Latest / For the Love of Hormones- Miscarriage, Hormone Balance, Progesterone, TTC, Cycle Tracking, Conception, Holistic Health / 199 | How to Get Pregnant While Breastfeeding + Postpartum
Transcript
- Bekah: is your spirit Submitted to God's timing here because He knows the timing of your next child. Like He has known the conception date of your next child since before He created the world. So that fact alone should give you a lot of peace, right? Like, man, the Lord knows. Sophia, thank you so much for your review. You are just a delight and a joy. And I'm so thankful to have gotten a journey with you in understanding about your body and how to support it for your pregnancy. so you guys, I am going to kick off today as well with just reading a review on the podcast. This is also from, I think it's a different Sophia, but it says from Sophia JT. She said, Grateful for this podcast. I'm beyond grateful that God has led me to this podcast. I have been feeling alone in my struggles with my hormone imbalance and miscarriages. This podcast is a reminder that I am not alone. What better support than that of Sisters in Christ? So, Sophia JT, thank you also for your sweet review. if you are listening to the show and you if you have not left a review yet, I am going to ask that you take a quick minute to do so. if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you just scroll down, click write a review, share a quick note about what you think about the show. this encourages me to keep recording for you, but more importantly, it helps like with the algorithms to allow this show to be seen and pop up on more people's feeds who are needing this encouragement and information. So thank you so much if you have left a review. and if you have not, if you could please do so. I would be incredibly grateful. And we're also going to get into gift that I have for you today. So if you're here and you're listening and you are potentially breastfeeding and nursing, or maybe you're a postpartum, but boy, do you have some baby fever in you? we're gonna talk a lot about how to get pregnant and what this really means for us when we're in this postpartum season of life, but also desiring another baby and another pregnancy. but I would, I would be doing you wrong if I didn't share this free gift with you. So your thyroid when it comes to your endocrine and hormonal health, especially when you are postpartum, is so critical. And I have an incredible handout for you guys. This thing is literally gold. You could probably pay me like $50 for it. And it would be so worth it. But I'm giving it to you for free. You can just go to Beccayon.com/slash thyroid labs. and download this this document that I've put together for you. It tells you which thyroid labs to ask your doctor for and it gives you the functional ranges of those labs from the are you know the nation's best providers who are trained functionally. They're also certified medical practitioners. I cite everything but Making sure your thyroid and your full thyroid panel is in optimal ranges, functional ranges. It's going to be like a more narrow, healthy range than conventional ranges that you would see pop up on your lab results. So you really want to be looking at your thyroid in a functional range. And this is not for you to like self-interpret or self-diagnose, but it's pretty easy to ask for these labs and get them done. And you can just look at them and see, like, like. These couple ones are outside of these functional ranges. And then all it's gonna do, it's going to give you a flag to follow up on that with your provider or see an endocrinologist or see a functional practitioner or chat with me. and that it's just so critical and it's so important. Your thyroid, when you were pregnant, works 33% harder. Than when you were not pregnant. And then when you're postpartum, it has major fluctuations, especially in that first year, even up to two years postpartum. So it's really important to get your thyroid checked if you haven't and to kind of get it checked frequently, as often as you need it. if you are if you're feeling off or if something isn't going as you think it should, I always think like, hmm, maybe I need to get my thyroid labs done. So again, you can go to becayan.com slash thyroid labs and download that handout. It is gold. save it to your phone, save it in a note on your phone. That way you have it. And that way anytime for the rest of your future fertility that you would need, like what are those labs again I need to ask my doctor for? And what are those functional ranges? It's gonna be right there in your phone. So go download that and that will be a huge blessing and gift to you. Okay, so today's scripture is Ecclesiastes three, verse one. