The Menstruality Podcast - Cycle Wisdom for Pregnancy and Birth (Jady Mountjoy)

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

The inner seasons of the menstrual cycle are often mirrored in pregnancy, and in this episode with doula and Red School Leadership Mentor Jady Mountjoy, we walk through the three trimesters of pregnancy, learning how to harvest your cycle awareness experience to hold yourself through all the huge changes happening in your body and psyche. Drawing on her experience of guiding pregnant and birthing people over decades, Jady shares how cycle awareness prepares you for the initiation of pregnancy and birth, how the deep intelligence of the trimesters builds the skill base we’ll need for parenthood, and how to move from your forebrain to your more primitive, instinctive brain as the energy of birth begins to court you. We explore:The medicine of the first trimester and how to create a soothing cocoon - even with physical symptoms - slow your life down, and tend to your needs in the vulnerability of the initial phases of pregnancy. The ‘blossoming’ that can arise in the second trimester and how it correlates to inner summer, creating a kind of anchoring, and guiding us into a journey of allegiance to ourselves.How the ‘descent’ of the third trimester can mirror the inner autumn, inviting us soften into the energy of birth, and start to allow ourselves to be beautifully dismantled in preparation for the surrender of labour. ---Jady is one of the Red School Leadership mentors who guides participants through our Menstruality Leadership Programme. Registration is open for our 2022 cycle and you can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Thank you for coming back to the Menstruality Podcast. Today I'm so excited to introduce you to doula and Red School leadership mentor, Jadie Mountjoy, who can demystify the deep intelligence of pregnancy and birth like no one I've ever met. She's guided so many people through the initiations of growing and birthing

babies over the past couple of decades. And she mentored and guided me through the inner seasons of my pregnancy, helping me to channel the wisdom I've gained from cycle awareness to hold myself through this wild ride. And actually this episode left me feeling really altered because it felt like Jadie and I had journeyed through a whole other entire pregnancy and birth together. We looked at the medicine of the first trimester, how to create a soothing cocoon even if you're experiencing challenging physical symptoms, how to slow your life down and tend to your needs in the vulnerable initial phases of pregnancy. Then we looked at the blossoming that can arise in the second trimester and how it correlates to inner summer of the menstrual cycle, creating

a kind of anchoring and guiding us into this journey of allegiance to ourselves through pregnancy. And then finally we looked at the descent of the third trimester, how it can mirror the inner autumn, how it can invite us to soften as the energy of birth begins to court us and we start to be beautifully dismantled, as JD says, in the preparation for the surrender of labour. So, JD, hi, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. How are you feeling? How are you doing today in this moment? I'm good. Thank you for inviting me. It's always a delight to have a conversation with you, Sophie. Yeah, I'm good today. You were about to do a cycle check-in, weren't you, which is exactly where I was going to go next.

I was scanning because my cycle is shifting and changing a lot. And I am around day 50 something slightly untethered drifty but soft. And how is it feeling for you if you can summarize this in a few sentences to be in a cycle that's changing in this way? It's not without its challenges. I'm certainly meeting some new edges in myself. And yeah, there's a level of disorientation and needing to sort of tend myself in a different way. And yet, I mean, this is kind of our conversation as well, isn't it?

And yet, the years of cycle awareness that I have done and yet I mean and this is kind of our conversation as well isn't it and yet the cycle of what the years of cycle and awareness that I have done and having some sense of the territory I'm moving into gives me context and I actually really find that deeply soothing and reassuring and I can set I can trust the process so I just keep coming back to the to a context that I understand and trusting how my kind of you know how I'm being evolved as a woman that's exactly how it felt for me as I was pregnant so this really does feel like a like there's a there are liminal spaces that we inhabit in different phases of our life for different reasons and we can sort of it feels like we're weaving the threads between them right now yes yeah this is a conversation about cycle awareness and pregnancy and the initiation

into motherhood into parenthoodood, cycle awareness and birth. And you've been, you have a very beautiful calling to guide women and people through these initiations. And you've also been practicing with weaving cycle awareness into the holding that you bring. And I know you've trained birth workers in cycle awareness. I would love to hear how this work began for you to be guiding people through these initiations and particularly how cycle awareness came in.

