Female Health, Pregnancy, Loss, and Spirit Babies

In this episode, Alanna discusses the complexity of fertility, pregnancy loss, and the layers that can influence conception and pregnancy. The conversation explores the role of the physical body, nervous system regulation, emotional health, and energetic experiences such as spirit babies. Through personal stories, clinical observations, and patient experiences, this episode offers a grounded perspective on navigating fertility journeys with both science and intuition. 

In This Episode

• Why fertility struggles often get reduced to a single variable
• Physical factors that can influence reproductive health
• How nervous system states influence reproductive health
• High-functioning stress and over-functioning survival mode
• Endometriosis, chronic pain, and seeking specialized care
• Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture for fertility
• Why fertility journeys are rarely just one factor
• Timing, uncertainty, and the limits of control in conception
• How spirit baby communication can appear in intuitive work
• Signs and communication from a future spirit baby
• The energetic perspective on miscarriage and rainbow babies
• Soul contracts, conception timing, and parental dynamics
• Questions around spirit baby attachment and detachment
• The importance of expanding the lens when fertility feels stuck

If this episode resonated with you, let's continue the conversation on Instagram @alannacrawford_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Summit of Event, where science meets soul and you don't have to pick one or the other. Hi, I'm your host, Elena Crocker, osteopathic manual practitioner and breaking medical teacher. On the pod, we're talking body wisdom, energy, intuition, and becoming an expert of your own healing. Whether you're looking to find yourself again, create a new version, or see, just here for the results, you're in the right place. I'm here to demystify spiritual curiosities while adding a layer of humanness to the healthcare experience. No gatekeeping, no pedestals. This podcast is for the woman who is ready to take her power back. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Hello everyone. Happy Wednesday. Uh as I actually record this, it's Tuesday. And if you live near me, oh my gosh, is it ever beautiful out today? I was just walking the dogs. Do you guys ever listen to Good Hang with Amy Polar? I was walking the dogs. The weather was so nice. I'm listening to Good Hang, it's the one with Paul Rudd, and I'm just like killing myself laughing. I don't wonder what people think walking by, or if they're like, man, she's got a good podcast, and I wonder what she's listening to. Anyway, um, if you follow me on social media, you know that I have been talking about for the past week the layered approach to female health. How yes, we can have the physical issue, um, be it in like different layers of tissue in the body, we can have an organ issue. So typically we're talking for females related to reproductive health, and we can have emotional issues, and that can be trauma, it can be unprocessed grief, anger, sadness. There's there's so many layers to what an emotional uh issue can be, and oftentimes it's all three of those things. Um, today we're gonna take that one step further, and we are going to talk about fertility, pregnancy loss, and something that can feel really vulnerable to talk about publicly, and that is spirit babies. And before we go near that topic, I just want to state that this episode is not about spiritually bypassing loss. If you have lost a pregnancy, if you have struggled to conceive, or if you have lost a child that's made at Earthside, nothing I say today is meant to diminish that experience. Grief in those spaces is incredibly real and it's incredibly hard, and it's layered, and it deserves to be held with the utmost respect. All I want to do today is open up a conversation about the layers that can exist at the same time. The layers being the physical, the nervous system, the emotional body, and the energetic or spiritual layer that people experience, but they always, I'd say they might not talk about it, they might feel it, and they might not know how to put words to it. And that's what we're gonna do today. So, because fertility and pregnancy, like they're not just biological events, these are full body experiences on many layers. And one thing I see consistently in clinic is how quickly fertility struggles can get reduced down to a single variable. So be it hormones, age, timing, your ovulatory windows. Yes, all of those things matter. Of course they do, but there are other factors as well. I had an Instagram follower ask me a couple weeks ago for tips for a healthy pregnancy after loss. And again, let me start by saying, I am in no way a doctor. I am not a fertility expert, I am not an OB, I am not a reproductive reproductive endocrinologist, I am none of the things. What I am is someone whose work and belief structure is deeply rooted in both science and energetics. So the only things I can speak to are my research, my personal experience, and what I see clinically with my patients. And sometimes something I say often on this podcast, and and to start to answer her question, is the easiest way in is the physical. With anything, with anything we're trying to do, the easiest way in is the physical, the physical body. If we're starting from scratch, look at the physical body because the body will usually give us some clues. And I will never forget my first big fertility success that I had with a patient, and it was when I was very green as a practitioner, being like I was very new out of practice, and it made a really big impression on me. So she had been having a really hard time getting pregnant, and she reached out to say, like, hey, can osteopathy help with this? And it's like this is my answer for any time somebody asks, can osteopathy help with this? I don't know until I can assess you. Because with osteopathy, it's it's a thought process, thought process through palpation, like through touch. So I can't answer the question if I can help you until I actually put my hands on your tissues and I start building a theory. So I'm