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I. February Spotlight: Krebs
Berlin is a longtime yoga teacher with a background in Hospitality Management who hails from Upstate NY. She spent her pre-baby years working in bars, restaurants, bakeries and farms. She has been practicing putting pen-to-page since she was a teenager, and her writing has been published by The Chronogram, Motherly, and Rebelle Society. After her surprise pregnancy in 2021, Berlin felt moved to explore and document her transition into motherhood through writing and started her Substack,
: a part-storytelling, part-research, part-thinking-out-loud combo meal of a newsletter. Berlin loves a nice long hike, a beautiful poem, any excuse to take a trip, and cooking good food for people she loves. She’s now a stay-at-home-mom who loves supporting other moms by offering doula/lactation support and yoga classes in the Baltimore area.Can you briefly describe an experience of birth and/or motherhood which has brought you most fully into a sense of being the adult in the room?
One thing that comes immediately to mind is my experience with my homebirth midwife, who was essentially missing in action for most of my pregnancy. She charged considerably more than other local midwives, though I didn’t know that at the time; all prenatal visits were virtual (save for one) and she was constantly canceling and rescheduling appointments. Throughout my entire pregnancy, I had a gut feeling of “this is not the level of care or support that I expected” but I’d never been pregnant before, and on paper, she was exactly who I was looking for. She had 15 years of midwifery experience, she was a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, she seemed to have a hands-off birth philosophy, her reviews were all great and she was very charming. So I just kept going with it. I couldn’t bring myself to trust that feeling of “something is not quite right here,” let alone act on it. With one week to go before my due date, I receive a call from her receptionist saying they need to reschedule my 41 week appointment because she’s going on vacation the week after my due date, which was never discussed or laid out in our contract. I expected I might go past 40 weeks, I definitely wanted the option to go past 40 weeks, not to mention the possibility of not having immediate postpartum care in the days after birth– so I was upset. I mean, I was distraught, truthfully. She was dismissive, totally ignoring my calls, and hitting me with all these patronizing platitudes and fake reassurances via text, even going as far to say “you will not give birth while I’m away.” I remember pacing back and forth on our patio the week before I was due, trying to figure out what I wanted to do about it. I felt really helpless and betrayed. I called my dad and he was furious, insisting I change my plans to have a hospital birth, insisting I give him her number so he could give her a piece of his mind, all of this righteous fatherly stuff. So he’s threatening to call her on my behalf and I remember a small, childish part of me feeling like, “sounds great, please help me, since I can’t seem to channel my anger in a productive way,” and then a much bigger part of me just sort of holding her face in her hands like, “What the hell is this? You are about to become a mother, you cannot have your father fighting your battles for you.” I ended up firing her, began moving forward with another midwife who my doula had connected me to, and then when I did go into labor (the day after my due date, interestingly), I decided I really did just want my original midwife there, in spite of everything, so we hired her back. It was a real rollercoaster ride of a final week of pregnancy, and I do remember this internal leveling-up, like I was being pulled up off my ass by some invisible force and being forced to step into myself in a more confident way. I tend to be rather watery, passive and non-confrontational, so that was hard for me.
Having a child is for sure an initiation into adulthood; obviously because we’re becoming responsible for another human life, but I also think it is because a lot of us rely on others to save or protect us in our birth experience. There is almost this false sense of security at first – maybe you love your provider, your partner is amazing, everything’s great – but you start to realize, as you’re walking along this path to motherhood – specifically towards birth – that you are kind of doing this all by yourself, no matter how much wonderful support you do have. I get this image of stepping out onto an open road at sunset, setting off with the wind in my hair, and the further I walk, the more people begin to fade away from my side, until it’s dark, and it’s just me. They’re behind me and holding me and cheering me on, but it’s just me.
