Improving Perinatal Care with Physical Therapy and Health Coaching with WHC Grad, Dr. Juan Michelle Martin

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Institute podcast. I’m Doctor Jessica Drummond, your host. And today I cannot wait for you to meet Doctor Joanne Michel Martin. She is a pelvic athletic health physical therapist specializing in perinatal year. And she is a women’s health coach in Atlanta who runs her own private practice in her community. Keep an eye out.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:31 Her story is amazing, her growth is amazing, and how her practice growth stemmed from her desire to be a present mom with a flexible schedule. Can’t we all relate to this? So tune in and then stay tuned to the end when I’ll give you my key takeaways after our conversation. Hi and welcome everybody. I’m Doctor Jessica Drummond and I’m here today with Doctor Joanne Michel Martin. And I’m so excited to talk to you today about your journey in the field of women’s health and wellness, because as a physical therapist, there are so many paths and options that you know, you had the opportunity to take along the way and you chose the path you chose. So I would love to hear the story about how that started and how it’s going.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:02:31 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Always a pleasure chatting with you. I think when it comes to my journey, it was really one that was pretty organic and kind of manifested along the way based on where I was at in my life and kind of what I and or my family needed at the time.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:02:53 But as with most Pts kind of started out with that big ortho goal. Yes, I’m going to work with all the athletes, primarily because I was one myself, having played overseas, collegiate athlete, coaching all the things. And so that was kind of where I wanted to be. And by the end of school, because I was also an athletic trainer, I was like, I don’t know how I feel about this traveling bit, so maybe we’ll rein it in a little bit and just do general Ortho or whatnot. And kind of in that experience was exposed to pregnancy, postpartum care and so on and loved it and started working with those individuals kind of straight off the bat and then started seeing a lot more complex cases over the years, like the next couple of years. Funny enough, when I moved to Atlanta shortly after I moved, I was a director for a practice that was adjacent to trauma surgeon. We got all the broken folks, all the falls, car accidents, ATV The skiing accidents and just about everybody had a fractured pelvis.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:03:58 So I actually was seeing non op and post op pelvises hips, you know a lot. And what treat me was you know, the complexity of it because it’s one thing to break a bone recover from that or have a surgery ACL whatever recover from that. But with a lot of the pelvic fractures it was I can walk, I can go back to doing what I’m doing, but my life is only about 80% of where it was, because I’ve got these other things here, and it was these other things, the issues with sex, the persistent pain in that area that kind of nobody acknowledged because of, you know, the doctors were saying, but I saved your life, I fix you. That was kind of what intrigued me to get on to this pelvic health path. And so I did and, you know, via a number of different instructors, via a number of different teaching platforms and just kind of building and building knowledge and reading articles and learning and just being open to learn and grasp, you know.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:04:58 And so that was kind of where my journey started. And I thought I was going to, you know, do it exclusively in like, you know, I was intrigued by pedes because I was like, oh, pediatric health and health. Yeah. Because at the time I also had little ones. But I also was very mindful of what my experience was for my very first delivered, that just hospital experience. And while mine was not, as I won’t say it was traumatic, I would say mine was more frustrating that no one wanted to listen, and I felt like I had to keep fighting with people to ultimately get what I wanted as far as the experience, but it kind of really showed that there was a lack of knowledge when it came to pregnancy, birth, that kind of thing. And then the postpartum period was like big eye opener in and of its own. And so it just kind of evolved from there, you know? And then the more conversations, because now you’re a mom, like when you’re not a mom, you don’t have mom conversations.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:05:54 You just don’t.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:05:55 Write. You don’t know.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:05:56 You’re never something that come up in your world. Then as soon as you become a mom, it’s amazing. You have now all these mom friends. It’s amazing the conversations you have at the playground and on playdates. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:07 So yeah, all.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:06:09 These things not related to kids start coming up in conversation and you’re like, well.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:15 That’s.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:06:16 Interesting. And so I recognize that there was this big need to have a more information, be more transparency about things that can be done and just overall guidance. And so that was kind of my roundabout way of really diving into the pelvic and women’s health world.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:36 Yeah. So in talking to a number of our other graduates who have made this transition from clinical health care in a hospital setting to starting their own practices and a number of those looking like a number of different things, there’s this idea that essentially the hospital health care that we have in most of the Western world is crisis management. You know, like you said, it’s like I saved your life.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:00 You can walk good enough. What are you complaining about? There’s not so much a conversation on quality of life, which also is really important because it impacts relationships and your ability to go to the bathroom and your ability to have sex and like all these really basic life functions, but they’re not survival. So it’s not like an acute crisis necessarily. But in that person’s life, it can feel like a crisis because of how it impacts their day to day. So now you’re hearing these on the ground conversations among your mom friends. And so is that the time? So now you have little kids, you’re at play dates, you know, is that the time when you launched your private practice?