like, come in for assessment. She comes in for assessment, and right away I feel a huge torsion or rotation, like to her upper body to the left. Um, so if you can picture that in your mind's eye, or even just do it now, if you're sitting upright and just turn your upper body to the left. So that's what we're talking about when we say huge torsion. And when I got into the lower half of her body on the right side, so lower right quadrant, think like our area of liver, right side of diaphragm, right ovary, fallopian tube, ascending colon, that whole area was compressed. So when I followed that line down, the tissues were incredibly tonic. When I say tonic, the best word I can think of so you guys can relate to it is tight. I often say when people are like, what does that mean? It's like, think of touching like hard ropey leather. That's what it feels like. And that's probably not what we want the right side of our lower body to feel like. So I worked through that rotation and we pulled it out in like a sideline position. And then when she laid down on her back, I went down into that quadrant and I worked through different layers of tissue and I worked out the spinal segments, and then I did some visceral work on the right side. So I worked in her organ field on the right side. And right away we got a really good release feedback from the tissues. So what happened was there was heat, and heat is a great indicator that a change has been made. There was no more compression, so her pelvis was nice and level and it was nice and soft. So I said, you know, this from an osteopathic standpoint, what I can do is I can align your body to be in the proper structure so that it can carry out its proper bodily functions. Sent her on her way and said, you know, if anything comes back or anything changes, let me know. We can keep going with treatment. So I got a message from her two months later. After that treatment, she had had a really heavy, so it was an early period, a very heavy period, very, very dark period, a lot of cramping. And then following that cycle, she was pregnant. So what happened there was a combination of mechanical misalignment in her body and fluid stagnation. When tissues compress like that, fluids can't move very well. So being like blood flow, oxygenated blood. If you have a fluid problem, you often have a nerve problem too because those systems follow the same pathways. So if circulation and nerve communication improve, suddenly the reproductive system can function a lot more efficiently. And I remember walking away from that thinking, wow, that was so easy. Guys, it is never that easy. Like literally never. That's usually just one part of the puzzle. But I think, and like I really do believe that I had that experience right out the gate as a practitioner because it allowed me to see the effects osteopathy can have on fertility and female health. And so naturally, it widened my lens beyond traditional health care, doesn't have to be the only way when we're dealing with fertility. And we'll talk more on that later. But I think I needed that gimme to send me down this rabbit hole of how I can help women because all it's done is made me want to help more and more and more. And I've just spent so many more years focusing on women and building my toolbox and experiencing myself. So I I do truly believe that that was the reason why I had that right out the gate. And I'm only telling you this story because I wanted to highlight that if our first step in is the body, take that low-hanging fruit. It's so easy to just go in and get the body assessed. And the body's measurable, it gives us immediate feedback. And in that sense, it sometimes can save people months or years of stress by picking up those easy things and fixing those easy things. And if you're spinning your wheels and you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself, internally, I would say start there because sometimes fertility journeys can feel really isolating. And just having that first buy-in of you know what, hey, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna go get an osteopathic assessment, that's a great first step. And understand it can be that plus more, it can be that situation, and we can work on that plus other layers. Sometimes the physical pattern in the body, it's been there for so long, like many, many, many years, and it can take longer for those patterns to unwind. It's not typically a one-and-done treatment like it was with that woman. But one of the biggest indicators of how long a pattern will take to change is actually what is happening in your nervous system. Because if your nervous system is living in survival mode, the body tends to hold on to the pattern much more tightly. It's harder for the body to accept and take on the treatment. And this is where the fertility conversations often start to move beyond just hormones and ovulation timing, because we have to move into how safe does your body actually feel. Your nervous system plays such a large role in reproductive health. So when the body's in chronic stress, when it feels like it's constantly just like bracing, or you're just living in survival mode, or you're just like, I'm just pushing through until XYZ. Reproduction is not the system it's gonna prioritize. It's gonna prioritize your survival over creating new life to be accountable for. So I also want to clarify something. When we hear the term survival mode, we often imagine something very extreme, like somebody who can barely function. And that is not what it always looks like. That's actually like rarely what it looks like. A lot of the time, survival mode is people who are highly, highly functional. They're working, they're exercising, they're managing households, they're doing all of the freaking things at once, and they're just like bulldozing through life. But they're also constantly stressed, they're burnt out, but like not letting themselves slow down to realize that, and they're pushing through exhaustion and running on adrenaline. So they're not necessarily falling apart, they're actually overfunctioning. And that, my friends, is still survival note. It's just the other side of the same coin. And the nervous system doesn't