Introduction to  home-based holistic midwife, Molly Dutton Kenny

Indigomoon
Today I’ve invited Molly Dutton Kenny. She’s a full spectrum midwife with a passion for supporting clients and community care providers to expand their thinking about care for pregnancy loss, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. One of the things I really appreciate about Molly is her focus on recentering home based and holistic care when it comes to all pregnancies, including those we let go or lose, which is what we’ll talk about today. Thank you for being here, Molly.

Molly
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Indigomoon
I would really love to focus on holistic and home based care today because we all know we can go to the doctor, or many of us can at least. And we’re blessed with that opportunity to get medication if we need it, get a DNC if we need it. But perhaps there’s also not so many that are familiar with other options when losing a pregnancy or wishing to let go of a pregnancy. And for the sake of reproductive sovereignty, I feel this is an important conversation to have.

How common and normal are pregnancy losses?

Indigomoon
So perhaps we should lay the groundwork just by speaking to how common and how normal pregnancy loss is, because that can get lost a little bit.

Molly
Yeah, it’s extremely common, and that may come as a surprise to people who don’t talk about it all day like I do. But pregnancy loss happens all the time. There’s various statistics and various measures throughout the world. In general, it’s accepted that about one in three or one in four women will have an abortion at some point in their lifetime, so choosing to let a pregnancy leave their body. A portion obviously of trans men and gender diverse people will also have abortions. It’s not just women. Additionally, when it comes to other kinds of losses, miscarriage is extremely common. So a body’s spontaneous loss of a pregnancy in the first and early second trimester happens quite often. About one in four pregnancies will miscarry.

And when they actually look more carefully at statistics of early, early pregnancy, especially in places like fertility clinics, those numbers raise quite a bit more. People are losing a lot of early pregnancies and may not even be aware of it unless they’re doing a lot of early monitoring. And then when it comes to more advanced pregnancy losses, so things like stillbirth or ectopic pregnancy or some of the more uncommon versions. I say uncommon, but in many of those cases, it’s about one in 100 or one in 200, which is not that uncommon, that means you probably know someone who has had these experiences.

So pregnancy loss touches everyone’s life at some point in some way, whether you’re totally aware of it or not. And for some unfortunate people like myself or like many others, it touches our lives a lot. A lot of pregnancy losses in their own life or in their loved ones around them as well.

Indigomoon
Yeah, I’ve had a few as well, and I come from a lineage of at least my mother has been through many pregnancy losses. So, yeah, like you say, we’re not alone in those statistics.

Why might it be a good thing to stay at home for my pregnancy loss?

Indigomoon
So many women walk those journeys and something that has really been an ally for me in going through pregnancy losses was staying home. Of course, we all have our personal preferences, our personal needs and also physiological needs depending on how a loss plays out. But I was able to stay home during my pregnancy losses. And the fact that I was able to be home is a lot of what I contribute to those losses not being traumatic at all. And also, in supporting me in being able to mine them for both beauty and wisdom, besides the grief that is also, of course, a part of walking a journey like that. Because there’s something different when you’re able to…. It’s a birth and when you’re able to stay home in that space, for me, it really supported me to stay with the emotions, stay with the grief and walk through my own process through that.

So can we talk a little bit about staying home and, why you might want to stay home? When you can stay home? Because I think a lot of people just have it as like it’s such a sort of reflex that we just go to the hospital right away if we start bleeding in a pregnancy. And that can be a choice, but there can also be a choice to do something else.

Molly
Certainly, yeah. I would say the majority of pregnancy losses can be managed nicely at home. A small portion of them will have true complications that will need skilled care. And if you had a skilled home provider, you might still be able to stay home or you might need attention and the doctor or the emergency room. I would agree that the majority of people who have bleeding in pregnancy, especially if they were planning on keeping the pregnancy, will panic and go to the emergency room. It’s a normal reflex and reaction that we have. Though anyone listening to this who’s ever been in an emergency room while bleeding in a pregnancy might also tell you that that wasn’t extremely helpful. In most cases, they’ll offer you an ultrasound and tell you to go home and wait for what’s going to happen. In some cases, they might offer you some management right away. But in general, I find you know with a few exceptions, that people will say that their experience at the emergency room was insensitive, that they were kind of shuffled along with a bunch of other people having totally unrelated emergencies and that they didn’t feel the doctors had any kind of emotional capacity for what was happening to them. With fairness to those doctors, they’ve got a million things on their plate and they didn’t sign up to care for your emotions. Fair enough, but it is a very emotional thing for people and it’s hard to be kind of dismissed in that moment when it feels very impactful.

So the alternative to that would be to not go to the doctor. And many people are able to safely stay home while losing pregnancies or letting them go. It’s not difficult. And in most cases what I’m describing, it would just be called expectant management. So that would be doing nothing in particular, just watching and waiting and letting the body release in the way that it’s going to, you know with a little bit of knowledge and parameters around what’s safe.

And then alternatively, you could also choose to manage the loss to either induce the loss or speed it up or manage the symptoms or something like that. In which case there’s lots of options for doing things like that. You could work with plants and plant medicine, you could work with medications, you could have a skilled community provider come to your home and help take care of you as a midwife. That is care that I have provided to lots of people. And lots of other midwives, doulas birth workers or just skilled parents know how to help people through times like this and could come and help you as well.

Indigomoon
Yeah, and it just immediately makes me think of how few people have resources like you or I in their community. Because it seems like it would be such a beautiful thing for people to have another option if they were to want to reach out to someone. Because there’s two things that you really kind of need to probably be able to stay home is of course, how the loss plays out, how it is happening in your body, that’s one thing. But there’s also the whole layer of being okay with the unknown. Staying home, you don’t get that immediate answer from the ultrasound if that’s what you’re looking for. You don’t get that immediate completion that you get from possibly doing a DNC right away or taking medication. So there’s a sitting in the loss, usually for a longer period of time, that asks something else of us.

Molly
Absolutely. Yeah. And some people have a lot of emotional capacity for that and some people can’t handle it in that moment. And that’s not meant as a judgmental thing. It’s fair if you’ve got a lot going on in your life and mystery around your loss is not something you can hold, then you do have medical options for managing.

But for some people, there is some real power in surrender and in letting it happen the way it’s going to in the body. And, you know, myself personally (and I’ve seen in others as well) sometimes that slowness and intentionality of the choices that we make when we stay home, where all the choices are our own and we are managing our own bodies, sometimes that process in itself can be healing as we go through it. Rather than abdicating my responsibility for this… Choosing to fully embody my loss as I would any other pregnancy and to let my body tell me what it needs was helpful I agree in a similar way, to integrating what was happening to me psychologically as well.

How safe is it for me to wait out a pregnancy loss?