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:07:47 Yeah. So I actually started back in 2016. I was looking for just more autonomy with regards to my schedule. Kind of didn’t know specifically what I wanted to do. Felt like I would do some pregnancy and postpartum work, but I really loved kids as well. And so I did some contract work in pedes, and that was kind of the start of my practice.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:08:12 And then I started doing home visits for pregnancy and postpartum. And this was like late 2016, early 2017. And I started doing that kind of no blueprint per se, because the only home health that was happening was the home health that you get out of the hospital when you have the surgery or something. And so that was where I started at, and I loved it because I could work my schedule around my kids schedule and around events they had at school. And that was where it took off. And so again, it was one of those things where it just really grew out of what I needed. I needed flexibility in my schedule. I had at the time of three year old and one year old, so I needed flexibility, you know, in case somebody got sick in case there’s an event at school. Because Lord knows, like you got an event on Thursday and they don’t tell you till Monday. It’s at 10:00 in the morning because of course, parents have nothing else to do.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:09 Right, right.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:09:11 So it’s like, oh crap. Now I got to flex my schedule a little bit, but it was great because I wanted to be involved in what they were doing, and I still wanted to have the option to build a career.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:22 Yeah. And so at that point, a little bit after that, you started getting the coaching bug and you joined our program. So tell me a little bit more about what you were so curious about when it came to coaching, and why do you decided to take the leap to add that skill set? Because it is really a different way of approaching things than just having that clinical perspective, that physical or occupational therapy perspective where you’re coming in to fix a problem. It’s a very different perspective from that. So what made you curious about it?

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:09:56 So couple of things. For one, I really wanted to embody a much more integrated and holistic care approach. I didn’t want it to be like the very clear cut, like, you know, medical eyes, because the reality is, when it comes to incontinence issues, when it comes to sexual issues, when it comes to relationship issues, those are the things it’s not like, okay, your knees are lacking this amount of range motion.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:10:24 Let’s get you doing this. You know, it’s kind of like clean cut. You know, Claire’s day they come in, you might have to dig a little bit because it’s not like they’re necessarily always forthcoming. There’s going to be some tears shed. You got to pass the Kleenex. You got to wait a while. You know, it can take some time, but it’s really finding a way to create safe spaces, finding a way to really, even though you’re working on the physiological things, to make sure that the whole person is taken care of. Now, you were one of my sheroes too, like I was following you. I’d seen you and I was like, I like what she’s doing. She’s doing her own thing. I kind of like the rebel approach.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:02 Yes, yes. Thank you.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:11:03 She’s going against the grain. I like her. And having then hearing, you know, either via webinar. And then I finally got to hear you in person and I think it was 2018.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:11:13 So that kind of cemented it for me. Like and I remember I think the first thing I did was the functional nutrition. And that kind of blew me away because a lot of the times people were coming in and they’re having chronic pain. And I started changing some of the things that I focus on, like, let’s talk about your nutrition. And I you know, I was amazed because it wasn’t really a major part of the subjective in the past prior to that. And now that I was asking this question, you know, sometimes in my mind I was going, well, no wonder you’re in pain. Eat like crap. You know.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:50 It’s like chick fil A is your whole diet. Yeah.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:11:53 You said something one time like, you can’t supplement a bad diet or something like that, because then they tell you that they went to the chiropractor and they got these 5011 supplements, and then they don’t know how to take him. So then they weren’t taking any. And it’s, you know, and I was like, I was really blown away by that portion.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:12:10 But then also the reframing or restructuring of an intake process to where it is less clinical and it is just very much more person centered.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:12:25 Yeah.