Michelle Peek Photography
Transforming the postpartum experience
Full Bloom Postpartum Care is a service that is dedicated to the life-long health of mothers and women. This service is focused around the postpartum time but extends far beyond. Mothers carry the incredible responsibility of taking care of their child when it is born but who is taking care of the mothers? We have forgotten that there is a deep responsibility of the community to take care of a new mother. Full Bloom Postpartum Care is here to tend to the needs of the mother so she can tend to the needs of her baby.
When mothers thrive, they are capable of raising future generations from a place of coherence and abundance. That is why my service is to tend to the mother. Mothers are the key to a harmonious and abundant existence. These offerings are here to remind mothers how to listen to and care for themselves, as well as to ask for and accept the help of those around them so that life can thrive within and all around her.
Planting seeds
This experience goes beyond just tending the physical body. It is deep, nourishing work that sets a foundation for life-long holistic health. This work goes well beyond six weeks. It is said in the Ayurvedic tradition that the first forty days of a newborn’s mother’s life sets the tone for her next forty years. How mothers tend to themselves and how mothers are tended to, ripples out into the rest of their lives, beyond matrescence, into cronehood and onto the maidens and mothers of the generations to come.
Through this experience you are not only investing in your postpartum care, but in the care and support of those that will follow you. Through our time together you will learn what the necessity of postpartum care needs to be for mothers to thrive.
My story
I remember vividly the exact moment my son was placed on my body for the first time. I thought to myself, “This is it. Life will never be the same.” In all honesty, it was a scary, holy crap kind of moment. I was not blissed out, I was freaked out. This thought carried with it a knowing that this journey of motherhood was going to be challenging. I’ve heard many times from parents that you can never be fully prepared for parenthood but I felt especially unprepared. I never had the so-called Baby Itch or planned to have a baby. Pregnancy came as a surprise and my son decided to arrive almost a month early, days before we moved into a new house.
I can’t say I reminisce about my early days as a mom with much bliss or joy. I mostly remember it being so damn hard and lonely and, sadly, I know many moms who have had similar experiences postpartum. I remember the beautiful moments too, but it’s the hard times I remember most. I am grateful however, for I believe it’s the difficult times that hold the key to our transformation.
Through my rite of passage into motherhood I have blossomed into this life’s work that is more true to me than anything I have ever done. I feel the fire burning and turning deeply in my heart and soul as I continue to step into the role of a mother. Despite how difficult it was (and can be) I have motherhood and all the uncertain, teary-eyed and exhausting moments to thank. It was those times of hardship that have fanned the flames of creation and brought Full Bloom Postpartum Care to life.
I have always felt a deep and authentic connection with Mother Earth and knew I wanted to be in service to Her in some way. For years I worked with youth teaching outdoor education. I’ve taken numerous courses rooted in wilderness awareness and survival, plant identification and herbal remedies. The highlights of my summers as a child and adolescent were the times I spent camping, hiking and canoeing. All my life I have felt the call to be in and connect with Nature but it wasn’t until the last decade that I felt the call to be a conduit between people and our earth. My call to connect with Her went from wanting to connect within myself to wanting to assist others to connect with Her. I knew this was my purpose, I just had no idea how this would come to be. It was the gift of motherhood that showed me the way.
By the grace of God I have been gifted with the incredible responsibility of carrying and caring for life and, God bless me, what a responsibility it is. I humbly accept this responsibility but have realized, that as mothers, we cannot carry this alone. We need a community, a village, in order to be able to hold this immense responsibility with the grace that is needed.
I remember saying to myself many times during those initial postpartum times, “This is crazy!” It is crazy to me that mothers are left alone in solitude to care for and grow their children and also continue to carry out all the responsibilities they had prior to motherhood. The reality of our modern postpartum care is shocking and sad and the health of mothers is a direct reflection of the health of Mother Earth. It’s no wonder our world is in the state that it is. Therefore, we must transform the postpartum experience in order to bring peace, harmony and an abundance of good into our world.
Full Bloom Postpartum Care was grown from the depths of my soul, from the depths of my knowing as a mother and a woman that without this kind of holistic care for mothers, we will continue the perpetual cycle of damage and disarray we have become so accustomed to and accept as the norm. Too often mothers are told that it’s normal to be depressed and anxious after giving birth, that it’s normal to have prolapse and incontinence. It may be normal in our modern day world but these circumstances are a result of broken and damaged communities. Mothers are not the problem. It is not a mother’s lack of ability that causes postpartum depression or any other disfunction or imbalance. It is the lack of care. The environment in which a postpartum mother finds herself immersed in each day is the problem. She is merely the canary in the cage trying to tell everyone that something is not right.
In service,
Lindsay Gosse
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