EBB 294 – Blending Ancestral Wisdom and Research Evidence with Emilie Rodriguez & Guramrit LeBron of Ashé Birthing Services in New York City

• Learn about Ashé Birthing Services here.
• For more information and resources, visit The Bridge Directory.
• Learn about the Irth App here: https://irthapp.com/
• Follow Ashé Birthing Services on Instagram

EBB Podcast Episodes Referenced in this Episode:

• EBB 161 and EBB 220 with Kimberly Seals Allers of the Irth App
• EBB 260 with Ms. Divine Bailey-Nicholas about Plant Medicine
• EBB 261: Mini Q&A on Group B Strep
• EBB 10 about the ARRIVE trial

EBB Signature Articles:

• Signature Article on Eye Ointment (ebbirth.com/eyeointment),
• Signature Article on Circumcision (ebbirth.com/circumcision)
• Signature Article on Group B Strep (ebbirth.com/groupbstrep)
• Signature Article on Vitamin K (ebbirth.com/vitamink)

• EBB handout on the ARRIVE trial: https://evidencebasedbirth.com/arrive

^^Get a FREE handout for each topic at the links above to help your informed decision making!

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• Become an EBB Instructor here

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Rebecca Dekker:

Hi everyone, on today’s podcast, we’re going to talk with Emilie Rodriguez and Guramrit LeBron of Ashé Birthing Services located in the Bronx about how they are working to create a balance between evidence-based research and ancestral practices while fighting the maternal mortality rate for Black birthing families in New York.

Hi everyone, my name is Rebecca Dekker, pronouns she/her, and I’ll be your host for today’s episode. I wanted to let you know that in this episode we will be talking about racism and maternal mortality. If there are any other detailed content or trigger warnings, we always highlight those in the show notes that go along with this episode. And now I’d like to introduce our honored guests.

Ashé Birthing Services is a collective of specially selected birth workers who work together to provide full spectrum services to their families. They are an extension of their village and they extend that to their clients. Emilie and Guramrit have created a balance between evidence-based research and ancestral practices, so important. This offers families a unique individual experience that is often missing in mainstream maternal care.

Emilie Rodriguez, she/her, is a traditional birth and postpartum doula, founder of Ashé Birthing Services and co-founder of The Bridge Directory. Emilie’s work as a doula addresses birthing people’s nutritional, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. She believes every birthing person should have the birth they desire, the information needed to see it come to fruition, and advocacy for themselves and their families.

Guramrit LeBron, pronouns she/her, is a birth and postpartum doula and Certified Lactation Counselor and Co-Founder of The Bridge Directory. Guramrit’s professional vocation has spanned across different industries, but has always resided with the same common denominator of amplifying the voices of those in underserved communities, especially in the greater New York City and New York State area.

Together, these two birth workers have been combining their respective experiences as doulas and mothers to educate their community to the reality that doulas offer a level of care that is vital, yet underutilized within the US maternity care system. I’m so excited to talk with Emilie and Guramrit. Welcome both of you to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Thank you so much.

Guramrit LeBron:

Yes, thank you for having us.

Rebecca Dekker:

Yeah, we’re just so thrilled that you’re here today. And I love what you all are doing with Ashé Birthing Services and The Bridge Directory, the impact you’re making for Black Birth to be a more positive experience in the greater New York City area. Could you start by just talking with us about how you both started in birth work and how Ashé Birthing Services began?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yes. This is Emilie. My background is actually in medical anthropology, where I studied birth in the United States, and also I was a veterinary technician for nine years. And so when I became pregnant, I thought that I was quite expert and well-versed in what to expect. But I started at a pretty well-known hospital system in New York, and I didn’t like how I felt like a number. The appointments were really short, and it just didn’t feel like the right place for me. And so I moved to a birthing center in Brooklyn, which was an hour away from me. It’s our only birthing center in New York City, where I experienced racism in my care. And then I ended up switching to a home birth midwife, a Black home birth midwife, and had a really empowering birth experience in the Bronx. Those experiences, and my particular lens, is what led me to become a doula, because I had a doula, and I realized that, like, “wow, you can have an empowering birth experience when you have the information, but most people just don’t know about their options or what they can do,” and so that’s where Ashé birthing began.