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:12:26 Life center. Yeah. Like okay. So you’ve got this hip problem. Tell me a little bit about what’s going on with you. Because anybody can come in with a hip problem. But how is this affecting you and why. What is this taken away from you that matters most? Then it got into a little bit more of like the motivational interviewing and like the strategies to create space for these individuals to really just share what was happening, right? To create that container for them to share what was happening and how it was affecting them, and then where they saw themselves and where they wanted to be. Right. So it was more that, well, I’m not going to be the one to do something to you. I’m going to be the one to walk alongside in this journey. And that really meant something to me. I value that a lot more than what the traditional way was.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:13:14 So and so how did it change your business? Because now you’re really on a deeper journey with your clients. You’re still doing essentially home health for the perinatal period, but you’re getting to hear deeper stories about their birth experience. You know, you’re thinking of their clinical challenges or their pain points, their literal physical pain points in a much wider context. So did it change anything about how you did your business or how your business grew?

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:13:48 Well, definitely. In terms of the approach, it wasn’t more or less kind of selling therapy and it wasn’t more or less like, all right, so you have this pain and we’re going to fix that, or you’re in your pants and we’re going to stop that. That kind of was a given, but it was more or less like we’re focused on helping you to have that lifestyle that you want. So even after the leaking stops, that might not be enough, because, sure, you’re coming in. And that’s what I was finding with a lot of my clients.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:14:17 Do they come in and, you know, their primary complaint intake and subjective, oh, I’ve got this leak in. I just want this leaking to be done. Well, now the leak is gone. It’s only been two sessions. So tell me now what’s going on with you, right. It’s like, well, I really want to do this, so I really want to get back to this or I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to start this. And it was, you know, being able to kind of help them, guide them, challenge them, support them in ways that kind of help made their lives a little bit more meaningful, right? Help them create strategies for things even outside of the physiological, you know, help them with regards to some of the relationship concerns, because now we’re taking a deeper dive in a different approach. So I think what it did more than anything was create a much more well-rounded practice.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:15:06 And so you’re working with people longer. You’re not having to sort of like chase down 100 new people with incontinence that you can easily help them resolve.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:15:17 But then you’re working with people longer. There’s a little less, quote unquote, you know, selling time because you’re just I think there are so many other levels. Then they’re going to start talking to you about their sexual dysfunction. They’re going to talk to you about the mountain climbing. They want to do not just be able to sleep through the night without peeing. They want to be able to lift their kids and go roller skating and whatever it is. And I think that allows us to have from a business standpoint, it’s you’ve got sort of more longevity with your clients, but it’s also, in my opinion, more fun. Did you find that, like, you get to know these people.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:15:57 You get to know people, you get to know people. And it’s like you said, it’s not having to chase down. I didn’t leave a mill to become a mill, so I didn’t want to chase down a ton of people. But it did help to deepen the connections that I felt like I had with my clients.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:16:15 I feel like because I’d have people who now they just keep coming back. Baby number one, baby number two, baby number three. We’re not even having a baby. But I’m just coming back to see you. Because maybe we want to have a baby in two years. Like. Hey, Jay, it’s been a long time. How are you doing? Fix me. What’s going on? Yeah, nothing, but I just need you to make sure that I’m fixed. So that when I go into this situation, I’m good, but really created a lot of that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:16:38 Yeah. Resilient and strong for the next phase, whatever it is, pregnancy or not. And so when you’re working with people over the long term and you have those deeper relationships, do you find that your marketing is easier because they’re referring people, they’re coming back. It’s just less work for you to sort of have to go out and attract clients, if you will.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:16:58 Yeah. For me, you know, one of my things was kind of more to kind of hit the ground running in the community.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:17:05 So when I started, I started reaching out to people in the community. I didn’t want for my practice to be dependent on the physician next door. I wanted my practice to be like a community name, like I wanted people to like, oh yeah, go to jail, you know, go see Jay. And if Jay can help you, they’ll tell you where you need to go. But kind of have that word of mouth, that more organic growth. And that’s where I’ve been. So a lot of the times when people come in to see me, I was like, well, who’s your doctor? Well, I don’t have one. Well, how’d you find out about me? Oh, well, I was talking to such and such and such and such. Had to go. See you. Okay.