Indigomoon
Yeah, thank you so much for speaking to that. It immediately takes me back to one of my pregnancy losses, which I carried for a much longer time than after it was actually sort of physically ending. So it was an early loss that I carried for a longer time in my pregnancy. And of course, the medical profession like to call it a missed miscarriage, but that doesn’t resonate with me personally. I don’t identify with those words at all because it wasn’t missed. It was a choice to stay in the unknown. I had a feeling that the spirit was leaving or possibly had left, but without ultrasound, I wasn’t quite sure. 100%. And there’s always room for hope in any wanted pregnancy, I think. And so there’s nothing missed about it. But allowing that pregnancy to play out in a way that… I would have probably gotten some medical advice to be careful being pregnant for that long. So maybe that’s something we can touch on. Sometimes a loss happens. You start bleeding, you might have already confirmed it. And whether or not you have confirmed it or not, there can be some insecurity around waiting. So can you speak to that?

Molly
Yeah, certainly. I actually think it’s how all pregnancies end. And we just don’t know this because we’re not like, peaking with ultrasound every single day on our pregnancies. But I actually think it would be extremely uncommon for a pregnancy to end – for growth and development to stop and then you start bleeding and miscarry that exact same day. That doesn’t really happen. The way that the body releases is that once a life has sort of slipped away and passed in our body, it will actually take our personal body, the pregnant body, quite some time for hormones to adjust, to understand. What happened to register what happened and then register that it’s time to induce this other process in the body of uterine contraction and cervical softening and opening and letting it out. It doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes time in our body.

Everybody’s body is a little bit different on how long that would take. And every pregnancy is a little bit different in, like, how high that hormonal cocktail was versus how much it needs to drop for your body to register, if that makes sense. So I feel like there’s not a one size fits all and like this is the safe amount of time to wait. But I would agree with you that this is actually how all pregnancy losses happen, that they end and then there’s a period of waiting in the body and then they come out. Now, I feel like most people don’t necessarily know this. Most of the way that people would know this would be because they go for a routine ultrasound at some point and they’re supposed to be ten weeks pregnant and the technologist says, I’m so sorry, it looks like your baby is only six weeks pregnant and doesn’t have a heartbeat. So that would imply that the life ended four weeks ago, but it’s just been hanging out in your body this whole time.

Now typically when people see that, the medical advice would be to get it out of you immediately right? And that leaving it in the body will cause problems, will cause infection, will cause all kinds of issues, which is not really the case. It’s not borne out in research, it’s not borne out in people’s experiences. In most people’s experiences, they can wait quite a long time without complication in the body. When you think about it, the embryo, the baby is living within a little sack of water and as long as it stays in that sack, amniotic fluid is a really kind of excellent preservative and it just kind of stays there perfectly until it comes out. It doesn’t really deteriorate a whole lot. It doesn’t sit there and rot and cause infection or anything like that. There needs to be pathogens in the body to introduce infection. Right?

So normally what I would explain to people is if you’re going to wait, you can wait. You might consider reducing the risk of infection in the body by keeping other things out of the vagina. And certainly if you feel like your water breaks now, that pathway is open. And so we would need to be more careful over time. But in general, just because some things in your body doesn’t mean it’s going to inherently cause problems. And as long as the body’s not exhibiting symptoms of infection or concern, I’m okay with people waiting. As a midwife, I’ve coached people through waiting for many weeks, in one case, many months, for something to come out of their body on its own. And I find that it always comes out on its own. There are extremely rare circumstances in the literature over hundreds of years that have talked of embryos just kind of getting reabsorbed back into the body. But that’s not common. What is more common is that if you wait long enough, your body will release. It just might take some time.

Indigomoon
Yeah, I remember reading one of those stories and I did not find it helpful.

Molly
No, it’s extremely rare, most bodies will just release.

Indigomoon
Yeah, it’s just so intense to think about. But our bodies are so wise. And I do think there’s something that we forget with pregnancy loss, and we’ve probably forgotten it to a large extent with sort of the whole continuum of pregnancy, birth and postpartum is that it’s normal. And our body does it pretty well most of the time.

Molly
Absolutely similar to birth, when undisturbed, most of the time it goes quite well. I would say the same for a pregnancy loss. When we leave it alone, most of the time the body will do its job very well.

What should I expect a pregnancy loss at home to feel like?

Indigomoon
Yeah. So in terms of expectations, if you’re moving to a pregnancy loss and you’re considering staying home, I feel there’s one thing that is nice to know as well is that a miscarriage or a pregnancy loss is a birth. It’s a different type of birth because it’s an early birth, but it’s not just having a period. I’ve spoken to so many women that were shocked at the physical process of going through their loss at home because they hadn’t really been told prior that this was actually a birth process and it would demand quite a lot of them. It wouldn’t just be putting a pad on or bleeding for a few days and then passing kind of in the back of their lives. It would really call them in and demand so much of them.

Molly
I agree. It is a very consuming process, I think, as it should be. And yeah, I would say that there’s lots of different experiences of the way people physiologically go through a loss.

But I would agree with you that in most cases it is much like a birth in which, you know, you start kind of I would say you start with having lower kind of period cramps and a little bit of spotting. Over time, that kind of increases and you start to feel regular cramping in the body just like you would feel contractions for a term labor. And then eventually the pain and slight bleeding will reach a peak. And then usually there’s a passing of the embryo or the fetus or however far along the pregnancy was. And that passing is usually somewhat obvious in the body. Even if it was early, it’ll be like a big blood clot or something along those lines. And then after that passing, there’s often like a very quick release in the body of a variety of things.

Maybe if you had any previous pregnancy symptoms, they’ll kind of immediately go away after you have that release. And I find that the bleeding and the pain tapers down quite immediately after that release as well. And then it kind of tapers off and you have kind of a medium period for a little while while your body sheds the rest of the tissue that was supporting that pregnancy in your body.

So, you know, it’s much like a birth that you kind of like start low and slow, get this peak expulsion and then kind of have this postpartum type bleeding. That’s for a sort of normally progressing loss. There are people who like in a birth, where things get a little bit stuck, and so the pain and the bleeding could last longer or be a little more complicated as things get kind of stuck in the body or are not shedding fully. But again, that’s less common, and there are things you can do about that. And, you know, most people will kind of go through this really similar to birth experience. I’ve had a few, well I’ve had five miscarriages myself, and one particularly comes to mind now as you’re talking about labor. This one was like exactly a miniature labor. It was really interesting, it was I think miscarriage number three or something and I was actually teaching a workshop about home based abortion when I had a miscarriage. I knew it was coming, I had actually had an ultrasound a week before because I’d had some spotting and I was nervous and I knew I was going to be traveling, and I just wanted to know. So I knew the miscarriage was coming, and I didn’t know if it was going to happen on my travels or not. But I was open to it. And I actually disclosed it in the class that. I was like, look, this is going on with my body right now, and I’m still going to try and teach you, but if I have to step out, the that’s what’s going on. And it was actually quite merciful in my body that it waited. It was a three day workshop and so then at the end of the second day, like, that evening, I started to feel a whole lot of cramping. And I was actually staying in a home with a couple of people who were taking the workshop. So it was kind of great because I was like, well would you like to apply the knowledge you learned today and help me?

