My Origin Story – From Loss to Functional Medicine Mission

In this deeply personal episode, Amy Hellmers shares her journey from labor and delivery nurse to functional medicine advocate. After 20+ years witnessing births, Amy experienced devastating loss when her 15-year-old son Jake died suddenly from bacterial meningitis. This tragedy, combined with her own postpartum health struggles and perimenopause symptoms, led her to discover functional medicine and develop the RESTORE Method.

What You'll Learn:

• How pregnancy and childbirth create lasting metabolic changes that can affect mothers for decades
• Why traditional medicine often misses the connection between postpartum recovery and long-term health issues
• The shocking maternal health crisis Amy witnessed when returning to labor and delivery in 2022
• How functional medicine testing revealed the root causes of Amy's chronic fatigue, brain fog, and hormonal imbalances
• Why current postpartum care fails to address the generational impact of processed foods on maternal health
• The science behind microchimerism - how your baby's cells stay in your body for life

Keywords: postpartum recovery, maternal health crisis, functional medicine for moms, chronic fatigue after pregnancy, perimenopause symptoms, postpartum thyroid dysfunction, iron deficiency postpartum, labor and delivery nurse, grief and healing, microchimerism, RESTORE method, beyond exhausted moms, postpartum metabolic matrix, functional health coaching

Perfect for: Exhausted moms, women struggling with unexplained fatigue years after childbirth, mothers dealing with "normal" lab results but persistent symptoms, anyone interested in functional medicine approaches to women's health, and healthcare providers seeking deeper understanding of long-term postpartum recovery.

Connect with Amy: Join the Friends of Beyond Exhausted community on Skool and follow along as we uncover why your body is still telling the story of pregnancy - and how to finally heal.

Transcript

Beyond Exhausted Episode 2: My Origin Story – From Loss to Functional Medicine Mission

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to Beyond Exhausted: The Mom Recovery Podcast, where we're uncovering why your body might still be healing from pregnancy and motherhood years later—and how to reclaim that energy you deserve. I'm Amy Hellmers, your host, a labor and delivery nurse turned functional medicine advocate, and a mom who's walked through the fire to get here. If you're new, grab Episode 1 for the intro to this wild ride. Today? We're diving deeper into my story because, as I teased last time, understanding the "why" behind this podcast starts with me.

So, I want to let you in on a little secret—or really just one of my quirks…I am a dork. One of those geeks who really likes superhero movies. I was raised on Star Wars and know WAY more backstory than I'm comfortable letting you know that I know. I especially love the Marvel movies! There's something about them that just pulls me in! It's the ones with the underdog characters that I like the most. In any good superhero series, there's always a section of the movie where they present the main character's backstory. The explanation of how the underdog becomes the tight-wearing, masked hero swinging through the city, fighting bad guys, and saving lives. It's vital to the story, actually—you need to understand where the hero has come from and their motivations; otherwise, they're just some random kid from Tatooine with daddy issues, talking to himself while he swings a light wand. So while I in NO way think I'm a superhero…today I'm going to give you my origin story. There's no radioactive spider bites or gamma radiation, but you might want to grab a tissue or two because, not unlike some of the underdogs I mentioned, it does involve great loss.

There's something about your first baby. It's not that you love them more or that you're closer to them than your others, although that may be true. It's that that tiny human was the person that changed you forever. Before them, you weren't a mom, and now you are. It's so much more than biology or even genetics…that tiny human fundamentally changed you, and you will never be the same again. Mind, body, soul, spirit…all changed. That's what my son Jake did to me anyway, and I'm pretty sure yours did to you too, right?

I've heard some fascinating research that when you carry a baby, tiny cells from them actually stay in your body—sometimes for the rest of your life. Scientists call it microchimerism. So even long after pregnancy, you literally carry a part of your child with you. Isn't that beautiful? Motherhood changes you in every way—mind, body, soul, and even at the cellular level.

Jake was my first, born when I was a new L&D nurse. That's when the subtle shifts started. I remember the exhaustion hitting harder than expected—not just the new-mom sleep deprivation, but a deeper fog. I'd brush it off as "normal," and power through with Dr Pepper and sheer willpower. Little did I know, those early signs were the first threads in what I'd later recognize as the Postpartum Recovery Matrix: stress, sleep disruption, iron dips from delivery, hormonal ripples…and for me, gut imbalances from antibiotic-induced colitis in high school that seriously didn't help! But back then I had no idea that was still an issue.

Life kept moving—We had Zach when Jake was almost 2, followed by Ben, then Nate. Four boys in 5 years! I feel the insanity just telling you that, but really I loved it. I love being a mom! Buried under the busyness of mom life and nursing shifts, there were hints at something happening on a cellular level… afternoon crashes, irritability when overwhelmed, and pure exhaustion. I remember one busy day staring longingly at the tile floor, thinking "I just need 10 minutes." Do you ever have those moments?