Rebecca Dekker:

Emilie, so you experienced, like, all three types of birthing systems then. You had a hospital prenatal experience, the birth center prenatal experience and the home birth. And you still experienced racism outside of the hospital when you went to the community setting. Is this something, you said this was in 2016, do you still see clients facing these issues today?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Oh yeah, I mean racism is everywhere, especially in the institutions of births. And yeah, I think that it might not be as overt as I experienced, but that’s one of the reasons why advocacy is such an integral part of doulas work.

Rebecca Dekker:

How were you able to switch then? Because so many people get stuck in the system that they’re giving in, and they feel like they don’t have any other option. So you opted out of the hospital, then you opted out of the birth center and found a provider that would truly care for you. Like what triggered you to do that?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yeah, thankfully, one of the first ethnographies that I wrote as an anthropologist was following Chanel Porchia-Albert, who is the Founder of Ancient Song Doula Services, and I had lunch with her, and she was like, “girl, you are low risk, get out”. You know, and I was like, “what?, maybe from my second baby, because this is all so overwhelming.” And she was like, “oh, just go talk to this midwife and she’s a Taurus and I’m sure you’re going to connect.” And we did, and I just realized the stark difference in my care. And in the 10 years almost that I’ve been doing birth work, we see the difference in between hospital systems and out of hospital systems and how midwifery care model really leads the way.

Rebecca Dekker:

And so it seems like really amazing that it was a doula, a famous doula no less, who encouraged you to switch and now you’re serving as a doula and I can’t wait to hear more about that. So, Guramrit, can you share your story next and let us know how you got involved in birth work?

Guramrit LeBron:

Yeah, so this is Guramrit and yeah, I actually really wanted to just work in magazines. Publishing was definitely something that I saw myself doing since I was young. But like my very first memory as a kid was the birth of my brother. So I actually witnessed his birth. He was born at home and it was unheard of in the eighties and early nineties for some reason. And that is something that just really profoundly stuck with me. I didn’t realize how much of an impact. It had until I just kept coming back to this same place. You need to help birthing people. You need to help postpartum people. You need to help the families. And how can you do that? How can you show up? And I just felt that urge and that call to take a training and that three days wasn’t enough. And I started to get mentorship and Emilie and I found each other. And honestly, it’s been about six, seven years now that Emilie and I have been together. And just in those years, it has been transformative work. Not just for me, but the people that we have worked with. We’ve worked with hundreds of clients and I can see us really touching on everyone. We’re just sharing all of this knowledge and love that we have for our community and we are centering them and it’s amazing. Like I love what I do. I love that I got to have my babies at home too. That was a conscious choice that I made and I also as a doula also had doulas. I’m just really excited to see where The Bridge goes and Ashé is just growing and thriving with these amazing doulas and we’re really letting it seep into and pour into the work at The Bridge.

Rebecca Dekker:

I love hearing the joy in your voice when you’re talking about how you and Emilie, you know, have been able to do this journey together. And I think it would be so much harder and different if you were alone. And it’s all about community. I saw on your Instagram for Ashé Birthing Services that you had a really joyful get together. Can you talk about how you create joy as birth workers together?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yeah, this is Emilie. I think it’s part of sustainability. This work is so hard. The burnout rate is two years for a doula. And so I don’t even know the statistics for Black and Brown doulas on top of that. And so I think as part of our group, which is about 15 of us. It’s important that we feed into, pour into each other and feed each other figuratively and physically. I invited everyone to my house. We had meetings and did each other’s hair and ate a potluck and jumped in the pool. And I just feel like it’s just really important that we process these births together, that we hold each other accountable, that we back each other up and it just creates a more sustainable model for us to be human beings.