Indigomoon
Oh, wow.

Molly
Which was great, and they were really wonderful, and I really felt this, like, strong, kind of overwhelming cramping feeling in my body. And then I vomited, which is a thing as a midwife I see so many women do when they’re in transition, right before they’re about to push out a baby. There’s this, like, hormonal reaction that happens in the body and they feel really nauseous and they vomit. It’s super common. So, like, when I see that in a labor, I’m like, oh, the baby will be here soon. So this happened to me, that I had a bunch of cramping, and then all of a sudden I vomited. And I was like, oh, okay, I know what that means. And then right after that happened… I was probably about ten weeks pregnant… right after that happened, my water broke. And it just, even as someone like myself who knew a lot about this, it really had not registered to me that that was going to happen. It really had not registered to me that there was really any significant amount of, like, a water stack or significant amount of water in there, but there is even at ten weeks. And my water broke. And I know because I felt like all there’s, like, big gush and, like, blooming of fluid in my underwear, in my pants. And I took them off, assuming it was blood, but it wasn’t. It was, like, all clear and sticky, and I was like, oh. There was this moment where I was like, oh, my water broke. And I had asked the lovely people in the home with me for a large bowl because I thought I was going to vomit in the bowl. I vomited in the toilet instead. Then I had this big bowl. So I just put it between my legs and caught all this, like, amniotic fluid and water, which was really interesting, that part had not really crossed my mind that it was going to happen. And then I passed a small embryo and caught it in a bowl. It’s like, perfect little thing. And then, you know, and then I had kind of a lull in my body for about ten minutes, and then I had a couple of really strong cramps, and then I passed this, like, tiny palm sized placenta, and then I had a bunch of bleeding, and then it was done.

And it was kind of interesting. I was like, wow, this was it. This was the home birth I wanted. It just happened at three months instead of nine months, you know. It was an interesting thing where I was like, oh, this was a labor and birth. And it only took 2 hours because it was small. And it was supported, and my body went through it in this really step by step process, which was really fascinating to see, having attended so many births before that moment, really kind of being able to identify each of those stages of, like, okay, now I’ve been transitioned. Now my water broke. Now these things are happening. And just reminding myself that this was my birth, this was my home birth. Like, I didn’t get a nice crying baby out of it, but I still had that experience. And could take comfort in knowing what to do then, you know, like, this wasn’t just a total mystery. I was like, well, I know how to take care of someone after a birth, right, so I know how to take care of myself too. And that was helpful to see those kinds of progresses through that experience.

And I’ve had other miscarriages since then that didn’t exactly follow the formula. I’ve had others that were kind of precipitous, where they happened really quickly, or others that had a lot more bleeding than that one. I’ve had kind of a spectrum, but that one often comes to mind when people compare this to labor, where I’m like, yeah, I totally had that experience where it was exactly like a labor.

The loss is real and there is a spirit we can connect to.

Indigomoon
You know, it’s really beautiful to take in your story and just that we can really get to honor that that is birth. There was a baby and it’s so real, physically real, soulfully real, emotionally real. And I just sit with so many women that feel like their early losses weren’t really real because they were so early, “So why do I feel like this?” And whether that’s right after the loss or even years later where they’re still feeling haunted by that loss to some capacity. And for me, when I get to hear your birth story with that loss, it really just makes me feel in honoring of that process that you went through and the realness of that on so many levels.

Molly
Thank you. Yeah, I think about it all the time. I think most people who have losses do. And I think it’s really normal that those things stay with you for your life. These are really pivotal rites of passage moments in our life, whether a baby comes out of them or not. And it’s really, I think, appropriate that that stay with us forever. That we think about it a lot. And for many of us it might be upsetting for a long time. I think regardless of how long that baby lived with you, you still as a parent for however long you knew you were pregnant likely wove a whole life ahead of you. You spent time thinking about exactly how your life was going to change, about this other human that was going to be in the world, about how you were going to support them as a parent. You likely built a whole life in a small period of time and then that life didn’t come. That doesn’t make it any less significant of a life or any less long of a life to grieve. Similar how you might grieve someone’s life who lived 80 years, you also created 80 years in your head whether they lived them or not, if that makes sense. So to me I feel like it’s totally normal that we grieve with that as if it was a very large and real loss in our life. It was a large and real loss in our life.

Indigomoon
Yes, absolutely. And for me, something that I feel my loss has really taught me, and I know it’s not like this for everyone, but for me, I really learned from my losses how much of pregnancy is spirit. In the sense of, with the pregnancy that I carried longer where it had already passed in the womb, with my spirit daughter… Even though she had already passed physically, the day that I started bleeding, I bled overnight and the next morning I was awaiting what was going to happen, full of emotion. Already full of grief and fear. And all of a sudden I felt her spirit leave. And for me it was that moment where I was like, no, it’s definitely a goodbye. Because even though I knew there was hope to the very end because there is often when we want our babies to stay. But that moment of feeling her spirit leave even though physically her pregnancy had completed but was staying in my womb… that has really, really stayed with me. That her spirit was still such a big journey for me.

And later on in my full term pregnancy with my son and him arriving, I’ve just really noticed how much the same it is. Like you feel the spirit and that’s the spirit that comes out in human form as well if they stay. For me, that has just really is something that I lean into and has taught me about why on so many levels as well, the early losses can teach us so much because there is the whole physical journey and there’s also a spirit and a very, very real spirit. And, yeah, for me, that has just been really heartwarming and really beautiful to witness. And also part of the reason why I was so happy that I ended up continuing that pregnancy in its own timeline, in a way that I probably would have struggled to do had I had medical management. Because it can be a little bit easier to kind of follow your intuition when there aren’t people questioning it, because it’s by no means always an easy thing to do. And yeah I got to go through that process and weave out the last lessons of that journey with that spirit. Yeah, that was really profound for me.

Molly
Sounds like it. I’m so sorry for your loss and I’m really glad that you got to have this experience with your daughter and have this meaning come out of that experience for sure. I had something somewhat similar in a different timeline though. I have always personally found it difficult to connect with spirit in early pregnancy. I have this spiritual belief that it’s there, but I have not always been able to tune into it. And I also feel like as someone who’s had a lot of losses myself, even though I know better, I still hesitate to connect in the beginning because I’m so sure it’s going to go, you know, like, I’ve never carried a pregnancy term, and so in my body I just don’t have a lived experience of going beyond a certain point. And it’s difficult to get emotionally invested because I know it’s going to be emotionally devastating when they leave.

That said, I would also, you know, if I were coaching myself right now, I would say whether or not you get emotionally invested in the beginning doesn’t really make the grief any less, so you might as well get emotionally invested. The grief is there and it doesn’t really matter how much you allowed in before.