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:17:41 Yeah. So you’re not dependent on that sort of medical model of. You need a referral from a physician. Because not only did you immerse yourself in the community that you actually live in, but you had the coaching skill set to deepen the relationships, deepen the work you could give to the clients.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:17:59 And when you’re starting out, I think a lot of times when people are starting out in their women’s health practices, they’re very worried about the marketing piece and talking to enough people. But I think what you’ve demonstrated is that kind of early, like a wider, stronger foundation with the first five people, first ten people that you work with starts to then exponentially grow because they’re each telling 5 or 10 people and they’re talking to them in that same way that you’re talking with them. You know, they’re talking to each other in moms groups and with their coworker who just had a baby. Those mom conversations are very organic because everyone kind of wakes up as a new mom, or is in their second trimester of pregnancy or whatever, and is like, you really don’t research that until you get there and so.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:18:51 Don’t know what you don’t know.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:53 So it’s such a surprise. You’re like, what the heck? And I think we see this in a lot of niches in women’s health because it’s talked about more. But even if it is, you’re not really listening to those conversations if you’re not in that phase of life.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:19:06 So we’re seeing the same thing in perimenopause niches or any dysfunction, even if it’s more well aware, there’s more conversations about it on social media or whatever. You’re not thinking about that individually unless you’re going through it. So I think that was a very smart strategy to instead of get too obsessive about marketing tactics, because a lot of people sort of go down that road. They take a lot of marketing courses. Instead, you really deepened your coaching and clinical skill set and then use some very fundamental marketing skills that, you know, we teach that allow you to build a strong foundation that then continues on because you’re well known within your community and you have a strong reputation.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:19:58 And, you know, what’s interesting is to, you know, starting out because there weren’t a lot of especially for cash based therapist, 2016, 2017, the cash based therapist that were out there. I’m not saying that there weren’t more, but you were one of the few females because it was just very male driven and. Right.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:20:17 True. Even though there were females out there, you didn’t see them. They weren’t prominent in social media and open spaces and that magnitude. But the approach was very different. Like the hard sell some things will work for some people and some things will work for other people. And what I recognize for me personally, was that the approach of a lot of others was not something that felt right for me. And so, you know, that’s why I kind of getting back to the community. And a lot of the stuff that was taught was reviewed within the coaching program made sense. It wasn’t, well, you need to have this big following and you need to have this and you need to go do this, and you need to market this and you need to have this funnel. And then it’s like, oh my God, right. What is the funnel even right.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:21:05 What is it.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:21:05 But it’s not all of that. It’s like, okay, who do you want to help. Yeah. What does that look like? How do you want that to look in your life? How do you want your business to be like and kind of starting from what is it that you want? Okay.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:21:18 Now who are the people that that relates to now let’s pair the two together. And so I found that that was kind of more what I wanted.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:21:26 Well, and to me it’s so important because, you know, one of the things about our program is that primarily the practitioners in women’s health almost exclusively are women. And so if we create a kind of business for you and with you that serves women, but you are like at the edge of burnout all the time, we’re not actually helping women’s health. We’re just creating more anxious, productive women’s health practitioners who are also women and moms and, you know, working moms and trying to demonstrate healthy womanhood to the next generation. And so I think it’s really valuable that you took the time and space to say, okay, what do I really want? And you were in a very challenging phase of life that so many women go through. You’ve got two toddlers and since you’ve had another baby, right.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:22:17 And another one, that’s what’s one more, what’s one more?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:22:21 I mean, you know, then the only thing my husband always said about that, because we have to is like, oh no.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:22:26 Then you go from man to man to zone, and I can’t take that.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:22:31 It’s something, I’ll tell you that. So we’re hanging on.