00:00:00] Welcome to your Body. Remembers Pleasure. I'm your host, Rahi Chun. This podcast is devoted to sexual embodiment, intimacy, and the body's innate capacity to heal, feel, and remember, pleasure if something here resonates with you. You're welcome to explore more writings and resources@rahichun.com. And now let's begin.

What happens to a woman's body, her desire and her sense of self when birth doesn't unfold the way she expected. And how do we support her in finding her way back to agency in her own body? [00:01:00] My guest today is Dema Marcado midwife birth keeper and founder of Latrice Birth. As a former sexual assault advocate, DEMA began to notice something deeply concerning in delivery rooms.

The same power dynamics, the same trauma responses she had witnessed in survivors. So she chose a different path. She created a birthing practice rooted in somatic consent and ancestral wisdom, and the understanding that a woman's sexuality doesn't disappear when she becomes a mother. This conversation may shift the way you understand birth.

The body and what healing truly asks of us. Welcome to Somatic Sexual Wholeness. I am very excited and honored to have Tema Marcado to the podcast this morning. [00:02:00] I've known Tema for, I guess about six or seven, maybe seven years or so since our training. We were participants in the scar tissue remediation training a while back, but I've admired her work since and I'm so excited to have her on the podcast this morning.

Tema, good morning, and thank you for joining us. Thank you, Rahi. I am. I'm really excited to be here too. Yeah. And also admiring your work from afar as well. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna introduce you and read your bio and then I'd love to, I love for us to dive in. Tema Marcado is a birth keeper educator and advocate for women-centered care across pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and pelvic care.

Beyond the birth experience. Through Lama's birth, she supports women to trust their bodies. We claim physiological birth and integrate sexuality as a vital life force. Not something that disappears when motherhood [00:03:00] begins. DE's work bridges ancestral wisdom with contemporary somatic understanding, helping families navigate birth as a rite of passage while honoring nervous system health, consent and embodied choice.

She speaks candidly about the realities of pregnancy, I should say a mother of six children herself. The politics of birth and the often ignored sexual and emotional needs of women after the baby arrives. And I also saw on your website de that restorative justice is also a huge passion and theme in your work.

Dema, there's so many ways we can like dive in and. Explore so many, the, so many kind of themes that intersect in your work. You know, previously as a doula, as a midwife, as a pelvic care specialist, as a someone who really brings in cultural and ancestral lineage in your work. Um, but I'd love to start off by.[00:04:00]

Having our audiences get, getting f to get familiar with the pivotal experiences that have shaped your journey in the work that you do now, what, what would you say were the real significant events that have shaped how you hold space and, and provide the services you do? I think definitely my own, my own birth experiences.

My first two children I had when I was 16 and 22 years old, so I was very, very, very young. And at 16 years old, you know, I really felt like I was invincible. I really thought highly of myself, maybe a little too much. You know? I think it's that good teenager ego that we all have. That is very helpful. But my birth experience was incredibly disempowering, partly because I developed mild symptoms of preeclampsia during the delivery.

But, um, I [00:05:00] remember walking away from that experience feeling like I was not invincible and that I did not know what I was doing, and that's how I entered motherhood, feeling very disempowered from a place of. Just being really like having, you know, a little ego death. But it was, it was not a positive ego death, you know, where I kind of rebuilt myself with new perspectives.

It was like, you don't know what you're doing here. You think you know, but you don't, and now you have a kid because of being in survival mode in those years, I just had to get on with life, you know, and then I welcomed my second son. At 22 thinking I was older, but really just still being a baby. And I had another, I had an, you know, very similar experience with him and I just kind of put this idea of childbirth [00:06:00] behind me as something that is innately bad and everybody has bad experience.

I remember. As a young mom, seeing other young mothers either pregnant or walking with their strollers, and I would feel bad for them. Oh my gosh. They just don't know what they have coming to them. Oh my gosh. They must be just like, I remember being in that place. You know? Like that's how I felt about. The childbirth and new motherhood experience.

And I thought that that was just very normal perspective to have until 'cause this is the perspective that was being mirrored across, you know, within my communities, my families, everybody felt this way, or at least that's what it seemed like. And then eventually when I was [00:07:00] about. 28 years old, I went to go visit a colleague of mine, my husband's very, um, community based and charismatic, and he was like, oh, such and such just had a baby.

We gotta go take food to them. And I was very much like, no, don't bother them. And he's like, come on, this is what we do. We bring them food. So we went and we took them food and I got to sit down with this. She was an acquaintance. We didn't really know one another. And I asked her how she was doing and she just began to marvel over.