It began really through my own lived experience. So I came into my first pregnancy off the back of a diagnosis of premature menopause. And that pregnancy initiated me in the way that it did. It was an incredibly growthful experience and challenging in all sorts of ways. But when I came, I was was it I had a very clear drive in me it really awakened a sense of purpose in me that I felt a deep guardianship around that space when I looked back on the experience of pregnancy that I'd had in the experience of birth that I'd had I recognized something in myself that was of a calling, that I just, I wanted to protect that space. I wanted that space to be really acknowledged for the initiation that it is. So I did go on to train as a birth doula. And with my first child my cycle actually was restored interestingly after years of not

having bleed at all and so I started alongside my parenting journey I started to form an intimacy with my own bleed my own menstrual cycle and a few years into my journey of motherhood I did I joined the apprenticeship with Alexandra and Shani the menstrual leadership program and trained with them and the weave really began there I suddenly began to see the relationship between menstrual cycle awareness and how I was worked and informed by my cycle and the the journey that I was seeing women go through that I was supporting through coming up to conception through their pregnancies and the birthing journey itself and I think really the work evolved by as my own journey deepened and as I deepened also into my work as a as a as a doula I just started to really see these correlations and I started to see that the womb has such a

coherent way of evolving us over a lifetime and how you know each stage in that was really a preparatory ground really informed that you know the next movement so that's really where it it came from as you speak I'm remembering how you held me through my pregnancy. And there's something about the language you use, the tone of your voice, the presence that you bring that made me feel so safe. And it's like I can feel the accumulated years of sitting with women and pregnant people and supporting people through their birthing journeys it's um I don't

know how to put it into words JD but I've got tears in my eyes talking to you now because I'm remembering how lost I felt in the pregnancy and how confused and how um your your hand-holding and support was so precious thank you and I think doesn't every woman deserve that I mean it's such a I I hold such reverence for the journey and I think culturally we lack so much context around what's actually happening to a woman as she enters a pregnancy journey you know there's a there's a huge amount of focus on maybe what's happening physically in her body and um but not so much on how she is being dismantled and then put back together you know not so much in terms of the initiation it is emotionally and psychologically as well and spiritually which is you know what I witnessed so

you know you move through that in such a profound and beautiful way I mean I have a really exquisite role it's very moving for me to see a woman take hold of her experience and have reverence for her experience and really claim the sacred ground of what's happening to her in her life and and it feels really important that she has somewhere to lean with that because of course you know one of the elements that dissolves in a pregnancy is that we don't have our cycle to lean into in the same way anymore and can feel incredibly disorientating you know I'm really hearing that in your description there were so many

mixed feelings happening simultaneously yeah people often write to us and say I'm pregnant or I'm breastfeeding and I don't have my cycle but I want to tune into my cyclical nature. And how do I do that? Do you have some thoughts about that? How we can understand ourselves as cyclical beings when we're not inside the rhythm and change of our menstrual cycle? It's a beautiful question. I mean, I think first is to remember that we are governed by all life is orchestrated by cycles. So there's something that we can lean into just by paying a little more attention to the other cycles that are governing us in our lives.

You know, even just the movement of night to day, the seasons of the year, you you know even watching the tides so I lean into nature a lot for reassurance when I feel really untethered in that moment I can see that there is an intelligence that's just moving us constantly and something that we can lean into. But I think, you know, it really depends. If a woman comes forward with that question, it depends a little bit on whether she's done, whether she had been practicing menstrual cycle awareness before her pregnancy or whether she's coming, you know, into it really fresh.

Because I think there's still, there's so much that we can still lean into in what we've, in the ways in which we've been informed and influenced by our menstrual cycle before coming into pregnancy because there are very distinct what I've noticed is that there's very distinct mirrorings happening between the trimesters of a pregnancy and then the birthing process itself and the seasons of the menstrual cycle and what we might call it what we call the chambers of menstruation so I started to see these parallels and that's something that when we can feel that there's we can relate the experience of pregnancy and childbirth to some archetype and maps that maybe were more familiar it can give us more context and we

can kind of get more of a sense of what we might be uh moving through and moving into what might support us what might challenge us um and what the you know what the sort of energies and tasks that are available to us in the same way when we kind of like move around one cycle of our menstruation. I really loved when you were supporting me through the pregnancy. You would always say to me, does this remind you of anything in your cycle awareness practice? You know, does this state of consciousness or the phase that you're in in your pregnancy remind you of anything and that was such a helpful question because it did anchor me back into say um when I was at the beginning of the pregnancy and I don't know if

this was altered because it had been an IVF pregnancy and it was there had just been so much running up to it I know that's the same for so many people in different ways but I I really felt that I was in in a winter for the first trimester I felt uh untethered that's a word that you used to describe your experience of your cycle right now I felt like I was in a liminal space I felt like I related more to the trees outside than to the humans around me. And I remembered that from my bleed times. I remembered that sense of like I was in a bubble or there was cotton wool around me, or there was something in between me and the rest of the world that was sort of buffering me and holding me, but also making me feel a bit disorientated

and it was really helpful to have you anchoring me back into the cycle so could we could we look into this like how how do you tend to see if you if there is a pattern how do you tend to see the inner seasons unfolding through pregnancy well I mean you've begun to describe that really beautifully. What I've noticed is that the energy of the early stages of pregnancy are very much like the winter phase of our menstrual cycle. There is a sort of deep kind of tiredness, need to sort of rest and cocoon there's a there's a permeability a sensitivity that's at play so women can feel very dreamy I mean you described it beautifully it's like that sort of liminality of the winter phase you can feel very dreamy and your consciousness can feel very sort of expansive you can you just feel like you're operating on a different time than the rest of the world yes I remember that yeah you want to snooze and over exposure or overstimulation can just feel really jarring of course your body's going through huge amounts of physical change and