But all that to say I’ve not really had the experience of connecting a whole lot during pregnancy. But after one of my miscarriages, I remember an experience along those lines. I was really struggling after one of the miscarriages, one of my earlier ones. I think it was just my first or second miscarriage, and I was really not well, even about maybe seven months later. Physiologically, I was still having some kind of weird bleeding every now and then, and I was seeing an abdominal massage therapist to help with that, and it was really helping. But there was this emotional piece to it for me where I hadn’t really processed or talked about it a whole lot with a lot of people. And my partner at the time and I weren’t together anymore, and that was a piece for me that was difficult.

And I reached out to a friend, a doula, and just tried to talk to her about what was going on with me and why was I still so upset. And I remember her saying, well, have you tried to talk to the spirit of the little one? And I was like, well, I can’t. It’s gone. And she was like, are you sure? So then we had this lovely talk about how to connect with spirit and that spirits don’t always talk to us in words. And there might still be an opportunity for communication. And I remember I was really taken by our conversation and thinking about it a lot.

And that night I drew myself a really, really, really hot bath, which I like to do when I’m thinking hard on things because it puts me in this physiological place where I sweat really hard and I work really hard physiologically, and that makes my brain work better, I find. So I was taking this really hot bath and really just trying to surrender. And I had this vision of me and this baby spirit, and we were spinning with each other in the stars. And the message that I had, not really in words, more like in feeling, was that the baby had left me on purpose. It had chosen to in order to show me mercy. That it loved me so much that it couldn’t have let me continue the pregnancy. And that, it’s true when I look back on it. Like, that pregnancy with that partner at that time in my life would have been really challenging, would have been really disruptive and intellectually wasn’t a good idea. But I was still very attached to the baby and very sad when it left. And it was this really meaningful thing for me to get this message from the baby that was, I did love you, and that’s why I left. I didn’t want to see you do that, what you were going to do in order to have me, like the sacrifices you have had to make in order to have me. I loved you too much to let you do that.

That was the message I got and that was so meaningful to me to not think because I had thought that the baby left me because it didn’t want to be with me, because there was something wrong with me, you know? And it was really meaningful to hear like, no, you were good, you were perfect, but I just didn’t want to put you through that, you know? And I felt like that was really nice and that kind of communication with spirit. Baby spirits aren’t non communicative or dumb because they’re young. It was communicating with me on an adult level, you know, which was lovely and meaningful. And so that’s yeah, a similar story that happened to you.

Indigomoon
Yeah, that’s so beautiful. That’s so beautiful. And I personally believe, which I think your story speaks to, that it’s possible for all of us to connect with our spirit babies and the spirits that visit us in our womb. And I think so much of it is really just that it’s a different realm than having this conversation we’re having right now. And it’s a little bit of a skill, you could say, but not a mental skill. And so many women, I find, start having experiences like yours. That when they marinated in the possibility that their spirit baby could be talking to them or there could be a message for them, then it also starts happening. And I also think there’s some babies that are a little more silent than others. Because really, the spirit of my son was very different from that spirit of Aviaya. She was really loud. She never came into form, but she came in so many other ways. And just like people are different, spirits are different. So sometimes there can be a really quiet spirit that doesn’t come with a whole lot, but it’s just still there. And then the knowing that they’re there and offering something to us can just be an opening to lean into that, whether or not that feels like a specific message or lesson. It doesn’t have to look any certain way.

What herbal support is there for my pregnancy loss at home?

Indigomoon
So let’s dive into the resources for managing a pregnancy loss at home. Because of course, like the ones we spoke into already, sometimes it just happens on its own and really the only skills and needs you have are more emotional and space holding and emotional processing. But sometimes there can be a need for doing something. Sometimes that waiting period of a pregnancy loss that isn’t happening, sometimes people want to do something but they don’t want to go to the hospital. They might want to use herbs. And then sometimes there can be other reasons why you would want to speed it up. If it’s an unwanted pregnancy as well, you have a shorter time frame. So maybe let’s dive into a little bit because it’s hard to cover much in a podcast but a little taste of what women can learn more about if they’re interested in reproductive sovereignty in this way. Having tools at home to support themselves, for example, with herbs during a pregnancy loss or a release.

Molly
Yeah, I’m glad you’re asking about it. I think it’s become sort of like an interesting taboo topic. People seem to think that either plants will not be effective to help with pregnancy release or that they will be poisonous or dangerous in that realm, which is not my experience at all. And I’m not a herbalist, I’ll preface this by saying that, but that I do have a lot of trusted friends who are skilled in this, who I’ve spent a lot of time in counsel with. And I also have done a lot in my own body and worked with a lot of herbs with a lot of people. So I feel like I have a lot to say on this topic and I’m grateful for you asking.

I think that plant medicine and herbs are a really excellent way at helping encourage the body to do lots of things, including releasing a pregnancy. I think plants can be really supportive in the process, whether they’re your method or not. I think plants can be really good at nurturing a body, at healing a body, at supporting certain actions. And there are plants that are really good at managing what’s going on in a body. So it’s not uncommon that people might feel they need to speed up what’s happening or induce the contractions themselves or something like that. There’s nothing wrong with doing that. We all have our reasons and it would be good to get some skilled help, for sure.

So I’ll preface all that by saying if you have anyone around you who you can communicate with, or even at a distance communicate with for some skilled help, that would be great. Otherwise, there are some basic things. I find with plants there’s some pretty specific actions we’re looking for in the body and we can choose the plants we want to work with based on those. So, for example, when you’re looking to release a pregnancy from the body, one of the basic things that needs to happen is you need to soften your cervix, right? No amount of contractions is going to push something through a body if a cervix is closed. We know that for people having term babies, and it’s the same for people having earlier losses or abortions. Your cervix needs to be soft and open in order to let something through. So there’s lots of plants that are pretty good at that. My favorite is parsley. So I often see parsley promoted as an abortion herb or like an herb that will do this, which always is sort of…. Like a chuckle whenever I see that, I’m like, what’s it going to do to induce an abortion? It just softens your cervix. And so if you are ready to release anyway, that might be all you need and so that would be fine, but it doesn’t actually trigger any kind of strong hormonal thing in the body or anything like that. It mostly just works as this softening agent, which is helpful and important.

So when I use parsley in my body, I actually just buy like fresh organic parsley. It doesn’t matter what version of parsley it is, there’s like flat leaf, curly leaf, lots of different kinds, it’s fine. Any of them will work well. I take a small bundle of them and cut the stems a little bit shorter and then I actually just put it in my vagina and rest the leaves up against my cervix. And then I change that bundle every eight to 12 hours, so like once or twice a day. And I find it’s really good at softening up a cervix. It’ll really kind of sit up against the cervix and soften things. It’s not going to harm you or harm your body or change the PH too significantly in your vagina as an alternative, if that totally weirds someone out you could like make a tea out of parsley. It’s not quite as effective that way, I find the topical way more effective. But it’s your choice.

