Birthing Wisdom: Nurturing Families Through Compassion, Connection, and Care

What if one of the greatest gifts we could give new parents was the reassurance that they were never meant to do it alone?

In this heartfelt and deeply informative conversation, we explore the transformative power of support, education, and compassionate care during one of life's most profound journeys: welcoming a new child into the world. From newborn wellness and breastfeeding guidance to the importance of emotional connection and self-care, this episode shines a light on the holistic approach to nurturing both babies and the families who love them.

My guest, Pauline White-Nardella, Founder and Principal of Birthing Wisdom, is a Board-Certified Family Nurse Practitioner and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant with more than 30 years of experience caring for women, children, and families. Combining her background in pediatrics, maternal-child health, public health, and integrative therapies, Pauline has created a unique practice that supports parents with both clinical expertise and heartfelt compassion.

Through Birthing Wisdom, Pauline helps families navigate pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, newborn care, and the often-overlooked fourth trimester. Her work reminds us that healing extends beyond medicine, embracing connection, touch, education, and the confidence that comes from feeling truly supported.

These insights are especially meaningful for expecting parents, new families, healthcare professionals, and anyone who believes that caring for ourselves and one another creates stronger, healthier communities.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

The Power of Integrative Care:
How combining traditional healthcare with holistic therapies supports the well-being of both parent and child.

Healing Through Connection and Touch:
Why gentle therapeutic approaches and human connection can promote relaxation, comfort, and healthy development for newborns and their families.

Supporting the Whole Family:
How including fathers, grandparents, and caregivers creates a nurturing environment where everyone feels empowered.

Self-Care Is Essential, Not Selfish:
Why parents need support too, and how taking care of yourself benefits your entire family.

Finding Confidence Through Trusted Guidance:
How expert education and compassionate care help new parents quiet the noise and trust their own instincts.

This episode is an invitation to embrace support, release the pressure of having to do everything perfectly, and remember that asking for help is one of the greatest acts of strength.

If you've ever wondered how compassion, education, and connection can transform the parenting journey, this conversation will leave you feeling encouraged, inspired, and reminded that every family deserves to be held with care.

Connect with Donna McDine

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Connect with Pauline White-Nardella

Website: https://www.birthingwisdom.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/birthingwisdom/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063586239404 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/birthingwisdom/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Infant massage is amazing. It came out of India and came into the United States through the NICUs. It's not like a mechanical, oh, I gotta start here, I gotta do this, and then I have to do this. You have to ground yourself. You have to be in a place of just peace and kind of call it no thought. You know, it's just a relaxing no-thought. And then that conveys that energy, whether it's through massage or CST or Reiki.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi, I am Donna McDein, and welcome to the Energy of Serenity Podcast. Here we unleash empowerment through the power of the word. Join me and my guests as we share stories, tools, and insights to help you feel grounded and aligned. Let's dive in. Good evening. It's Donna McDein. How are you today? The Energy Serenity Podcast. And I am thrilled to announce my latest guest. It's Pauline White, Nardella. Pauline, welcome. I'm so happy to have you here tonight. So happy to be here. So happy to be here. It's just amazing. And uh I often talk to people about like the six degrees separation. And when I had that aha moment, I'm like, wait a minute, I know your sister. So it's just like really incredible. So for those listeners tonight out in the energy serenity world, I want to introduce Pauline a little bit further because her background is truly fascinating. So, Pauline, um, you have the different initials after your name, F N B C B C and then M S M P A I B C L C. Alpha Alphabet Soup. That's what we call that. And I know that's a mouthful for the listeners out there, but it'll become more to light as we have our conversation this evening. So she is the principal and founder of Birthing Wisdom, an independent maternal, child health educational and clinical consultant company. Pauline is a board-certified family nurse practitioner, an international board-certified lactation consultant with over 30 years of experience caring for families. Pauline also holds a Masters of Science and a Master of Public Administration in Health Policy Planning and Administration. Her nursing career began in the field of pediatrics and maternal child health. She later went on to become a clinical nursing professor in maternal child health, pediatrics, and community public health. Pauline founded Birthing Wisdom, which I just love the name, in 1992, after the birth of her first child. Over the years, it has grown into a robust perinatal educational company with a clinical arm in breastfeeding medicine, newborn and fourth trimester for women and children. Oh my goodness. Welcome to Melanie. It's so inspiring what you have created and continue to create for young mothers. Doesn't even need to be a young mother, I would imagine, at this day and age. People are having their children later and later in life. Later and later. So when you first started your nursing career, did you ever feel that this was going to be your expertise of what you've created with this beautiful resource and company that you have shown to the world how important it is?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