people experience their bleeds in very different ways so some people are really sort of brought to a place of stillness by the physical experience of their menstrual bleed. In early pregnancy some people are kind of more debilitated in a sense by physical symptoms than others you know there's going to be that layer unfolding as well where your body starts to feel really different and you can you sense that something big's happening inside you and yet it's got a flavor of sort of mystery and otherworldliness to it that's not quite anchored in yet yeah well you can't see it you can't see it. You can't see it later as the belly grows. Something I found myself. Yeah. Instead of being anchored by my cycle, I was anchored by this big belly in front of me.

And I felt more grounded than I ever have in my life because there was just a lot of weight. You know, I was just, you know, I felt in my in my physicality and in my body. But in the first trimester there's not there's not really much to see so yeah it does have that just that sense of like there's some there's some magical mystery happening and I don't it's just happening I'm not having to make any of it up I'm not having to do anything it's just happening inside me and oh what an what an incredible what an incredible thing what an incredible thing. What an incredible thing. Yeah. It really is, isn't it?

And I think, like you said, you know, if you're holding an intimacy to that, you know, that place of, you know, what do I lean into? If you're holding an intimacy to just what you're feeling each day and actually tuning into what the need is, because, of course, you know, when we're menstruating, we don't necessarily have a cultural context that says okay just you know be in the environment you want to be in and sleep when you want to sleep and all of that but if we can in that early in those in that early stage of pregnancy if we can be aware that actually our psyche and our body are needing more spaciousness and we are needing to to work to work slower and and to see where life can cooperate with us in that you know I'm not saying it's necessarily easy in the context of people's lives especially if you have other young children but as much as possible to recognize that that's what's uh that's kind of like the medicine of that time it's like actually I need to rest as much as I possibly can and let myself dream this in dream this experience in and be cocooned in the sense

that I don't overexpose myself certainly to environments or to people that uh feel kind of too sharp edged or um you know that take you out of that place of feeling sort of soothed and taken care of? I had a question I wanted to ask, and I've forgotten it. Hang on. Yes, I was speaking very positively about it just then. But I know that for all kinds of reasons, some people could enter a pregnancy and feel a lot of pain or discomfort or, you know, challenging emotions, possibly in a similar way to menstruation. You know, some people find that a time of rest and dreaming and visioning, and they have worked that muscle of being able to drop their bundle. And, you know, the 1% of rest and letting go has become 2% or 5% or 10%.

But some people, you know, their experience of menstruation is the complete opposite of that. And it's an incredibly difficult time psychologically or physically. And likewise, entering into pregnancy. So I wonder if there's anything you could share for people who don't feel that sense of joy and magic but are actually experiencing more challenging feelings well firstly um you're you're courting huge change in your life and of course everyone's going to have their own relationship to that the you know the prospect of bringing another life through and all that might mean and I think however you experience that entry into pregnancy, if a woman can try to create an environment around her that allows her to come into an intimacy with herself and really

try to tune into what it is that she needs. Now, most likely what it is that she needs is she just needs a very soothing environment. She just needs to be able to rest. She may be experiencing all sorts of physical symptoms that may make it feel difficult to eat well. You know, some women have experienced nausea really early on others don't um for others it's just um a sort of very wishy-washy uh dreamy feeling but you're gonna feel some disorientation and so just trying to slow your life down a little bit and um and you know cocoon yourself as much as possible just so that you can actually allow what's coming through which quite literally uh is a baby to land because there's a huge amount

that's happening physiologically in terms of your pregnancy actually sort of anchoring in and landing huge amounts of changes happening uh in your body and in your psyche and on every possible level so really it's just to be aware that you are going to be much more permeable much more sensitive to the world around you and so to have some discernment around how you interact with the world as far as possible. And then how, yes, let's carry on with the pregnancy and how the inner seasons correlate. What do you tend to see as people come into their second trimester? Well, it's interesting because what I've tended to see, and of course the archetypal maps that

we use for menstruation they are archetypal maps so of course once you spend some time actually coming into your own cycle awareness your your own nature will you know we say at red school don't we that your you know your own experience trumps everything else. So there will be variations. But what I'm generally starting to see is that coming into the second trimester, generally there is there's there's an energy of emergence. So you're starting to. So in a sense, if we think about those transitional times of coming out of your winter into the spring of your cycle, and this can, of course, be a vulnerable time. We always talk about the importance of pacing and of the need to really sort of cherish yourself and, again, not overexpose this new shoot that's coming through. So in the same place in a pregnancy, we will see, you know, if in your own cycle, this has been a difficult threshold for you, then this might be a turbulent place in the pregnancy as well. So this is where cycle awareness can inform your experience of your pregnancy.