There are so many decisions to make, certainly in pregnancy but especially as a first-time mom, where you’re just like, “Who, me? I have no idea what the right thing is here. Will someone please just tell me what the answer is?” and you have to come to terms with the fact that ultimately you are the one who has to take the reins and make these tough calls and trust that it is the right thing for you and your kid.
What resources do you find most supportive in tending your unique configuration of obligations and passions? Where do you yearn for more support?
Some of the most life-giving resources for me as a new mom have been the simplest: going to the library (specifically to free baby/toddler classes, but also just in general!), walking to local coffee shops. Having a *thing* to structure the day around, having a simple pleasure to make your way towards, it really invigorated me and made me feel capable, nourished, and downright excited about our days. Now I have these really sweet, core memories of early motherhood: navigating those first outings with my baby, wondering how I fit in with other moms, singing songs, dancing, flipping through books, sitting with the discomfort and newness of motherhood on the floor of the library, watching my baby interact with other babies. Slowly walking a mile or two in the dappled sunshine to the coffee shop, wearing my sweaty baby on my chest, wrestling with all of these loud uncertainties and unanswerable questions with every step, moving towards the singular goal of an iced latte… yes, the coffee shop and the library were absolute lighthouses in that first year as a fledgling mom.
I couldn’t do the things I do without my husband’s support & his flexible work schedule, or without the several hours of childcare we have carved out each week. It still doesn’t feel like enough (4-8 hours/week, depending on the season, not much wiggle room for more) but I am grateful for the support we do have in that realm. I’ve gotten to be quite skilled at time management and arranging my day-to-day life around when it makes most sense to do which tasks. For example, I know I can cook, clean, run errands and exercise with her alongside me. I would never waste the time that I have childcare doing something like grocery shopping. I save things related to creating, class planning, higher-level thinking and resting for when my daughter is with her Grandma or with our saint of a neighbor. It recently occurred to me that I can drop her off at the stay-n-play at the YMCA and use that time to get work done, write or read, instead of using the gym… I’ve been trying to be more strategic about all of that!
I’d say I yearn for more communal mothering with the people I’m already close with. We live in a sweet, quiet little nook of a neighborhood surrounded by some great families who have children of a similar age, which has been a blessing for sure, but I wish I lived closer to my two siblings or parents and had the easy, come-and-go support of family in the home. Mothering feels so good and natural when my family is around. Knowing several people are looking out for your kid without having to have a discussion about it, being able to seamlessly drift in and out of rooms, in and out of conversation and activities, sharing the silliness and sweetness of your child with your best friends, it’s so nice. It has felt a bit lonely being the first to have a baby; my daughter is the first grandchild on both sides, and hardly any of my friends have kids. I grew up with a lot of cousins and the home videos from our childhood seem pretty idyllic, all of us running around my Grandpa’s yard in a wild-haired pack, wearing nighties adorned with Disney princesses and the like, my mother and her three sisters posted up on the patio, looking on from their lawn chairs… it’s just dreamy to me. I totally long for that. It feels incomparably rich and nourishing to be able to share this experience with the people who are close to you, and it’s also hard to convey what it’s like if they aren’t “in it” yet. I’ve actually reconnected with a number of acquaintances from my past, who became mothers around the same time as I did, and that’s been super special. Those sporadic text check-ins and commiserations, sharing experiences, tips, things that are/aren’t working, I really value that. New motherhood has felt like a great equalizer to me — woah, you birthed a baby too?? You know what it’s like to sleep for two hours at a time for weeks on end?? Let’s hang out.
Is there any particular image or story (fictional or otherwise) which has been a guiding presence and influence within your vision for your own mothering?
I have a few! The High Priestess archetype from the tarot really resonated with me after I had my baby. I kept pulling that card throughout my whole first postpartum year. Resting with the mystery was an overarching, challenging theme that pervaded my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, and the High Priestess is all about honoring that mystery, going inward, wisdom, intuition, the subconscious, the integration of dark and light. No matter how much of a type A person you are (I’m not!) pregnancy shows you just how little control you actually have. The High Priestess felt steady to me, and her whole archetype and the associated symbolism was emblematic of the qualities I was striving towards and honing as I transitioned into motherhood.