She told me how she had this natural birth and she had her doula and it wasn't as bad as she thought it was going to be, and she didn't tear and she had her placenta pills and she showed me her placenta print image and I remember feeling so happy for her. And simultaneously I felt so. [00:08:00] Sad for myself.

'cause I was like, whoa, why did I not even know this was possible? Why am I barely finding out now? And so I think that really created this like radical shift of like, oh, nobody told me that it could be this way. And all these years I thought that this was just the way it was. So that's introduced me to birth work.

That was the first, well, at least the first pivot that I recognized. Obviously when we do our, when we are called into a calling and once you're in the calling and you understand it, you can look back at your life and look at all of these other moments that kind of led up to it. But I believe that was the biggest one that brought me into awareness.

Wow, that's so amazing. I mean, at 28, this is 12 years after your first [00:09:00] birth to, wow. Okay. So Tema, after that experience, like. H help us understand your path since then, because La Lama Trees and all of what you're providing is so amazing in holding space and educating and, and nurturing and empowering your clients and families across the San Diego area, you know, and beyond.

Now to have that kind of sacred birth that you didn't know was possible. Like what, what, what is informed and nourished your understanding of what's possible since then. You know, at this time when I had had this realization that birth could be different, I was kind of like in a crossroads. I wasn't working at the time.

I had about a year to kind of like think, what do I wanna do next? Because we had moved from the San Jose Bay area to San Diego, and my job prior to [00:10:00] that was I was working as a sexual assault advocate. I was the advocate that would go to. The, um, forensic exams and also to the forensic interviews, and if it made it a trial, I used to sit at the stand with the survivors as they testified against their perpetrators.

So when I, I found out about a doula, right? Because I walked outta my acquaintances home thinking like, what the heck is a doula? And I found this training and it was like, if you wanna be a doula, you have to be on call. You're gonna be called at all hours of the night. You know you're gonna be dealing with high stress situations.

And I was thinking to myself like, I could do that. I was on call as an advocate. I know what it's like to be on call. I know what it's like to deal with mean detectives, condescending detectives. I know what it's like to deal with district attorneys who are not returning the survivor's calls. I was like, but this will be different 'cause we're [00:11:00] welcoming life into the world and it's gonna be beautiful.

And so I think like within a week of having that experience with my acquaintance, I enrolled into like a doula workshop. And then it just happened really quickly after that. You know, I started like attending pro bono births for military families and. I just fell in love with it. But very shortly after, you know, attending the birds, I began to see the power and control dynamics that I was seeing with my, with, you know, in my other job when I was a sexual assault survivor advocate.

Mm-hmm. I dancing the same, condescend, the same power and control dynamics in the delivery room. As I was seeing amazing at the detective interviews, except on one end, [00:12:00] somebody's wor was wearing a badge and on the other end somebody was wearing a white coat. Mm-hmm. And after the birth experience, you know when you're supposed to be so elated 'cause you have received this beautiful child into the world.

I began seeing the same PTSD symptoms that I was seeing with my survivor clients. Amazing in the sexual thought world. So I thought to myself, I cannot continue doing this because I felt like an accomplice, because as a doula, as a doula. I'm a Sta staunch advocate, but sometimes in a very stressful situation, or when somebody's experiencing a lot of pain or somebody's afraid for their life, they feel like they're going to die, they will often bypass their actual consent because that's, they're in [00:13:00] survival mode, of course.

And so even though I may whisper in their ears and say, you're doing fine, you got this, you're safe. If we have a provider saying, oh my gosh, if you don't get the epidural, it's only gonna hurt more. You know, like mm-hmm. Not only is it manipulative, not only is it bypassing their consent, but it's really such a violent assault on somebody who is already feeling so vulnerable.

So that's when I decided I could not be a doula anymore. By then, I had fallen in love with birth work so much that I, I told myself, if I'm not gonna be a doula, then I have to become the provider because I cannot control what all other providers do. But I know that me as a provider, I can honor consent.

I can honor consensus a different way, and I can [00:14:00] welcome babies in a way that I feel is more honorable, more humanized, more respectful, even of the baby. Like the baby's experience is also very important. So important. And a midwifery school. I went to midwifery school. Yeah, that is the midwifery part of it.

Yes, I'm, you know, there's so many, there's so many questions here, DEMA, and it's amazing the journey you've taken. I find it really fascinating the parallels, the similarities that you found working as a sexual assault survivor advocate and a doula. Just kind of witnessing the power dynamics, the manipulation, the giving away of your body's, you know, voice, the body advocacy, all of that.