really care if the stress is coming from bad things or good things. Pressure is pressure, be it good or bad. And if the bonds the body's constantly trying to keep up, reproduction, again, it's going to become a low priority. So this is when people need to start regulating their nervous systems to help with fertility. So moving their bodies consistently, sleeping better, actually nourishing themselves properly, creating moments of safety and rest. Like these are all really, I don't want to say easy because a lot of that stuff can be difficult or feel challenging, or like you have a block to add into your life. But these are low-cost things as opposed to diving down a rabbit hole of like hormone timing and like all of those sorts of things. So sometimes just getting out of that survival mode and prioritizing sleep, nutrition, rest, movement, fertility can start to shift. And not because they manifested a baby, but because their body finally felt safe enough to shift out of survival mode. I recently, not recently, probably about a year ago, experienced this on my current fertility journey. So to explain this, I need to explain how I got pregnant with Ray. When I was trying to get pregnant with Ray, I went to see um acupuncturist and traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. And she did acupuncture for like maybe two sessions, and then she sent me home with some herbs. She's like, when these herbs are done, come back for acupuncture, which I did, and then probably one cycle after that, I was pregnant. So when we started trying for our second baby, I was like, oh, I'm gonna go right back to her and it's all gonna be good. So months go by, I think five months go by, and I'm not getting herbs, I'm not getting anything. And this has like become a joke between me and my patients because I do work a lot with people just working on their health, um, their reproductive, if they're on fertility journeys, if they experience loss, oftentimes I will tandem treat with a TCM acupuncturist. So with her specifically, um, the joke is like, what did you get sent home with? Was it herbs? Was it like tinctures? Was it teas? Was it some sort of like capsule? Um, and somebody always gets sent home with something and we don't necessarily always know what it is. So after a few months, I finally asked her, like, why haven't you given me any take homes yet? And I was fully prepared for her to be like, oh, Elena, I forgot. Like, obviously, she didn't forget, she's a freaking wizard. And instead, she looks at me and she's like, Alana, I'm treating your nervous system. You're way too stressed out. And like, she didn't tell me anything I didn't know, but I did need to hear it from her. At the time, I was going like a mile a minute. I was running my full clinic while also trying to like pivot my business. I was in the thick of motherhood, which like I'm still a year later just barely getting sleep. I've mentioned on the other podcasts, like Ray is just allergic to sleep. Um, we've been a full house renovation since July, and we're still going. I'm also processing grief. But I mean, other than the grief, I kept telling myself, like, oh, I'm not stressed because this is all good stuff. This is all amazing stuff. But in reality, I was like completely burnt out. And it wasn't until I finally was like, okay, maybe I'm gonna take a mental health day and just, you know, focus on what she's telling me. And I absolutely crashed. I remember sitting there thinking, like, oh yeah, okay, maybe she's right. And like knowing what I know about physiology and anatomy, of course I can't get pregnant if I'm in survival mode. So I think like when we're in the thick of it, if we don't take time to step back and realize we're in the thick of it, we don't realize how much pressure we're under. And it's not that survival mode, it doesn't always look or feel the way we imagine, like quote-unquote survival mode is supposed to feel like. Because I very much was not, I was the opposite of non-functioning, it was overfunctioning. So again, this is why fertility journeys are complicated, right? It's layered. There can be many layers. It's the physical body, it's the nervous system, it's lifestyle, it's emotional load, sometimes it's timing, sometimes it's things we simply just don't have control over. And all of those layers are interacting at the same time. So shortly after I had this crash and burn, I did try to make time for myself by slowing down things that I was trying to launch and just like slowing down in life. And my endometriosis came back with a vengeance. The only days I wasn't having like 10 out of 10 pain were day five, six, and seven of my actual period. So I sought out a different acupuncturist and TCM practitioner who solely focuses on female health and fertility. She is like next freaking level amazing. Her name is Ann Matthews. Um, she owns Energy Tree Studios in Oakville. She also has a podcast calling Triding to Be Positive, and it's phenomenal. You should listen to it. This woman is just a gift to the world in all of the women in it. She's the freaking best. But she put me on a really great protocol within the first two months of like supplement protocol of taking that. My pain was like substantially reduced, and it was just game-changing for me to even function in life. And the shitty thing about dealing with endometriosis in Canada is it takes forever. Like, I am on a wait list, it's like eight months to a year wait list just for a consultation with a surgeon to get my endosurgery. And that's to my point of like, there are going to be instances on this journey that you have zero control over. I cannot control the timeline for needingless surgery. And all we can do is the best with what we have. And that's why we need to dial out the lens and say, okay, what other options than traditional like surgery, OB, specialists, what other options do we have that we can take action in right now to move the needle forward? And an interesting thing that Anne had said to me at my initial appointment was she said, I don't think it's a coincidence that your endo just flared like this a month or two after your mom's cancer diagnosis. And she mentioned that some of the acupoints she actually