If you think back to your cycle and think well where were my trip up points where was I comfortable where was I uncomfortable you know what kind of season felt you know what was my sort of home place you may see mirroring in your trimesters within that so the second trimester is really has this emergence energy you know you're what you're starting generally and of course this isn't for everybody but generally women are starting to feel more settled physically and symptoms of nausea may be starting to abate they may be feeling a little bit more anchored and settled in the pregnancy the the biggest risk of of miscarriage is starting to also settle at that point so they may be able

to feel a little bit more confident in the unfolding of the pregnancy. So there's something more slightly more robust happening so there's something more robust happening in the body and something more robust happening in the psyche so this can be a time where you may begin to talk about being pregnant to a select group of people so again the way in which we talk about you know this the spring energy creatively say it was a project we might say also still have discernment keep this close tend it it, you know, tend this. These are still early days. You don't want to overexpose yourself. But there is a sort of quickening of a regaining of some sense of energy

and some sense of like being back out in the world. Does that resonate with you, Sophia? Oh, yeah. Every single thing you said, definitely. It was the sickness started to ease, I think around 16 weeks, which was so good because that was way more debilitating than I ever imagined it could be because I love food and I really just didn't want to eat, which was such a strange and difficult thing to navigate. And yeah, my anxiety eased because, you know, this long awaited pregnancy, it really

felt like it was established and I just got so much energy and I felt like a, like a power station, just energy. And I was so creative mentally, just ideas were just coming all the time and I and I had the physical energy to put them into action so it was it was a really fun fun time that's the three months in the middle I really enjoyed it beautiful and springtime in your cycle was a time you enjoyed well do you know it felt more summery to me it felt like the wild unbridled passionate sensual powerful all-consuming creativity of summer that I do absolutely love I find spring a bit edgy and and I think I noticed that as I was coming out of the first trimester and coming into the second that it was there was a real anxiety and tenderness but it was hard to track how much that was like fear of miscarriage.

And because, you know, as you said, there's so many things going on on so many levels, but I do, I remember that massive creativity and it felt like summertime to me. Yeah, because some people will feel that emergence into a sort of spring energy earlier on in their first trimester than others. It really depends partly what's happening to you physically and partly also how you're really meeting the reality of your pregnancy so some people emerge sooner than others so yes there is that momentum that then leads into that sort of summary feeling of the second trimester I mean we kind of call it the blossoming time and again it's not for everybody not everybody blossoms in their second trimester you know know, but but a lot of women do.

They fit exactly as you described. They feel that anchorage. They feel that energy return. You know, your belly starting to swell and, you know, suddenly. You can kind of embrace the identity of being a pregnant woman in a different way, so can start to get this you know as we talk about with the menstrual cycle as we talk about this sense of your identity forming in the first half of the cycle in the via positiva this this rising energy in the sense of um this healthy formation of ego and in a sense you're still starting to build identity as a pregnant woman and as a mother as you kind of peak towards the that you know that sort of middle of your second trimester um where you really feel there's much more of a declaration

of that starting to embrace that in terms of a really significant part of your ongoing expression you know I am mother or you know I am parent to a child and I think the belly really helps with that where you know you actually start to feel that swelling and that change and like you said it sort of gives you a new sense of orientation actually to just watch your body shift and change and you know beginning to start to feel the movements of the baby everything becomes very much more animated. So true and I just want to bring in here because I know that a lot of people who listen to this are entrepreneurs or creatives and I wanted to sort of note and flag up that and if I'd known this, it would have been

helpful, I think, for my business, that there's a sort of energy that you can ride off some, some people, I'm sure not everybody, there's an energy you can ride off in the second trimester, that can set things up for maternity leave. So I was able to do so much more than I thought I would in that middle phase, and actually, sort of up to about eight months. And then my brain just dissolved. But we'll talk about that in a minute. So it could be something to factor in if you are running a business or wondering about how to negotiate work with pregnancy, that there is this creative moment where you can get a lot of things lined up and um yeah that there's that there's there's some good opportunities there in a similar way that we talk about the summer of your menstrual cycle this there is this kind of

um uh even though there's something obviously very significant going on internally you can really attend to the externals in uh in a in a in a very sort of um creative effective way in the second trimester you like your brains quite even though to be honest I feel like the undercurrent and I often talk about this I remember we talked about it the undercurrent of the sort of energetics of the winter phase never really leave you throughout the pregnancy there's always an of the winter that's um guiding you but in a sense i also hear alexandra talk about that in terms of her sort of um post-menopausal life as well you know you kind of uh you're you're you have that access um throughout the pregnancy because the the you know the entire pregnancy is initiating you in a particular

way and there's a particular permeability. So to be able to harness that as well creatively is something that I think can be really rich for women in their pregnancies, that they do have access actually. If you're loving hearing JD and you'd like to connect with her as well as the power of menstrual cycle awareness for all of the phases of our cycling lives and all the way through to menopause we invite you to visit menstrualityleadership.com where you can find out more about the world's first leadership training designed for pioneers, change makers, culture shifters and troublemakers to realize your full authority and leadership

through the power of the menstrual cycle. JD is one of our leadership mentors guiding a group of 12 participants through the program personally. You can find out more at menstrualityleadership.com that's menstrualityleadership.com that's exactly it I felt plugged into life's creativity in a way I never had before and it's like maybe some of the barriers that I unconsciously, subconsciously put in the way of just the flow of creativity that can come through all of us were shifted in that time. It was a really magical time. It was really fun. The beauty of pregnancy as well is that, you know, where we can learn over and over again to try not to override ourselves in our menstrual cycles.