Rebecca Dekker:

Yeah, I love that. So speaking more about your team, could one of you tell us more about your team, so you said there’s 15 doulas. How are you all together providing evidence-based care and ancestral healing, and you’re combining those two things for your community?

Guramrit LeBron:

So we have 15 Black and Brown doulas. They are serving the community in the New York City area, which is pretty amazing. They all have different expertises from placenta encapsulation to herbalism. We have someone who is actually starting their own farm, which is awesome. And that helps us pour into each other, like Emilie was saying, in the herbal aspect and reconnecting with the earth, which is such an important part of our ancestral work. I don’t know, Emilie, if you have one, jump in a little bit and share how we all tap into each other and our own experiences too.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Sure. So we have weekly meetings where we go over case studies. The other day I got distance Reiki from one of the doulas. I made pasta out of the vegetables that Guramrit’s talking about from our farmer, Valencia. We have an obstetrician on our doula group as well, and she’s a traditional obstetrician, I would say, in combining her Dominican roots to biomedicine. And so I think that that’s really what we do. We’re all from different places. We combine that ancestral knowledge into our care together. And so sometimes that looks like bone broth in an induction and some that we made homemade, like Guramrit’s usually that person, or sometimes it’s sobadas or belly binding postpartum. Yeah, so it just depends who the doula is and how we’re all centered and working collectively.

Rebecca Dekker:

I would love to encourage our listeners to go back and listen to EBB episode 260 with Miss Divine Bailey-Nicholas, where she talks about plant medicine and herbalism and the Black ancestral knowledge there. She gives a really good overview. And so I love that you mentioned that. I was wondering also, when you’re caring for your clients, I know they’re in this system, so they’re receiving medical diagnoses and they’re being told to have this test or that test or be induced for this or that. How do you use evidence-based information in combination with that other side of wisdom that you bring to help your clients navigate all this information being thrown at them, especially in a place like New York City that I know, similar to Chicago, there’s a really heavy emphasis on interventions and just some of them being not necessary some of the time. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Guramrit LeBron:

We’re both looking at each other.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Ha ha ha.

Guramrit LeBron:

So I think it’s a combination of things that we do because we like to say we’re more so evidence in, we are yes, evidence-based but also evidence-informed. So we’re constantly looking at different studies that are coming up, the different information that’s in front of us so that we can actually provide the most up-to-date information to our clients while at the same time acknowledging that they do have their own culture, their own practices and traditions and finding a way to incorporate that. So we try to find out in our prenatal meetings what is really important to them. What if they don’t know what their practices are, how can we find ways to add that into their care? I think that that’s that piece that’s missing and Emilie and I know the rest of our team, we say this all the time. It’s like, how can we work the way that our ancestors did? How can we sit at the feet of our elders and bring our traditions back? And what is that going to look like? Is like we have to sit and we have to research, we have to talk and see what’s going to work for our community. And we all have different things that we bring to the table. We’re not saying that interventions aren’t necessary. We’re not saying that there isn’t a place for them, but just making sure that that traditions also hold that same weight. Yeah, and power because there is power in herbal medicine, there is power in tradition, there’s in all of this knowledge that’s ingrained in our mind, body and soul. And we really want to work with that and walk with it. In everything that we do.

Rebecca Dekker:

That makes sense. Emilie, do you have anything to add?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yeah, it’s just piggybacking off of that, we send them to your website. We love Evidence Based Birth® because it really helps us help to inform our clients to make empowered decisions that are right for themselves and their family. And so who they choose as a provider, totally up to them. Where they decide to birth, totally up to them. But our job is really to make sure that they feel informed so that they can make the right decision and actually have informed consent throughout the process. And so we integrate those things wherever we are. We don’t care. Most people are birthing in the hospital. Most of our clients are in the hospital. And like Guramrit said, that might mean making an altar for a loved one who has just recently passed or honoring a particular tradition that’s really important for the family. But I think that there’s absolutely a way to ground in the ceremony of birth to make it your own, but then the institution that feels overwhelming. And make it different.

