A conversation with Layla O'Mara: Chinese medicine and the postpartum period

A new series of conversations about the postnatal period

I’m delighted to share a conversation I had with

Layla O'Mara

earlier this spring. As a postnatal doula, I wanted to meet a range of people to discuss the postpartum transition as a distinct phase in a woman’s life. How are we meeting this phase in our cultures, what our we missing and what would a more nurturing postnatal period look like?

“In Chinese medicine we would say that to give birth, you have to open your whole self. Going through a birth process is a process of opening on every level, of surrender in many ways, of giving in. Therefore the postpartum period is a period you’re going into fully open and that’s what the gateway is about - fully open to shifting and changing on every level, but also that needs to be guarded and guided and held and protected so that that open-ness can have time to reform and re-heal in the way that it needs to.”

- Layla O’Mara

I loved hearing Layla’s wisdom and more about her own experiences. I felt the echos of how Chinese medicine perceives the postnatal experience with what I’ve witnessed supporting many postnatal mothers at this time which can be both brutal and tender, exhausting and joy-filled, terrifying and magical.

This conversation covers:

• Layla’s acupuncture practice, how she came into that work and using the lens of both science and spirituality to understand it

• postpartum as a gateway in Chinese medicine, the wisdom of the body and trusting yourself vs outside authority

• Layla’s 3 postpartum experiences (including a cross-cultural comparison between Germany and Ireland)

• some beautifully simply postpartum practices that someone can do for you at home

• the role and experience of partners in postpartum

I’d love to hear your response in the comments. How was your experience of the postnatal period? Could it have been different with this frame of knowledge? Were subsequent postnatal phases different than your first?

And if you’d like to be interviewed for this series, or have an idea of someone who might, please get in touch!

Love,

Chloe x