Since we're on this topic, demo. I would love for our audiences to know what you and your organization [00:15:00] have instilled to make consent a priority for your clients from, from preparing for the birth throughout the birthing process, and how that is starkly different than what most people get going to the hospital.

Yeah. That's a great question, and I love this question. You know, one of the privileges that I have as a community birth midwife, you know, I attend all of my births outside of the hospital setting unless we have to transfer, there's some sort of complication that requires a higher level of care.

Oftentimes, I am already working with a population of people who are really searching for different kind of care, so that. Like just at once, they walk in the door like this. These are people who are very committed to not only receiving good care but who are also committed to having hard [00:16:00] conversations, and they are already in awareness many times of some of their trauma.

So that makes things a little bit easier for me. However, some of the things that we really incorporate, we do incorporate somatics throughout the prenatal care, and this is done either through like our one hour prenatal visits. So we offer one hour prenatal visits. Sometimes it's an hour and a half, rarely.

It's less than an hour though. And on some occasions we will invite them to come in to just do somatics. I work with, I have a co midwife, her name is Alex Medina, and she and I are both trained in somatics. So we can offer this to our clients in the prenatal time and the amount of informed consent and education that goes into rethinking everything.

Everything from. [00:17:00] This test that we're doing, this screening that you're doing, I mean, we are asking them so many times, how's this information landing for you? What are you noticing right now? Or, you know, like we really bring in somatics so that we can really get to know them and so that we can help them understand where some of their resistance is at.

We really welcome. Their doubts and their fears around childbirth. I find that in a more romanticized version of birth keeping or attending, you might find somebody who will say something like, only positive mindset. Don't invite, don't even invite a bad thought into this birth space. But I think that that is a disservice.

I, I always tell my clients, if you are feeling doubt, if you are scared, let's call that in. What is happening? You know, like what is [00:18:00] happening for you that is making you doubt or maybe you're afraid of something happening. And so we really invite them to talk about it, unpack it, and remove some of the charge.

Yes. And so not only does this allow them to look at what a cesarean birth might look like, but we get to give them education. Also we remove that charge for them so that if that totally is what ends up happening, we can work with it from a place of understanding less from a place of, oh my gosh, my worst fear came through this, that I'm not good enough.

This must mean something. Mm-hmm. You know? So we try to really even reduce the shame that might come with. You know, in birth, things are, you don't, we can't, I can't [00:19:00] promise somebody their birth outcome because it's so vast. Mm-hmm. And we're working with life as, you know what I mean? Like there's nothing, I mean, it's so big.

It's life. So it's life. The only thing, the only thing I could really ensure is that we walk. Next to them through that process. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That they don't have to do that alone. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, what I'm hearing Tema is, you know, when you talk about you, you're really empowering them with their own body's wisdom as you're guiding them through a somatic attunement of what they're feeling, feeling their fears, where's their resistance.

So it's almost like you're preempting any kind of. Unwelcome trauma that may happen during the, the birthing, but also in preparation for the birthing. I mean that emphasis [00:20:00] on inviting them to feel and attune to what their bodies are actually wanting and feeling and giving them the space to express. It sounds like you're really empowering them with their own body's wisdom.

Yeah. And giving them permission to feel versus trying to suppress. Away. Mm-hmm. Really giving permission to feel. Mm-hmm. Because at home, when you're giving birth, we're not gonna give you suppression for, for your experience, your bodily sensations. And so in a sense, we're also trying to prepare them to listen to their body bodily needs.

We want them to. As much as possible trust their body, even if their body is telling them something is wrong, or to trust their body to say, I can do this, or the baby's [00:21:00] coming in my practice, it's very rare that we do cervical exams, and so oftentimes my clients ask me, how do I know I'm going to push when it's time to push if you're not gonna check me?

It's like, well, your body will tell you. And you will feel the sensations once the baby is low enough. And so we're really just trying to not just prepare them for the birth. The birth is monumental, but we really want them to walk away from their birth and their postpartum feeling whole and feeling like, yeah, they can parent and they can be, I.

Who they are as you know, perfect humans, and also being able to parent from a place of a deeper knowing versus a shame or not trusting. Mm-hmm. Their [00:22:00] instincts, not trusting their, the way that their body speaks to them, because this is not only gonna be good for them and their lifelong reproductive health, but it's also gonna be good for.

