Well Worth Watering Podcast • Birth Classes • Postpartum Support

"In April of 2018, the Black Mamas Matter Alliance published a paper that addressed the casual dismissal that too many black women face during prenatal care. 'In order to provide holistic care, providers and medical staff must unlearn and self-correct implicit and unconscious bias. They must also continue to push back against a productivity model that does not give them enough time to build strong...

On this episode, I had a conversation with fertility doula, herbalist and health coach Sierra Bizzell about hormonal imbalances like PCOS. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder with symptoms ranging from infrequent or long periods, excess androgen levels and infrequent ovulation. We talked in detail about the role food plays in imbalances that manifest in issues like PCOS. One of...

What was your first birth story? This isn't necessarily a memory tied to your first birth. If you aren't a parent, you still have a birth story or birth stories even. Think back to your earliest memories in childhood. Can you remember what your first memory or idea about birth was? Maybe it’s not from childhood, but from your early teens? Maybe it’s not so much an event you can recall, but an idea...

Do you usually do an end of year reflection? If you didn't before, I know that the desire must surely be there this year. 2020 has us all looking back wondering what was the message & meaning of all this chaos. Join me on my last episode of this year as I look back on and celebrate all of the wins I accomplished—my own personal top 20— in the midst of all of the collective loss we felt this ye...

Meet Telika Howard, a Certified Birth and Postpartum doula through Doula Training International and a certified International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners (IBCLC) with 16 years of experience with birth and breastfeeding. Telika successfully breastfed 7 children, including a set of twins and had a variety of birthing experiences such as unmedicated, medicated and cesarean birth...

 Diagnostic tests are a part of many pregnancies today. They help us ensure the children we are growing are healthy and strong. But when your provider suggests that a test to rule out genetic conditions such as sickle cell disease, does the recommendation also come with a call to protect your mental health? In this episode, I share my experience with having an amniocentesis—a common diagnosti...

Seiea Britt is the mother of 2 beautiful girls, a singer/songwriter and Washington DC area native. She joins me on this episode to talk about her experience of not only birthing during the coronavirus pandemic—oddly enough, her second time becoming a mother during a global pandemic— but facing a diagnosis of cholestasis late in her 2nd pregnancy. She talked about the power of affirming positivity...

This episode contains descriptions of difficult and traumatic birthing experiences. Please use discernment and protect your peace, particularly if you are currently pregnant. Who is at the center of care if a pregnant mother is advocating for herself, by herself? It’s a question far too many of us have to answer. My 1st guest is Yanikie (pronounced YAHN-EEK) Tucker, a fellow Caribbean-American who...

It is important to put it in its proper context because it is an emotion that takes way too much control over people's lives and in the context of this podcast, people’s birth experiences. Fear is not a useless emotion. If we understand and get more comfortable with fear, we can then put it in its rightful place, because it is NOT the keynote speaker of our lives and certainly not our births. On t...

Welcome! My name is Lou-Ann and I’m the creator of Well Worth Watering, a blog and online community that uses education, empowerment and transformative storytelling in order to nourish the maternal health experiences of black birthing people. I opened this episode with a reading of my first blog. In so many ways, this new beginning—expanding my work into a podcast— stirs up many of the feelings an...