Part 1: Balancing Hormones; Podcast Ep18

This is going to be Part 1 of a 3 part series in the podcast on Balancing Hormones, Part 4 is shared in my Facebook group The Postpartum Circle, so be sure to go join!

These episodes will be spaced out and released through the month of July & August so make sure you are following the podcast so you don’t miss out!

Why are so many women experiencing imbalances during postpartum? Your hormones are responsible for everything. When you have a baby and you are not getting the proper care to heal your body you will experience hormonal imbalances.

Your postpartum hormones are not naturally out of control, however, they are in a biologically normal shift that comes along with these major changes.

That shift is a state of fluctuation that is normal as you are going from pregnancy to postpartum.

The change is definitely big, but it is not the cause of hormonal issues.

Come listen to part 1 of balancing your hormones where I share why we need to look at our bodies as a whole and try not to compartmentalize.

In this episode, I’m sharing with you:

• Your hormones are responsible for everything
• Knowing how your hormones function within your body is extremely helpful
• I am here to help you focus on how to balance your hormones
• Why are so many women experiencing imbalances during postpartum?
• 1 in 4 experience depression and anxiety
• There are misunderstandings about how our hormones function
• A massive hormone imbalance
• Postpartum lasts up to 6 years
• Most remedies tend to mask the issue
• When using remedies you are never addressing the root issue
• You control a great deal of your hormones
• Your body is not operating in different pieces
• Addressing the root of the issue
• Addressing the whole body
• You cannot take and break a woman into smaller pieces or compartments
• Your hormones in relation to everything else
• Your mental health, your nutrition, your sleep, your support system is so deeply related

We all get it: postpartum and the years after having a baby is no walk in the park. But you know what? It isn’t just about depression or anxiety either.

Hey, my friend, I’m Maranda Bower, a homesteading mama with four wild kids. My life’s passion and education is all about supporting mothers and providers in understanding the science, the art, and the sacredness of healing after birth. What we know as common sense in the postpartum years has many women feeling just plain awful. It’s time to bring back the truth and get you the tools you need to heal and thrive in motherhood and beyond.

Hello, my friends, welcome to the podcast. We are going to be doing a very special three-part series on balancing your hormones, and this is going to be an amazing series. It’s something that I have done in the postpartum circle group on Facebook, and I actually have created an entire workbook guide for you as well so that you can dive into your own personal hormone journey and use the information that I’m going to be giving you over the course of several weeks to apply to your own personal needs.

So, I am very, very excited about this. I want you to dive into these components and really apply them to your life. I’m going to be giving you so many amazing nuggets here. So listen in. I’m going to give you day one here. Over the next few weeks, here in August, I’ll be releasing the second part as well as the third, and if you want to watch the fourth part and get your download, go to the postpartum circle Facebook group, which is linked in the show notes, and get that information. Enjoy! I’m super excited for this series. It is absolutely something that’s been in the works for a really long time.

I spend a great deal of time planning for these kinds of things because I want to make sure that you’re getting the absolute most out of your experience here. It’s really, really important to me that I take a lot of time to just really dive into the significance of this series and why your hormones are working and all of the components so that you walk away with some amazing things to support you.

If you have not had the opportunity to print out your workbook, please do so. I sent out an email to my entire list, so you should have that workbook. Make sure that you print that out and that you get that ready because we’re going to go through that and answer those questions in there, which are going to be a significant part of your healing experience here. If you haven’t gotten my email, if you’re not on my list, I also posted it in the group. It is posted as an announcement, so you can go in there and double-check and look.

I am going to share with you short videos, right where mom’s here. Everything’s got to be short. I’m going to share with you over the next four days, these short videos that are going to be action-packed or jam-packed with information that you need to know. I’m going to be breaking barriers. I’m going to be opening up some doors to misinformation. You’re going to learn quite a bit as you see in your workbook. Follow along with me. Ask questions as they come up. I am here. You can ask questions, take advantage of my lives. Even if you don’t catch this live and you find yourself with a question, please ask it. I will come back and check this thread often because I want to make sure that you are wholly supported and all the things that I’m sharing with you today, okay?

So let’s jump right in. I’m Maranda Bower. If you don’t know me, I’m sure that you do. You’re in my group, right? But if you don’t know me, I am a postpartum bliss coach. I have been doing this work for over 10 years and supporting women in deeply healing their body, not just with hormones, but in the years after birth in relation to autoimmune issues, depression, anxiety. They’re all related, and I’m gonna share all of that with you here.