The child that they've invited into the world. Yeah. I find that, you know, people don't realize how critical that sacred process is not only in changing their bodies, but the life and the kind of behavioral patterns of the infant, the quality and the safety of that birth. Um. Tema, I wanna ask you, how has your culture and the ancestral lineage, the wisdom of your lineage informed the work that you do?

Because I remember, I remember, you know, in the scar remediation training, you had talked about the binding process, you know, post-birth and how to support the mother's belly to heal. And it [00:23:00] seemed, I remember you brought in some fajas and, and so I'm curious how your. Cultural traditions and lineage have informed what it is, the services that you provide now for your clients.

Yeah. You know, I think myself, you know, in, in my own journey of try of reclamation and of remembering these ancestral practices, for me it's, I'm also trying, you know, it's a reclamation process for myself, but in particular, it's also a way of reminding families that we often have a lot of the medicine already within our homes.

So if I am, for example, a couple of weeks ago, I, I had a family who had a postpartum hemorrhage at home and we had to [00:24:00] find ways to rebuild her blood and we were talking about some of the herbal. The herbal remedies that could be used. And the moment that I mentioned this one particular herb, it's called the Father's Eyes, lit Up, and he said, yes, my mom used to give me that when I was anemic as a child.

That helped my blood platelets come back up. And so it's really beautiful to have these moments where I'm reinforcing some of the. Cultural heritage, knowledge and medicine and reminding them like, yeah, that's right. You know how to heal yourself. And I'm here to remember, remind you of this. I also feel like it's a way of just kind reconnecting to the earth.

And for me, you know, when I think about a mother who has a child, you know, a birth giver who has a child, that [00:25:00] birth giver, right, is like the. Original ecosystem of the baby. And if we scale back, the larger e ecosystem for humanity is the earth. And we know that unfortunately, the way that we treat the earth is the way that we treat birth givers.

It's not that great. We are really it. We really disparage the earth. We do not. Tend to the earth. We're not respectful of the, of ecosystems. We really take and extract from the earth, and I feel that that is reflective in the way that we take care of birth givers and mothers. So when we, when I have little tiny opportunities to remind people how special the earth is and how these plants can help us heal.

I feel like it's [00:26:00] also reminding us how to take care of mothers and how to appreciate mothers. Right. The earth gives us weekly. Mm-hmm. Women give us milk through their breast, you know, so I feel like it's, it's all really connected. We were able to raise her hemoglobin by two points within a week's time.

And for those of you who are clinicians, you know that that is. Kind of unheard of if you don't, if you're not doing a blood transfusion. Mm-hmm. So I guess, I suppose that is one that is one way in regards to the belly binding. For me, belly binding is also a somatic practice. You know, we have like tapping or sometimes we have, uh, there's like different.

Things that you can do to help people feel themselves, their body, whether it be tapping their knees or tapping from right to left to kind [00:27:00] of help them feel their physical body well in postpartum. The binding does that as well because those first three days postpartum and you feel, you can feel a little loopy, a little just, you know, trying to fi discombobulated like.

Trying to understand what's happening in your body. There's so many changes and I find that the binding helps people feel themselves again. They yes, feel more contained. They feel embraced. Mm-hmm. And then also, it's such a loving act to rub somebody's belly, think their uterus. I'll often tell my clients like, do you wanna feel u your uterus?

And I'll help them palpate their uterus so that they can feel. How large the uterus is postpartum. I'll teach the mother-in-law that's in town how to do the binding, and so then that becomes a loving [00:28:00] act. Or I'll teach the partner to do the binding. Just very basic, like just back to basics. Yeah. Yeah.

That sounds so sweet. I love that. The whole, um, yeah, the, just what you shared about teaching the mother-in-law. I mean, it's just, it's such a beautiful thing to involve the whole family and the whole community. Tim, I have a question and that is, I wanna get back to consent and how I, the role of consent and choice during the birthing process affects someone's postpartum recovery and also recovers their.

Sexuality, postpartum. 'cause I'm, I'm imagining that because in a hospital setting so much, you know, as you mentioned, the power dynamics and the, the, the urgency and the, the, the, when consent and choice goes out the window, I'm guessing that that really affects someone's postpartum recovery and their self-perception of [00:29:00] how well they did.

Or was it a successful birth, but also. Their agency over their body. When it comes to sexuality, this is a big one, and it can look different for everyone. You know, there's sometimes where we kind of forfeit consent because there's a true life or death emergency, right? And so there might be like a rationalization of.