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. So before we get into like the nitty-gritty, lovely how-to's, because don't you just want like a magic button or a magic pill to be able to get pregnant while you are breastfeeding in postpartum? So sorry, I don't have a magic pill for you or a magic thing, a magic button. So there's no magic pill, no magic button I can give you to to get pregnant. But there's certainly a lot of things, a lot of things that I want to cover in today's episode. but the first thing we have to cover is our spiritual where like where we're at spiritually on this, because if we're off spiritually, it doesn't matter physically what's going on. It just doesn't. So I I am gonna talk to you about all the physical things, all the nerdy fertility physical stuff. But we are going to address our heart before Jesus first. So again, reading this scripture for today, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. So, Mama, I just want you to take a big deep breath and embrace that. And I want you to picture Mary in her crazy seasons of her life and the time of her big things in her life. The time of Gabriel coming to her and saying, Hey, you're going to bear the Son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. and she just said, Yes, okay, let it be. The let it be in the Latin that she that she said. Well, she didn't say it in Latin, it was translated in Latin by Jerome. but it's fiat, F-I-A-T, fiat. She said, fiat to the angel Gabriel, let it be. And ultimately, That is the heart posture that we are called to right now in this season of our life. What is what is God calling us to? Obviously, He is calling us to care for the child, the the babe, the toddler, whoever it is that that's in our care. so of course we say, Yes, Lord, fiat, let it be to that. And We also have this desire of baby favor and wanting our sweet and precious child to have a sibling to join them and to be their buddy and to be their friend and to continue to grow our family and to glorify God and the growing of our family. Of course we have this desire in our heart. And I know that's why you're listening to this and and you're wanting that. But ultimately, we have to submit the timeline to Jesus. We have to submit it all to him. And we have to say, Jesus, whatever this timeline is, fiat, let it be. Whether it's next week, next month, next year, or four years, fiat, let it be. I am your servant, Lord. so that that is my challenge to you is to embrace the grace of saying fiat to the Lord and to whatever this season is. We we are not God in Isn't it wonderful that we get to be under his wing and trust in him and trust in his timing and trust that he knows the past and the present and the future all at the same time and he holds it all. And so when we recognize that and we understand that, we don't need to fear the right now. We don't need to fear or worry or feel sorrowful over what we don't have right now because we know. That God knows what's in store for us in his timing and in his way. And ultimately, right now, he is calling us to obedience in the season he has us in. And that that's our challenge is to say fiat to this season of obedience. Okay, so let's get our hearts right there. so if, you know, I just encourage you to pause this and and do some deep breathing and just some prayerful meditation and just say, Lord. I surrender this to you, take care of it. I trust you. Fiat. Whatever you want, Lord, fiat. Let it be. So I encourage you to pause this, take a few minutes, and breathe and just pray that to the Lord and give that to him. And now let's talk about the physical things. So sometimes when we are nursing and we're breastfeeding, sometimes it can inhibit our body from getting pregnant. when it comes to our ovulatory hormones, the hormones that, you know, help our body to ovulate, the breastfeeding hormone, prolactin, often does suppress those ovulatory hormones from kicking up and functioning. And it's just the body's way of being really smart and knowing when it's ready to be open to getting pregnant again. It's kind of like the body's protective measure. most of the time. So there are some women's bodies that ovulate like crazy fast and crazy early in postpartum, like a month or two postpartum. It's it's insane. Like, no, girlfriend, your body is is not ready. Just a month or two postpartum. But sometimes that can happen. And that's a that's it for another episode. Cause I know you're listening to this episode 'cause you're like, I want another baby. and you're not having that problem of early ovulation. So most likely or One option, one possibility could be that your prolactin is just really inhibiting your ovulatory hormones, which would be your FSH and therefore your estrogen, and therefore your alH and progesterone, whatever. Okay. But if we don't have FSH, FSH is the follicle stimulating hormone, then if that's not elevating in proper levels, no follicles are being stimulated and therefore no estrogen is being produced. And when there's no estrogen, you know, reving up and and rolling. there's no luteinizing hormone that's being triggered to rupture a follicle that has been developed and matured and ready for ovulation. Then when there's no LH, you know, there's no there's no egg to be released in ovulation. And then there's no empty follicle to produce progesterone. So that's kind of like the science y way to explain it. So basically what prolactin does is it often suppresses or inhibits FSH from firing. And therefore it it prevents the other ovulatory hormones from kicking up as well. so, so that can absolutely be what's happening. It could just be like, girlfriend, your body is saying no, like your heart is saying yes, your spirit's saying yes, to another baby, but your body's like, I'm just not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. My prolactin is is just holding, holding me up. And and maybe I just need to wait and be patient in this. Of course, you always have the option of like, do I want to wean? You know, and and weaning, it's not going to be a quick answer most often. once you wean, like it's going to take your body most likely a few months, even a few