeding issues, which is something nobody prepared me for. I'll just be honest. Like that was just not talked about.

Chelsea (13:35.17)
No.

Chelsea (13:41.05)
No.

Vashti Kanahele (13:41.182)
in any way and then like, oh, it's gonna be the most perfect thing you've ever done. And it's so easy. And now after so many years talking to countless friends, colleagues, you know, clients, that is not the case for many, many people. So you know, I just was like, okay, well, here we go. We have done such a poor job as a society of preparing people for the fourth trimester.

Chelsea (13:56.277)
No!

Chelsea (14:08.255)
Yes.

Vashti Kanahele (14:10.19)
Because you're like, okay, I've done the hard work now. I, you know, created and birthed this human and now we're gonna go off into the world and we're gonna keep them alive and everything is gonna be great. Right, right. And then seriously, the next day you're like, oh my goodness, what do I do?

Chelsea (14:20.746)
Yeah, what you think is the hard part, you think that's the hardest part.

Chelsea (14:30.253)
Yeah!

Vashti Kanahele (14:32.402)
you know, and I was lucky to go back to my best friend's house. So there were my best friend, Carolyn and her husband and my husband, three adults there besides me, helping me to take care of the baby. So I was very, very grateful to have that support there. Still not my own home, you know, living in a guest room with just my suitcases and whatever. But then my husband had to leave at

Chelsea (14:46.347)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (15:01.69)
um the like four days after our daughter was born he was due in Washington DC for language training so then he goes off and here I am and I cannot even tell you how appreciative I am of my friends there because like literally uh my daughter was not latching on we she was like it was awful like she wasn't getting enough food I wasn't getting any sleep I was freaking out panicking

Chelsea (15:21.603)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (15:30.806)
Like, oh, I'm not even a good mom. All these things that start going through your head, I'm failing at this and it just started. Oh, goodness, like I can't even feed my baby. What worth do I have? Right, and I think these are pretty common themes for a lot of people.

Chelsea (15:35.244)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (15:44.019)
Right, right. Oh yeah. The words that you just said have been echoed so many times with so many guests that I've talked to and it's so unfortunate. It was like, I can't even feed my baby. Like, yes.

Vashti Kanahele (15:56.79)
Yeah, yeah. And then I'm making like sort of panic calls to a lactation consultant. I didn't even leave her my name or my number. I just, I'm like crying, leaving messages. And then thankfully she came over that day once my husband, this was right before my husband left. And he was like, I think I will call her and talk to her.

Chelsea (16:08.491)
Hahaha

Chelsea (16:21.923)
Let me field this one.

Vashti Kanahele (16:23.534)
Yeah, and so, you know, she was helpful and to some extent as much as she could be But really the bottom line was we never got the breastfeeding down I continued to feel like a failure and then I was like, you know, I have to pump I was pumping around the clock. So then my best friend would come in to feed her Well, I pumped thank goodness for that because I don't I would have never slept and would have been even more of a disaster than I was

Chelsea (16:44.512)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (16:50.878)
And you know, there's this whole thing of like formula is bad. So then you have to like get past that too, you know? And my doctor was thankfully like, no, you need to feed your baby. And this is the way that that's going to happen. And there's no shame in that. And I really, really struggled with that, you know, in those early weeks of who am I? Goodness, I'm failing.

Chelsea (16:54.286)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (17:20.458)
You know, we're just set up for that though, too, to have those ideas, you know, as birthing people that if it's not perfect, you failed at it.

Chelsea (17:23.063)
Yeah.

Chelsea (17:33.651)
Yeah, or all of these things that should I hate, I hate the same, this should be natural. They should come naturally to you. And that's just not the case.

Vashti Kanahele (17:39.686)
Right. Yeah. No, no. Come to Kent and find out our daughter had a severe tongue Thai, hence why she wasn't latching on. And by the time we had that fixed, it was too late in the game for us to really ever get that. So I ended up pumping around the clock for about six months to have my supply. And then when she was three weeks old,

Chelsea (17:48.075)
Mmm.

Vashti Kanahele (18:06.282)
she and I moved to Seattle or to Virginia to be with my husband who was in the DC area at the time. So that was another thing. It was just like, okay, we've had this baby. Three weeks in, I'm gonna leave my best friend, my parents, my community of family there, and my doctor, our pediatrician, everybody, and I'm just gonna get on a plane and move to a new place that I don't know anybody. And start again.

Chelsea (18:26.432)
Yeah.

Chelsea (18:33.705)
and start all over again.

Vashti Kanahele (18:37.666)
Um, the good thing is my husband, I was doing language training at the time. And so we, he had the schedule in which he went to work early, did language school and came home. So I had that support in the afternoon. But I'll tell you, it was just me and me and Kara, you know? Um, and just, I didn't have a community.

Chelsea (18:56.444)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (19:04.682)
And it was such a shocking change, you know, in an already very sort of fluid situation of moving multiple times when I was pregnant, not having my own space, and my husband having to leave early. You know, that was a crazy time. And just being pushed into the world with this infant, I just really have such a hard time with how the US sort of sees this fourth trimester.

Chelsea (19:22.317)
Yeah.

Chelsea (19:34.208)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (19:34.39)
the lack of education and preparation around it for most people, unless you're, I don't know. I don't even know, it's been like a decade, so maybe it's a little bit better, but I tend to not think so.

Chelsea (19:46.687)
It's really not. I think I also have like blinders on right now because perinatal mental health is like my area of focus. So I see it a little bit more, but no from all of the guests that I've talked to, especially like brand new parents, they're like, I wasn't prepared for any of this. So.