I didn't want to have an emergency cesarean, but I understand that this is what was the best thing for my child, you know, or for myself. And so that can be really, really hard to consolidate when inside of the body you feel you felt. You know that you had a near death experience, or that you planned, you did all the things that you could, resources, time, consciousness to have, you know, a, let's [00:30:00] say a unmedicated water birth at home, and you got the extreme opposite.

It could feel like a betrayal of. Life or destiny or fate. And that's really hard to consolidate when you understand the that rational side, right? Like, well, you know, my baby needed to come out immediately. I don't know, maybe there was an infection or maybe heart tones were. Came down really low. And when I see people who come to me with this kind of a story, it's oftentimes because now they're pregnant again and they're trying to find either a new provider and it, this is hard because sometimes they had another midwife, and even though it wasn't the midwife's fault.

They attach that midwife to [00:31:00] that story. Right, of course. And so then they come to a new midwife hoping to have, not wanting to have that kind of memory, or maybe there was one little thing that the midwife said, or one little thing that the midwife did, and then everything gets hinged on that one thing.

So it's really quite complex and there's lots, a lots, a lots of layers and mm-hmm. That's why the, the prenatal care and the somatic sessions during the prenatal care are really important because again, yeah, I can't promise, I can't promise that things will be different, but I did wanna share, there's this one story that continues surfacing for me and, um, this was during, um, we had a, like a free community trauma-informed.

Pap clinic a couple of years ago, or a few years ago, and a woman came in, she [00:32:00] was maybe about eight or 10 months postpartum, and she needed to have a pap smear, and she had had, mm-hmm. A birth. And you know, as we're doing the somatic sessions, I'm trying to ask her, you know, you know, if there's anything that she's concerned about or, um, you know, why she's seeking trauma informed pap smear.

And she was like, actually, I don't have any trauma at all. She was like, I don't have any trauma. I just needed this to, you know, it's a free pap. I need to have a pap. And so I was like, okay, like. Great. And I said, well, we're still gonna go through all the steps because it was a teaching clinic. And so we're going through all of the steps and sure enough things begin to surface for her.

And so this is, she had had an okay kind of sort of birth experience that left her with some pretty severe incontinence. So she was worrying a [00:33:00] pessary and she. Her baby was almost a year postpartum, and she had not resumed intercourse with her partner. And when she explained this to us, she was like, it's not that I don't wanna be with him.

She was like, but it's also that I don't wanna be with him. She was like, I just have no interest in sex. So she was like, there's no trauma or anything, there's no issues with me and my partner. So everything was very like, I'm just here for my pap, just do my pap. So before we insert a speculum, you know, we do this whole process.

We do the bone holds, we do a pubic bone hold, a vulva hold. We're just like very, you know, we're, um, disarming the pelvis little by little. And there is a moment where we go from vulva hold with a sheet, you know, in between. The hands and the vulva. Mm-hmm. To ova hold with a gloved hand and directly [00:34:00] on the skin and mm-hmm.

I begin seeing her kind of like processing and I could see that things are beginning to surface and I ask her, what's happening for you right now? Yeah. And she just kind of like shakes her head and our reminder. It's okay. Like all of your feelings are are welcome here. Your body's trying to speak to you and she says, I'm having this memory and I'm thinking she's gonna go back to her birth.

She says, I was crossing the border, um, a few months ago and I was sent over to secondary inspection and while in secondary inspection. They, they x-rayed my car and they X-rayed me and they saw the pessary that was inside of my vagina and because [00:35:00] they didn't know what it was, one of the border patrol agents had to do a digital exam to make sure it wasn't, I wasn't trafficking drugs.

And she's sharing this. Right. And I can, I can see her trying to like regulate and to suppress it. And we're all the while we're still holding her, all the, oh. What was interesting was that she kept on asking for more pressure. More pressure. She needed us to really, really hold her. Yeah. And um, so there was numbness, there was like armor there.

Yes. Yes. And then she goes on to say, she was saying. I know it wasn't a sexual assault. I know it wasn't a sexual assault. She was like, but that's what it felt like. But I know it wasn't like, so her rational brain was trying to, you know, she had walked away from that experience with her rational brain saying, Hey, this is what happens at the border [00:36:00] sometimes.

But her body registered it as a sexual assault worse. It was just so powerful because we gave her a moment to recognize that's how her body was feeling, and so we gave her this moment. Yes, we gave her body and herself to make this connection with her experience, and I believe, you know, that's why Somatics is so amazing, but also the slow pace.