Rebecca Dekker:

Speaking of the Evidence Based Birth® articles, which ones do you think you send to people most often? Like which are the issues that are always coming up?

Guramrit LeBron:

Vitamin K, eye ointment, circumcision, 39 week induction, The ARRIVE trial. That’s a really big one. Those are definitely hot topics. And I, especially like if we have a client for like a home birth and they’re contemplating circumcision, maybe that’s also an article we’ll send them. If they’re trying to decide or they don’t know what Vitamin K is, like definitely send them those. I have to say we have all of the handouts downloaded. So it’s just available to us in case anyone has a question.

Rebecca Dekker:

Exactly. It’s like you have the ones ready to go. If the topic comes up, I’m so glad that can be helpful. And it’s interesting, you mentioned the newborn procedures are the ones that people struggle with and need more information because there’s not a lot of education in doctors visits about what they can expect for their newborn, right? It like focuses on the pregnancy, not the baby.

Guramrit LeBron:

And that’s also where we step in too, right? As doulas and birth workers, we step in and we say, hey, like what is your plan when the baby arrives? What do you mean I have the baby? So what are we going to do once the baby’s here? What would you like to do in your immediate postpartum? What does your plan look like? How can we help facilitate that? And that’s also where the traditions in ancestral practices does come in too.

Rebecca Dekker:

Yeah, Emilie, you were just thinking really hard. What were you, what was going through your head?

Emilie Rodriguez:

I love the medical reasons to be induced. Because I feel like that’s such a confusing place to be when somebody is pushing you to an induction that might be very much elective and just trying to figure out what is medical and what isn’t, right? Like sometimes we have providers that are, that say big baby or that say oligohydramnios, right? Like too little fluid in, you know, and these types of things. But having the actual information and the evidence to be like, “oh, actually, I had a client last week that said my fluid was really low, it was nine”. And I was like, “that’s not low.” And so it just really helps to know the barriers of the actual evidence to be able to actually make those decisions.

Rebecca Dekker:

Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s like when those rationales are listed for having an induction, then knowing what is the evidence really say? Like, is this just part of the OB’s tradition or is there evidence supporting it? So, I love that. Can you talk about The Bridge Directory? Tell us what it is and how you put it all together and what it offers your community.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yes, absolutely. Well, I think through our journey as birth workers, we were getting phone calls, especially during the pandemic and prior, but it definitely was exacerbated during the pandemic, where folks would be like, “I don’t feel safe delivering in the hospital alone, mostly. And I’m looking for a Black doula to help support me and advocate for me through this process”. And we realized that there was no platform to find a Black doula in this day. And so we really wanted to create a free resource for families, starting with New York City, where they could find providers of color, find someone, in New York City, we speak over 600 languages. We need to be able to find providers that are in the perinatal space, that speak our languages, that understand our cultures, and that look like us, so that we know that we’re getting better care through research that’s proven. And then one step beyond that, because I think that there’s an argument to be had that it’s not enough to be a Black and Brown provider in a system that was never created with us in mind. Obstetrics has a very strong only history in slavery and non-consensual procedures. And so it was really important for us to work within the institution as well. And so we created a standard of care that all of our providers adhere to, a model of care that seems pretty natural for us, but that we would love to see implemented in the hospital system. And we’re working with institutions like Columbia University currently, New York Presbyterian, implementing and training their providers on the inside to give better care to our people.

Rebecca Dekker:

And I encourage our listeners to check out thebridgedirectory.com. So it looks like right now people can search for doulas that you’ve vetted in New York City, Long Island, Northern New Jersey, Southern Connecticut and Westchester. Are there any other places you’re hoping to expand to next?