Vashti Kanahele (19:59.15)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (20:08.702)
No, you're not. For the exhaustion, just the round the clock-ness of it. It's never ending. It's a job that you don't ever stop. And so I think we just could do such a better job in supporting moms and spouses and partners, whoever is the caretakers for the baby, to take care of the caretakers.

Chelsea (20:15.336)
Yes!

Chelsea (20:32.608)
Yeah.

Chelsea (20:37.055)
Yes. I've said, I've, I hate repeating myself, but I've said this so many times. We have this, this age-old saying, like, it takes a village to raise a baby. It takes a village to raise a mama. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (20:51.206)
Yeah, it definitely does. And most people don't even have a village for either one of those things because we have lost the sense of community. It is, we live in a very much, at least in the US, in a insular sort of fashion, you know? And we don't wanna ask for help either. I am as guilty of that as the next person. And it's something I've really worked on, but you don't want to seem weak.

Chelsea (20:56.436)
No.

Chelsea (21:17.88)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (21:18.194)
or that you're failing or that someone else is going to assume that you're not good at this job of parenting and then you don't ask for help.

Chelsea (21:25.132)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (21:28.878)
It's often not even there.

Chelsea (21:30.535)
No, even if you...and where do you look? Especially if you're someone who, like you were at the time, like you were away from your family. Your family wasn't right there. Who do you ask?

Vashti Kanahele (21:34.463)
Where do you look?

Vashti Kanahele (21:43.806)
Yeah, there was nobody really to ask, you know, there's other countries I know that do such an amazing job of, you know, bringing in that support for the mom after having the baby and, and the parents in general, you know, and it's just, it's just such a terrible thing. We have the resources for this, we have the system that we could do such a better job. And we just

don't and I have lots to say about why I think that is but that's not for today. That's another podcast.

Chelsea (22:17.412)
I was gonna do that's another podcast. Trust me. I've gone down that rabbit hole several times, but yeah, no, it's

Vashti Kanahele (22:24.09)
Yeah, yeah. So that was like the first pregnancy. And then we thought, oh, we're not going to have any more kids. We're one and done, as they say. You know, it had just been a little, a lot of that had been so traumatic to me, especially, you know, ending up in the hospital. And all of these things had really made us think maybe we're just going to have one child.

And so our next post, when our daughter was 10 months old, we moved to Cambodia. So we've moved across the world. And there I was able to actually, because the cost of living is much less there and just how it is, I was like, oh, I can hire somebody to help me.

Chelsea (22:55.565)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (23:10.545)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (23:12.146)
And it was like such a game changer to just have this person who can help me with all of the things. I started being able to take care of myself, which was huge for my mental health, which I don't wanna, I wouldn't say I had postpartum depression, but it was a struggle.

Chelsea (23:13.943)
Ha ha.

Chelsea (23:22.42)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (23:27.201)
Yeah.

Chelsea (23:33.895)
Yeah. And there's, I think a lot of, a lot of people are quick to be like, well, I don't, I didn't have PPD or I didn't have PPA or I didn't have, it's like, it's okay if you struggled. You don't have to have a label on it to say like, that was hard. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (23:50.102)
Yeah, it was really hard. It was really, really hard. And then I moved to Cambodia and I was able to have this sort of support system there every day. And a few months later we decided, okay, we're gonna try again. We know what's going on. We have this plan in place. So we spoke with our doctor at the embassy and we said, this is my medical situation.

and can we get these blood thinners on the market? No, okay, well, let's order them just in case that I do get pregnant. And we sort of started putting the pieces in place in case we were able to get pregnant. And I'm so thankful to say that we were able to, it took maybe, it took about eight months. So it wasn't like, oh, super fast, but we were able to get pregnant. I still had those thoughts of, okay, well, now I'm not even getting pregnant quickly. What's going on?

Chelsea (24:38.879)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (24:48.55)
Um, you know, and then again, when I was pregnant, it's like, oh, I just I could not ever shake that fear. And it wasn't until I was writing my book that I was like, man, I never really enjoyed these pregnancies.

Chelsea (24:57.815)
Yeah.

Chelsea (25:03.551)
I know I was gonna say you never got to sort of live in those moments.

Vashti Kanahele (25:07.262)
Yeah, because I was always afraid. Like there was a point in Cambodia where I started spotting and I must've been like 15 or 16 weeks along and I was just like, oh no, here we go. Here we go. Everything was okay. But again, it was that sort of fear factor and then a doctor had told us that she wasn't growing properly. So that, you know, I hopped on this plane and went to Bangkok to see my, we decided to give birth in Bangkok. I should.

Chelsea (25:10.208)
Yeah.

Chelsea (25:19.487)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (25:36.546)
caveat that because with my blood clotting disorder, flying all the way back to the US just didn't make sense. 30 plus hours of travel and it just didn't really seem like we were putting my health in the best situation there. And the healthcare in Bangkok is phenomenal. So we had many friends actually that were pregnant at the time and they had, a lot of them had given birth in Bangkok so we went and we checked it out.

Chelsea (25:44.546)
Right.

Vashti Kanahele (26:06.87)
And we thought, okay, yeah, we can do this. I had a high risk OB there. And the whole thing was so different. They were like, oh, you can do these things and you're gonna stay in the hospital for this amount of time and we can have you in the natural birth room. And there were just all of these things that they talked about right off the bat that had never been discussed in my US birth.

Chelsea (26:14.754)
Mm.