Like every single time we would ask her, how do you know you're ready to move on to the next step? She'd be like, because, you know, I feel safe. Okay. How do you know you feel safe? We were trying to really make that mind body connection of like, this is what it's like to feel safe. This is what it's like Yes.

To, to really say yes and in mm-hmm. Making those [00:37:00] neural connections. I believe she was able to go back to that point and be like, oh. That time was not like this time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, that, that just kept on surfacing for me. You know, that it's not always about the birth experience. It could be, I had somebody who.

Had a tampon that was stuck inside of them for the, uh, during the very first menstruation, and she felt so humiliated take being taken to her pediatrician to get it removed, you know, so. Mm-hmm. Many of these moments, they trickle into our sexual health. They can trickle into how we feel about ourselves when it comes to birth.

It's all just a big woven trap tapestry. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's so, [00:38:00] uh, that that example is so telling and so reflective of so many things. Tema, the beauty of inviting the client to feel into their sensations, their emotions. I feel like so much of the buried trauma in our bodies are because we're not giving ourselves the spaciousness to feel.

What our authentic feelings are regarding that experience and what you did with this client Allowed her to get in touch with it and metabolize it and you know, only then can it dissolve and, and release from the body. This brings up a fascinating question for me, Tema, and we touched a little bit upon it before we started the interview and that is.

You know, all of those kinds of experiences that live in the pelvis, that live in the genitalia, whether it's past violations or a past traumatic birth experience, I'm guessing [00:39:00] in the birthing process, so many of those memories come to the surface. Maybe for the first time since those traumatic events happened in order to metabolize.

Yes, it can happen. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes they're so buried though that they don't surface fully until postpartum though. Mm-hmm. Because in labor, yes, in labor, we will sometimes see people completely clench. We'll hear people really screaming as if they're being attacked all over again. Yeah.

Sometimes, you know, when we're doing a cervical exam or attempting to do one, if one is needed or called for, we can sometimes feel how the pelvic floor and all the soft tissues are not soft. They're, yeah, [00:40:00] completely guarded. So that is why for one. Spontaneous labor is really super important. You know, when you're working with somebody who is, when you're working with somebody who is low risk and is healthy, it's so important to wait for labor to begin spontaneously.

And this is important, spontaneous because yes, this is when you know your bag of water breaks on its own or contractions start on its own. There's there we're not inducing, so already we're beginning from a place. Of embodied consent because the body and the baby are all in alignment of it's time for it's time for this to happen.

And also there's often a gradual onset to labor, particularly for first time birth givers. And so this gradualness allows people's psyche. To slowly get [00:41:00] initiated into this first thing that the birth that they're doing for the very, very, very first time, and that is a more gentle process than being induced than just.

It's a little bit more, um, it could be a little bit more intense. Um mm-hmm. Because we are artificially creating contractions or artificially mechanically opening up the pelvis, if at all possible. Waiting for spontaneous labor could be really helpful for somebody who has a history of trauma for many reasons, right?

One, it's. The best thing we can do for the pregnancy and the baby and the birth giver's body. But two is that slow gradualness, so that's, that's really important. And then the environment that is created prior to planning for the [00:42:00] home birth. We talk in detail about who's gonna be around at your birth. We ask people to think really carefully, like, do both grandmothers really need to be in the room?

You know, um mm-hmm. Does your high stress, high anxiety sister really need to be present for the birth? So we really look at the entire environment, even placing lighting, um, ensuring that they feel comfortable with the midwifery team. All of that is so really important. And then obviously, hopefully by the time that we are in the birth setting.

The birth team has a good grasp at the languaging that they use, right? Because some languaging is can be triggering for, for individuals. So we learn how to speak in a way that is non triggering to them. We even [00:43:00] go over certain things like birth complications, you know, and I tell people ahead of time if there's truly a birth complication.

The tone of my voice will change. You will hear the tone of my voice change. Mm-hmm. And this is so that everybody can clearly hear what needs to happen next so that I can take good care of you so I can take good care of your baby. So I even explained those things beforehand so that they don't go from sweet midwife voice, all prenatal care, and then all of a sudden at the birth.

If they hear me do a shift, and that could be also very dysregulating and scary for somebody. Sure. Sure. I wanna ask that example of the woman with the pessary and, and who was with the invasive procedure at the border and how she, 10 months after giving birth, just lost interest in sex. You know, [00:44:00] that it's staying with me because I'm, I, the question I want to ask de is.

For clients to resume a healthy sexual life and and relations post birth. Are there things in particular, are there ways that you prepare your clients for that post birth? Because clearly all of the. Attunement somatic attunement and the consent are huge, huge factors for them to feel really empowered during the birthing process.