The other image that comes to mind is this image of a bear standing up on her hind legs with teeth bared and blood dripping from her mouth. Like just absolutely ferocious. There’s a bear on the Berlin coat of arms, so I was frequently gifted little tokens and statues of the Berlin Bear when I was growing up and have always felt drawn to bears. I’ve been embracing that ferocious bear imagery as a mom. It feels like a strength that I am still stepping into and a ferocity that I am still fostering.
I also hold in my mind and heart the images and qualities of certain mothers who I’ve met in my life who I admire, and whose work inspires me. I’m thinking specifically of one of my yoga teachers, and a writer I used to work for… but there are plenty of others. Women who have children who are doing interesting, creative things, who seem to know themselves deeply, who are unapologetic about their existence, who wear many hats and who seemed to write their own story – those real-life examples are positive, hopeful influences that I carry with me and reference in moments of doubt, despair or self-pity.
You've mentioned your work as a doula and breastfeeding counselor throughout your writing. Can you share a bit about what drew you to engage in your community in this way? Has your own journey through pregnancy and birth and into motherhood shifted your perception of need as you provide support for other women? If so, how?
I was a mother first, and since I am relatively new to birth work (I’ve been doing it for a little over a year), my perception of need didn’t so much shift as it was shaped by my own journey. I never expected to be interested in birth or breastfeeding; it was definitely my own experience that drew me to engage in this work. Like a lot of new-moms-to-be, I spent my pregnancy doing a ton of research, learning the language of motherhood. I listened to a lot of birth stories and read far beyond the recommended FTM reading list. I learned that many common practices in prenatal care and childbirth are not based on evidence, and are not emotionally, psychologically or spiritually supportive of birthing mothers. When I started to learn about the discrepancies between common prenatal practices and what the evidence actually says about certain things AND how mothers seem to frequently walk away from their births feeling manipulated, confused, traumatized, silenced, etc. it got me all riled up. I started to really fall down the rabbit hole and a deep reverence for birth, for women, for this process of becoming a mother began to bloom inside me. The draw was strong, I don’t fully understand it but moving into doula/lactation/birth education work felt like it could be a way for me to synthesize that passion into something purposeful.
I really believe birth is sacred, and I really believe everything matters. When I was pregnant, it was always distinctly obvious when providers were either making a genuine effort to connect and listen to me, whether they really respected this work, or whether they were simply putting up a front of compassion, trying to tick items off their list. People can feel that. When I sought help with breastfeeding, I was really inspired by the two lactation professionals who came and helped me. I was so fried and confused, and the way they carried themselves, their warmth, their kindness, how they sat with me and continued to check-in with me in the following days... all of that went so far. I am so grateful to them, and their support made me want to be a source of comfort for new moms, too.
My own postpartum experience (and working in restaurants, ha!) has helped me learn to anticipate and intuit the needs of other new moms. One thing I remember from my own postpartum and friend’s postpartum was the exhaustion of decision-making during that time. Like, please don’t ask me what I want to eat, just hand me a bowl of something. Don’t ask me what would be helpful, just pick a task and go for it. Delegation during postpartum is so draining and emotional. So that’s what I try to do with postpartum support, just quietly start making soup, filling up mom’s water bottle, folding laundry, changing bed sheets, looking around for what needs to be done. I also remember how good, nourishing and correct it felt to have the support of another woman in my home, cooking and keeping me company. The focused, lighthearted presence of my friend and my sister in those early weeks was enough to lift me up out of the pit, and I was so sad when they had to leave. So I think about that when I’m going to support a postpartum mom, the significance and simplicity of having a grounded, supportive, female presence around during that tender time.
