The Postpartum Years

When you lose a pregnancy, your body doesn't know that. It still goes through the hormonal shift, and depending on how far along you were, your milk may still come in. Dr. Julie Bindeman is a psychotherapist who specializes in reproductive mental health, and she joins Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp to talk about what pregnancy loss -- from failed embryo transfer to stillbirth -- actually does to a perso...

Julia was 20 years old when she had twins, alone in her recovery while her husband worked and her mother was still in another country. She figured out postpartum the hard way, by herself. It wasn't until her babies were nearly a year old that anyone named what she had been going through. In this episode, she walks through four pregnancies and two very different postpartum experiences, and make...

Postpartum rage isn't in the DSM, doesn't have a clean clinical definition, and almost nobody talks about it - which is exactly why Jennifer Steiger wanted to. In this episode, she joins Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp to define what postpartum rage looks like, why it happens, what contributes to it, and what actually helps. She also makes the case for why women specifically are least likely to name...

Jennifer Steiger is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in perinatal and postpartum mental health. In this episode, she and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp dig into the part of the fertility conversation that often gets skipped: what happens after the baby comes. The anxiety, the trauma that didn't disappear, the pressure to feel grateful at all times, and why telling someone who struggled to...

After a pregnancy loss and a new marriage, Bev's third pregnancy ended at 38 weeks in a Popeyes drive-through. Her third birth went fast and smoothly. Two days postpartum, she hemorrhaged. After six units of blood, a bag of platelets, emergency surgery for a cervical tear, and a Covid-era delay her OB refused to allow, Bev woke up in the ICU thinking about how women used to die from exactly th...

Bev's first birth ended in a postpartum hemorrhage she didn't know was happening, and her first postpartum period ended with a hospitalization and quarantine that forced her to stop breastfeeding after weeks of hard work. Her second birth was an accidental unmedicated delivery she wasn't planning, followed by a postpartum period complicated by a struggling marriage and a mental health...

Mary Lisan had two C-sections in the early 1980s under very different circumstances: One emergency, one urgent, and two postpartum experiences that looked almost nothing alike. She spent four years being dismissed about a symptom she knew wasn't normal, figured out her son's food sensitivities through process of elimination before organic food sections existed, and had to get a notarized p...

Breastfeeding pain is common. It is not normal, and you don't have to push through it. Dr. Kellie Soltis is a pelvic PT who found the Thompson method after a painful first breastfeeding experience with her own child, and has been helping other moms ever since. She and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp talk through the Thompson method, what pelvic PTs can actually do for breastfeeding support and mastitis p...

Amanda's first birth left her with a significant tear, an infection, mastitis, and two years of assuming urinary incontinence was just her new normal. Her second birth - after pelvic floor PT, birth prep work with Dr. Mary Ellen, a doula, and acupuncture - ended with three pushes, a baby born with the membranes still intact, and a postpartum recovery that was so much easier. Learn why she now...

Getting back to intimacy after having a baby is one of the most common things Liz Jones and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp see in their practices - and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Liz brings 20 years of treating both women and men to a candid conversation about postpartum libido, the fear and guarding that can build around returning to sex, what couples aren't saying to each other an...

Dr. Liz Jones, DPT is a pelvic floor physical therapist in Bismarck, North Dakota who accidentally became the region's go-to hemorrhoid specialist - and she is very okay with that. In this episode, she and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp get into everything people don't know about hemorrhoids: how common they are, the wide range of symptoms they cause that nobody connects back to them, the treatment Liz spec...

Dr. Shirin Towfigh is a hernia specialist and one of very few women in her field. She joins Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp to talk about what actually happens to the abdominal wall after pregnancy -- what gets missed, what gets misread on imaging, and what patients are told to just live with that they absolutely don't have to. From diastasis to hidden hernias to mesh, this is the conversation most postp...