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:22:35 That’s great. That’s great. And so you were literally in it in parallel with your clients. And so having our community allowed you to create the kind of business that wasn’t going to, as you said, like go from one mill to another mill where you’re just doing something different and you have more flexible schedule, but otherwise you’re exhausted. That thoughtfulness in the beginning is so important not just to understand, but to really apply. And you’ve grown so successfully from that. I mean, that was six years ago, and now, you know, so well known as a leader in the world of obstetric physical therapy, postpartum physical therapy, teaching all over the world. I know you just got back from India and doing it in such a way that is fully holistic for your clients so that they’re not just kind of getting a treatment solution for their incontinence and then moving on, but really going deeper for a lifetime of almost, you know, a primary care level of support that just doesn’t exist within the crisis health care system that we have.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:23:48 So let’s switch gears just briefly and talk about this maternal health crisis that we are having in the United States. You know, the United States has the largest maternal death rate of all industrial countries, and it’s three times or more worse for women of color. I know that your practice is actively helping to solve this problem. And how do you think the rest of us could get on board to help? And what have you done that’s been successful?

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:24:17 So definitely yeah, we’ve got a big problem. We’ve got a really severe problem. And while I love that now more people are familiar with that stat of three times higher for black women, but I like to let people know it’s as much as 12 times higher because it varies from place to place. There was a study that came out, I believe it was 2018, out of New York City, and New York City was like 12 times higher.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:24:41 Wow.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:24:41 That’s amazing. Within the metro area, within the boroughs. And so we look at things like systemic bias.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:24:47 We look at things like provider bias, we look at just the structure of the system. And realistically, I think they’re great physicians out there. They’re great practices out there. But until we by and large, dismantle the current system, we’re just plugging holes. It’s like plugging holes in a ship that’s going to sink. Yeah. Or is sinking. And it’s only going to do so much, I think, for us as clinicians, really, it gets back to educating people. It gets back to one of the things that I do try to do is whenever I can definitely networking within the community and whenever I can, is making sure that I am available in the sense of workshops or educating, because not everybody is going to be able to come to a cash based physical therapist like myself. So when I can do things that help and fill those voids, then that is crucial. So educating within our communities, making sure that we are familiar with the providers out there who are the midwives? We’re the lactation consultants.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:25:51 What is it that people need? Who are the other birth professionals? Right. And so we can then act as a liaison, like getting people the resources that they need. Well, here’s what can be helpful on that journey, right? Painting the big picture and kind of plugging in the team members where they are appropriate so that people know a lot of times, for example, I might have somebody come in postpartum and they’ve never had any education, never heard of childbirth educators, never heard of doulas, never heard of any of that stuff. And they’re coming in and we’re addressing issues. I might have somebody come in because they’ve got a lot of pain. I’m doing, you know, ultrasound, lymphatic drainage, whatever. But they’ve never heard of a lactation consultant and they’re having a terrible time. You know, we’re talking about things like their overall wellness, nutrition, managing stress, different things like that. I’ve got a really dear friend of mine who’s doing a lot of work now with remote monitoring of vitals for pregnant women so that they have some sort of objective data that they can also take to their providers.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:26:53 You know, so when something comes up, when something doesn’t feel right, when that mommy instinct is going off, that they’re not just allowing somebody to dismiss them, but they can say, hey, here’s what’s happening, take a look at this. You know, so I think really one getting into our communities a little bit more, finding out who the key players in birth are, finding out what they need. Right. Like I can’t do everything, nor do I want to do everything. I’m just not that type person. Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. So how can I help? What is it that you need from me? How can I help you? How can we do this together? Because we can get a lot further together than we can by ourselves. And that in turn, helps those within the community, the moms, the pregnant people who are going through all of this and need us. I think as far as the providers go, educating the providers every day, I still hear people say they never heard of pelvic floor physical therapy.