cycles for your hormones to start working again and like re I kind of pic picture like a factory that hasn't been working for a long time. And then when you finally do, like it takes some time to get all the gears turning. get everything well oiled, get everything working really well. It can take, I would say, at least two to three cycles, up to six cycles, for your hormones to be normal again. And I'm I'm kind of putting like a hardball out there, like you could definitely get pregnant way earlier than that. But once your ovulation starts coming back, but for your hormones to really get going again, you know, it's it's just going to take time, even after you start weaning. And so ultimately I go back to that first point of like, is your spirit Submitted to God's timing here because He He knows the timing of your next child. Like He has known the conception date of your next child since before He created the world. So that fact alone should give you a lot of peace, right? Like, man, the Lord knows. The Lord knows. so so obviously I want you to be aware that you know, that could be a big piece of the puzzle. And I also want you to know, like, that's not the only that could. be not the only reason. So I do want to just introduce this idea that breastfeeding, it might be one piece of the puzzle, but maybe not the whole picture. So I want you to look, you know, learn how to look for signs that your body is preparing to ovulate, which is, girlfriend, you learn all of it in fertility framework. If you've not had formal education in learning the signs that your body's getting ready to ovulate, you need to do fertility framework. Go to Beccayan.com slash course and get started because you're going to learn about your cervical mucus, you're gonna learn about your basal body temperature, you're gonna learn about different hormone monitors you could use to kind of figure out what's going on. And you're also going to learn about what does a healthy ovulation look like? What does an unhealthy ovulation look like, or or maybe what would it look like if you didn't ovulate and how would you know that? and and all of those things. So it's really important that you learn what those signs are because it's really helpful for you to learn when you're fertile in this postpartum time. And if your goal is to conceive and you know when you are fertile, that's going to definitely increase your chances of getting pregnant. because if you time intercourse when with when you are fertile, you have a greater likelihood of of conceiving. Now the biggest thing is is like, yes, you're fertile, but are we fertile like we're ovulating or are we fertile like our body is trying to ovulate, but not quite there yet. So That's important to know. you learn all those things inside of fertility framework, or you can absolutely learn them inside of a different fertility awareness method course or education. That's just the one that I teach, is the FEM method. So so it is really important to learn like when you're fertile. That way, again, like I said, you can time that inner course. So when it comes to being postpartum, I love sharing this story because it's literally like, wow, that's hilarious. So I knew absolutely nothing about my body. when I when w my husband and I had our first son and then I was walking with a friend, I think my son was like five months old or something. And I was like, Yeah, like I don't want to go back on birth control, but I d I also don't like we don't really wanna get pregnant, you know, but it's not gonna be the end of the world. And she was like, you just gotta use this temperature thermometer thing and then you won't get pregnant. And was like, okay, cool. And so I ordered the it was called the Daisy. It's like basal body temperature thermometer. And so I was taking that and like I mean, I literally feel so dumb that I did it. I don't know. I don't even know what I thought. But that's how our that's our second son was conceived was by me taking my temperature and not knowing anything of what to do with it. I actually I looked back on all of those temps once I learned everything I've learned and went through everything I went through. And like my body was screaming signs that it was not healthy because our temperatures are really helpful to identify when we have ovulated. that's how Micah came into the world because we thought, like maybe we ovulated or my progesterone's risen. And then yeah, that's how he came into the world. So it was it's kind of funny. it's just really important to just not take hearsay advice, not just take advice that's in a Facebook group, not just take a friend's advice who just doesn't know what they're talking about. Or even like I have friends that I talk to about about fertility stuff, but I'm also like, but you have to take the course. Like you have to like take the education. Don't use this as a method to avoid getting pregnant, or like this might not help you get pregnant. Like you have to learn the full organized, formalized education, right? It's really important to know all of that postpartum. Like your body is really unique. It's some postpartum women have cervical mucus all the time. And some postpartum women have like no cervical mucus. So it's really helpful to learn that fertility awareness method because you're gonna become really in tune to what is my body doing on an ovulatory level. Okay. So the other thing to kind of consider is, you know, have your cycles returned