Audra Zastrow is a pelvic floor PT who spent the better part of a decade navigating pregnancy loss, a major birth injury, prolapse, and four very different deliveries. All while working in the field she was simultaneously failing to benefit from herself. She joins Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp for a candid conversation about what it looks like to have the clinical knowledge and still not have the right inf...

Stacey Gayer is a holistic pelvic health physical therapist, and her own postpartum story is one she is only now putting fully into words. After an emergency C-section and a psychiatric crisis six months postpartum, Stacey spent years in recovery before eventually finding her footing and building a practice around the very work that helped heal her. She and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp dig into birth trau...

Pamela Newman is a therapist who spent her first postpartum experience deep in anxiety, envisioning worst-case scenarios, refusing help, convinced she had to manage everything alone. All without recognizing what was happening until it lifted over a year later. In this episode, she and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp walk through three very different pregnancies and postpartum periods, the breastfeeding journ...

After nearly 50 hours of failed induction and a C-section, Kate Harris came into the postpartum period with two dreams: holding her baby right away and breastfeeding. Neither went as planned. In this episode, Kate shares the honest, sometimes messy reality of those first weeks -- the feeding challenges, the delayed bonding, the grief of letting go of expectations -- and what support actually looke...

In Part 2, Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp picks up the postpartum story with her daughter Elena. She walks through a recovery that was far harder than anyone around her acknowledged -- physically, cognitively, and emotionally -- and the complications that kept compounding in the weeks and years that followed. She and Elena also discuss the nervous system disruption they both experienced after the abrupt eme...

Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp's youngest daughter Elena -- an occupational therapist -- turns the tables and interviews her own mother about the birth that almost went catastrophically wrong. Part 1 covers the full birth story. Part 2 takes on the postpartum recovery. Disclaimer : The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educationa...

At 29 weeks pregnant, Rachel Kaufman noticed her baby had stopped kicking. Trusting her gut, she called her doctor and headed to the hospital, where fetal monitoring revealed her son was in serious distress. With amniotic fluid nearly gone and the placenta failing to deliver nutrients, he was delivered via emergency C-section weighing just 2 pounds, 1 ounce. In this episode, Rachel joins Dr. Mary...

In this episode, Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp is joined by her niece Gabriela, who opens up about her unexpectedly intense postpartum journey. Gabriela shares what it was like to experience postpartum anxiety and OCD, conditions she didn't even know existed until her therapist named them, and how years of therapy and a strong support system helped her find her way through. She also speaks candidly abo...

Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp sits down with Swathi Raman, a pediatrician who learned firsthand just how broken postpartum care can be, even for those who work inside the medical system. Swathi shares the story of her difficult delivery, a soft tissue infection that went unaddressed until day five postpartum, and the ongoing pelvic floor dysfunction she is still working through ten months later. She reflec...

Lynn Schulte and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp are back for part two of their deep dive on diastasis recti, and this episode gets into territory that most postpartum exercise programs completely ignore. They talk about how the breasts, rib cage, and thoracic posture all affect the abdominal wall, why some women are walking around in what Lynn calls "the pregnancy posture" long after birth, and wh...

In this episode, Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp sits down with pelvic health physical therapist and educator Lynn Schulte to dig into one of the most misunderstood postpartum conditions: diastasis recti. They break down what actually happens to the abdominal wall during pregnancy, why the research has been measuring the wrong things, and what really matters for healing. Lynn explains the role of collagen ty...

In this episode of The Postpartum Years , Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp and internationally board certified lactation consultant Catherine Halek explore the many paths of weaning. From choosing not to breastfeed at all, to gradual toddler weaning, to urgent medical situations that require stopping quickly, they unpack what weaning can realistically look like. They discuss aggressive versus gradual weaning...

In the final part of the series, Mary Ellen and Vanessa examine the current research on diastasis recti and exercise. They break down studies evaluating abdominal training, pelvic floor strengthening, and postpartum programming — and what the data actually shows. Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educati...