Guramrit LeBron:

Yeah, so one thing about Emilie and I is that we want to make sure that it’s not just like five doulas or five midwives, we want to provide people with choices. And so our next goal is definitely heading over towards the West Coast. So I think we’re going to focus on the Los Angeles area and then tap into Chicago. And we’re moving slowly, but very intentionally. We’re moving rapidly, but slowly, but also intentionally. Like we’re growing our provider. Our platform is about 170 providers and growing every week. We have new providers and practitioners that are joining the site. So we have everything from chiropractors to pediatricians to obstetricians, anyone that serves the perinatal period and beyond. And one part that’s really, really important that I think Emilie touched on is that we not only in this vetting process, are we making sure that they are who they say they are, we’re making sure that, yes, they are attesting to these standards and that they agree with our mission and our values. They are allowing us to walk with them in community and hold them accountable if something pops up. And we’re like, listen, like we need to talk to each other. We can’t, as we like to say all the time, we cannot do this work alone. We cannot work in silos. We need to hold each other’s hands in this process and really just. This is how we make an impact in maternal morbidity and mortality. This is how we make change. And we really firmly believe that The Bridge Directory is like part of the solution here. That’s also what gave birth to our foundation as well, which we just recently launched our 501c3, which is The Bridge Community Foundation and just really making sure that there is not just access, but also education and care.

Rebecca Dekker:

On the website it says that you have like a community nominated Council of Elders. Can you talk about the importance and why you brought that and made that part of the picture?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yeah, I think that elders in today’s world are often forgotten, and they’ve contributed so much to the heartbeats of our society, really. And so it was important to us that it didn’t come from our 36-year-old selves. We can’t lead communities on our own, so we had a community-nominated Council of Elders that are three amazing individuals that help us to stay focused on what our goals are for the year. You know, what Guramrit was speaking to was the fact that we’re all doing this work, and it’s all interconnected, but what impact will we have if we work together? And so that’s really our vision for The Bridge, is like, well, if we work with obstetricians and the midwives and the chiropractors and the lactation consultants and the acupuncturists, like, how far would we get moving this needle?

Rebecca Dekker:

And I have another quick question, because I just love the directory. What are the values that people are saying they ascribe to, so that you can, you know, you said you vet the people who join the directory. What are you looking for, and what are they saying that they are also committed to?

Guramrit LeBron:

So they’re committed to offering culturally competent care, that they are making this work accessible, that they are part of our community.

Emilie Rodriguez:

They’re committing to culturally competent care. They’re committing to treating people with respect, to accountability, which is completely missing, I would say, in today’s culture, to continued learning, to actual informed consent, to anti-racist care and trauma-informed care, filling in the holes that we see that need to be filled.

Rebecca Dekker:

And I love how it’s all working together with Ashé Birthing Services and your mission to improve care for families in the New York City area, but it seems like this is going to have a ripple effect and affect more people outside of that area. You know, we were talking a little bit earlier about the rates of maternal mortality, especially for Black families. What are you seeing, anything that’s working to help protect Black women and Black birthing people in the current system and time?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yeah, I think there are a lot of fires brewing. I think we’re all at the front lines in different ways. Ashé and The Bridge are doing what they’re doing. Chanel, like we mentioned earlier with Ancient Song, is doing so much amazing policy work. Kimberly Seals Allers has the Irth app where Black and Brown people can go on and say their experiences, like a Yelp for births. So I feel like there’s just many things that are happening simultaneously to make change. Now in the age of social media as well people are talking about it and learning different information, knowing their rights, and that they can say no, that that’s a complete sentence. And I think it just takes a retraining of society to realize that we have a lot more power and a lot more options than we’ve been led to believe.

Rebecca Dekker:

It sounds like a lot of what you’re saying is change coming from outside the institution. And I know that’s important because we want to, and we need to follow Black and Brown women and birth workers as they’re leading us through this. But I know there also needs to be change at the institutional side and the hospitals, and there’s a lack of accountability, and we still have providers who are sometimes providing good care, but also we know there’s bad apples out there as well. So can you talk a little bit? Have you seen any changes in the hospitals to put protections in place for Black families?