yet? What were your hormones like before you got pregnant? You know, what are they like now? Have you had a history of miscarriage or PCOS, PMOS, or thyroid issues, or low progesterone or whatever? the biggest thing is is like if you are, if you happen to be dealing with some kind of root issue, like your adrenals are off, or like I said, your hormones are low, or you're having gut issues or liver issues, or Having a ton of inflammation. Like if you're having any of those things going on, even like once your cycles come back and your hormones come back, it's not a guarantee that you're gonna get pregnant immediately, especially if you are having some root issues. And so if you know in your gut that something might be off, aside from you're just lovingly nursing your sweet child, and that's that's not being off. Like that's just the nature of of motherhood and what you're doing, and it's beautiful. But if there might be something deeper going on, and I'll just like throw out some things, these could be some yellow flags of maybe pay attention to this. Like if you are exhausted all the time or you're exhausted when you wake up and you have a hard time falling asleep, or maybe you wake up in the middle of the night and then you have a hard time falling asleep again. Obviously, if you're waking up to nurse a baby. That's, you know, do it, you know. But then if you're having a really hard time falling asleep after that, that's a sign that your stress hormones are off, and that's going to impact your ovulation coming back. if you're bloated all the time, gassy all the time, if you're not pooping once a day, if it hurts when you poop, if you're constipated, or if your stools are super loose, those are all kind of some signs that like your gut is off. And if your gut is off and you have leaky gut, That's going to impact what your hormones are doing and and your ovulation. if you just have like joint pain all the time, or your body just like kind of hurts often, everything feels just kind of inflamed and kind of icky, you might have a lot of inflammation or if you get a lot of headaches, or if you get migraines. if you are just grumpy and irritable, you know, if you're dealing with any kind of postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety or irritability. you know, that's definitely something we you wanna take into consideration. there's I I could go on and on, but there's definitely like some root stuff going on. But if you're listening to all this and you're like, no, like I'm really good. Like I'm happy, I'm chill, like I'm I'm not stressed, like I don't really get cranky or grumpy, like I'm just good. It's like, okay, well, I mean you're probably good, you know? but if any of those things you're like, ooh, ooh, ooh, yeah, that's me. From what I was saying, that's something to really pay attention to and it's a sign that you might be having some root issues going on. Okay, so I think that is going to be sufficient for today. So my main points for you are discussing about breastfeeding and postpartum, understanding what's happening hormonally typically, understanding other root issues that could be going on that could also be contributing to your ovulation and your ovulatory hormones not coming back or not being healthy, being aware of that. And also a big point, too, is you need to learn how to chart your biomarkers. It doesn't matter if your cycles have not come back. It's absolutely going to be helpful to understand when you're fertile and timing intercourse. And also just depending on your history, if especially if you do have a history of miscarriage, being able to observe what your hormones are doing and perhaps waiting a couple cycles and observing them. through your charts to make sure that your hormones are balanced and doing really well before getting pregnant, just to set that baby and that pregnancy up for the best success and being a full-term pregnancy as much as possible. So like I said, I've given you guys a couple of resources today. You can get that thyroid handout. That's one of the routes that, you know, it's an easy button to check off with getting that lab work done and checking it. You can go to Beccayawn.com slash thyroid labs. And of course, if you're like, man, I don't know anything about my body. I do kind of want to figure out what's going on. I do want to figure out how to support my hormones and how to do this in a Christ-centered way. come join me inside of fertility framework. You can go to Beccayaon.com slash course and learn all of the beautiful things to support your body, to support your spirit, and to support your mind in this season of nursing and wanting another baby. So let me pray over you. Lord Jesus, we just come before you and I thank you so much for just the the my sister in Christ. I thank you for this season of her motherhood. I pray you would give her deep satisfaction and gratitude and joy in her season right now, Lord. I pray that you would guide and direct her, Father, for just amongst her heart and her body and her mind in exactly what she is needing, whether she is needing patience or she is needing. to maybe take some steps to take care of her body in a in a deeper physical way, Lord. I pray you would guide her in that. I pray you would give her joy in her motherhood and just help her to embrace saying fiat to what you have for her today, tomorrow, and in the months and years to come. I pray all these things in your holy name. Amen.