I'm wondering, in the postpartum, are there any ways to support a healthy resuming of a vibrant sex life for them? Yeah, I would say that in some cases it's automatic. You know, somebody is, you know, at their six week appointment and they're like, Hey, can you just. Take a good check down there, make sure that my tear healed.

Mm-hmm. Because we we're really looking forward to resuming sexual intercourse. [00:45:00] But there are times where I will find clients who will say things like, I'm not even thinking about that. It's not even in my, it hasn't even made it into radar bots. And sometimes that's simply because. The first six weeks can be really hard if you have a baby who is not allowing you to sleep.

And so sometimes it's just simply waiting out that newborn period. 'cause if you're not sleeping well, you don't have good sex hormones in you at all. And this can be true even for. The father, especially if the father or the other birth parent is also waking up at night every hour, every two hours, not feeding themselves correctly.

You know what I mean? Like, just like the, if the basics are not there for both parents, then [00:46:00] the sexual desire goes out the white side sometimes. So for me, one of the things that we talk about. Is is about, um, the co-parenting that needs to happen. What I find is that sometimes women will not want to engage intimately because they don't find, because, um, they don't feel supported.

There is like all of the other ways that you could be intimate and loving to somebody. Is not there. Mm-hmm. And so very early on, you know, once the baby is born and it's the first time that mom needs to get up to use the restroom, we tell Dads, take off your shirt. You're going to do skin to skin now because you need to attune to this baby.

This baby needs to know that you too are a safe person. That you two can put this baby to sleep, that you two can change the diapers that you two will get up in the middle of the night to [00:47:00] help. And in building that relationship with the baby gets to know that two people that, that they have two people that are their safe thoughts.

Maybe only one of, maybe only one of them can have milk come flow through them. Um, right. And so we really, really try to encourage the non-birth parents. Yes. To begin to extend to the baby. 'cause something's really special happens when, mm-hmm. A father or a non-birth parent begins to do a lot of that newborn care stays up with them, smells them, swaddles them, changes their diaper, burps them, their amygdala begins to also change.

They begin to attune to the baby as well. And if their amygdala changes, if their gray [00:48:00] matter also changes, this makes them more attentive to the birth parent as well. And so it becomes this really beautiful feedback loop amongst all three of them. And if the, if the mother, if the birth giver can find.

Soulless and comfort that her partner is going to be with her throughout those long nights. Bring her water. Yeah. Take care of the other things. That is a, those are romantic acts, you know, to know that those are so romance. Yeah. To know like, oh my gosh, my partner, like I feel, you know, for me and my husband, it was so beautiful because he, you know, we had.

We have six kids, so we definitely had practice. He would sing to me. He would sing to me after the babies were born. You know, he would tie up a drum and he would sing to me like songs of gratitude. He'd [00:49:00] make sure that our favorite foods were available. He'd make sure that the big kids didn't feel neglected, you know, so that I could sleep.

And so we were in love. This was a time of being in love versus me resenting him. Versus me. Yes. Not wanting to feeling like I'm doing things by myself. And so then that creates that right natural progression of I'm loved, I'm supported. Oh my gosh, I see my husband holding the baby and I'm melting. I think that if that is, is not there.

If we don't have those kind of dynamics in place, and if we don't have the correct resources to support that family in that cri critical time, then things like intimacy feel like the last thing on their mind totally makes total sense. I'm really [00:50:00] curious, Tema, obviously the work that, that you and La Matrics birth do is to support, like, here's a question because that kind of education needs to be, needs to focus on the, uh, mother's partner do.

Is that part of what you guys do at, at La Matrics birth is, is bring the whole family in because that's what it really takes for a successful birth to happen. Yes. As much as possible we invite parents to come to the prenatal visits, particularly if they're having their very first baby. And we also talk about it very candidly, right?

So we might have hard conversations like, what was it like your first, your with your first baby? You know? And I've had, I've had mothers say, I wasn't supported. I resented my partner, I envied my partner. Mm-hmm. Because my partner got to sleep and I didn't get to sleep. Um, so we have those conversations and, [00:51:00] you know, sometimes I'm working with, it's, it's really curious to see all of the different types of dynamics, but I will sometimes see.

Mothers who are unwilling to let go of tasks, they're unwilling to receive support even though we have a willing partner. And so then this kind of shows us the relationship dynamics and it yes, you know, we, we thread carefully because we only can support them if they're really open to that, right? So sometimes we are having conversations about.