I had no clue that this is what it was going to be. As a young child, I I used to make posters, which we would call now like um, you know, where you're you're putting down your future and your affirmation vision boards. And it had a whole bunch of little babies cut out, and you know, I loved I loved babies and baby dolls and things like that. And it's funny because when I first started nursing, it was in pediatrics, really all up to age 21. So it wasn't just babies, but um going through the pregnancy and birth of my first and really taking a wonderful uh natural childbirth class and having um chosen out-of-hospital birth uh in a birth center with midwives, it really opened up my mind and my body and uh my career into a more holistic view on pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, birthing, postpartum, baby care, everything like parenting. And um, I do bring a uh what I would say a holistic eye to everything. Um, and I feel like I'm very much balanced between, you know, the whole integrative as well as um, you know, medical side of things.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

That's beautiful. So for those listeners that are not familiar with the word integrative, what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

So um integrative medicine, integrative health is really um not giving away the more structured medical care, but adding in very well-studied integrative therapies, like, for example, hypnosis for birth. And um, I trained in that and taught that for it must have been 15, 16 years. And um that's just one example, you know, there's um craniosacral fosscial therapy, there's uh infant massage, um, Reiki, um I don't know, just so many different little bits, herbalism things that uh have been brought into the practice.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

That's beautiful. Uh I'd like you to explain to the listening audience, and for my own benefit too, more of that cranial sacral portion of bringing that forward for not only the baby, but for the mother as well, correct?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

So I try, like in my clinical arm in my office, I try to um what I should say is my goal is to treat the mom and the baby as a dyad, dyadic care. They are symbiotically together, have been together, and continue to be together, even in postpartum. And um what craniosacral is, it really fascinated me. I saw babies go for craniosacral treatment or craniosacral fossil treatment, very similar. And um, I would see huge changes in the mom and the baby. Like all of a sudden, they'd get out of this stress, maybe trauma from the birth, things like that, and be in a place of um really at peace and feeding better, resting better, both of them, um, mentally feeling better, especially for the moms. So um, I took a training in it. I did the galepsy method, which is craniosacral fascial therapy. Um, it was a training in adult and then training in infants. Um, it took me two years to achieve both. And it's a very light touch uh therapy. It deals with the cranial down to the sacral, the spine, but also very much um like other therapies, you know, the the whole body, like from your toes to the top of your head. And uh the way I describe it to my patients is every muscle in our body is encased in fascia. And fascia, if you could think of it like saran wrap, you know, around every muscle. Um, and that fascia connects throughout the body, it's like a second roadmap. So we have the lymphatics, we have veins, arteries, we have uh so many different muscles, tendons, bones, they all connect. But the fascia is uh one of the more major connecting, let's say, thoroughfares of the body. And um even babies can have their fascia really tighten up due to birth injury, due to uh how they were positioned in mom's um utero. Uh they could be very tight on one side and looser on the other or more widespread. So um it it always starts with the laying of the hands either on the sacrum or on the back of the head or the head. And many times with babies, if they're really stressed, I start on their feet. I don't even touch the sacrum, I just start on their legs and their feet. I feel like they're the least sensitive in those areas, and then it's really being patient, um, getting rid of ego, getting rid of all your thoughts, and it's feeling the movement of um that's that system. So it moves at a different pulsation than breathing or heart rate and things like that. And when you really sit quietly and just have that very fine touch, I was a uh another class I took, um, the teacher explained it, which beautifully as lily pads floating on the water. Oh so that it's just that very, very light touch. But when you do that, you can actually feel uh that brain pulse is what we call it. And it's the fluid in the fascial system. Um, so now we have like fascial rollers for you know athletes and um so many people are now addressing the fascia in different ways. But for moms and babes, this is really the way that I do it. Sometimes I'll put the baby laying on mom, they're fully dressed, just laying on mom, and I'll put my hands on one hand on mom and one hand on the baby. And I mean, I've never had a mom say, Wow, you know, that was terrible. Usually they're like, Wow, that was so relaxing. That was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