Chelsea (26:34.86)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (26:35.85)
you know, in there, it was like, you're gonna lay in bed and you're gonna push and you're gonna give birth. And then in Bangkok, I had found this midwife and I was like, she's like, no, we can do this, you know, in this other way, you know, a natural, again, to use that word, but, you know, without an epidural, which was what I was hoping to do. And...

Chelsea (26:56.457)
I'm sorry.

Vashti Kanahele (27:03.578)
So it was just already this very different sort of experience. So then I had her, I had this other woman who was part of the community. There was a really large expat community in Bangkok also. So it made it easy to sort of find these people to be part of my community, you know? And they had postpartum support.

Chelsea (27:24.694)
Yeah.

Chelsea (27:30.971)
Ugh.

Like, dedicated postpartum support.

Vashti Kanahele (27:33.63)
And I was like, dedicated postpartum support. And I was like, well, what magic is this? Yeah. Yes. So when, you know, we moved there a couple months before I was due to give birth because I was high risk, they wanted me to just be there. And you know, my mom was able to be there, my mother-in-law, and so I was far, far from home, but I was able to really.

Chelsea (27:44.375)
Like, excuse me, what now?

Vashti Kanahele (28:03.502)
create this community. And even with expats and local ties, it was lovely. So I go to the hospital when we're in labor. And they have me in the natural birth room, I had to end up going to a regular birthing room because we were having some issues with the fetal heart rate. Then I'm in there, I'm able to walk around, they're really dedicated to like, how are you going to give birth in a way that works?

Chelsea (28:28.3)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (28:33.39)
for you.

Chelsea (28:35.231)
Oh my gosh.

Vashti Kanahele (28:37.918)
I literally had her on my hands and knees pushing because that's where I was at in that moment. And my midwife was like, we've got this. And I was like, wow. So I was able to just have a different hospital situation for sure. This was January and I had gone in the evening, but she was born in the early morning, four days later.

Chelsea (28:44.117)
Yeah.

Chelsea (29:06.359)
Oh my gosh. Oh, they asked you.

Vashti Kanahele (29:06.67)
They're like, would you like to go home now?

Vashti Kanahele (29:12.17)
And I was like, yeah, I have a toddler. I think the Seahawks were playing the next day. I was like, I wanna watch the Super Bowl. You know, and I'm like, but they would have allowed me to continue to stay. And as soon as Kate was born, they said, well, we have the nursery and we'll take her for you. And I was like, oh no, I don't.

Chelsea (29:22.371)
I love that.

Vashti Kanahele (29:40.846)
you know, I ended up having her in the room with me. I don't know, it was just to say, I was like, I really want her to be with me. But they came all the time and took her and just took care of her. And then I was getting massages. I just couldn't end. So I'm thinking, why can't we have this in the United States?

Chelsea (29:49.043)
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh!

Chelsea (30:00.547)
Oh, yeah, no, I, I guess I don't. I don't know why I even said it like that. Like, like the what because I like I said, we did this series and I learned these things like these practices of massage and like massage even for like your uterus to like help. Yes. And like, I don't know if they did this where you were at but like teaching baby massage to

Vashti Kanahele (30:05.779)
End of, yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (30:21.378)
Yep.

Vashti Kanahele (30:27.989)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (30:28.655)
Yeah, to help with like colic and things like that. Like, what?

Vashti Kanahele (30:33.434)
And I was having a hard time again with the latching on and I had hired, I think she was an American living there, but she was a lactation consultant and she was there with me all the time, helping and again, teaching the massage and my midwife would come over once I went home. And the midwife came every day to the hospital too to check on me and then when I went home, she had like two weeks of postpartum support as part of her.

Chelsea (30:47.285)
Ugh.

Vashti Kanahele (31:02.766)
plan. But also in the Thai culture, mom doesn't do anything for like 30 days.

Chelsea (31:03.562)
Yeah.

Chelsea (31:08.595)
Yeah. Yeah, you're not expected to do anything. You just stay in bed.

Vashti Kanahele (31:13.21)
Yeah, which I'm like, I don't know if I want to stay in bed, but like, I love this idea of like, you are being so taken care of. And so I had that in some aspect, because my family had flown out. So I had help there. And then I had my midwife checking on me, I had the lactation consultant. And it was just this very, you know, I would say just the

Chelsea (31:16.691)
Hahahaha

Chelsea (31:22.792)
Yes!

Vashti Kanahele (31:40.926)
the entire thing while my US one wasn't terrible, there's no birth trauma or anything. It was just such a different experience. And thinking, wow, we could do this. Besides the cost is like a fraction of anything that you would have in the United States. But that is also another conversation cast. You know, I remember seeing the bill for my daughter in Seattle versus the one that we were having in Bangkok. I was like, Oh, goodness, like

Chelsea (31:45.713)
Great.

Chelsea (31:57.015)
There's a, there's another podcast. Yeah, yes.

Vashti Kanahele (32:10.158)
How is this even possible? So it was just really a whole different experience, and I was lucky in that the cost of living is less, you can have a nanny. So I was very, I know, very blessed to be able to do those things, but also it just should be part of our society to have support that people can access.

Chelsea (32:11.127)
Yeah.

Chelsea (32:34.333)
Yes.

Vashti Kanahele (32:39.95)
Because definitely there's support out there if you have the financial means to do so, but we should have it be accessible to people, to everyone, yeah.

Chelsea (32:40.012)
Yes.

Chelsea (32:48.087)
to everyone. Yeah. And the thing that strikes me so much about the differences in your two birth stories is the first is so very clinical and so very just like almost like assembly line process. Like, okay, now you're here. Now you're gonna push. Now you had the baby. Now you go home. And then your experience in Bangkok was just so much more holistic, it sounds like.