And there are others as well. That’s just one that I feel very familiar with and I like it. And I like it as a piece of advice for people because it’s pretty accessible. Most people in the world have access to parsley. It’s one of those plants that grow really easily and if you have access to a grocery store, you can probably get it. Now, I say that knowing there are people in lots of remote areas where that may not be true, but I would say by and large, it’s a more accessible thing for people.

Indigomoon
Beautiful. I really love that, which is something I learned from you and your midwife recourse for loss, around organizing the herbs for loss. Those categories you spoke to, the first one being cervical softeners. And for me, that really helped me organize my knowledge because when learning about using herbs in this way, for me, I find it’s a different mental way of applying the knowledge than, say, for other needs in the body. I don’t know if it’s because of what we associate with using herbs for loss or release of pregnancies, but it’s so helpful the way you teach it, I find, with breaking down those categories. So you spoke to the first one being cervical softeners, and the next one that you speak to is progesterone blockers. Will you share more about that?

Molly
Yeah. So once your cervix is nice and soft, you’ll need a couple other things to happen. One of them is altering the hormones in the body in order to either ensure or make happen for the first time that growth and development has stopped in the pregnancy. And probably the most efficient way of doing that in the body is to alter the pathway of progesterone. So progesterone is a particular hormone that promotes growth and health in pregnancies and without adequate progesterone in the body, you won’t be able to continue a pregnancy. So we can block it with plants pretty well in the body. And I find that that is pretty excellent at ending a pregnancy. If it was sort of like sorta hanging on. Or if it was hanging on quite well but your plan is to end the pregnancy, blocking progesterone can be a helpful step. So I think this step is important whether it’s an abortion or a miscarriage. Just because the heartbeat has stopped, like, your body is still siphoning progesterone there, that’s why it’s still in you. If you’re trying to get it out of you, you need these hormones to drop in a certain way. So I actually don’t make any kind of physiologic distinction between an abortion or a miscarriage .If you instigating it yourself versus it already starting on its own actually, physiologically, the management is exactly the same. So I think blocking progesterone can be a helpful step.

My favorite plant for doing that is cotton root bark, and I like to use it in a tincture form. Cotton doesn’t grow everywhere in the world, so that may not be accessible to everyone, but that is my favorite and most reliable. Some others that are maybe more accessible in other parts of the world might include black cohosh or vitamin C tablets. Specifically, what it is is ascorbic acid, not vitamin C itself, but ascorbic acid is usually the active ingredient in vitamin C supplements that people take. So very large doses of that can be pretty good at blocking progesterone in the body. Yeah, a couple others, but those are the ones that are a little more easy to find, usually. And there’s different protocols for taking those. But yeah, I think taking a look at what is accessible in someone’s community and these different actions can be really helpful. So kind of blocking that progesterone and softening the cervix are some really good first steps, right? We need to make sure that the body is getting the message that this pregnancy is not going to continue and that the body is preparing by opening and releasing.

And then the last action that we’re working with is inducing contractions in the body. We need to make cramps, we need to get the uterus to squeeze itself over and over and over in order to push out anything that is still inside. That may prompt something like a water breaking. And it will eventually prompt the expulsion of the embryo or the fetus or the baby or however you want to call it at that point. And then we’ll usually promote some bleeding afterwards as it sheds anything left inside the uterus.

So those contractions can be induced by plants as well. I actually find this is like the weakest point with plants. I find plants are very good at softening cervixes and very good at altering hormones. I have no qualms or questions about their ability to do that. However, I do find the stumbling block I come across is whether or not the plants are “strong enough” to induce contractions in the body. They absolutely can. Whether or not those contractions will be sufficient to expel everything in the body is another question.

And I find that this is the part where it’s not always totally effective, but you could still try. And there are lots of plants that are good at that. Again, the cotton root is really good here, but also blue cohosh. Some of the more common herbs you might have heard of, that do this action would be things like pennyroyal, rue, tansy. There’s many that grow all over the world. And again, I prefer to use tinctures at this point, sort of a specific preparation of medicine with herbs.

So, yeah, I think some combination of those actions. So getting the cervix to soften, getting the body to realize that we’re not developing anymore, and then getting those contractions to happen in the body, when we get all of those pieces of a puzzle together, that’s really what we need to manage a loss. And so that’s where I feel like there’s can sometimes be confusion where people will say, like, oh, well, I tried herbs and it didn’t work. And then I’m like, what did you try? And they’re like, I tried parsley. I’m like, right, so that’s a good puzzle piece, but it’s not the whole puzzle, we need another thing to get it to work.

And I feel like that’s where herbs kind of get this reputation of being ineffective, often comes out of a space of, by no one’s fault, out of a space of ignorance of what you are actually trying to do with the plants and whether or not you were actually using the right plants to do those things. So that’s what I mean when I say that in my experience, plants are very effective, but that’s because I’m using a particular approach that’s really taking all of this into account. And all that to say people combine it with other things. You can use the plants and then wait it out. You can use the plants and then use medications. You can use the plants to prepare for a surgical procedure. The plants have a space no matter what you’re going to do next and I find the plants are very helpful in whatever capacity you ask them to be helpful.

Indigomoon
Yeah, what I’ve come across is that the biggest challenge can be access to herbs. I mean, it depends on the country that you’re in. Where I’m at right now in Denmark, there is quite a bit of restriction on herbs and natural medicine. And so it can be hard to get access to some herbs in the quality, organic, that I would prefer or the form if I don’t have time to make a tincture, because that takes a little more time, right. And so depends a little bit where you’re at, but that’s what I love about having the categories, is that when you know these three layers, the cervical softening, the progesterone blockers and contraction inducers, there’s a little bit more of an array of herbs that you can try and seek out. It definitely can be tricky having access to some of these herbs last minute.

Molly
Absolutely agreed. And I feel like that can also be why, when possible, it would be really amazing to connect with other people in your community who might already hold some herbs. So herbalists, midwives, dolas, parents, you’d be surprised how many moms stock things in their kitchen. I feel like, yes, obviously, miscarriage is not something we all anticipate and prepare for. Right. We all hope that our pregnancies, when we want them, continue as we want them to. So finding other people who are always prepared for that potentiality, they may already hold things. Or if, you know, you’re someone who is more prone to loss, it might be wise to keep some things in the home in case you were to need them. And I acknowledge, yes, that sourcing good quality medicine in what often feels like kind of an emergency situation can be really challenging. And that’s agreed why I like to work with this kind of broader category approach and perspective, because I can put a lot of things into those different categories. And then when I talk to people, I do a lot of long distance care and when I talk to people, I’ll just be like, all right, here’s the list. Go to the grocery store, tell me what you can get. And we’ll work with what we have, we’ll do our best. And I think that’s better than telling someone like, this is the formula that works. I’m like, well, that’s not very helpful if you’re not able to access it.