You know, we all trip ourselves up and go too fast or you know whatever it is that we do but pregnancy is beautifully intolerant i don't think we've had conversations like that where you really uh it's a wonderful um journey of allegiance to yourself because actually it it it won't allow you to um step too far away from your need you really get the opportunity to tune in to the energy that's available to us um and to what's really moving through us you know we we have to stay more faithful to it because the consequences are very quick to show themselves in pregnancy. Yeah, very much so. I love that phrase allegiance to ourselves. It's and that's a very important muscle to grow for motherhood. I have found. And I think I can you know, there's so much I want to unfold in this conversation and I

I think that's another conversation we'll have about cycle awareness and the initiation into into motherhood because there's so much that we can take from our cycle awareness into that too isn't there absolutely yeah okay so let's move into the third trimester so you know again if we um if we're just feeling the veers first so we've got this this you know the babies literally you know so the creative project we're talking about in pregnancy is the growth of the baby and of course the growth of the mother so we have this peak point you know in your second trimester and coming towards the end of the trimester there'll be a point and this is where if you have if you've come to your pregnancy after doing cycle awareness and so you've been in the experience of being of having that intimacy with yourself from sort of being attentive to yourself um there'll

be a point where you feel that uh the gear shift where there is a that that point where you make the movement from the summer to the autumn where you begin the descent so this is a um you know it's a very significant uh point in the pregnancy in the same way that it's a very significant point in the pregnancy in the same way that it's a very significant place in the menstrual cycle because we have to what's required is that we bring our gaze really internally and we're going to start everything that's sort of been built up is going to start to be dismantled apart from of course our swelling belly our our baby is going to start to be dismantled uh apart from of course our swelling belly our our um our baby is going to be kind of forming a stronger sense of uh their identity we're going to be getting a stronger sense of our child's identity but we are going to start to be beautifully dismantled in

preparation for birth which is going to demand um us being in such a receptive open soft space so all of the elements of the uh of the sort of autumn of our cycle start to come into play in the third trimester so of course it is the natural home of the critic so we may start to find ourselves questioning ourselves we may have um we may and this is probably going to be coming up throughout your pregnancy you'll be having like younger memories and but particularly in the third trimester we might be working through uh stuff around our own childhood we may be working through stuff around our own childhood. We may be working through stuff around our own patterning and our thought beliefs. There's just this sort of energy of just being taken apart.

And we may become less tolerant to our surroundings. Of course, we're full of baby. So physically, we're meeting the challenge of that edge as well, that there's just not as much space. And yet we'll feel like we require a lot of space and we require a slowing down in order to be able to not be overwhelmed by this permeability again that's coming in how do you support women to hold themselves through this process of of being taken apart one of the things I think's really again context one of the things I think is really

important is to dignify this and um and bring reverence to it you're really beginning to court the energy of the you know the transition into birth and bringing your baby through so life is really calling your attention so what I would always encourage women to do is when they feel that threshold when they feel that that calling that the beginning of that sort of descent is in a similar way with our menstrual cycle is really acknowledge yourself really take care of yourself you know really kind of acknowledge that movement and maybe if you can slow things down I mean the sooner you can slow things down in your third trimester the better now I know that you know people have different requirements around work and family and everything else you know life is trying to spin us along at the same speed but if if you can begin to slow down in your third trimester then you are going to find you're going to find that the demands of the third

trimester much easier to negotiate um so slowing down really nourishing yourself again you know talking to the people who are really key in close to you in your environment let them know that your sensitivity is heightened in a say in a sense you take care of your relationships in the same way that we learn to take care of our relationships pre-menstrually yes let the people around us know that we are softening we are um you know our our barriers are dropping that we are sensitive that we need space that we need time because then we're less likely to attack those around us or or or also be hit too hard by our own sort of inner critical voices we we need to yeah listen deeply listen deeply to ourselves at this time eat really nourishing foods be in environments that take care of us and that tend us and if we are of course still working and in environments that do have a harsher edge then we