Guramrit LeBron:

Yeah, so that’s a really great question. So we’re actually, this is a fundamental piece of the work that we’re doing with New York Presbyterian and Columbia University is really just getting in the door and talking to providers and offering them training and even just telling them, “hey, this is actual informed consent and teaching them from the beginning”. It’s really hard to rewrite and, all of this curriculum that they’ve already walked in with, and they’ve already walked in with this idea of how things are supposed to be. So now we have to retrain providers and professionals while also at the same time, empowering pregnant folks to step into their appointments and have all this knowledge about what care is supposed to look like for them, how they’re supposed to be treated. And I think us actually being able to come to a grand rounds and be like, “hey, how about we try this? We do some role play. Let’s see how this feels in your body after someone approaches you this way”. How can you actually bring a level of, not just sensitivity and competence, but just like empathy to appointments and not just checking off the boxes. How can you actually meet them where they are? And I think there’s a huge difference in the level of care when you are actually being heard and there’s a real relationship and it’s not just checking off, “hey, I talked about this, this and this and that’s done”.

Rebecca Dekker:

I think, yeah, you bring up a really important point about the empathy. And I’ve been doing a lot of reading on empathy and when there’s a lack of empathy. And Ihotu Ali, who’s one of our research editors at EBB has written about in our article on anti-racism, the cross racial empathy gap, which I think is not pointed out enough as a big part of the mortality crisis. In cases where I’ve personally been in the room and seen racism happening, it’s because they’re not treating that person like they would a family member. There is that lack of empathy, there’s a coldness and just not caring. And that’s the kind of care that kills people.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Absolutely. First shout out to Ihotu because she comes from New York and we love her. I know she doesn’t live here anymore, but.

Rebecca Dekker:

She still sees herself as a New Yorker. I know, because she talks about New York all the time.

Emilie Rodriguez:

We love her. I do think that there’s a consciousness that’s changing amongst white people as a majority, because I feel like Florida is its own thing. But I would say that most white folks that we engage with, that our providers in New York want to be great providers. And they have biases that they necessarily weren’t aware of, that I think the pandemic and the uprising really highlighted for everyone to look at their internal biases and internalized racism. And I think that we weave anti-racism into everything that we do as Black and Brown people, period. There is no separation for us. I’m thinking right now we’re on this board for the NIH writing sepsis guidelines because they don’t exist. And so thankfully, we’re able to be in these spaces with majority doctors and have a community perspective and have a Black perspective where we can say, well, this is missing here. While we’re writing these guidelines and protocols, it’s important that this is also brought to light that goes hand in hand. And I think that that’s also something that’s very different that, we weren’t a part of these conversations before, even though the obstetricians learned from Black midwives in the South, I feel like Blackness hasn’t been centered in the same way that it’s starting to be again. Like, I feel like, as a culture, we’re like, no, we want to make change and at least we’re calling it racism, right? It’s the big R word, like, but we’re saying racism now. We’re not saying some biases or we’re acknowledging that the training is lacking and that like in textbooks, it says that Black people don’t feel pain. And I don’t know, I feel like we’re just coming to terms with the realities of our history and how it still plagues the institutions today.

Rebecca Dekker:

It’s interesting that you brought up the sepsis protocols and guidelines because I know when we were updating the Group B Strep article, that was something we and Ihotu has encouraged us to weave anti-racism information about how to fight racism into every article that we update and write. And so we’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. And I remember writing the Group B Strep article and just being really surprised that when you put that lens on it, for me as a white person, I don’t wear it all the time. I have to specifically put the lens on. And you see the research showing that there’s disparities even with Group B Strep rates, and then also mortality rates and hospitalization rates and complication rates when there is Group B Strep for Black families. So it and then you look into, well, why is that? You know, is it because they’re not being screened appropriately or not being treated appropriately? Where where is the racism causing that? And so where where are you with the sepsis protocols? Where are you inserting the info about racism? Like, where are you seeing that lead to if it’s not addressed, it causes increased mortality?