Birth is not just about removing a healthy baby from your body; it stirs up all this stuff around trust and strength and power and mystery and patience and doubt and surrender, the way all of those things live inside of you. Breastfeeding is not just about feeding your baby; it shines a light on how you relate to your own body, it puts you in contact with these big ideas of love and interdependence and patience and humility and slowness and trust and work and finding your way. There is so much poetry in these things. Really, the short answer is: I just think moms are magical. The things we are capable of, the power we hold, our innate ability to create, all the things that we carry throughout this season of life. I hope to acknowledge and remind women of that.
What is one aspect of motherhood that you completely did not anticipate?
I had no understanding of how intertwined everything in my life, specifically in my relationship, would become. Before you have a baby, your life and your partner’s life are running parallel to one another. You can choose to shower or go for a walk without discussing it. You can choose to stop off after work, or take a trip, and all you have to do is let your guy know that you’ll be in New Orleans for the next 4 days or whatever. You can choose to quit a job, or begin a new one without consulting someone about potential schedule changes and how it’ll affect the family unit as a whole. Maybe you have the shared responsibility of a pet, but it does not compare or affect your shared existence in the same way that having a baby does. All of a sudden, those side-by-side life paths become inextricably woven and bound together. The way you each take care of yourselves has an effect on each other’s wellbeing and your child’s wellbeing. You are constantly tag-teaming with one another, constantly checking in with one another, especially if outside support or childcare is lacking. There are suddenly all of these logistics you’re working through together, all of these decisions to make. It’s interesting because people do warn you about this, and rationally, Pregnant You understands — but when it actually happens, you feel this undeniable interdependence settle in on a deep, core level. It’s so jarring – it was for me, anyways. It felt like a complete restructuring of self, impulses, needs, wants, freedoms, but it was all happening quietly inside of me, and basically overnight.
I think I was stubbornly rooted in the idea that a baby would integrate easily into our life. I also assumed we would be able to share parenting responsibilities 50/50. We were both doing client-based work and I expected that eventually we’d just divide our work appointments and our free time right down the middle, and it absolutely did not work out like that. Despite reading books about breastfeeding and natural birth and stuff, I did not anticipate how much my baby would need and want ME, and only me. My daughter was a barnacle: I was the one with the boobs, and she didn’t want anyone else. Around 2 months postpartum I tried to take some clients– I’d be gone for maybe three hours and she’d just wail at the top of her lungs the entire time she was with her Dad. Just recently she has begun tolerating Dad doing bedtime, and that’s been a big relief. I understand now, after attending La Leche League meetings and working with other mothers and babies, that it is very normal and natural for infants to want only their mothers in the beginning– that she and I are a unit, a dyad– but after my daughter was born, that parallel life experience my husband and I were accustomed to had split off in entirely different directions, then wound back around over and into itself. In other words, we were experiencing new parenthood in very different ways, and that interdependence, that “split,” felt quite frustrating at times. To put it mildly.
Interdependence is not exclusive to motherhood, but becoming a mom puts you face-to-face with it. It begins in pregnancy, of course– what you put in your own body has a direct affect on your baby’s development - and it continues into new motherhood, but on a more subtle level. The way I treat my body and my mind ripples out into the way I am able to show up to my daughter and partner and family as a whole. It has taken me a little while to become conscious of this, but I’m trying to be more mindful and attuned to these subtleties. For example, if I drink too much coffee, and I’m rushing and bouncing off the walls and have an unreasonable, grandiose expectation or timeline for the day, it affects everyone. If I stay up late and I drink wine and I’m tired and short-tempered the next day, it affects everyone. If I wait too long to eat when I’m hungry, it affects everyone. If I take on too many classes or client visits in a week and my husband has no time to himself, it affects all of us. If I don’t make my needs known, if I give and give and give and then find myself burnt out, stewing in resentment… that affects everyone. It’s wild. You see the ripple effect in real time.
What strengths did you find already within yourself to meet the unexpected? How has it changed the woman you are today in reference to the woman you perceived yourself to be before motherhood?