Indigomoon
Exactly. Yeah, especially when it’s like these losses, they come in and take us whenever they want, not when we want. So it’s definitely helpful to have some of these herbs on hand, but still, yeah. It can be tricky, but using these categories can help widen the herbs that you might need so you’re not thinking that it’s only this herb and if you don’t have it, you can’t do it. There’s really quite an array of herbs to call on. And often also, I mean depending on the season and the way that you want to take it, there’s also herbs growing in many, many places that can be used for this. So it’s all about learning more about what’s available to us and seeking out the wise women, because there are those of us in these places that have this type of knowledge and keep it on hand, knowing that this is part of life and it happens.

Molly
Absolutely.

What are some warning symptoms that I would need to take seriously?

Indigomoon
There’s one thing that in using herbs, and whether or not it worked, I feel like it comes back to that space again. Like, how long is okay to wait? And something that I find is helpful to keep in mind, even though most of the time is okay, is just knowing what signs of infection could feel like. So would you speak to that? Because I find that that’s just really good knowledge for all of us to have, and it can take the weight off our shoulders and be like, okay, this is what I can watch out for and until then, I’m probably okay.

Molly
I agree. I think this doesn’t have to be some big mystery that we pawn off to the doctors in our lives. We can know when it is safe and when it’s not. So I would say the vast majority of times people are totally fine. But there are some symptoms that I would recommend you see someone for help with.

And so an infection in the body can look a couple of ways. Oftentimes a symptom of infection that we’re used to seeing is a fever. So the body, you know, being at an unusually high temperature. Typically for me, that threshold is being over 38 or 38.5 degrees celsius or over 102 fahrenheit, especially if that fever is not responding to your efforts to bring it down. Either of those efforts are herbal or medication or something, if you’re trying to bring that fever down and it’s not responding, that’s not really a good sign. But even if it is responding, spiking a fever is not totally normal in most of our lives.

Additionally, sometimes we’ll have some kind of different discharge from the vagina. So sometimes that will smell bad, like not smell like period blood. Not just smell like, you know, the kind of regular discharges we all get, but smell foul. Smell really rotten, coming from the body. And sometimes it will be a strange color, like green or yellow or something like that, that wouldn’t necessarily be as normal for us. So we know what our bodies normally look like and normally smell like. If you’re seeing something that is quite different and you’re spiking a fever… And often it will come along with specific, like shooting pain in the uterus. So not just like a dull ache or a feeling of emptiness, which is quite common both before, during, and after these losses, but rather like a deep, sharp, like, seriously painful thing going on in our body. So that combination of pain and discharge and fever is really not normal. And if that is happening, I think it would be wise to get help. Now that help doesn’t necessarily have to be an emergency room. Maybe you have your own connections of doctors or midwives or other people in your community, but if you don’t, then an emergency room is a good next step.

And then sort of through and after a loss, there’s some other things that can come up. I agree. Infection is a big, scary one, but some other things that may come up. too would be an inordinate amount of pain. It’s going to be painful to lose a pregnancy – emotionally and physically. Physically, as we said, it’s much more akin to a labor than it is to a menstruation. So if you’re thinking about what’s the volume of pain, it’s more like labor pain than it is menstruation. So it’s going to be painful, but it should not be excruciating for a long time. If it is, then it’s possible something is stuck or needs help or that there’s something else wrong. Or it could be that things are progressing normally, but your body is feeling it in this intense way, and you may need help coping with that pain. Maybe you have options for coping, or maybe you need help accessing medication or something like that.

And then the other thing that would need attention eventually would be too much bleeding. So, you know, again, I feel like the threshold of bleeding that we’re used to seeing at home is pretty low. So when we see any significant amount of bleeding, we all panic. The number of times I’ve known loved ones to go to the emergency room during a pregnancy loss, and then later they described to me like, oh, there was so much blood. And they’ll describe it, and I’m like, that sounds fine. We have a different threshold for what would be okay and what wouldn’t. And so basically what I tell people about bleeding is that it’s actually really not about the amount that you’re bleeding. The amount doesn’t really matter. It matters how you’re coping with it. Some bodies that are really healthy and have lots of blood volume going into this can lose a surprising amount of blood and be totally fine. And other people going into this from kind of like a physiologic weaker state, or who were anemic or had other issues with their blood or something like that, can lose very what looks like very little blood and really not be okay. Right?

So it doesn’t really matter, the volume you’re seeing around you, even if it looks like a lot. What matters is how your body is handling it. So if your body is fine, if you’re able to hold a coherent conversation with people… You know, obviously you’re going to be in a space of grief and in a space of challenge, but if you’re able to hold a coherent conversation, if your skin feels warm, if you’re able to walk, if you’re able to do relatively normal things around you, even if it looks like a heck of a lot of blood, it still really may be okay. Whereas someone who’s not coping well with blood would be someone who is…. Certainly losing consciousness in that you’re not awake anymore is a definite sign of losing too much blood. But before you get to that point, it will often be of a like, you’re not able to finish a sentence or hold a thought in your head or hold a conversation with someone. Or your pulse starts racing, racing, racing in the body. Your blood pressure drops. Oftentimes your skin will feel cold and clammy, and you’ll feel like you can’t stand up or can’t move. Those kinds of symptoms in the body, regardless of how much blood you’re seeing around, you are not good and not healthy, and you’ll need some help at that point, too.

Why am I bleeding so much in this pregnancy loss?

Indigomoon
Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that in, because that is, I feel, one of the more common ones, a fear of seeing the amount of blood that can come out during a pregnancy loss and then running to the emergency room. And sometimes feeling afterwards that that was not so helpful in the end for their process because there wasn’t anything wrong, it was just their body releasing it. So it’s so helpful, that knowledge of knowing what to look out for. And I know for me, in my later loss I had a pretty heavy amount of blood coming out, which is pretty normal when you have a later release of a pregnancy. And when that birth energy came and took over (labor land!) then what I said to my partner, (if you have someone around you, this can be helpful) what I said to him was, I feel myself disappearing, and I’m not sure if it’s the amount of blood or if it’s just birth happening, and I need you to look out for me. Yeah, of course. I’m in a situation where I have these type of conversations with my partner. So we’re not always in a situation where we might have a friend or partner around that can hold that space. But if you have that, sometimes just having someone else looking out for you through a loss can be really helpful. Someone that knows these things, right?

Molly
Certainly, I agree. I remember I had an abortion at home as well, and I remember feeling that way too. I bled a lot during that, and it was an early pregnancy. And I remember thinking, where is all this blood coming from? This is a lot of blood. When I look back on it now, I’m like, oh, yeah, that would be quantified as a hemorrhage. Like, that was a lot of blood, but I was fine. And I knew that. But similarly, I remember my partner at the time was with me, and I remember saying to him, I’m okay right now, but give me a half an hour, and if this bleeding doesn’t slow down, I need to, call an ambulance. Because I was like, at that point, I’m not going to be able to make that call anymore. I need someone more objective to make that call. And then it slowed, shortly after that I was able to pass this big clot, and then my bleeding slowed down way after that, so it was okay. But yeah, I remember, like if you have that moment where you’re able to say like, I’m okay right now, but I might not be in a little bit, it can very helpful to put that on to someone else.