You're gonna have to let your partner put the older kids to bed. I know that this is your routine, but this new baby is coming. Or maybe you decided not to suture your tears and now you have to stay in bed. You're go, you know, these are the things that have to happen to honor your healing. Hmm. But also to honor the relationship of the other parent [00:52:00] with those children, and how important it is for children to have more than one person that they can securely.

Attached to and how important it is for a father to feel confident as a parent. So yes, we have these conversations with them prenatally. We talk about these things before we discharge from home because we give the father responsibilities. You are gonna take the temperature every four hours. That's what you're responsible for.

Yeah. Yeah, you're responsible for the P'S and the Ps. I want you to count them. I want you to see them. I want you to feel how heavy they are. And so then when we go into do these postpartum visits, I'm asked, I'm, I'm following up on, on dad's on daddy's homework. And so this is not to, this is to really, this is how you include, right?

This is how [00:53:00] you include them. And as a midwife, I try my very best to not leave it all on the birth parent, of course. And I'll ask them like, okay dad, oh my gosh, what are you gonna make for, because sometimes we like just even something simple, for example. I could say like, let's say it's time for the postpartum meal because baby's been born.

Instead of asking the mom, what would you like to eat? We turn around and we looked at the data and we say, what are you going to prepare for her? What do you have prepared for her? How can we help you prepare something for her so that even the mental load of deciding what they're going to eat, we remove that off of their plate.

That's great. Mm-hmm. That is so great. Tema Lama Trees. Birth is People can find you and, and your work@lamatricbirth.com. And in [00:54:00] addition to home birth midwifery and trauma-informed pelvic care, I know you guys offer workshops and courses as well. Can you share a little bit about the mission and vision of Lama Three's birth?

Lama Three's birth was created specifically for midwifery purposes, you know, to be able to offer out of hospital birth services. And I named it La Matress birth because I wanted to make sure that it was, um, inviting to Spanish speaking communities. That was really important to me. And yes. Because even though in San Diego we have so many amazing and abundant amount of home birth midwives, at the time when I launched my business, I was the only fully bicultural bilingual midwife at the time.

So wow. I [00:55:00] guess that would be another one of my missions is to support more bilingual, bicultural midwives. Um. Today I've helped four, four Spanish speaking midwives through apprenticeship and preceptorship through LAMA birth. So creating more bilingual midwives is important to me. Um, yes. And then of course, offering the trauma-informed skills to providers who are offering pelvic care.

Yes, I've had some people come and train with with me, and yeah, I'm, I'm hoping to be able to do more of that in the future as well. Cool. Cool. Tema, um, we're about to wrap up, but before we do, I think it's just so incredible how you've taken your own personal experience. You know, your, your first birth experiences were [00:56:00] so disempowering that, that you would see pregnant women and feel sorry for them, and now you are just holding this process, this sacred process of birthing in such an exquisite way.

To wrap up, I would love to know, 'cause you've shared the experiences you had at 16 and 22. I would love to know how that compares to your most recent birthing experiences. 'cause I know you have six children. Yeah. Well, of my six children, um, I gave birth to five of them. My last three birth experiences were with home birth midwives, and I believe the first.

Was a birth center birth and the last two were were home births. And by this time I was already in my birth work journey. And I think that for me, the most important part of that process was remembering my autonomy, my self agency, my sovereignty, and seeing [00:57:00] how. The midwives really respected me and saw me.

That was really transformative and it allowed me, it has allowed me to walk in this world feeling more certain of myself and feeling more certain about my intuition, the things that I feel, and that led me into becoming a midwife that really ushered me into midwifery, and that's what I want for. Anybody who I get to support is that I want them to really remember who they are, you know, and who we are in our essence, you know, in our natural blue blueprint, so that when we walk around in this world and we're making decisions and choices, that it feels as authentic as possible.

How is today's episode landing for you and your body? Right now,[00:58:00]

are there emotions connected to your birth experience that are asking to be felt held or honored? And if you're preparing for birth, what somatic awareness, what self attunement, what partner practices might support you, your baby, and your family.

And what of these can your beloved step into to initiate, to hold, and to support you? You'll find links to TE's work along with a companion blog article featuring somatic pelvic practices related to this conversation in the show notes. Thank you for listening to Your Body. Remembers Pleasure. [00:59:00] If this conversation supported you in remembering pleasure, safety, or aliveness, you're invited to leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

You words help this work, reach others who may be finding their way back home to their bodies. You will find more resources and teachings@rahichun.com. Until next time, take good care.