My capacity for patience deepened after giving birth. What I also mean to say is something about surrender– I don’t know if I knew much about patience or surrender before becoming a mom. Surrendering to the unknowns of pregnancy and birth, those early days with a colicky newborn, bouncing on the birth ball for hours, singing, rocking, shushing, nursing, giving yourself over to the now, putting yourself aside, losing yourself in your baby’s smile– all of that does something to a person. Somehow you manage to dig deep and tap into this well of patience that was apparently there all along. I think those exhausting, miserable witching hour stretches must have primed me to surrender to the needs of the moment and follow her lead with everything else as she got older. Her sleep habits changed over and over again, her eating habits changed over and over again, we changed the layout of the house around over and over again, her need for closeness with me continues to change and evolve… all you can do is roll with it!? I fail at surrender all the time, but I do think the times that I have been able to surrender both to the dependence that my daughter has on me and to the natural flow of the day has helped me accept motherhood more fully and show up to it more gracefully.
I always valued individualism and have always been very work-oriented, not in the sense of climbing the corporate ladder or anything, but in that I always felt that any meaning or sense of purpose in life would be derived through my work. Work, specifically making money, equaled freedom. I put independence up on a pedestal. It’s pretty hard to uphold that mindset of individualism when you have a baby, though. Parenthood demands that you embrace interdependence. Work remains very important to me, but I will probably always try to structure the work of my life around motherhood if I can, at least when I have really young kids. I feel a lot more willing to surrender to that aforementioned interdependence than pre-baby Berlin would have been.
BONUS QUESTION: What question do you wish someone would ask you, either in conversation or in an interview? Would you be willing to share what that question is, and then answer it for us?
I suppose you’ve asked this in a variety of ways already, but maybe it would be: How has becoming a mother changed you for the better? What do you love about being a mom? because the perceptible, surface changes are probably that I have circles under my eyes, I sigh a lot, my belly isn’t flat anymore, I’m less “free” – but beneath all of that there’s this phosphorescence that hums and glows under the skin of your experience, and it’s pretty incredible. I love how my life is infused with silliness and imagination now. I love the love my daughter brought into our existence. I love how she snaps me back into presence. I love how having a daughter has expanded my compassion for others while also firming up my boundaries. I love witnessing my own adaptability. I love how motherhood has made me feel more beautiful somehow. I love trying to meet the everyday challenge of being her mom.
One wonderful, magical thing that has come from motherhood is that I feel considerably more in tune with my creativity now. I think I always thought of myself as a creative person but I was often too afraid to fail or finish anything. I’d walk towards my creativity, then skirt around it because it scared me. That has begun to fade after stepping into motherhood, because I feel more creatively powerful and everything feels more urgent now. I feel it both on a small scale (writing/newfound interest in certain crafts like quilting/spinning stories and making art from nothing with my kid) and on a large scale (I make my own happiness/I create the life I want to live/what is it that I am meant to bring to form/what can I do to make xyz happen?) Now I know that everyone is inherently creative.
Having a baby woke me up to the fact that I am responsible for being the person I want to be. Do I constantly act in accordance with my values? No, I don’t. But I feel less out-to-sea, at least now that we are past the first year. I know what my values are, and I care more about holding myself to a certain standard. It’s like my standards have gone up, but I also feel considerably more relaxed about so many things in my life?? Becoming a mom completely changed the way I experience the passage of time, which makes me want to be better because I really don’t want to waste time anymore– and my daughter is watching.
If you enjoyed this written interview and would like to explore more of Berlin’s writing, I recommend beginning with the following pieces! Or you can visit her Substack publication
and follow wherever the thread of your attention leads…you will not be disappointed.III. Ask a Midwife
Q: “I’m in the third trimester of pregnancy and my hemoglobin levels are low! What can I do to raise my levels?”
A: Eat Meat. Eat Beets. Drink Nettle Tea.