did in that session were to release grief from the body. And again, it's not something I didn't know, but it's something I needed to hear somebody say to me out loud so I couldn't choke it down anymore. Because I can sit in my clinic all day and tell, oh God, I'm getting emotional, and tell people to face their emotions. But it's very easy and it's like my default to choke mine down in the name of being to service to others because that's how I identify and that's how I identify my purpose. So sorry, I needed to start exploring anticipatory grief, and I needed to start working through that to try to help release the emotional load while I have other practitioners working with the tissue and the organ. So a very long-winded emotional personal answer of how how do I, what do I do on my journey for healthy pregnancy and healthy pregnancy after loss? Number one, I would say go to the physical body first. That's your first step in. Number two, let's look at our nervous system. What can we do there? Number three, and I will shout this from the rooftops TCM and acupuncture. No matter what, guys, it's just it will make a world of difference for you and it will really help you narrow down your path. But now I want to touch on something that's been a huge anchor for me in not only my own fertility journeys, but in what I do in my clinic for other people. And this is where the conversation can get really, really humbling. And somebody can be doing all the right things. Their body is healthy, their hormones look good, they're regulated, their nervous system, they're supporting everything physically, mentally, emotionally. And sometimes pregnancy still isn't happening right away. And this can be really hard to sit with because we're human. We like explanations, we like timelines, we like feeling that if we just do the right protocol and we take the right supplements and we fix the right imbalance, we will get the outcome we want on the timeline we want. And again, like you totally can. Number one through three above can move mountains, and that can get us our babies. Totally can. But it doesn't always work that way, and it can encompass more layers than that. There is a big element of timing and mystery involved in bringing a human into this world. I don't think there's anybody disputing that. But depending on their your belief system, some people might interpret that in different ways. Some people see having a baby purely through biology and probability, some people see it through fate or divine timing. And some people, myself included, through the work that I do, have experienced another layer that sometimes can show up in fertility journeys, and that is what we call spirit babies. And I want to tread lightly here because this is a very sensitive topic. And this is not, again, it's not about dismissing grief. It I am not saying loss happens for a reason because that's definitely like not what I'm suggesting. Um, and it's not that I'm saying, like, if you haven't conceived yet, it's because you haven't done the work. I am not, not, not saying this. I'm just sharing simply another layer of the experience that some people encounter, especially if they're digging into intuitive work. And this is where the conversation is gonna move into territory that not everybody believes in. And that is okay. You do not have to agree with me to take something useful away from this conversation. But as my energy work has gotten deeper over the years, one thing that started happening naturally was that I. Began connecting with people's spirit babies, and this isn't something I sought out, it just kind of turned on as my intuitive work got deeper, and it as I was diving down the path of focusing on helping women's health. I think this was just another tool that got added to my toolbox to be able to assist. So people hear the term spirit babies and they often think it's something like so woo-woo. The simplest way I can explain this is some people experience the consciousness of a future child before the conception or before the birth. And sometimes that can simply show up through dream, it can show up through meditation, and it can throw up through intuitive work, like Reiki, what I do. And sometimes it can show up in ways that are that honestly, it's just really hard to explain logically. And over the years, I've had moments where I've told people they were pregnant before they even knew. I've had experiences where a baby's presence came through during a session and it helped calm a mother's anxiety during her pregnancy with some messages that they shared. I've worked with people navigating pregnancy loss where the energy of that child still felt very present in their life. And I've dealt um worked with people who have lost a baby earthside, and we are able to communicate them with them after loss. And none of this erases grief. It does not at all, but it does sometimes change the way we hold it. So I want to share my own story because I think it's easier for me to share spirit baby stories than try to explain this through a theory. So about a year um before I conceived Ray, I started to connect with people's spirit babies through uh Reiki. They were coming through. And then I thought this is really neat. I know I'm going to try to have a baby in the near future. Maybe I could connect with my own. And the way I do work on other people, it doesn't work for me. It just I would have to go to somebody else. But somebody told me about the book called Spirit Babies by Gay Hendricks. It's a wonderful book. If you are wanting to conceive within the next one to three years, I would say for sure, read it. Um, but he explains, he walks you through a meditation that you can do to help you connect with your own spirit babies. So naturally, I was freaking terrible at it. And I was so frustrated because at that point I couldn't connect so easily with other people's. And like, why couldn't I do it with my own? So months went by of trying to do this thing, like not every day, but probably multiple times a week. I was hearing absolutely nothing. I remember sitting in meditation, like outside my back porch. I still remember this so vividly. And I was like, okay, if this doesn't work this time, I am