Vashti Kanahele (32:58.903)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (33:16.863)
Absolutely.

Chelsea (33:18.651)
Yeah, and that in doing the research that I've done on other cultures, it shouldn't surprise me as much as it still does. These other cultures are so embracing of the birthing person because you're not just bringing a life into the world, you are also experiencing a new birth of yourself. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (33:36.824)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (33:43.658)
Right? Of yourself. Yeah, it's an absolute reinvention of you for the first, second, third, fourth, however many times, right? With each time it's a different version of you. You know? I was so that the Thai really do focus heavily on C-sections. So that was something I had to really advocate for myself. And part of the reason why I found a midwife was to

Chelsea (33:52.211)
Yeah, yeah.

Chelsea (34:03.473)
Oh.

Vashti Kanahele (34:13.01)
make it so that they're not like, you're gonna have a C-section on this date. Nothing wrong with having C-sections, but they have C-sections for like auspicious holidays, for lucky births, right? So I just was like, okay, we're gonna, you know, I wanted to have that more holistic approach if possible, but really just the whole way they did it was a holistic approach. Yeah.

Chelsea (34:17.457)
Yeah.

Chelsea (34:24.579)
Okay.

Chelsea (34:32.532)
Yeah.

Chelsea (34:37.723)
Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds vastly different. Yeah. How did that sort of so how did that impact your fourth trimester the second time around? Did you still have a lot of those same fears and doubts?

Vashti Kanahele (34:42.026)
Yeah, vastly different.

Vashti Kanahele (34:54.83)
Um, I would say no, you know, um, I still was like really struggling with the breastfeeding part that we were able to get that down and she never took a bottle. So that did impact my fourth trimester. You know, and I loved those moments. I was so happy to have that. But also that it was just the mommy show all the time. Right.

Chelsea (35:07.42)
Oh, of course. Yeah.

Chelsea (35:19.708)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (35:22.294)
But I would say, no, I was less stressed, less fearful, less just upset, maybe is a good way to put it because I had people there to support me. And when I went back to Cambodia, I had helped that was coming to the house every day. It just helps tremendously. And so I just wish that everybody could have that.

Chelsea (35:41.879)
Yeah.

Right.

Chelsea (35:50.011)
Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm just looking at my notes, but one of the top things it says is support system. And, and yeah, the, the importance of having the community and having a support system and how it affects your journey into motherhood. Like you said, for the first time, second time, third time, no matter how many times you give birth, it's a different experience and you become a different person.

Vashti Kanahele (36:14.222)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (36:18.399)
and having a community there to support you makes all the difference in the world and we don't have that here.

Vashti Kanahele (36:26.226)
No, we don't. And I don't know, frankly, what I would have done if I was in the US at that time, because I didn't know it at the time, but I had Lyme disease. I'd been bitten partway through my pregnancy. Yeah. So after the birth of Kate, I thought, well, I'm not getting better. I thought I should be bouncing back a little bit. This doesn't seem like normal postpartum.

Chelsea (36:37.027)
Yes, you had mentioned that.

Vashti Kanahele (36:54.054)
stuff, recovery, you know, like, I, and so I thought, well, this is so weird. I'm not, I'm obviously tired. Every birthing person is tired, you know, but it was this bone, deep fatigue. And then I was like, sort of having some mental health issues around that, because I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. So I had all the support.

Chelsea (36:54.151)
recovery. Yeah.

Chelsea (37:06.14)
Yeah.

Chelsea (37:17.842)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (37:21.77)
which I don't know where I would have been if I did not have that support because I was like barely hanging on with my energy. And so I ended up leaving Cambodia a little bit early, just a couple of months early with the two girls. So I left, here we go, with a six month old and a two year old. My husband flew me back, but then he had to go back.

Chelsea (37:30.373)
Right.

Chelsea (37:45.035)
Just you? Okay. Oh boy. Okay.

Vashti Kanahele (37:50.026)
So he did fly us back. And then again, I moved in with my best friend who has always been there. But it was again, this transient thing. I was like, I have to figure out what's going on with myself. Like really, because this is not okay. And it was there that I found a Lyme literal doctor in the Seattle area who tested me. And it was positive for that and positive for a reactivated EBV, which is mono.

Chelsea (38:04.309)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (38:18.602)
And once you have these viruses, you know, they stay with you and they can be reactivated. And EBV is often reactivated in stressful situations, including pregnancy, because that's putting a huge stress burden and immune burden on your body. So I had all of these things happening sort of at the same time. And I had, so this is, you know, into that fourth trimester, and here I am, kids, husband finally is able to join us.

Chelsea (38:18.787)
Oh man.

Chelsea (38:34.515)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (38:48.83)
and we moved to Dallas where I didn't know anybody. I just had the diagnoses, I didn't know anybody. And overseas, because we work at embassies and consulates, they're sort of a built-in community in some aspects. But whenever you go back to the US, you're just like on your own again. And so.

Chelsea (38:50.913)
You moved again. Of course. And you've just got these diagnoses.

Chelsea (39:13.141)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (39:14.922)
which is how I know many people are when they move, you know, it's starting over. So again, starting over with these new diagnoses and that's really where I had the hardest time was in that timeframe because I was so ill and I had a baby and a toddler and I didn't have any.

Chelsea (39:31.955)
Yeah. And you're back in the US healthcare system.

Vashti Kanahele (39:33.994)
because we literally moved back in the US healthcare system. Thankfully, I became good friends with our neighbor, but in those early weeks, I didn't have anybody, my husband had to travel. And so it's like, literally we closed on our house, he left the next day, and I'm living on a floor with a mattress with a baby and a toddler.