One of the most frequently emphasized aspects of routine prenatal blood work tends to be mid-to-late pregnancy hemoglobin and hematocrit levels (or, as they are commonly represented, iron levels). And low levels certainly can create stress, particularly if they directly affects the birth support options available through a chosen care provider.
It’s easy enough to get ahold of an iron supplement; the trouble is less in finding one and more in deciding which one? But benign as iron supplementation is often considered to be, it comes with its own set of challenges, including constipation and the potential over-supplementation of iron in cases where low hemoglobin has less to do with low iron in the body and more to do with whether that iron can be accessed and utilized.
One of the gentlest ways to improve hemoglobin levels is through daily prioritization of foods known to improve blood health. This might include eating small amounts of organic grass-fed beef liver several times a week in the form of pâté or sauteed in butter (or taking liver capsules daily if liver on your dinner plate sounds too unappetizing).This could also include making red beets and their nutrient-rich greens regular guests in your kitchen. If stews are a regular part of your diet, be sure to add beef or venison and a fat handful of chopped kale. Prunes, eggs, steaks, lamb, and blackstrap molasses all contribute to improved hemoglobin/hematocrit levels (with particular emphasis on eating animal over vegetables, since the iron provided through meat and eggs is more easily absorbed and used by the body).
While a good nutritional foundation for blood health must be laid in the meals cooked and served, I would be remiss not to mention the herbs which serve to support healthy hemoglobin/hematocrit levels. Nettles tea infusions are transformative when hemoglobin levels are staying persistently low, as are alfalfa and dandelion leaf infusions.
While there are occasional clients who truly do seem to benefit most from a supplement more than any food, the majority of the clients with whom I’ve worked most intensively over the years on hemoglobin levels have noticed the greatest shifts in their blood levels arising in direct relationship to shifts in the kitchen.
On a related note, is starting a deep dive into how to support healthy hemoglobin levels; see her recent posts on different types of anemia (low hemoglobin levels) here and her exploration of what can prevent absorption of iron stores here.
III. Shelf Life | in fragments
Instead of bringing you a book review, I must confess to having finished not a single book in the month of February (though I grazed from many a wonderful volume). So instead I offer a small collection of others’ words which have lingered with me through some of the late nights and early mornings which the work of this season has required.
You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love.
Louise Bourgeous, in Deconstruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923 - 1997
Modernity has two faces, suggests the Argentinian decolonial thinker Walter Mignolo, as inseparable as the faces of a coin. He calls them ‘the shine’ and ‘the shadow’. If the changes in the prospects for surviving childhood are among the brightest aspects of the way that death has changed in the era of industrial modernity, their shine is not the whole of the story. Seen from elsewhere, what defines this era may not be the triumph over death so much as its systematic outsourcing. The world system which made industrial society possibly was founded on the destruction of worlds, not only in rural England, but more brutally across the globe. The conquest of the Americas involved the extinction of 80 to 90 percent of the Indigenous population, a multi-generational genocide in which the impact of introduced diseases was compounded by military, economic, and biological warfare. The raw materials that fed the new industrial economy were grown and mined by victims of the new industrial slave trade, black bodies bought and sold and disposed of at will. This systemic savagery was not a side story to the main drama of industrialization, still so often presented as a history of ingenious white men and the unforeseeable consequences of their inventions; it was a necessary condition for the viability of the industrial economy and it is a process that persists, in varying forms, to this day.
Dougald Hine, in At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place In the Time of Climate Crises and Other Emergencies
(You can find Dougald’s work at and on his website.)
And last, but not least, a poem memorized years ago and held close to the heart always.
Credo
by Edwin Arlington RobinsonI cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all—above, beyond it all—
I know the far sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.
The PDF version is so beautiful! Thank you for spotlighting me this month, I'm honored!
Thank you for the shoutout, Jan! Appreciate it and also all the resources here 🧡 A good read.