And that's beautiful. Now, in your experience, when you start at the feet of the baby, do you find that the baby gets to know your touch a little bit more and like actually smells your scent and your calmness that's around them? And have you had that experience where like all of a sudden like the baby just kind of relaxes more? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

There's uh I had a baby last week that was I I call them my siren babies. You can see that hear them in the parking lot with that cry, that stress cry. And and when the baby came in, you could barely even talk to the mom. The baby was just so in a vagal stress mode. And um long story short, I put my hands on the baby's feet and on their on his legs, and then I just put my hand on his abdomen on his sacrum, and I held it while I'm talking to mom. You know, um, I held him on my changing table, and um, you know, all of a sudden he started to just breathe very slow. And then I handed him to mom. She was nursing him, so she nursed him, and she said, he's never nursed this well before. He's he's always so stressed. And you could hear him take this sigh. So with craniosacral, there's a still point. So when you're feeling for these pulsations or pulls, you know, some they feel different different for every person, but there's a commonality feel. Uh, but once you feel nothing, you hold your hands in that position just a little longer. It's the still point. And usually you'll see the adult or the baby get flushed or they'd sigh. And it's like the body, it's the body doing the work, not anything I'm doing. I'm just let's say the conductor or the outside mechanism, but it's their body that does the work uh to release that tension.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

And that's beautiful because even as adults, when we have that release of tension from us, we find like, oh, my shoulders are relaxed, I'm breathing better. So to be able to instill that in such a beautiful young life, and when you're engaged there with the mother, are are you able to provide them techniques that they can take with them to do at home as well?

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah, so um, some of the work that I do with babies is um oral motor um exercises because they they're having trouble either bottling or breastfit feeding, and that's part of their stress and struggle too. Um so I will give them some of those exercises, and then I have body work, and um, I give them usually two or three, and I show it to them. A lot of that comes from my infant massage training. Um, infant massage is amazing. It came out of India and came into the United States through the NICUs, and um, with its use, it's so well studied, highly studied, um, showed how these babies, NICU micropremies really grew and um achieved more uh quicker discharges and and more growth and developmental strides than babies that weren't touched. And it's not it's not like a mechanical, oh, I gotta start here, I gotta do this, and then I have to do this. It's very much um like the person doing it has to be uh in even craniosacral and craniosacral fossil and and reiki, you have to ground yourself. You have to be in a place of just um peace and um really I kind of call it no thought. You know, it's just a relaxing no-thought. And then that conveys that energy, whether it's through massage or CST or Reiki.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And it's that beautiful intent of being there to support the mother and their baby, and but what comes from within you is that calmness and that beautiful intention to want to be able to help them, to guide them, that there's nothing wrong with needing the assistance. Because being a mother, it's a it's a overwhelming. And and then it's with the influence of social media, people like I have the best life, I have the best baby, my baby sleeps all through the night by the time they were two months old. And for people to be able to step back and realize there's such beautiful resources out there, and then it's not skipping through the tulips all the time. There is that profound connection that you need to be able to calm your own energy down to be able to calm your baby's energy down.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah, I mean it's a huge change in a woman's life. Well, even going from one to two, you know, every baby brings a change to their to the family.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

And um true because like my mom uh had five children, my mother-in-law had six, and they always say everyone was different. Everyone was different. It didn't matter that it was still the same mother and father, every baby was very different each time. Just when you thought you had it, it's like the next baby came and it was completely different again. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

A whole new lesson.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

It really is, and I just I find it so inspiring and beautiful that there you have this beautiful resources for a family to come in. Now, do husbands come in or the father of the baby? Do they come in?