Chelsea (39:58.763)
That does not sound like a good time.

Vashti Kanahele (40:01.966)
No, it wasn't a good time. It was really, really hard. And I was, I think that was where my mental health was really having the hardest time was in that those early Dallas days, I really struggled not having people there. And in fact, it was bad enough that my husband called and had his mom come stay with me.

Chelsea (40:04.793)
Yeah.

Chelsea (40:18.455)
Wow. Yeah, I was gonna ask what sort of got you through that time? What were you able to, or were you able to really access anything?

Vashti Kanahele (40:31.558)
I didn't really access anything except for like trying to find help for my Lyme disease, which I'd never really got in Texas. And so it was like working, you know, telehealth with my doctor in Seattle, and then becoming friends with my neighbor helped tremendously. And then my the moms, my mom and my mother-in-law came repeatedly because my husband traveled for four months. He was gone at one point.

Chelsea (40:39.895)
Mm.

Chelsea (40:49.719)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (41:01.846)
And so I was just there. It was a hard time.

Chelsea (41:05.11)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I can't, I honestly can't imagine not just navigating having a toddler and an infant in a place where you don't know anybody, but then on top of that, navigating a Lyme diagnosis and not getting the help that you need. I mean, thank goodness for your mother and your mother-in-law. But yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (41:27.042)
there.

Chelsea (41:36.579)
It's not often that I'm left speechless. I usually have, I usually can think of something to say, but that is, that's just, it must have been incredibly isolating.

Vashti Kanahele (41:47.922)
It was very isolating. And there was one point, my knees had swollen up so tremendously from the Lyme disease. It goes into my joints. That's really where I had the worst problems. And it took me five minutes to walk down the hallway from my room to Kate's room. And I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing right now. I cannot keep going on like this.

Chelsea (42:13.493)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (42:16.542)
And that next morning I had barely met my neighbor maybe a couple of times and I was like, can you take me to the doctor? Like I can't drive. You know, and that was the beginning of our friendship. I was like, please help me.

Chelsea (42:24.437)
Yeah.

Chelsea (42:29.585)
Yeah, but like good for you. Good for you for advocating for yourself. That must've been scary. I mean, for an anti-social, I'm an anti-social person just to be like, I need help. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (42:35.5)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (42:41.59)
Yeah, yeah, I really, because there was no other option. Like, I was not in a good space. I was responsible for two little humans and I didn't have a clear path forward.

Chelsea (42:52.49)
Yeah.

Chelsea (42:58.079)
When, when did that? I don't even know how I wanna word this.

So how long did you stay in Dallas?

Vashti Kanahele (43:08.17)
We were there like 20 months.

Chelsea (43:10.131)
Okay, and you didn't and at that in that time there was no real progress with your lime.

Vashti Kanahele (43:16.118)
There were some, I mean, I made some progress, but it was also the hardest healing moment. So it was all like compounded together, new motherhood, toddlerhood, and sickness, and not having like people around me. Thankfully I did have my small neighbor community. And so we were making some progress with Lime, but for every step forward, I was taking 10 steps back, which is...

Chelsea (43:22.216)
Okay.

Chelsea (43:27.657)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (43:45.058)
the thing with healing, it's not linear, it's very tricky. And it was just so hard, I ended up having to have like, tooth extracted because of it. All of these things just really all happened at the same time. And I think that was where I struggled the most and we moved to Nigeria from there. And actually that might be where it was. The struggle continued, my mental health was in it, really deteriorating at that point.

Chelsea (43:47.639)
Right, right.

Chelsea (43:56.881)
Mmm.

Chelsea (44:14.029)
Okay.

Vashti Kanahele (44:14.834)
and I didn't know how. I remember calling my mom and being like, I don't know if I can stay here. And I've been all over and I've done really hard things and I don't know that I can do this. I was very isolated there in the beginning, just given where we were living and I didn't have any friends and I couldn't drive and I didn't have any transportation. And every time I went to the grocery store, like

Chelsea (44:22.273)
Mm.

Chelsea (44:28.661)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (44:43.43)
half time I get home and everything was like rotten. It was just like, you know, and the kids were going crazy. The two and four, almost five year old at that point, you know, it was just like, nobody told me that it was gonna be like this. He would know.

Chelsea (44:45.913)
Ugh.

Chelsea (44:55.146)
Yeah.

Chelsea (45:02.4)
I've got the line from the side so no one told you life was gonna be this way. But it's but yeah, I mean, that's parenthood in a nutshell is no one prepares you for it. And I can't. I'm saying this so much with you but like, your circumstances compound those to everybody has challenges and everybody's circumstances are different. But like

Vashti Kanahele (45:10.285)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (45:24.658)
Yes, absolutely.

Chelsea (45:28.895)
I personally cannot imagine moving around as much, A, moving around navigating different healthcare systems every time you're somewhere new, having a toddler and a baby and then a toddler and a small child in a foreign country. Like, of course your mental health was impacted.

Vashti Kanahele (45:43.105)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (45:57.135)
What what were you were you doing anything to sort of tackle that like were you I don't know what the options would have been in night you were in Nigeria at that point. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (46:06.454)
in Nigeria. So we're living in Lagos, Nigeria, you know, a city of 24 ish million people. And, and it was funny because you're with so many people and you can still be so isolated, you know. And it was just this whole, I ended up really loving our time in Nigeria, but this, this entry point to it was really the hardest landing I have ever had anywhere that we've lived.

Chelsea (46:12.722)
Yeah.