done. And I am okay with the fact that maybe this is just a gift I have to help other people. And for me, it's like it's just it is what it is. And right as I'm about to close the meditation, this little orb of yellow light pops in, super cash, female, and she says, I love my room. And that was wild to me because right before I went into that meditation, I was scrolling Instagram and I saved this picture of like this wall deal that you could buy to put in in the picture I saved. They put this wall deal of a sun with all these rays of sunlight coming out from behind this gold crib. And I thought, wow, if I ever had a baby, like what a neat nursery. And that's where her name came from, Ray, like a ray of sun. But that was the only time I ever communicated with her. Like I could feel her, I don't even know if it was presence. Like when you're pregnant, you can always just like feel the baby, but I never connected with her in ways like other than that, that one time. Um and I said like I knew she was gonna be a girl. Sorry, sible water, and um, that she loved her room and that we were gonna name her Ray. So when we started trying for our second baby a little over a year ago, I connected with her very, very quickly, which was a very different experience from Ray. Um, so she gave me her name. This is a fun thing that you can do with your spirit babies, and it doesn't just come out of nowhere. You so I had said to Jay, I know we're gonna have another girl because I connected with her. What would be like some names that we would want to name her? So we had two names, and you can say to them, sometimes they won't answer if they if they're truly like impartial to what their name is, you might not, they might not give you feedback. But I said to her, Okay, this name and this name, show me your name. And right away I got her name. So that was really neat, and we connected well over a year ago. But this past year has been really hard. Um, and as I mentioned, like we have not been successful getting pregnant, and there's been moments where it feels really, really heavy. And every time I get close to a breaking point, I see her name, and it's like usually somewhere random. So one time I was in the shower, I was having a conversation in my head, like so down and out that this is probably not gonna work. My endometriosis is like nuts, and I just like show me your name if you're still with me. So I get out of the shower, I'm literally still in my towel, and I open a link to a Lululemon sweatshirt that I wanted to order because obviously when I'm in a downward spiral, I online shop and I didn't realize it shows the name of the models, so it's like so-and-so is wearing a size six, and it was her name was wearing the size six to shame, ma'am. We're still on board to like that. Most recently on Saturday, today's Tuesday, so this past Saturday, Jay and I were wine tasting, and I was saying I still have faith in her because she does keep showing me her name, but I am starting to get stressed again and like a little bit upset. I kid you freaking not, 10 minutes further into the drive home, and we see her name as a sticker on the back window of a friggin' truck, and he was like, Oh, okay. And I swear it's because Jay did not believe me when I tell him, like, I see all these signs, and she's like, take that, dad. See, and she always shows up in the exact moment I'm questioning everything. And for me, that's become something that keeps me grounded in the trust that like this is going to happen for us. I'm not in control, but I'm in surrender and I'm in trust. Because if there's one thing my fertility journey has taught me, we are not in control of timelines. What everybody's journey is, we have to surrender to we cannot control the timelines. So, a question that I got asked is is if the baby, if the spirit is there, why is the baby not here yet? And the answer is there's like a ton of possibles. Sometimes the body needs time to heal, sometimes the nervous system needs to feel safer, sometimes life circumstances need to shift, sometimes grief needs to be moved. And sometimes that soul that's coming into your life, they just aren't ready yet. And that doesn't mean something's wrong, and it definitely doesn't mean anything's wrong with you or that you have done something wrong. So also, believing in spirit babies does not mean every pregnancy loss has a spiritual explanation. Loss is devastating, and sometimes there is no explanation that will ever feel satisfying to why there was a pregnancy loss. But for some people, understanding the fertility journey through the biological and energetic lens can help you feel less alone on the inside. And if that perspective doesn't resonate with you, that's okay. Again, I'm going to talk about pregnancy loss in a spirit baby interaction that I had with a specific client with miscarriage. So miscarriage, I know for women listening, if you've gone through miscarriage, it's very hard to listen to pregnancy stories that don't relate to your own. So that's why I want to tell a miscarriage story. In the world of energetics, the soul enters the body upon first breath. So oftentimes, actually, the soul, the soul can take a little bit of time to fully integrate into the body after the first breath. Um, it's because the spirit baby realm is it's a really, really special place, and sometimes they struggle to leave it. So, in the case of miscarriage, not all cases, but in many, rainbow babies are the same souls as prior pregnancies because they haven't taken their first breath. And this can be for many reasons. Again, it's not always, but it is often the case. Why the spirit baby decided not to come earth side, I have a couple of examples of that I can share to you. So, one really interesting one that stuck with me was a session that had absolutely nothing to do with pregnancy. I was doing Reiki on a client whose youngest child was actually 17. And in her session, the energy of a miscarriage came through. And her mother, who had passed, explained to me that tell her that this, the her son's soul, this is the same soul as her miscarriage. And when we debriefed the session, I brought it up and she was like, oh my God, I actually always wondered about that because