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Some do. It depends. I mean, they always ask, I always say absolutely. Um, and for the prenatals, I do ask if they can come, even if it's virtual to be in the space and listening. Yeah, you know, in the educational side, the birthing wisdom side, those classes have they really encourage the father to be involved or the partner to be involved, um, or even the grandparents to be involved. Um, you know, if the grandparents are going to be helping uh this mother out, um, it's great for them to all be on the same page because things have changed over 30 years, 35 years.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yes. And I love that you introduced that fact. Not only do you welcome the mother of the baby, but the father and the grandparents. Because oftentimes it the way this world is, how expensive it is, we're really relying on that older generation to step in to assist. So how beautiful that is, because uh I know with the older generation, they just did it all. They just did what that had to be done, they didn't think about it. But now that there's so many more resources out there and there's more conversations being had, that it's perfectly wonderful to accept help. You don't need to do it all on your own. And do you find that when you have the young mother or the father holding the baby, do you find that they relax during the session too? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

And that gives them that beautiful peace that okay, they're being taught tools, they're being guided, and that they're not alone in this journey. Because many people don't have a support system. And to be able to be guided to a support system that is a safe, non-judgable, non-judgmental, loving environment that they can come in and be like, okay, what to what is going on? What can you do to help me guide me through this is just so beautiful because in the long run it calms down the parents energy and it calms the baby down. And I love the fact of being able to see these babies achieve, especially in the NICU, milestones quicker than they would be without touch. And people seem to forget too, even as adults, if we haven't been our hand hasn't been held for a while, or we haven't been hugged or our words aren't being heard, it's exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. It really is exhausting. So bravo to you for providing such a wonderful service. And well before it became more of a mainstream, no? You you're definitely a pioneer in this.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

There's not too many people who I think do what I've done. There are, but I don't know if they're like and nurse practitioners or you know, some doulas do a lot of this work, you know, uh with moms in pregnancy, birth, and then briefly into the new parenting um age. But you know, for like medically trained, you know, um you usually don't see that that much of that kind of like overlaying into more of the energy work.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Right. Because I know myself when I had my two children, my I had, you know, good births, one was a c-section, one was natural, all was well. But the moment when you left the hospital, though, that was it. Yeah, there was no really any further follow-up. Yes, you went and saw your your doctor at those intervals afterwards, but there was really no follow-up that was, hey, how are you doing? Do you need do you have any questions? Have you connected with your doctor? And I've noticed as years have gone by, that has changed a bit. Do you train people in doing this?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Um, I've trained uh I have NPs will come to me for 90 hours because it's a very specialized um pediatric and woman's health combined. So they can check off, you know, 90 hours for each area. They can't come to me for primary care because I don't do that sort of care, but um, they come to me for for the specialty. And um, it's very interesting because I I do say like postpartum moms show up in ERs and postpartum moms show up in mental health clinics, and um, you know, they may even show up to cardiology, you know, appointments um and offices. And you need to understand the whole picture of if they're nursing or not nursing and um safe drugs, unsafe drugs, and how to counsel them, you know. Um, so it is it's so niche. The practice, I always say I need ten of me.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

I believe it. And as more information is provided out there, especially with the social media world that we live in. I know that um when my oldest daughter had her first child, she did not go on social media. She was like, I'm not going to get into the so-called experts or whatever niche that they think that they're in. She goes, I'm going to be talking to my doctor, to the people that I've been connected with to really get the resources that she needed because she didn't know how to filter out what was accurate versus what was just because this worked for someone else. And that really served her highest purpose when she first had her child. That she was like, No, I really want to go to the people that are truly certified in this, have the education behind it and the experience. And it's interesting because as other people around her, her age, started having children, that was the first piece of advice that she said to them. You need it, you need to speak to your medical people to get your guidance. Don't be listening to what's out on social media. Yes, social media is great at times, but you really want to hear it from the mouth of the expert as to who's been trained in this and is in the weeds, really facilitating these types of different modalities on for the parent and the child. I often speak to people about the power of the word. Are your words very selective choose chosen when you're meeting with these young mothers or fathers with their baby so that you don't frighten them from like the medical jargon?