Fast forward through the joys and chaos of building our family. I hit some stumbling blocks in 2013 when my marriage of 14 years ended. Major adjustments to life, but being a nurse helped so much! Don't get me wrong, it was stressful being a single mom, but the lack of conflict was a nice trade-off. By the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015, I was still thriving in L&D, looking good. I even ran my first half marathon!

But then, at the end of January, everything shattered. Jake, my  never-met-a-stranger, happy and healthy kid, passed away suddenly.

It was bacterial meningitis and it happened so fast. Saturday his ear hurt. Sunday was better—we went to church, he went to an art exhibit with friends. Monday he stayed home feeling off. Tuesday he slept ALL day on the sofa. At midnight that night, after he'd woken me up several times with headaches, I knew something was wrong. By the time we got to the ER, he couldn't walk well. By Wednesday morning, he was basically gone. The swelling had done irreversible damage to his brain. We decided to donate his liver and kidneys, so we stayed in the ICU until Thursday evening. They removed life support and I held my baby and listened as his heart stopped beating. I like to imagine walking him all the way to the Throne of Grace and placing him gently into the arms of his Savior.

There are no words. Over the years I've become comfortable with the silence that follows when I tell this story. It's okay to not know what to say.

The pain was all-consuming; it felt like part of me died with him, but at the exact same time there was a peace that passes ALL understanding. I hope you never, ever have to experience that.

And in the aftermath, my body? It rebelled in ways I couldn't ignore anymore. The exhaustion I'd dismissed for years amplified—crushing fatigue, brain fog that made simple tasks feel impossible. One of the first times I drove after that, I got lost going to the grocery store. The one I went to every week of my adult life! Grief layered on top of those lingering postpartum effects, and suddenly, I was snowballing into what I now know was the start of perimenopause.

I took 6 weeks off work and, truth be told, I never made it back to L&D after that. The delivery room, once my passion, became a minefield of triggers. So I left the hospital world behind and transitioned to home health nursing with high-risk pregnant women. It was quieter, more controlled, a space where I could heal while still helping others.

For 5 years I worked with women experiencing high-risk pregnancies. Going to someone's home weekly for more than 30 weeks, you connect on a whole different level than being their nurse for just a 12-hour shift. This time also gave me space for self-reflection and time to grieve. It was also during this time that I remarried my now husband and best friend, Danny. Both Jake and Danny's late wife Kim played a major role in putting us together—but I'll have to tell you that story another time.

And then 2020 happened. Like many people, I started questioning everything—including my own health. Perimenopause hit like a freight train, amplifying it all: hot flashes, insomnia, weight that wouldn't budge, and that ever-present fatigue. Conventional doctors ran the tests: "Labs are normal, Amy. Maybe it's stress or age." Sound familiar?

I'd nod, but deep down, I knew it wasn't just grief or "mom life." In about a 2-week period, I gained 10 pounds! My hair was falling out like crazy and I was absolutely dragging!

I poured into anything labeled "root cause" I could find. Unlike traditional approaches that slap a band-aid on symptoms, functional medicine asked the right questions: What's the root cause? How have pregnancies reprogrammed your metabolism? I dove into deeper testing—full thyroid panels, hormone mapping, nutrient assays—and there it was: The snowball effect from 4 pregnancies onward, compounded by grief and time. Iron stores depleted, gut inflammation tanking my energy, hormonal imbalances fueling the fog, disrupted sleep and stress looping back to everything. It wasn't "normal"—it was fixable. Through targeted nutrition, supplements, lifestyle tweaks, and yes, therapy for the emotional layers, I started healing. Energy returned. Sleep improved. I felt like me again—not the exhausted shell, but the vibrant mom and nurse I'd lost touch with.

In 2022, I returned to L&D—but what I found shocked me. As I shared in Episode 1, the landscape had changed: Postpartum hemorrhages weekly, skyrocketing preeclampsia, sicker moms across the board. At first, I blamed COVID. But slowly I realized that's not the whole story.

I realized we're seeing the first generation of moms raised entirely on processed foods from the 1970s-80s diet revolution. These aren't just individual health crises—this is generational metabolic programming playing out. The low-fat, high-carb era created mothers with compromised metabolic foundations, and now their daughters are entering pregnancy already depleted. What we're witnessing isn't just poor outcomes—it's epigenetic inheritance in real time.

And that's when I knew: This isn't just about helping individual moms recover. This is about changing the trajectory for future generations. Your healing matters—not just for you, but for your children and their children. The choices we make now are literally programming the health of generations to come.

That's my origin story, friend. From loss to functional medicine mission—not because I chose this path, but because it chose me. In our next episode, we're diving into one of the biggest lies in women's healthcare: the 6-week clearance myth. Why your body doesn't magically reset at 6 weeks, what's really happening during those early months, and why understanding this changes everything about your recovery journey.

Your body has been trying to tell you something. It's time we learned how to listen.

Thanks for walking this journey with me. If this episode resonated, please share it with a mom who needs to hear that her exhaustion isn't normal and it's not forever. Join our Friends of Beyond Exhausted community—link in the show notes—and let's continue this conversation.

Until next time, remember: You're not broken. You're just not done healing yet.