he felt familiar. And I always wondered what happened in those instances is something I think about a lot. So it's obviously part of her healing journey to know that they were the same soul. And she also explained to me that that miscarriage was the beginning of the end of her marriage. So shortly after she had her son, her rainbow baby son, um, because she knew after that miscarriage, she knew all she wanted was another child, and she was like, whatever happens to the marriage, so be it, because the miscarriage started to cause a lot of problems between her and her ex-partner. And she said, I've learned through this, I really just want another child, and whatever happens to the marriage, happens to the marriage. So she ended up having the son who's now 17, and her marriage disintegrated. I ended up meeting her son and doing Reiki with her son, who is incredibly intuitive and energy sensitive. He is an old soul. He is so lovely, but he's a very old soul. And it made me think about why the miscarriage or or start to explore why the miscarriage. I can't answer this for certain. I can only use my intuition and what I what I felt and what I connected with during both of their sessions, but I think the marriage needed to disintegrate because as an energy-sensitive soul, it would have been extremely hard for him to live in a house where a marriage was not working. And had the miscarriage not occurred, I'm not sure that they would have ever divorced. And often we hear, like, oh, well, we're gonna stay together for the kids. Maybe there needed to be a breaking point prior to a successful pregnancy so that they didn't stay together for the kids because that would not have been what was in his highest and best energetically and for his development. Another example was someone who came in after having to terminate her pregnancy because it was an unviable pregnancy. And when I connected to the spirit baby, it actually came through as twins. And she didn't terminate a twin pregnancy, it was a singleton, but she does come from a family with many twins. And her spirit baby communicated that the timing wasn't right, but he gave her an animal totem to signify their presence. So oftentimes from loved ones or spirit babies or anything, they'll give us a sign that we will either see all the time when we're thinking about them or if or we're having a low point, or we can ask questions and they'll give us the sign to confirm a yes to our question. So she saw the totem constantly, and she was not pregnant too too long afterwards, but she did have a singleton, and that baffled me for a while because I when I was pretty, it was pretty green in spirit baby communication at the time. Now I've learned like twins can honestly be an entire episode on their own. But in a very long story short, sometimes it's believed that a soul can be split into two humans, so come as twins for varying reasons, but oftentimes it's because they have a very big soul purpose that they put it into two bodies. And based on the interaction, I believe the first pregnancy was not viable because the soul was confused on how they wanted to come Earth's side. Were they coming as a singleton or were they coming as twins? And I believe that he decided to come as one, but he had to decide that and want to come as one. And giving her the sign that he is there, he was just saying, like, I am here, I'm still with you, I am the same soul. The timing just wasn't right, but that he was on his way. And again, I've met the baby, extremely old soul energy, big soul purpose, like so such an amazing spirit. And twins do carry a big soul-driven purpose. So he's the very same, almost like the same vibe as a twin, but he's a singleton. So that was another example where time wasn't right for the baby. It wasn't necessarily, in both those instances, it wasn't necessarily anything that the the mother of the parents had done. It just that that situation wasn't going to work for the spirits. I had someone ask on Instagram, can spirit babies come and go? Like, can they attach and detach? Again, I want to reiterate like rec read Spirit Babies by Gay Hendrix. It's very helpful in navigating preconception, conception, pregnancy, loss, and honestly, just if you even want to have children. And he might have a different view on a detachment and detachment. But typically your spirit baby starts entering the chat at like one to three years before you conceive them. We suggest like no more than five, um, because so much of your life will happen between one and five years, but in and around one to three, five years is when if you're thinking about having a child, you want to connect with them. And I think that digging into the connection can be super valuable for you if you are going to try to conceive. So much is gonna happen um between connection and conception. So that's why we again we say like one to three years. Um and also they might not be connecting with you because they're super busy, they're in the spirit baby realm, they're doing their own thing. Um, so if it's again outside of one to three years, you might not have a great connection. But we all have soul contracts to babies. So we all before we come down to this floating rock rolling around in space, we all have soul contracts with people that we're gonna learn stuff with, or um, they're gonna be part of our family, our soul family doing all of these things. So I don't believe in detachment because I believe that we all have these soul contracts that are predetermined. So if they're attached to, they're attached to you. I just believe that you might not be able to pick up the specific soul contract connection if you're really far out from conception. I don't believe they're like hopping on and hopping off because we do have a lot of soul contracts beforehand. So that's um, I do believe we always have these attachments. We just can't necessarily all experience them. Now, detachment will vary depending who you talk to. With some things I've seen in my experience, is yes, a lot of these soul contracts are predetermined, but it can take longer than expected to reach a destination. I actually just posted this today. It was something like, what's meant for you will never miss