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Yeah. I mean, I mean, words are powerful, they really are. And um, you know, even just looking at a mom who's pregnant, there are so many words in the medical jargon that are fear-producing that we can and that I change into words that make sense to them. So um instead of saying contraction, like you know, a muscle is contracting and squeezing, you could use the term um the uterus is going into a wave. It's going into um, you know, a you you I always say to the moms, make up what what do you feel that it's doing at that time? It's massaging the baby head to toe. We do know that. So, and take out those words like um, you know, some people say bloody show. Really, it's a pinky mucusy show. It sounds like it's the civil war and really it's the showing that your body is progressing during during the labor. And it's a wonderful thing to look for because it does show the dilation. So there's some examples, you know, in the postpartum phase, I have moms come in and they're just exhausted. If they're struggling and they say, you know, I'm trying, I'm trying so hard. The first thing I say to them is, you're not trying, you're doing. You're actually doing, and you're doing a lot. So let's work together to figure out how we can take some of this work away from you so you can now have those moments to not only feed yourself and take care of yourself, but to enjoy the baby and enjoy your family.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Right. And I love that that you took the word work out of it and you put it as doing because, as mothers, regardless from day one to when your children are adulthood, you're always doing, you're doing something for that family unit, regardless if they're still living with you or they're paying their own way in this world, you're always doing, and to be able to step back and really take those words and be like, you know what? Yeah, okay. And to step back in my self-care is important as well versus doing for everyone else and never doing anything for myself. So we can put that word doing in, I love it. And I often talk to people too that feel I'm depleted, I never have time for myself. When I when Reiki clients come in to see me, I say, Well, you're here now. You've cultivated this time for your self-care, and self-care is not selfish, and it pays off to the family unit as well when mom takes care of herself. And it's so important because for forever women were not taught that it's okay to have help and it's okay to take care of yourself. It's just so instrumental, and the baby I would imagine feels that feels that calmness coming from the mom that she doesn't feel so drained because she's done so much and has done nothing for herself.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

It's incredible to see it must be for you to see the changes in your clients from when you first see them to when they progress and they have those aha moments. And accepting help, it's not a weakness. Accepting help help is strength. It's definitely strength because we shouldn't do it all on our own.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

No, I don't think we're made to.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

No, no, we're we're made to be connected to others, whether it's within your own family or friends or professionals like you that can raise that vibration up for one another. It's just so beautiful. So beautiful. I'm I'm so awe-inspired into what you do. It's just so fascinating. Um, I would like you to share with the listening audience how they can connect with you because they don't have to when they don't have to jot down really quickly when they're listening to this beautiful time together, because it'll be in the show notes for them and they can grab your contact information from there. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

So the birthingwisdom.com is the educational website, and then it's birthingwisdom at gmail, you know, for email. Um, the clinical is integrative lactation and family health, and uh the email is integrative uh lactation at gmail. So if you went on to the birthingwisdom.com website, it marries and connects right into the other one, and vice versa. Beautiful. So so you can find me on either. Beautiful, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Are you on social media at all, or you consider your email and your website the best way to connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Um, I mean, you could either way. I I'm on Instagram, Birthing Wisdom is on Instagram, Birthing Wisdom is on Facebook, uh, and X. And and they are the only ones that I have.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Excellent, which is perfect because maintaining all these different social media channels is a job in itself. So I love the fact that your two websites married to one another so that if one goes to one of them, they can easily go to the other. Um, Pauline, this conversation this evening has been so enlightening. And uh what you provide as a service to families is incredible. I love what you're doing with additional training for those nurse practitioners or nurses out there that feel like they need to take their practice to the next level. And just wonderful. What a beautiful, beautiful resource that you're providing for people. Thank you. And I think for that.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's an honor.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

You're very welcome. I'm so happy that we're connected, and uh, it's just our conversation went very, very quickly as it always does when we connect. So I just wish you all the blessings and continued success with your clients and uh keep doing what you're doing because the world needs it. Thank you, thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the Energy of Serenity podcast. I appreciate you taking the time to explore the power of the word, mindfulness, and calming practices with me. My gift to you is $10 off any energy of Serenity service, class, or product when you opt in to the Energy Serenity newsletter at energy of Serenity.com forward slash newsletter and enter coupon code thank you all lowercase. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe and engage in the comments. Until next time, may your energy be serene and your words be empowered. Namaste.