just need to find those small ways within our days to just be able to sort of pause and tune in and be yeah open up a really strong inner dialogue that's starting to unfold as we move towards you know the end of our pregnancies and this is really some initiatory ground and I think you know we're not necessarily going to be using that language in the lives that we leave or in the context of the lives that we lose but if we can claim that internally that this is really okay i'm actually being courted by the energies of uh birth now and of coming into of really being of really meeting my child and uh and coming fully into my motherhood and that requires a huge amount of attention. I could listen to you speak all day. One thing that I found really helpful was setting up expectations pretty early on. Like I remember I knew I was going to try and take the final month of my pregnancy off work. And that meant at least three months before I had to be thinking of, okay, what do I need to

be wrapping up in order to make this possible? And that was really helpful. So I'd really recommend that to anyone in any work situation to really start thinking about this in the middle of the pregnancy, if not before, like to understand how things can be handed over and even then with all that pre-thought people were still pushing up you know they were still trying to get me to sort of push past my own boundaries right until the end and I had to stay so firm and so strong and really advocate for myself and for my boundaries. And that happened all the way through, all the way through the, the final trimester in many ways, I had to advocate for myself with the consultants that were trying to push for me to go for an early induction and all kinds of different things. And it was, it was a challenging tension to hold that, to have to be strong and advocate for myself whilst feeling so dissolved and so vulnerable.

And I imagine that might be an experience for many people. Absolutely. Absolutely. And of course, I mean, certainly looking back, I mean, I know that you're aware of that at the time as well, um really upping your game in terms of taking responsibility for your own needs and holding boundaries i mean what of course what great preparation for parenthood again we see the intelligence of the pregnancy journey you know it's giving us every possible um opportunity to like build the skill base that we are going to require very much so but yeah that's such wonderful um advice Sophie because of course there's that place like as you described you know in the second trimester

where you may feel very robust and buoyant and feel like you have great capacity and the last thing you want to do is to be putting things in the diary you know putting demands on yourself uh late at that point for later in your third trimester because it's like that thing if you'd never leave your summer woman in charge of your diary like never leave your second trimester woman in charge of your diary either I feel like there's something important from cycle awareness that can come into play here if we've been practicing in our inner autumn holding the tension like you said you know there are so many plate there were so many places in your particularly in the third trimester where that was required um in terms of

uh how you met the outside world so whether that was a consultant in your pregnancy or whether that's uh in your work environment or whether that's in your relationship but this requirement be able to sort of steady yourself in the face of great change. Yeah. So a couple of times you've talked about how the birth energy is courting you. Can you say more about that and how that unfolds towards the end of the pregnancy? Well, you know, in a similar way, if we've become in, if we've been tracking our menstrual cycle and we've become aware of when we start to feel our need caught us, you know, you just start to feel that you are moving more and more and more into an energy of descent and sort of, you know, you can feel yourself being dismantled. So in a similar way in your pregnancy, the energy of birth,

what it's going to require of you is for you to be in a very soft, open, surrendered space. It needs to be able to kind of take you. And you need to be able to like offer yourself over to something. And so, like you said, you know, there are very practical ways in which you prepare for that by not having a full diary and, you know, being able to carve more spaciousness for yourself. It's also, it's calling the uh the sort of animal

in you and i i often see this in women in later pregnancy um they start to sort of operate from a different place so uh your forebrain starts to really sort of dissolve, which is brilliant and fantastic, because it's certainly not the part of your brain that supports you for your journey of birthing. We need to drop. So what will naturally be happening is that you will be dropping into your more primitive brain. So I always encourage women, particularly in that later in the third trimester, to really allow you know to really sort of yeah allow this to happen so ways in which you can do that to sort of drop out of the forebrain one is to just not have so much busyness in your life so not have so much external

stimulation much more spaciousness also just letting yourself be creative. So it might be painting or playing with clay or just walks or just staring into space, but anything that just sort of allows you to sort of drop into your creative brain set. So also meditative practices or moving your body in ways that feel good. So lots of sort of circling your hips and dancing can feel really lovely. Anything that's really just letting you really anchor in to your physicality, into your body and listen to, you know, I always say sort of follow your bliss at this point, because, you know, women can feel all sorts of things late in pregnancy.

Some women feel very uncomfortable physically others don't but I always say track what feels good for you you know really have an allegiance with what feels good for you because what we're what what's beckoning you from birth is to really up your oxytocin so we're wanting women to come more into their sensuality, more into a feeling of softness. And so doing the things that you love is going to really help with this. So simplifying everything and coming much more into your animal sense, following your instinct, following your pleasure, rather than being too busied by the world.

You know, I mean, that sounds, you know, I'm idolising it there, you know, because obviously life is orchestrating us in all sorts of ways. But as much as possible, if you can allow the spaciousness for you to really be guided by your pleasure and by what feels good to you um that's going to bring you into uh towards the threshold of birth in a much more available soft way yeah and there's something we can practice there that will prepare us really well for motherhood which is asking for support asking for people to

help so that we have a bit more space in order to be able to to rest and to drop like that it feels so much it felt so much to me like entering into uh into the chambers now and I guess a lot of what we're speaking about really is separation yeah yeah you are beginning to separate and this is where we see the correlation between the chambers of menstruation and the journey of birth itself and into motherhood and so for those of you listening who aren't familiar with the five chambers of menstruation, you can read about them in Wild Power. That's probably the best thing to say. Alexander and Shani's book, Wild Power, and we'll go through them now.