So, why don’t we jump in? Let’s jump right into the topic of hormones, yay. So, I will tell you, your hormones are responsible for everything.

Question number one in your workbook, in your guidebook: “Your hormones are responsible for everything.” These little signals in your body are constantly sending out messages and controlling so much of what you experience in this world. So, no matter if you’re postpartum or not, right? At pregnancy, postpartum, especially, our hormones take a front seat and we become even more aware of their existence for two reasons.

First, they bring your body into a heightened state of awareness so that you can care for your baby, and we’re gonna talk more about this here soon. It really is meant to keep your baby safe, okay? And the second component is because most of the time in postpartum, our hormones are not supported and they become so out of balance that it messes with everything. And so, therefore, it comes up to our awareness, right? You experience major weight gain, milk production issues, hair loss, lack of libido, right? Brain function deteriorates, night sweats, mood shifts, mood disorders. And by mood, I mean like fluctuations and quick shifts. Like one minute you’re okay, the next you’re crying.

I’m talking about depression, anxiety, anger, rage, feeling guilty about everything, feeling terrified when someone else is touching your baby or caring for your little one, okay? All of this. Now, knowing how your hormones function within your body is extremely helpful. And I’m not going to get into all of that here because that would take up a lot of time to go through every single hormone and tell you exactly what they do in the body. Instead, I wanna focus you here in this series on how to balance your hormones, okay?

So here’s the thing. Not only do most people not understand how hormones function during pregnancy and postpartum, how you support those hormones is even lesser known. It’s almost non-existent, right? We go to the doctor, right? We go to our six-week checkup. We go see our provider three or four years after having a baby and we’re telling them, “Oh, I’m losing hair by the clumps,” “I’m having these emotional breakdowns,” “My periods are out of whack.” And they’re like, “Ah, it’s just your hormones.” Like, that’s the sign for everything, right? I don’t know how many times you’ve heard this. Like, let me know, raise your hand. But I’ve heard it a lot.

So we’ve gotta start asking the question though: Why are so many women experiencing imbalances during postpartum? I mean, one in four women will experience depression and anxiety, and that’s not including those who never say anything or don’t know that they’re in the fog until they’re coming out of it. And that’s not including the other mood disruptions like OCD, bipolar, postpartum rage, and so on, right? I’ve had depression, anxiety, postpartum bipolar, and postpartum rage not related to depression, okay? So I’ve experienced quite the gamut myself, and having four kids.

So we have to ask the question: why is this happening? Obviously, our society is not doing something right. And that begins with some basic misunderstandings about how our hormones function. And the first thing that you need to know is that your postpartum hormones are not naturally out of control. Okay, they are in a biologically normal shift. They’re in a state of fluctuation going from pregnancy to postpartum. That is it. The change is definitely big, but it’s not the cause of hormonal issues. Okay, and I know this is like, “What in the world are you talking about?” But bear with me here, because I’m going to tell you why in just a minute.

But first, it’s important to truly understand a few things here. And the first being that this isn’t some crazy, wicked, unbalanced time. This is a biological normal. This shift is not associated with feelings like you’re going insane, feeling depression, anxiety, anger, cheerful. That’s not normal.

Okay, so let’s get back into this because I know many of you are thinking like, “Wow, okay, you’re crazy. Do you know what you’re talking about?”

nd I can, let me tell you, how can this shift in your hormones not be responsible for the negative feelings and symptoms? So here’s the thing. If you were healing and postpartum in a way that was also biologically normal, the symptoms of imbalance would not happen. Okay, so take that in for a minute. If you were healing and postpartum, and that was also biologically normal as your symptoms were fluctuating, it is biologically normal. The state of imbalance and the symptoms that come with it would not happen.

Okay? If you were provided with what you needed in postpartum to heal your body, the symptoms of hormone imbalance would not happen. So postpartum comes at you like a freight train. All of the emotions and even nutritional issues that you didn’t get to sort out earlier in pregnancy or even in childhood, okay, on top of your previous life before the baby comes, which is oftentimes something that we mourn, okay? Then through the exhaustion, the typical Western diets, you know, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know how awful I talk about salads and smoothies being for you in postpartum. We all fall into a massive hormone imbalance with all of that. That’s the spiral effect that we have to unwind.

And although these things are critical immediately in early postpartum, y’all, postpartum lasts up to six years, okay? And so if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, “Oh, I’m not in early postpartum, this doesn’t apply to me,” it absolutely does. We’re gonna dive deep into this. We are going to discuss, especially tomorrow, getting back your hormones in balance in the years later after this initial postpartum time, okay? But let me tell you, fixing it with pills or herbs or essential oils, those are not the hacks I’m going to give to you today, okay? Often those only make it worse or only let up just a slight bit, right? So where you feel like you’re functioning.