Indigomoon
Yeah. And while the bleeding is okay, it’s actually helping your body release what needs to come out, that bleeding usually gets worse when your body is trying to release something. So as long as you’re okay, it’s actually a good thing.

Molly
Yes, you actually need that. I will often encourage people when they’re going through a loss, much like a birth that lying on your back or curling up in a ball on the bed might feel good emotionally or because you’re in a lot of pain, but it’s going to make this a lot longer and a lot slower. If you can get up, move around, sit on the toilet, squat, make efforts to getting things out of your body… It will be more bloody, it will be more painful, but it will also be shorter. And this is what you need to promote in the body and shying away from it isn’t going to make it stop happening. It’s already happening so let’s encourage it to happen. And again, not shying away from the blood. Right? Like the blood needs to be there, the blood is a part of this. And finding ways to encourage that. How do we get more bleeding right now so that it can stop, you know?

Indigomoon
Do you find sometimes that curling up and kind of moving away from what’s happening in the body sometimes is the cause of prolonged bleeding? Because that’s a complication that can happen as well. Whether it’s a complication, but very prolonged bleeding after loss that’s not fully completing, and then sometimes the volume of that blood going up and down and then very much up at the end. What’s your take on that?

Molly
Yeah, I definitely think that how we move our body could be contributing to not only the loss itself, but the bleeding that comes after. I think it’s very normal when we’re in pain. And a lot of us with menstrual pain might be used to just like curling up on the couch and just trying to sleep through it or whatever. But this is kind of a different kind of bleeding in the body. This isn’t the bleeding that our body does all the time. This is a special time of bleeding. And I find that we need to encourage it to happen.

And I would encourage people to get up and go to the bathroom all the time, like every couple of hours. Because that process of sitting on the toilet and letting kind of your pelvic bowl release will also encourage your cervix to release. It will also encourage clots to get out. Keeping your bladder empty will allow lots of space for your uterus to do its job. So I think being proactive about this can help encourage the process to go faster, which can be helpful in the body, certainly. I don’t think anybody relishes prolonged bleeding after losses. And one of the best ways that we can do that is to not spend all our time curled up, but to rather try to be active, try to go on a gentle walk, try to sit on the toilet, try to get the blood out and the tissue out, right?

Because what’s happening is your body is passing these clots of tissue that were previously supporting the pregnancy and are now no longer needed in your uterus. And until all of those are out, you’re going to keep bleeding. You know, your body is bleeding in order to shed those things. So if you’re not allowing it to shed those things, then it will just keep leading. Right? Our cervix is smart. It won’t close until everything is out. So, yeah, I feel like if that’s your desire, if your desire is to promote a resolution to this, then you may need to be an active participant in that. Your uterus might not just do that without any attention from you.

Indigomoon
Will you bring in more herbs at the end if the contractions have slowed down again and that bleeding continues?

Molly
Certainly. You can make more contractions in the body with plants. I find they are more effective at this. In terms of inducing contractions., I find they’re better at managing that later bleeding than they are at inducing the loss itself. I think because there’s less in the uterus at that point, they can affect it in a different way. But yes, I think plants could be really great there. I’ve also used plants to slow down bleeding. I’ll say all of this to say there is also, like, a pathological version of this when it’s not right and not well and someone needs help right now. And there have been people who have called me and they’re like, ‘I’m four weeks post miscarriage, and I’m just hemorrhaging. Like I’m sitting on my bed and there’s like a puddle forming under me’ and I’m like, that’s not okay. And so then we’ll work with plants to slow down bleeding. There are plants that will stop and slow down bleeding.

Indigomoon
And what about any retained tissue, if the bleeding is coming from that?

Molly
Yeah, then I think it would be really important to get the tissue out. And I think if the bleeding is moderate, then encouraging that would be encouraging contractions in the body, right? But if the bleeding is concerning, if the bleeding is too too much, I would rather us stop that bleeding, even if it’s keeping retain tissues in right now, just to give us a minute to figure out our next plan. We can’t really figure out a plan when someone’s hemorrhaging, you know what I mean? So I’m like, okay, we’ll stop the bleeding. We’re trusting you to be okay right now, you know, so. Yeah, I think there’s a place for different plants and different approaches. And not to say that all bleeding is fine. There is some bleeding that is way too much. And getting help when that’s happening would be good for sure.

Indigomoon
Absolutely, yeah. So, I mean, it’s such a big topic there’s honestly so many layers more we could touch on this. More herbs and also different modes of holistic care for pregnancy, loss and release, because herbs are not the only thing, but I’m really glad we got to dive into that today.

Do I need postpartum care after a pregnancy loss or abortion?

Indigomoon
There’s just one thing I want to touch on because I feel like the subject deserves that honoring, which is postpartum after loss. Because it just deserves mentioning that after you’ve had a loss, after you’ve had a pregnancy release, an abortion, you are postpartum. And the span time that you might need care in that postpartum varies depending on how it feels for you, how it happened in your body. But I just really want to round it all up with that there is also an after that really deserves mentioning, that deserves care.

Molly
Yeah. I’m so glad you’re talking about it. I feel like this, in my opinion, is like the biggest missing piece in people’s experiences of pregnancy loss, of abortion, I mean frankly of birth. But certainly I feel like most people seem to treat it as like, ‘And then the loss happened and that’s that and we all move on in our lives’. Which is not wise or helpful. And certainly in medical care what I find is that when people have had a miscarriage or abortion, they often have no follow up care at all. Or they will have an appointment two weeks later to get an ultrasound to see if there’s anything left. And I’m like, that doesn’t count as follow up care, that’s not what someone needs. They need more than that.

And so certainly when I’m supporting people through that, my default is to offer a standard postpartum amount of care similar to how I would after a birth of a life term baby. So to me, what that would normally look like is seeing someone within 24 hours, seeing someone a couple of times in the first week, once or twice in the second week, and then a few more times over the next month or two. So that’s a lot of seeing someone.

And I think that most people who have had a loss could benefit from some version of that as well. Not only to help them manage sort of the aftermath of the loss, the physiology of, ‘Is your body still bleeding? Are you doing okay? How are your emotions?’. That’s all really important. And I find that people don’t always have the mental space and wherewithal to engage in a reflection or story sharing or conversation about their loss until they’ve stopped bleeding, until there’s some kind of resolution in their body. It really goes on for quite a long time, much like the birth. Having a birth of a baby is a really important day, but it’s one day and then postpartum is forever, you know what I mean? But people spent so much time preparing for this one day and then are totally unprepared for everything that comes after. And I find the same with loss. People put all this emphasis on the day of the release, but then are not acknowledging that it’s not just immediately better after that. You’re still bleeding and thinking about it for a long time and many weeks for most people.