you. It will just circle and circle until you're ready for it. So sometimes, even though we have these soul contracts with these babies, depending on how we lived our life and our choices we made, it might take longer for us to conceive or get to the point of wanting to have a child. Time frames are loosey-goosey on soul track contracts. Um, and when we're talking about reproduction, I think depending on the woman, we all have a certain age in our mind where we're like, okay, if I'm not pregnant by this time, I'm done trying, or like I've been trying for X amount of years at this year, I just can't do it anymore and I'm done trying. And in that context, when a woman decides she's had enough, you do create a detachment. But the detachment happens from both sides. It's not just the baby saying, Oh, I'm out of here. It's both the mother and the baby, or the parent and the baby, saying, in this lifetime, I don't think that this is going to work. Now, sometimes the baby stays around and aids the mother or the family in other ways. I actually had a client who miscarried um her first, sorry, she miscarried between her first and her second, and that baby actually came through and said, like, their job is protecting and helping the kids as they grow up, and that they interact with them in this rocking chair in their living room. And she's like bursts out crying, and she's like, Oh my god, my son tells me that he plays with a little boy in the chair. And so, in that instance of miscarriage, the spirit baby still chose to be part of their family, and it was a soul contract carried out in a different way. So I don't believe in like cut and dry, oh, they're gonna attach and detach. And maybe other people do, but I just don't see it that way and haven't really seen it that way in my practice. There's been conscious detachment and um conscious like altering of how the full contract between you is carried out. There's also the fact that you have to factor in both parents. I do see men, but it's very rare. And the times I have seen the situation end in a detachment that maybe the mom wasn't really willing to do, but it was between like there was issues between the parents or between the other partner, typically just from my experience, the father not owning his own stuff or stuff between the two of them that they're refusing to face. So I have a girlfriend whom um we chat like energy stuff all the time, and I was telling her about spirit babies. And when she was interested in like thinking about trying, I was like, you know what, if you're one to three years out, read read the book and see if you can communicate her what happens. Um, so I would have been maybe over a year ago, guys. I'm bad with timelines. Um, she started doing the spirit baby um meditation that Gay Hendrix had come up with, and she got a communicator. So her spirit baby gave her a red rocket, and that was like the sign of her spirit baby, and she would see it a lot. Um, and then when she got serious about wanting to start to try, I think it was that I know she said like something feels off, she's not seeing it as much. And actually, like she was seeing different color rockets, it wasn't a red rocket, and so we tapped into her energy. I think we were doing, I did distance reiki or something. She'd asked me to do it, and we connected with her spirit baby little boy, and he indicated um that her partner has some stuff that he just needs to work out, and they need to work on some future planning stuff, and that right now it's just not a good time because something's gonna happen where it's gonna cause friction in the relationship. Right away, my girlfriend stops seeing signs, and when she she stopped seeing signs, but she also when she received that message from the spirit baby, she decided to take a step back from pushing and being like, okay, let's look at what's happening in life. And in really, I think it was like a week after or something that this whole thing happened, a lot went happened in her relationship dynamic. And they worked really freaking hard on their relationship. He worked on some stuff and they really worked on setting themselves up for future. I think that was like six months ago. Fast forward to really not too long ago, and I get a message, and she's like, the sign is back, it's a red rocket, it's go time, and we're like, Yeah, it's go time. And then two weeks later, she sends me a picture, a text of a pregnancy test and tail pods. And she's like, Which one is it gonna be? I shit you not. That night I have a dream. She told me she was pregnant, and it felt so viscerally real. Like I felt it in my bones. And I woke up and I said to my husband, I'm like, she's pregnant. I felt it. Sure enough, we get a call at 6 p.m. That night, she's pregnant. And I know you might be listening, especially if you've gone through loss, you're really struggling, and you're like, what the fuck? This is so unfair. Please understand the work and surrender that went into conceiving that baby. To have sure fire signs like it's go time, baby, and then all of a sudden they go away. That is so fucking heartbreaking when all you want to do is start a family. Like all she wanted was just have a baby and start a family. And if they tried during that time, that six months or however many months, who knows what have happened? Because biology still works, my friends. And that's why I want to bring it up at this point in the episode. I think that that was one of the most beautiful, selfless acts a woman can make. And before she's even hit conception, she is being the absolute selfless best mother to that child in that instance. Because she factored in the chances. Yes, biologically, I might be able to get pregnant. But if he's saying timing's not right, is that really for the highest and best for me and this baby in my partnership in this moment? And they took a step back because yes, her biology could work. And we don't know, would she have miscarried? Um, would she have even just struggled that whole time and got really down on herself and then changed her nervous system? Like she took a step back and surrendered and did the work. And I think that that is so incredibly beautiful and such an example of how phenomenal of