Emilie Rodriguez:

The interesting part is that it’s the racism aspect because there’s also a communal aspect, which is obviously intersectional. I don’t know what I’m allowed to talk about, but I’m just because it’s ongoing. But I would say, for example, one of our last meetings, there’s this hyper-focus on treatment in the model and prevention was very much missed.

Rebecca Dekker:

Just even info about the microbiome and…

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yes, when the prevention that was listed prior just said like vaccines and hand washing. And something that The Bridge brought to the attention of these very amazing, very woke providers that we really, really love working with was, and it’s just their minds, their medical mind, it was missing things like self-monitoring one’s temperature at home with a spontaneous rupture of membranes, prenatally. Or something that we advocate for that intersects with racism is that when a C-section is necessary, most of our Black and Brown clients are given staples and not sutures. So that’s something that’s really big that we have to advocate for for BIPOC families that we serve.

Rebecca Dekker:

So they should be advocating to have sutures instead of staples. 

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yes. Sutures are so much better for healing. It takes longer, providers don’t want to do it, but they don’t even sometimes, anecdotally on our side for doula’s perspective, we see it [staples] only offered to Black and Brown people, our Black and Brown clients. Our white clients always get sutures. So that’s something that we have to advocate for when C-section is brought up. And then in how that relates to sepsis is that people are able to monitor their own incisions. Teach them, teach them what to look for and what the signs are and believe them when they say that something is wrong. These types of things that’s like, what are the protocols for believing a Black person that calls you and says something’s wrong?

Guramrit LeBron:

I guess I was going to say we also really incorporated this aspect of like Emilie said, like self, self monitoring and education and like this big piece. So we have this like protocol that they have written out and like the big and tiny, tiny, tiny letters was about prevention. We’re also talking to them about what does the follow up look like? What is the support? Who are they going home to? How are we going to teach the community? Like let’s, we want them to go home into the hands of the community because a lot of trends, what’s happening is they’re left, they’re left at the door, set to the hospital with a brand new baby, whether it’s with an incision there or however it is. Whatever their birth experience was like. Then they have to look out for all of these things on top of having a baby. They also have to monitor themselves and take care of themselves. So how can we integrate community and educate the people that are going to be around them? And okay, these are the signs of things to look for and how can we incorporate that education prenatally? And that’s going to look like what is prevention? We need to talk about these things in visits and not just give them a little magnet to stick on the fridge, be like, “here are these things and here’s a number to call”. So it’s such an important piece.

And also we’ve been really trying to incorporate into this new model that they’re creating, traditional care and recognizing that it does have a piece and it is medicine, traditional medicine is medicine. And it’s not just a bunch of, it’s not, what is the word that I’m looking for? Yes, it’s not woo to use cultural practices. Like if they want to consume herbs postpartum, what is that going to look like? How are they going to monitor these things and recognizing that, yes, this is medicine, this is how you can help and heal yourself. And maybe they don’t have the capacity or the time to go back into a clinic, they don’t have support, they don’t have someone with the baby, they don’t have someone to help like rub their feet and feed them teas and broths and help them enjoy the sacred time and really heal. So, you know, it’s all these different pieces and like Emilie said, it’s intersectional. We have to find a way to incorporate the traditional with the modern and I want to say Western medicine because I have a very Indian brain. So I’m always thinking like, okay, this is the Western way of doing things. How can we incorporate our practice here, where there’s still a place for modern medicine and there is a place for it, but there’s also a place for, you know, my cumin tea or my fennel seeds and red raspberry leaf and all of the things that I want to help heal me.

Rebecca Dekker:

And I love how you’re bringing this full circle back to the evidence-based care and community care and ancestral practices and how community is medicine as well, right? Because if you were wrapped in a protective net of community, things wouldn’t go that far, you know? Where they would turn into an emergency or a crisis. Because your community would catch you before it did.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Absolutely. That’s why doulas have become so popular is because we have to be intentional about this community that most people don’t have. And so people hire us because they want the extra set of hands and the extra set of eyes and the traditional practices and the postpartum cooking that comes with mothering the mother or the birthing person that most people are really separated from either intergenerationally or just because of location.