And so getting some kind of specific care during that time could be really helpful. I also find people really want to ask me questions about the loss or reflect on the loss and/or ask me a lot of questions about future fertility in their body, but that they’re not really in a space to do that until at least a couple of weeks out from the loss. So that’s, for me, why it’s really important to stay involved in people’s lives for a while after the loss. And some people don’t want that. Some people have one phone call and are like, ‘I’m good’. That’s cool, but a lot of people when I say, look, this is going to be my default that I want to take care of you for a long time, and if at some point you don’t want that, just stop returning my call, that’s fine, and that’s okay. And I find that when I put it out there, most people take me up on it. Most people are like, ‘Great, I have someone to talk to? That sounds fabulous.’

But if you don’t have someone like that in your life, that’s understandable and there are things that you can do to help take care of yourself as well. I think being gentle with yourself and really patient with what this healing looks like. And no matter if this was a pregnancy that you only knew about for three days before your body had a miscarriage, that doesn’t make your grief or your loss or the physiology of what’s happening any easier. And I don’t think we should try to quantify how much we deserve to feel during these things. We feel what we feel and just embracing that and letting our body go through it, letting ourselves care. Sometimes I find we don’t know how much we cared about a pregnancy until it’s gone, and then we have this weird space of grief of like, ‘Wow, I didn’t even try to care about it while I was pregnant. And now that it’s not here, now I feel really sad.’ And so we have to actually go through those emotions of bonding after, which is a trippy thing to do. So just being really patient and gentle with yourself about what this feels like and then also sort of along those lines that there are plants and other things like that that can promote healing in the body, emotionally and physically.

And I feel like, honestly, if I could only suggest one thing to help with people’s healing, it would be stories and reaching out on the internet or amongst your community to find other people who have also been through losses at similar times to you or similar experiences to you. And hearing their stories and helping to normalize what’s going on with you. And gosh. If you had it in you to share your story at some point, that could bring such peace to someone else in the future, too.

Indigomoon
Yeah. I mean, I personally love talking about my losses because I find them to be as beautiful as hard. You know, they were both. And I think for a lot of women that because a pregnancy loss is at birth, it’s a story that wants to be told. Birth stories, they kind of really sit in most women like they really want to be told. Sometimes it has to be in a very safe space, especially if there is trauma around a birth. But it usually really wants to come out. Pregnancy losses are the same. It’s a story that wants to be told and wants to be heard by someone else. Yeah, it’s so heartwarming, honestly, to hear the care that you provide for the women you work with after loss, because that’s something that I find to be really, really rare. I had a private midwife, actually, in that later loss with Aviaya. And it’s still pretty, like, shocking to me thinking back on that the aftercare was text message.

Molly
Yup.

Indigomoon
And that’s it. And I was in an amount of grief that I could not take responsibility for asking for what I needed. I needed it to be offered in those early days. And that was private care paid out of pocket, right? And you certainly don’t get anything from public care. So I just know how many women, they don’t have this on offer. And it becomes something we have to reclaim for ourselves. And that’s certainly not always fair. But something really beautiful and powerful can come from us being willing to acknowledge that we are postpartum after loss. We are mothers after loss, whether there’s ever a live baby or not. And we get to walk our season of grief in the way we need and until we need it.

Molly
Absolutely. And I would hope that anyone listening to this would take that away, too. I would imagine some people listening. to this may be having a loss right now. In which case, I extend my deepest sympathies to you. But also some people listening to this might be thinking about their friends or their clients or someone else in the future who might have a loss. And so, like, I want them to hear us saying this. That people cannot always ask for help when they’re in the depths of this, and the best thing you could do for your friend or your sister or your mother or someone who’s losing a pregnancy is to, like, come over, bring soup, do the laundry and sit there and listen to them. That’s what people need, and they’re not going to ask you for it. If you send them a text message that says, let me know if you need anything, they will not tell you.

You will need to actually take that initiative and go over and support someone and remind them that they’re worthy of that support and that this grief and this loss is no less than any other and deserves care. And you can provide that care. I mean I think professional care would be fantastic, if people could access that, but it’s also not the end-all deal, right? Like a really lovely friend sitting with you and bringing some tea and soup would be excellent for most people.

Indigomoon
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, maybe there’s a wise woman in your community that you can reach out to and get some of that support. But also as a friend, like you’re saying, you don’t have to have any answers. You really only have to show up and care. We all feel like we’re stumbling a little bit when we are trying to reach out to someone who’s grieving. It’s normal and it’s okay and really, just show up. Just show up. Just say that you don’t know what to say, but your heart really is caring for them and thinking of them.

Molly
Absolutely.

How can I get in touch with Molly Dutton Kenny?

Indigomoon
Yeah. Thank you so much, Molly. I’m really, really grateful for everything you’ve shared today, both your personal stories and the immense amount of knowledge that you have around herbs and keeping care in the home for those who desire that. Because just remembering that that’s an option is a really beautiful thing.

Molly
Yeah, I agree. Thank you for bringing it into the conversation. I think it would be really lovely to see more people able to manage their pregnancies, all of their pregnancies, no matter what comes out of it, exactly how and exactly where they’d like to be.

Indigomoon
Yeah, absolutely. Will you share how women can work with you, learn more from you?

Molly
Sure. I have a website. It’s my very long maiden name, Molly Dutton Kenny. That’s mollyduttonkenny.com. I spend a lot of time crafting blog posts so that there will be lots of free education on there as well. I also post workshops on my website, I’ve got a couple up there now. And then you can also reach out to me with questions about your body. I do that all the time, don’t feel like I’m too busy for that, you can totally email me. I also really take pride in my community network and in the wonderful people that I am blessed to know in my life and those connections that I have spent a long time cultivating. So if you’re like, ‘Okay I don’t live anywhere near Molly. I want care. This is where I live,’ you could always email me and ask if I happen to know someone in your area and I would be happy to get you the help that you need, whether that’s at a distance, if that’s all we can manage. And not necessarily through me, through lots of others that I respect who can hold this space really well. But certainly I know a lot of people in a lot of places in the world and I would like to help you get the care that you need.

Indigomoon
Beautiful. Thank you so much. I will definitely leave a link in the show notes. I highly recommend checking out everything that Molly offers. I’ve done a course with her before and it was a really powerful deep dive for me. And I really appreciate the space that you hold and the way you share your knowledge, so I urge everyone to check that out. I want to just close the conversation with repeating something I already said, which is remembering the options that are out there. We talked about the herbs today and there are so many holistic ways that we can care for our losses, care for our releases. This was one part, so hopefully I can bring you other facets to that in the future. This is a huge topic, but the world of women’s wisdom is really there to support you at every season, every cycle, every phase of your life. And there are so many ways that we can move through the things that come to awaken us in our feminine center with knowledge, with support, so we can actually come through on the other side more whole, more awake and more in tune with ourselves. So thank you so much for coming on today, Molly. I appreciate you so much.

Molly
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.