Chelsea (46:18.685)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (46:32.694)
And so we ended up moving because there were some situations with our living situation at the house. And so we moved to this other housing compound. And that's where everything sort of shifted for me because there were lots of families with young children and mom friends. And you know, I still had to put myself out there. But because we were on this compound with a pool and you can't

Chelsea (46:47.818)
Okay.

Chelsea (46:55.105)
Ugh.

Vashti Kanahele (47:00.246)
like there wasn't really like a lot of things to go do like parks and other things there. So we all congregated at this pool. And so it was there that sort of mindset shifts started happening. I just needed to find some people and you know, other, I needed to talk to somebody. We hired an amazing helper Gladys. I really think that she's a lot of the reason why I was able to,

Chelsea (47:07.206)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (47:17.)
Yeah, you needed to talk to somebody.

Vashti Kanahele (47:29.154)
to manage there and to actually start getting better. She helped me with the kids every day. My oldest son was in kindergarten, I believe. And so, things started falling into a routine, but those first month and a half, I was just like, oh goodness. And then it was really finding those people. And I was talking to someone else on a podcast the other day and I was like, not a lot of people knew that I was as sick as I was because I'm...

Chelsea (47:41.899)
Yeah.

Chelsea (47:56.18)
Yeah, I was wondering.

Vashti Kanahele (47:58.226)
I'm very private yet I've just written this book that really is my whole life and all the intimate details of it of the last 15 years. So clearly not private anymore. But I didn't want to be that person because when you're sick with an invisible illness, people don't always get it because they don't want to, they just don't understand it. And so I just kind of kept that to myself until I made closer friends.

Chelsea (48:02.083)
I'm sorry.

Chelsea (48:08.883)
Not anymore!

Chelsea (48:20.076)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (48:27.906)
But you know, people are like, well, why don't you wanna come to this? Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? Well, I don't have the energy to do any of these things. You know? And then I started working, I started getting massage, cause I found a massage lady. So that was really, that's one of those things that really, really helps me, both mentally and physically. And so that became a priority for me. I was, I found a yoga class again.

Chelsea (48:34.196)
Yeah.

Chelsea (48:49.989)
Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (48:56.874)
mental and physical help there. And then partway through our tour, I was not doing very well with my Lyme. It had really taken a hard turn. And so I flew to Seattle and I met a new doctor and he really helped me change my mindset. Like he heard me, he saw me, he validated.

Chelsea (48:58.305)
Yes.

Vashti Kanahele (49:24.15)
like what I was going through, you know, I wasn't just another patient. And it was working with him that I was like, oh, I can get better, you know.

Chelsea (49:32.327)
Oh, yeah. You know, I didn't even I didn't even know. I think there's still just like there's so little information about pregnancy and postpartum, there's so little information about Lyme. I had no idea that like I had only ever heard like you have Lyme for your whole life. That's what I've heard. Like you have Lyme and you'll have it for your whole life. And that's it. The end. And I'm only now learning like you can go into remission and you can like. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (49:44.013)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (49:58.838)
Yeah, this was just what I've done. Yeah.

Chelsea (50:02.119)
Yeah, so I'm so glad that you found a doctor that saw you and got you.

Vashti Kanahele (50:06.014)
Yeah, yes. Yeah, it was a huge turning point in my healing journey because like you really need to have that healing mindset. I think you need to have a healing mindset if you have complex chronic illness, healing mindset postpartum, you know, all of these things are, it's very important to have this healing mindset. And it was then that I started to have that and...

Chelsea (50:21.504)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (50:30.294)
then I started, but then I changed my whole career and became a health coach and all of that kind of stuff to help people with Lyme disease. But yeah, I mean, it is, you know, we go through these things and we change who we are and what we're doing. But yeah, the Lyme was really impacting every aspect of my health, including my mental health, because I just had such severe brain fog, I could hardly remember any words, let alone my memory was shot, everything was, you know, terrible.

Chelsea (50:36.873)
Isn't that how that works?

Chelsea (50:43.714)
Yeah.

Chelsea (50:53.971)
Yeah.

Chelsea (50:58.099)
I mean, you want to talk about mom brain, put lime brain fog on top of that. And that's a recipe for disaster.

Vashti Kanahele (51:04.59)
Exactly. My husband would be like, I'm like talking to him and then I'm like, yeah, I have no idea what I was gonna say.

Chelsea (51:15.507)
Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I have that on the daily, but not to that, it like I can't even imagine. I'll be mid sentence and I'll be like, Nope, it's gone.

Vashti Kanahele (51:22.891)
Yeah.

Yeah, I still do that and I think it's because as moms, we have so many things going on in our head. Like, you used to have, yes, which I have all the time.

Chelsea (51:33.439)
It's all the tabs open. Yes. All the tabs open and one of them's playing music, but I don't know which one. And I can't close out. You know what I'm saying.

Vashti Kanahele (51:44.562)
Yeah, absolutely. And you only have so much space in your brain, right? And we're just doing all of the things and then you add any other stuff on top of that and it's, you know, it's just compounded.

Chelsea (51:48.102)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (51:57.791)
It's just so many things, so many themes that you've brought up through this episode are things that I think are important. One being community. And I think it's awesome that listeners are going to get a good perspective on your perception of community in your experiences, birthing in the U S compared to birthing outside of the U S. And we all know that community is important.

but knowing that it exists elsewhere brings more attention to the fact that it doesn't exist here and that it needs to. That's one theme. Another theme, look, my train just derailed. So this is like mid-sentence. So let me, I have to remember. God, it was the one I wanted to say first too and I should have said it because now I can't remember what it was.