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:27:46 And these are physicians. Yeah, right. They never heard of pelvic floor physical therapy. And it doesn’t have to be a hard and fast. We got to do a lunch and learn or we got it. But form organic relationships even within your community. Talk to people, doctors or people. At the end of the day, they don’t know what they don’t know, right? They do a lot, and I’m sure they don’t wake up in the morning going, okay, I’m going to mess somebody’s life up today, you know? But they don’t know what they don’t know. So how can we now come alongside them and say, hey, you’re not in this by yourself? I’m here to help support the people that you have. How can we do this together and starting to connect with them in the midwives and different people like that, starting to connect in smaller areas, even in the hospitals, because sometimes in bigger cities, to get into the larger hospital systems may be a challenge, but how can you get into the hospital systems? I remember in 2018, I started teaching in the childbirth education class at one of our local hospitals, and it was funny because the labor and delivery nurse, I asked her, I said, hey, you know, tell you what, can I just come in, do a talk on pelvic health? She’s like, well, you know, we really don’t have much time.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:28:52 I said, well, you know what? I tell you what, how about we try it, see how you feel, and then let’s go from there. And as I’m talking at the end of it, she goes, oh my God, I did not know all that stuff. We’re going to have to talk some more. Can you come back again next month? And then I was a regular fixture. Yeah. And this is like once a month every month. They had the full day 9 to 3 childbirth education. And it went from being like a little 20 minute block to like, all right. You know, the whole hour and a half is yours. And we’re talking, and I come in and I bring samples and, you know, you got the moms, you got the dads. So now you’re not just educating the moms, but now we’re educating the dads because they don’t know. I mean, half of them used to be like, whoa.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:33 Yes.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:29:36 You know, and, you know, I remember the first time when that said, so do men get healthy help? Absolutely.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:29:43 You know, and so because we were having the sexy time talk, I told them, I said, dads, you can get a lot more with honey than you can with vinegar. Okay? Right. Okay. It’s it’s not about what the doctor says. You need to be connecting with your wives and knowing what’s going on. So it’s like those types of conversations that were meaningful and impactful. And so getting into your communities, doing things like that even can be so helpful.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:30:07 And especially because most women are not going to have the luxury of a really skilled doula right by their side to be advocating when their blood pressure goes high or they feel, you know, a lot of these actual causes of death are just things that have been brushed off like, oh, it’s okay, or this bleeding is fine, you know? Meanwhile, the woman two hours later is hemorrhaging to death because no one feels empowered in that moment because, I mean, anyone who’s had a baby, or at least this was my experience.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:30:42 In that moment, you don’t feel empowered. You’re super busy. Like just getting through it.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:30:50 There is so much going on, and that’s the thing. And their voice isn’t heard right. And it’s unfortunate, then, that the persons who are charged with hearing those voices, they don’t. Then I oftentimes will tell people, you know, you kind of can’t get mad because we think, oh, well, the nurses should know better. I’m like, again, people don’t know what they don’t know. And they were trained in a system that was designed that way. So what is this lowly nurse going to do if she’s like, well, I can’t really speak up because my job’s on the line and I’ve got miles at home to feel, and they themselves don’t feel like they’re empowered because maybe they also don’t have the support of their hospital system, that if they have to say, listen, this is not working, or I’m here to report this, they don’t feel supported enough. They might feel like they might be blackballed or the physician.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:31:37 So we’ve got a lot to do on that end, and that’s going to take a whole lot of stuff. But at least if we can at the grassroots level, start getting to the patients first, start getting to, you know, the community providers and then start moving up the chain. I think we can do a lot of amazing work and.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:31:54 You know, empowering the birth partner, whether it’s the father or a family member or friend, even if someone doesn’t have a doula, they have an additional voice that, you know, maybe we’ll keep pushing, keep pushing, because a lot of times It’s as you said, it’s just an issue of not being heard, not feeling empowered to take decisive, strong action. Because if it turns out to be nothing, which it might be in some considerable number of cases, but it’s enough of a significant problem now that on an individual level, you do want people confident to have someone there to advocate for them. And, you know, I think that little slice of birth education gives them confidence in you, gives them a resource to ask, you know, and even with the follow up, because it’s not always the case that people die, like in childbirth on the table, it’s a week later at home.