Pregnancy · Birth · Postpartum

Birth & Beyond

The things I reach for through every season of growing, birthing, and recovering. Chosen for the tender, transformative stretch from first trimester to fourth.

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There is no season that has changed me more than this one, and none where I was handed more advice I did not ask for. What follows is not that.

These are simply the things I have reached for through four pregnancies and four very different births — some I found early, some it took me until the fourth to work out.

— Emma

Birth Prep Tincture

Gentle Birth

Part of my go-to routine as labor draws near. One of the most-asked-about things I carry.

I start it in the last stretch of pregnancy, and part of what I love is the ritual — a small daily marker that birth is coming. This is emphatically one to take to your midwife or provider first, not something to begin on your own after reading about it here. Timing and whether it suits you at all is their call, not mine.

How I use itBegun in the final weeks, once a day.

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Nourishing Pregnancy Herbs

Frontier Co-op

Red raspberry leaf, nettle, and the herbal companions I steep all trimester long.

A big jar on the counter and a pot of tea most afternoons. This is the least glamorous and most consistent thing I do in pregnancy, and the one I would keep if I had to give up everything else on this page.

How I use itA quart brewed overnight, sipped cool through the next day.

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Iron Tonic

Vitanica

Liquid iron that does not taste like a rusty nail.

Liquid rather than a tablet, and blackberry rather than metal, which is the whole reason I stuck with it. Worth saying: iron is not something to guess at — my midwife checks my levels and I follow what she says rather than the internet.

How I use itA capful in the morning, when my levels call for it.

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Magnesium

For the restless-legs, can't-sleep season of pregnancy. A nightly ritual in our home.

Anyone who has been pregnant in the third trimester knows the particular misery of legs that will not settle at two in the morning. This is what I reach for at bedtime, and what I hand to friends further along than me.

How I use itAt night, as part of winding down.

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Questions about any of these?

Truly — ask me. I would far rather talk it through than have you guess, and I do not mind at all if you never buy a thing.

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