Vashti Kanahele (52:34.494)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (52:45.602)
Thanks for watching!

Chelsea (52:57.347)
I'm gonna get it, I promise. This is what happens to me. Oh, another theme is bounce back culture that is pushed on us, especially in childbirth, but even for like chronic illness too.

Vashti Kanahele (53:20.918)
Absolutely.

Chelsea (53:22.055)
and invisible illness and it's just this and you used the words bounce back more than once and I was like, yep, there it is. We are expected to pick up and get on with our lives. And that's just not It's not a thing. It's not a thing. It's a thing that has been created and pushed on us and it's not healthy. It's it drives me insane.

Vashti Kanahele (53:32.863)
Yep.

Vashti Kanahele (53:49.262)
couldn't agree more because it is a driver of stress, of illness, and we know what happens when you have chronic stress, right? And so we all have stress, you can't get rid of stress.

Chelsea (53:50.812)
Yes!

Chelsea (53:58.1)
Yes.

Chelsea (54:07.88)
No, of course not.

Vashti Kanahele (54:09.622)
But we don't need to be creating a culture that is expected to just move on to the next thing and not actually deal with what is happening to us in that moment. Because we cannot heal if we're not dealing with it.

Chelsea (54:20.14)
Yeah.

Chelsea (54:24.007)
No, no. And like you said, healing isn't linear. And it's not, it's not a, I don't want to say it's not a steady process, but like it looks different for everyone. So expecting everyone to have the same outcome and take the same steps is just not productive in any way, shape or form.

Vashti Kanahele (54:35.798)
Absolutely.

Vashti Kanahele (54:47.154)
No, and that's, I mean, we have like, good, like critical care, like, definitely. But that is not health care, like, holistically speaking, right? Like, we need those things for sure. But you cannot expect people's birth, illness, any of these things to follow that same path. There is no one size fits all.

Chelsea (54:55.061)
Yes.

Chelsea (55:04.224)
Yes!

Chelsea (55:13.043)
Right? No! And I'm getting into it, but I don't like to subscribe to gender norms. I'm just, I feel gender is a construct, whatever, that's how I feel. But, but in the same breath, I can say that cisgendered females, I feel like...

Vashti Kanahele (55:28.854)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chelsea (55:39.387)
are the most heavily pressured in terms of get on with your life. And we are so often, I say we, I identify as non-binary, but I'm female presenting, women are dismissed in their mental health concerns, in their physical health concerns. And so much of that lies within the...

Vashti Kanahele (55:44.842)
Absolutely.

Chelsea (56:07.499)
perinatal and postpartum and beyond into menopause and in puberty. Yes, the whole experience like, oh, well, you're just going to get your period. Or you go to the doctor and you're like, no, something's wrong and you're dismissed. It's hormones. And I'm going down the rabbit hole.

Vashti Kanahele (56:12.103)
everything.

Vashti Kanahele (56:28.73)
Yeah, and if it is my hormones, then how are you going to help me get to the root cause of why that's happening? Like band-aid medicine is not how people get better. Yeah, I 100% agree with everything that you're saying on that point because I literally did not deal with any of these things until 2020. We had the girls and I left Nigeria, got on a

Chelsea (56:35.)
Exactly.

Chelsea (56:39.929)
No. I know.

Vashti Kanahele (56:58.286)
met a back plane out of there. And because I just weren't sure how things were going, go to Seattle where I think, okay, I'm gonna go into this quarantine house with my kids for a couple of weeks and then go and stay with my mom and stepdad. Ostensibly the safest I've ever been in my life or in like this recent time of my life in the last 15 years, I had a complete breakdown.

Chelsea (57:25.92)
Mm.

Vashti Kanahele (57:27.686)
And I mean like the kind in which you're having extreme dreams and nightmares and it was the most it was the craziest thing because I knew I was safe and yet I all of it came out in that moment.

Chelsea (57:46.951)
Yeah, I wonder too how much of that was suppressed from your whole journey, from this whole journey. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (57:55.858)
Oh, it was 100%

Chelsea (57:59.527)
And it just because of the circumstances, we were all literally and physically isolated that you just had to confront it in them. Like it was just there.

Vashti Kanahele (58:07.53)
Yep. Yeah. Right. It was just there and there was nothing I could do about it. You know, my mom was down the road, but we weren't supposed to be together, you know, and I couldn't stop it. You know, there was no one there to just feel the help me in like three days into it, my mom would come in at the house at night and just like sleep in the guest room because I was calling her panicking in the middle of the night.

Chelsea (58:18.56)
Yeah.

Chelsea (58:24.087)
Yeah.

Chelsea (58:34.16)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (58:36.126)
you know, and then I'm like, I'm responsible for these two kids and I'm falling apart.

Chelsea (58:43.619)
How... what... hmm... it's too simple of a question. I have to really be... I have to think about how I want to wear this.

Chelsea (58:58.307)
Uhhh... Fried brain! Um...

But you did come out the other side. You came out the other side.

Vashti Kanahele (59:07.934)
Yeah, I did. My doctor, he was like, I really think that you have PTSD from suppressing all of the things that have gone on in your life, because there's so many more things that aren't related to birth and postpartum that have happened. And...

Chelsea (59:23.984)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (59:27.79)
he had me work with an energy healer that he knows. He's like, I really recommend that you work with Jennifer, this five elements energy healer. She changed my life because we did that work on healing from all of these things, bringing them up very hard things to like relive. And you know, I came out on the other side and then I ended up writing this book, which was actually the most healing.

Chelsea (59:37.655)
Yeah.