a mother she's gonna be. So when people ask about attachment versus detachment, I think it comes down to yes, there are circle soul contracts that exist always, but you might not always be able to communicate with them depending on where you are in your conception journey and what's going on in your life. Like they might pop in and they might pop out. That's not attaching versus detaching, that's just looking at what are aspects do I need to take care of that they might be giving me messaging on. Um, okay, actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna share one more of my favorite stories um because this is like one of my OG spirit babies, and it's kind of three stories. We'll tie it together and we'll call it a day. I'm sorry guys, I know this is probably so long. Um, a woman came in for Reiki. Oh gosh, how many moons ago? Like four four years ago, five years ago, I don't know. Uh, she had run won a free session at PUSE at the yoga studio I go to. She had won a free session. I don't even know if she knew what she was coming in for. I can't even remember. All I know is I got to her sacral chakra and was like, you're pregnant. And she was like, There's no way. I'm not trying, it's not on the radar. This is years away, like, there's actually no way. And I'm pretty sure she thought it was insane and would never come here again. Sure enough, she's pregnant. She comes back and a little girl comes through in the session. This is when she's like into her pregnancy, and baby came through and was like, My mom is having so much anxiety about if she's going to have the ability to breastfeed. It's actually keeping her awake at night. Like her anxiety is keeping her awake at night, and just you need to tell her, do not stress. I do not care how you feed me. I will eat. It doesn't matter. I just need you to sleep. So, in the moment, it was really helpful for the mom to know that it did stop her like looping thoughts at that time. But she actually ended up having an emergency C-section and her milk never came in. And she said, like, when this was frantic or whatever, she just thought back to that and was like, okay, it's all okay. We're gonna give her formula and it's all good. And what like a powerful message. Sometimes we get messages from them that they might not make sense in the moment, and then it happens, and you're like, holy shit, okay, this is it. We're okay, everything's okay. Um, but she came in before she had the baby. So remember, this baby's not planned, was not on the radar, like life is drastically changing. So she came in before she had the baby, um, right before her due date, and she's there, and all of a sudden, this male, this little male spirit baby comes flying in and was like, Don't forget about me, I'm here too. And I was like, Oh my god, I hate to tell you this because I know you weren't planning for the first one, but you have a little boy in the wings, and she's like, Elena, no, shut up, like, absolutely not, stop talking. We're not having kids. This was a one and done situation. She had a very tough postpartum period. Honestly, this woman is a fucking superhero. I don't know how she did everything she did. She did come in for a lot of Reiki during that time just to give her the energy to get through what was going on in that postpartum period. And her spirit baby would always come in very gently, very chill, very soft, and say, absolutely no rush. Like, I'm really busy doing stuff in the spirit baby realm, but I'm here when she's ready. And when she was in the thick of it, like he didn't even come through at all because she was so hellbent that she was never having another child. Um, and then things shifted in her life, and um, she actually had like a huge physical transformation, a lot of I think change and like her mental emotional state. She really was like her nervous system was balanced, and she came back in, and sure enough, he comes back in and he's like, Okay, like I'm ready. And she laughs, and she's like, Oh my god, we were actually just talking about like okay, well, maybe we'll try for the boy. And again, they had tried, um, she was pregnant with a male, and she would come in and just you know, top up the energy, make sure everything's good. I treated her osteopathically as well through all of her pregnancies, and she's like, I need him to come early. And sure enough, he she says, Yep, I'm coming early, and shows me a snowstorm, and it was like not a time I think that we were having snowstorms. And sure enough, I get a text on a snowstorm and she's like, Oh my god, he's coming today, headed in for the C-section. But again, session before, or session maybe a couple sessions before, another little female spirit baby pops in and was like, Hi, ha ha ha, I'm here. Um, and we all laugh because we probably know how that story is gonna end, uh, but that will be remain to be seen. I have a million spirit baby stories. Some are beautiful. I tried to end on the beautiful, some are absolutely heartbreaking, some are honestly freaking hilarious. Spirit babies are amazing. But all of them, through one way or another, served as a piece of the fertility puzzle. I believe there are many layers to pregnancy, and if you are constantly pushing one and it's not working, why not expand the lens and just try another? If you are someone navigating fertility struggles or pregnancy loss right now, I just want to say this. Your experience is valid, your grief is valid, your hope is valid, and your story is still unfolding. Whether you see your journey through science, spirituality, or both, you are not broken. Your body is doing the best it can with the information and the environment it has. And sometimes the path to the next chapter isn't about forcing the outcome. It's about slowly creating the conditions where life can arrive in whatever way is meant for you. Getting emotional again. Thank you so much for trusting me with this deeply personal conversation and know I am here to hold space for you in whatever way that looks like. If this episode resonated with you, feel free to continue the conversation with me over on Instagram at Alana Crawford underscore. As always, take what resonates, leave what don't. I will see you next Wednesday.