But there's a good full description. In fact, I think there's a whole chapter about the five chambers in Wild Power. Yeah, so it begins with separation. Yeah. so it begins with separation yeah so again I think it's some you know just to remind us that of course we are each unique women's going to experience this differently and this is where coming to your pregnancy after a time of cycle awareness will already have given you information about how you particularly, your particular nature, your particular personality, how you navigate these different thresholds. So again, just before we go into separation, it may be, you know, let your, let what you know about yourself and your

cycle inform the places that might be challenging for you in your pregnancy or the places where you feel that you'll be most at home so you know even in identifying uh which trimester you might sit most comfortably in um but particularly these um be aware of um how crossovers were for you in your menstrual cycle and of course this is like a very very significant crossover that often is challenging for women is this is the is the void the first chamber of separation and so in pregnancy you know everything's working at a different time scale in pregnancy than in the menstrual cycle so the void can feel very extended I'd always say to women you know think back to what helped you what helped you to make that movement to really just be able to

feel the permission to sort of let go in your menstrual cycle and you may find that similar things support you in your pregnancy but in the pregnancy this call of the energy to separate instead of being expanded over in your menstrual cycle it could be a number of hours or it could be a couple of days in your pregnancy this could be extended over a number of weeks so it's quite an energy to hold you know because it's a very definitely felt that I definitely felt that I felt it for the whole of the last month. And then he was still inside at 41 and three. So I felt it, especially in that, you know, time after the quote unquote due date, which is obviously a made up thing. There is, it doesn't exist, a due date, but I especially felt it then I felt so so in the void I could hardly communicate with anybody else yeah I was just with the trees I was just with the trees all day they they but they

made sense to me more than humans that was what was beautiful is that you you knew the energetic that you were stepping into it was a space that was familiar to you and in a way in that way you you had some idea of how to take care of yourself in it and that had been taught to you by your menstrual cycle an extraordinary thing in itself isn't it it gave context okay so and as you described your your third trimester had so amped up your capacity to hold tension that that was also preparing you for being able to sit in this place of separation for a much more extended period of time. So, again, the more that the world around you can cooperate with you, and that is, you know, how much can I ask for what I need? So how much were you able to was your partner able to understand oh actually Sophie's really not going to be able to make a coherent have a coherent conversation anymore and she's not going to want to I can't ask her complicated questions

anymore she has to be able to put down her bundle you know how much were the people around you able to really honor that that was what was required right now for you was to simplify and follow your pleasure and be in communion with that which made sense to you and really take as much stimulation away from your forebrain as possible and that can feel very unsettling and it can feel as if especially when it's extended over a long period of time and we've got health professionals you know I mean you had that particular edge where you still had to hold a boundary around health professionals advising that you should go for an induction so there's still all that sort of that boundary holding to do as well and so really having allies at that time people who are going to really support the holding of that space for you you have to start to be able to hand that over so there's a huge amount of trust that's required here a huge amount of um and you know and you had prepared the ground for that

and that again you know your your menstrual cycle had informed you about that you had done lots of preparation for this time much earlier on in your pregnancy well you know when you had the energy to and when you could plan so you had created much more spaciousness for yourself. You were well informed and you'd called in support to help you negotiate those final decisions that you needed to make when actually you didn't want to be engaging your forebrain at all. and because it's the nature of initiation it still absolutely knocked me out of all understanding like I'm just gonna have to start using sentences that don't make sense because everything stopped making sense towards this time it's just I was so I was so used to having control in my life and this huge thing was ahead of me and I had absolutely no control of how it was going to happen when it was going to happen and that was tough psychologically that was very tough um yeah like you said you know because every pregnancy um will come with its own particular

way in which it's going to initiate you. So it will have its own theme. Every woman I see, you know, they're like, oh, this thing keeps coming up and this keeps coming up and this keeps coming up. And it's like, ah, okay, there's the generosity of your pregnancy. That's what it's sort of unwinding in you. That's where the growth is, is with that particular theme. And it will come up like you've just described. It will come up, you know, described it will come up you know really really

strongly at that threshold at that gauntlet place where it's like okay you know how much can you let go of control now and it is especially confusing and I imagine a lot of first time mums feel this because I didn't know whether labor was starting or not for about two weeks it felt like you know I was having sensations I didn't recognize um tightenings uh sort of pains and and there was all sorts going on but and I was in completely unknown territory which I guess is when surrender started to happen and you know what you know you we could definitely talk about this for about seven years but this is probably where we'll where we'll begin to um wrap up this part of this conversation knowing that we'll you and I are going to pick this conversation off again

definitely for part two and probably a part three but perhaps we could um bring this journey to a to a good and organic and natural kind of close by speaking about the surrender the surrender now the chamber of surrender that happens coming into the actual birth experience oh oh that movement and of course you know in our menstrual cycle at that point where the blood comes and like you said you know because this because this separation had had expanded over such a long period of time and there's all these sensations happening in your body it's like a pregnant woman will often ask me when will I actually know if I'm in labour because yes you can have all sorts of sensations over a long period of time and it's always a sort of irritating answer because all I can really say is you will know that you are in labour when you stop asking if you are and it's a similar answer that