Chelsea (59:53.685)
Yeah!

Vashti Kanahele (59:56.834)
thing I could have ever done for myself.

Chelsea (59:59.011)
Talk to me about that, I wanna hear about your book.

Vashti Kanahele (01:00:02.218)
So I wrote Passports and Parasites. I wasn't planning on writing a book, but about a year and three months ago, my husband was like, Vashhtey, you need to tell your story. And I was like, you know, I don't, you know, if you see my Instagram, it's like all like medical, health stuff, educational, I'm not like out there like, oh, this is what I'm doing every day. He's like, no, seriously, you have a very special story.

Chelsea (01:00:12.851)
Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Chelsea (01:00:22.94)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (01:00:31.686)
Okay, so I kind of sat on it and then New Year's Day last year I started writing it. And I was like, okay, we're moving again, because then we're living in the Caribbean. And I was like, I got to get this book done before we move back to the United States in the summer. Otherwise, it's just gonna I could just I know myself, it would just fall off the rails, right. So I finished it by Mother's Day weekend, the rough draft, and it highlights.

Chelsea (01:00:46.645)
Yeah.

Chelsea (01:00:50.951)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (01:00:55.192)
Wow.

Vashti Kanahele (01:00:58.314)
It's really the last 15 years of my life. So it starts with me on a helicopter going into Baghdad and thinking, what did I sign up for? It really, it chronicles every sort of detail, what I've shared with you today, and also more of the parenting, the infertility, really scary situations health-wise with my family overseas, most of this happening far away. And then,

Chelsea (01:01:23.691)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (01:01:27.058)
you know, it really ends in the present and I've come through on the other side. And I really hope that it shines light on the fact that there is hope that people are not alone, you know, that you can, you can make it through. Um, but writing these things again, specifically like to our conversation today, having to write and then rewrite and rewrite again, these situations.

was terribly hard and yet so therapeutic.

Chelsea (01:01:57.959)
I can imagine, because you're having to relive them over and over and over again. Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (01:02:01.366)
Yeah, it was a lot. And I saw my energy healer many times. I had to clear that out, you know, but it was so therapeutic. So it's, you know, the book, I guess, is like this thing I never thought I was gonna do, but maybe was outside of having kids, the greatest thing I've done, you know, and it's getting really great reviews and it's touching people.

Chelsea (01:02:08.773)
Yeah!

Vashti Kanahele (01:02:30.27)
in ways that I didn't foresee, which I think is really all you can ask for as an author, as a person in general, and trying to make the world a better place is, you know, helping others sometimes through your own story.

Chelsea (01:02:35.018)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea (01:02:44.307)
Yeah. And I mean, and that's, I'm so thankful that you chose to share part of your story on this podcast, because that's our goal is, um, one, through sharing our stories, we're normalizing the conversations, making it okay to talk about these things. But two, um, I say that every time I connect with a guest, I feel like a tiny part of myself is healed a little bit.

Vashti Kanahele (01:02:59.766)
Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Vashti Kanahele (01:03:11.757)
Yeah.

Chelsea (01:03:12.179)
And my story is different than your story. And your story is different than the person that I talked to this morning. And all of our situations are completely different, but we've all been through something and we can relate on that level. And to know, especially like you're saying, there is another side and you, you will find the other side. And that I think is, is what's most important in what we do. And you writing your book and, and with us sharing our stories.

Vashti Kanahele (01:03:14.454)
Thank you.

Vashti Kanahele (01:03:20.363)
Yep.

Vashti Kanahele (01:03:31.821)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (01:03:41.594)
Yeah, and we're creating a community, you know, through our stories, normalizing this, providing that hope and inspiration to others who may be in the thick of it, and who might need to hear this, my story, anybody's story today, you know. And so there's real power in that and in normalizing this discussion.

Chelsea (01:03:43.592)
Yes!

Chelsea (01:03:52.948)
Yeah.

Chelsea (01:03:57.535)
Yeah. Yes.

Vashti Kanahele (01:04:06.242)
the discussion of birth, infertility, loss, grief, things that we are really told to just get on with.

Chelsea (01:04:06.26)
Absolutely.

Chelsea (01:04:14.343)
Yeah, yeah, and it is, it is okay. I'm telling you right now, this is me on my soapbox listeners. If you haven't caught on at this point, it's okay. It's okay to talk about these things and it's okay that you experience, it's not okay that things happen to you. Like you can be mad, you can be angry, you can be really, really upset and know that you're not alone

and that things will get better. Yeah. I feel like this is a beautiful sort of natural wrap up spot. I always end on a question and I usually take the whole episode to decide which question I'm gonna ask. I think the question that I'm going to ask you, you've touched on several times throughout the episode, but...

Vashti Kanahele (01:04:45.665)
Yeah.

Vashti Kanahele (01:04:54.209)
Yeah.

Chelsea (01:05:13.255)
if we can narrow it down. What is the one thing you hope my listeners take away from your story?

Chelsea (01:05:25.315)
Hope. I love that. I love that because I think that's the theme of the day. Take hope away from Vashti's story. Yeah, I again just want to thank you so much. You have

Vashti Kanahele (01:06:04.398)
Hope. Oh, that's beautiful.

Vashti Kanahele (01:06:15.479)
Yeah.

Chelsea (01:06:23.147)
led an incredible life so far. I am adding your book to my must read list. It's getting quite long, but I am definitely putting it on there. And I can't wait to see what the future holds for you. I'll be checking in.

Vashti Kanahele (01:06:40.376)
Thanks, Chelsea. Thank you so much for having me on and for really having these important conversations. You're helping a lot of people.