And I will tell you why: because medicinals or even holistic, all-natural, earth-kind remedies for this tend to mask the issue or cover it on the surface level. And so you never address the root issue. You never address the root issue. One thing that I hear all the time, and I heard it just the other day in a thread where a mom was suffering, and she’s like, “Oh, go get muscle testing done. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with this. Let me know if you know what I’m talking about when it comes to muscle testing. Go get your nutrients done. You’ll get some supplements for it,” and you know what? I spent three years of my life doing that. Three years, and it got me to a place where I could function a little bit better, but it never addressed the core root of my issue. And so I always had to come back and buy those supplements and get more testing every single month because it was only scratching the surface.

Okay, so there is one other misconception to chat about here today, and many of you might not want to hear this. Okay, I’m going to be so upfront with you. You know I’m upfront with you. Actually, I get a lot of hate mail over this important fact. This is something that I have been kicked out of Facebook groups for over and over and over again. This is hated, okay, but it’s the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts. It did for me. Okay, this was incredibly painful for me, but also the truth can save your life, and it did that for me too.

Okay, are you ready? You control a great deal of your hormones. Now, if you are an ambitious go-getter mama, this is probably something that gives you a spark of joy. But if you’re like me, when I was going through my own postpartum journey and my own story of depression, rage, anxiety, and bipolar, that joy was quickly replaced with feelings of frustration and anger. It’s triggering. Clearly, it’s a hot topic for many moms, and I recognize this.

But here’s the thing: hormone imbalances are controlled by a cycle, and I’m going to cover that cycle tomorrow. What I really want you to understand, both as mental health and nutritional, is the nervous system response. Your body is not operating in different pieces. Your body doesn’t have separate sections like “here’s your gut health” and “here’s your mental health.” All of these systems, especially in the Western world, tend to be compartmentalized. We put them in their own boxes and try to address those issues separately. One thing that I often hear is about “adrenals” – “I don’t have the adrenals for it, so I got to work on my adrenals.” But guess what? That’s secondary. I never focus on adrenals with my one-on-one clients because if I’m addressing the root of the issue and addressing the whole body, the adrenals will be taken care of.

Your brain, gut, and all other systems are going to be taken care of if you address the root. What I’m saying is that you can’t compartmentalize a woman’s body. The woman’s body operates as a whole. Everything is interwoven. So, one of the biggest questions I get is, “How do you know if this is a hormonal issue or a mental health concern?” My answer is: it’s all the same. Especially postpartum, you cannot break a woman down into compartments. That’s not how the body works. Your hormones, mental health, nutrition, sleep, support system – all of that is deeply related, especially postpartum.

If you have questions, please drop them in the comments. What are your thoughts on baby blues? There’s a normal biological shift that takes place, and this shift is spectacular. It’s absolutely amazing, but it’s biologically normal. If we were supporting a woman in these shifts, especially considering the challenges I just mentioned, things would be different. A mom has to mourn and release her previous life. Even if she’s on her sixth child, she’s entering postpartum anew. At the same time, she’s dealing with physical changes like bleeding. Are women getting the support they need?

Food is emotional. The way we eat can dramatically affect mood swings, and with the right support, we can shift out of negative feelings. But postpartum often brings up old, unhealed wounds, whether from childhood or relationships. If we don’t address these, they can manifest as baby blues or even deepen into depression. Women ask themselves, “How did I get here? Who am I in this situation?” And these feelings can persist for years postpartum, often resurfacing with events like weaning or the return of menstrual cycles.

I want to leave you with this information. Understand these fundamental pieces before we dive deeper tomorrow. After 20 minutes, I hope you’ve had some “aha” moments. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments. Let’s have this conversation. Women need to understand their bodies and how interconnected we all are.

So, what were your aha moments from today? Let me know if you have any questions, and I’m excited to dive into the hormone cycle with you tomorrow.

Okay, bye guys. Thanks for tuning in and learning about how to support your body in deep healing. This work isn’t just for us or you. Your healing impacts your children, relationships, and community. The health and vibrancy of our world begin with its mothers. I hope you’ve gained valuable insights today. 

If you’re unsure where to begin, consider reaching out for one-on-one help or at least learn about my postpartum nutrition plan. This is where I start with every client. You can find more at MarandaBower.com. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Leave a review, and we’ll see you next time.