Alexandra gives to women about menopause you know and this is kind of the nature of initiation isn't it it will take it will there'll be a point where it simply takes you and so again the more that in that time of separation you can just keep trusting the intelligence that work in your womb trusting that you don't have to do anything that it's all about relinquishing control at this time it's about being as soft to yourself and to the sensations that are moving through you as possible so that you can then simply hand yourself over because really the chamber of surrender which is the first part of the birthing journey uh sort of mirrors the chamber of surrender is really about you handing yourself over literally just handing yourself over and letting the great wash of love that's coming through your body

to just keep opening and softening you yeah it's an extraordinary movement I remember calling you and it was it was pretty much in the moment when I stopped asking if I was in labor or not because I really knew that I was definitely in labor and I remember calling you and saying JD you know it's happening this is it I can't actually I can't remember what I said to you I don't know if you can remember um but you said you were your presence was so soothing because you said you know you're doing this I think it was something like let it take you let it take you and uh. I think it was something like, let it take you, let it take you. And yeah, I think having as much as possible, having people around who understand that the initiatory territory that's going on must be incredible medicine for that chamber of surrender

with birth, right? Absolutely, because it needs guardianship it's impossible to surrender if you don't feel safe so um so there's the work there's the internal work around trusting the process um but there's also the external work of crafting an environment and having the people around you as you say who will hold and encourage you to just simply like follow the simplest impulse you know follow your breath follow your body follow the sensation um and that keep you cocooned in a way that you can just let go with that without needing to attend to anything else. I had an interesting ride because I had two trips to the hospital while this was happening. I went in and then came back and then went in again.

And because it was COVID times, I mean, home birth wasn't a possibility for a few different reasons. But, you know, I knew I was going to birth in the hospital and I had to be in triage by myself for about two hours while I was in the midst of this. And I'm amazed, you know, and that wasn't why imagined, you know, I imagined soft music and all the things that many people do get and I'm so glad they do and there was something so potent and so huge about the birth that the surrender took me anyway and I will never forget this and it's it shaped me into a different human but I realized that surrender I realized for the first time properly that surrender isn't something that you can do surrender is something that happens and then becomes you and that's what happened to me it became me and then I was I was in I was just in the river and what happened happened and there was a sweet perfection in it and a craziness in it and then my boy was here and now I'm crying and it was

yeah that that surrender it was how to say it um I know it was an initiation because I dissolved into surrender I was gone yeah and it wasn't about the externals at all was it it was an orientation you had with yourself deep deep within yourself yeah and having aid my my ally my bear there who was basically massaging my back for about for many many many many hours I'm not sure who was more tired afterwards after the birth me or him because he was putting so much love and energy and care into protecting me and holding me and being with me and that was so key to the surrender as well having him as as my ally absolutely you could trust and you knew you had your back wow I feel like we've actually just been through a pregnancy and a birth together

through this conversation um I feel I feel really moved and quite altered actually and um yeah I'm excited to pick this conversation up with you again and talk about the postnatal period and how we can draw on cycle awareness there and then talk about the initiation into motherhood and how our cycles can like help us stay true to ourselves in the middle of sleep deprivation and frayed nervous systems and reorganized new brains and all of that richness and all the real nitty-gritty of parenthood yes so we will we'll pick it up again yes what were you going to say jd no i said i'm i'm i look forward to it

and to close up this conversation is there anything that you would want to share in closing about cycle awareness and is the preparatory ground for your pregnancy journey, your birthing journey and your journey into motherhood. That there is a coherence. in that intimacy of, in the intimacy that comes through cycle awareness, through your menstrual cycle, you have already acquired so much information about yourself and your own nature and your capacity and how you're worked that will really support you to navigate your your pregnancy and your birthing journey so trust your cycle awareness that it's that it's absolutely preparing you for this next initiation oh thank you so much jd i i truly wish that we could clone you into millions of you so that you could be with every single birthing woman she's giving birth um you yeah you're carrying something that's so profound and thank you for everything that you've shared today in this conversation I

deeply appreciate you thank you Sophie thank you very much for inviting me to the conversation. Thank you so much for being with us today and listening to the Menstruality podcast from Red School. Please subscribe and follow wherever you listen to podcasts, and it'll really help us to reach more people if you could leave us a review. And if you'd like to explore how to activate your unique form of leadership through menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause, you can visit menstrualityleadership.com. All right, see you next week and until then, keep living life by your own brilliant rhythm.