Rebecca Dekker:

So how is nutrition woven into the services you offer? Because I want to make sure you get a chance to talk a little bit about that. That has been something on my mind this year, is just food and feeding people.

Guramrit LeBron:

Oh, absolutely. This is one of the things that like our community loves to do for each other is we’re very intentional with feeding our families, whether it’s during pregnancy or postpartum and making sure the first 42 days in that sacred window in that, in Spanish cultures that cuarentena is just upheld and warm and loving. And so we’re always walking in with food, with our clients. We’re making sure that everything is nice and warm. We’re making sure that everything that they eat is like a warm hug from like a granny. Like that’s what I envision my, like our role as doulas, as birth workers, we’re stepping into someone’s special place is making sure that they feel like this warm embrace from all of us, but also from their ancestors, from all of the traditions, whether they have foods that are special to them, we make sure that we can research it for them. Maybe they need to ask somebody and we can ask someone, “hey, what do families in Kenya have for postpartum?” What do families in India do when there’s different parts of India, right?

So there’s different traditions across the subcontinent. So we don’t, everyone’s different. Like you’re going to have some ginger rice or you’re going to have some lentils, things that are very like just nourishing, easy to digest, warm, in some places heavy on like the good yummy fats. I could talk about yummy fats all day. I’m also love Lily Nichols RDN. She’s amazing. I know she was here. Just heavy on the ghee and the butter and just loving up on the insides and letting the body just be nice and soft. As we like just, yeah. I just think of postpartum as this big hug time. It’s a time to just lay and be and eat yummy things. Pop things in the mouth, get fed, someone’s feeding you, and you feel really, you feel more energized and healed because someone just loved you up with some traditional food.

Rebecca Dekker:

Yeah, and I want to encourage people, if you’re in the area and you want to check out Ashébirthingservices.com and you list some sample menus and teas and broths and snacks to use with your postpartum clients. So thank you so much for nourishing your community the way you do. And Emilie and Guramrit, do you have any projects you want to let our listeners know about or ways to follow you or support your work?

Emilie Rodriguez:

Yes, thank you so much. We just launched our community foundation at bridgecommunity.org. We’re currently in a fundraising season. We’re trying to launch our access piece, paying for BIPOC families in New York City and surrounding areas to have access to birth and postpartum doulas, lactation and feeding services, placenta encapsulation and contributing towards their home birth midwife as well, which is really, really inaccessible for our people, especially. And so we’re trying to fundraise $30,000 by the fall and then we’ll be opening applications for families to apply. And so we’re really, really excited. This is a labor of love for us. We have many initiatives down the pipeline and please join us in helping with this passion project of ours.

Rebecca Dekker:

It looks like we can follow you on Instagram @AshéBirthingServices. And does The Bridge Directory also have an Instagram or social media?

Guramrit LeBron:

Yeah, so The Bridge Directory is on Instagram, @TheBridgeDirectory, and also the Bridge Community Foundation is also on Instagram.

Rebecca Dekker:

I would love to encourage our listeners to check out all of these resources. We’ll put them in the show notes and bridgecommunity.org/donate is where you can contribute to their fundraising efforts. And Emilie and Guramrit, thank you so much for taking the time to come talk with us and also for everything you’re doing for your community.

Emilie Rodriguez:

Thank you so much. We’re just trying to fill the holes that we see and be the answer to the problems that we experience. And we’re so thankful for the opportunity to come talk to you and your listeners.

Guramrit LeBron:

Yes, thank you so much. It was so great to connect and share how we can center our community and really make a difference.

Rebecca Dekker:

Thanks everyone for listening and again please go to the show notes and check out Emilie and Guramrit’s work and the work that their fellow doulas in New York City are doing and we will see you next week. Thanks everyone. Bye.

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