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:32:57 It’s, you know, up to a year. Yeah, yeah. And so when you’re doing postpartum recovery work, that’s where coaches are going to be there. You know, as a postpartum health coach, as a postpartum doula, as a postpartum midwife, as a postpartum physical occupational therapist or acupuncturist. You’re going to be seeing these patients longer and deeper, as we talked about earlier. Then there are six week gynecologic checkup, which you know, is fine, but they’re not going to be comfortable enough there. You know, depending on what day it is, they might not have slept the night before. You know, there’s so many issues that I think if we have the opportunity to get out in the community and build these micro practices, even if they’re never scaled, even if there’s, you know, 20 individuals like you who are deep with not even 125 to 50 people a year, that’s what really saves lives, because we’re going deep, not superficial and wide. So I really appreciate that work that you’re doing, and I love that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:04 It’s sort of it’s been really fascinating to me to talk to so many of our graduates and see how much their business is really parallel and are inspired by their own life story and just the simple desire of working moms to have autonomy and flexibility. You know, it’s really that simple that this is really. Yeah, I mean, this career, like my oldest is now in college, and I just feel so grateful that I had all those years just being at the bus stop or being able to go to the performance or the game. And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about this kind of work. So thank you so much for sharing about your work. And I have two things I want to wrap up with as we build out this podcast. I’m going to be asking some of our experts to answer some questions posed by our earlier guests. So if you had the opportunity to ask someone who’s a little bit ahead of you, or a peer or a colleague in this women’s health practice journey, what question would you ask them?

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:35:08 You know, all of my questions these days revolve around food and recipes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:14 Hey, great meal prep. Had a working mom. Listen, let’s talk meal.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:35:20 Prep, right? Yes, it probably would be that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:24 I love that because, you know, the reality is we’re still working moms and we’re still working for those those little time saving tips.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:35:34 Yeah, that is my struggle. It’s like I told someone the other day I was talking to a patient and I said, you know, the biggest lie ever sold was adulthood. Like, if I knew, I had to wake up every day and figure out what everybody was going to eat every day for the rest of my life, I would have passed. I would have been like, no, I’m good.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:50 Yes, teenage years are good. We’re good.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:35:52 Right? But it’s crazy.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:54 Yeah, I have to say, I have started my 13 year old meal prepping just for herself because like you said, I’m tired of making people’s lunches and stuff, and I haven’t really done that forever. But it was always like, still a day to day conversation of like, what are we doing now? So now it’s a job for her and my husband every Sunday to prep that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:36:17 So I’ve delegated that. But just internally it’s good.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:36:21 And I get the ten year old started early.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:36:23 Yeah I mean they’ve been making lunches for years so she can do it. And then the final thing I want to end with is, as a person who has been very successful in your business and just really defining your own path and living into it. What’s one piece of advice that you would like to share with someone who might be a little bit behind or parallel you on this journey?

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:36:46 Do what fills you. What brings you joy? What makes you happy. Do not go chasing after somebody else’s dream because it is not yours. It may look great, but it is not your dream. The most fulfilling thing you can do is being on the path or the journey towards the things that bring you the most joy and form your business around that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:37:10 Excellent, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us, and I am so glad to just hang out with you again and we’ll talk soon.

Dr. Juan Michelle Martin 00:37:20 Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:37:27 Oh, that was such a great conversation with doctor J. She is so inspiring. I mean, she’s teaching internationally now because she changed her entire work life from working in a mill like physical therapy practice that was focused entirely on productivity to taking a step back when she had a one year old and a three year old and thought, you know what? I’m going to change exactly how I work. And she built the foundation of her practice with the mindset of serving her community. She went to women at their most vulnerable in their home, struggling with perinatal and postpartum issues. And now she’s going deeper into her community, serving and teaching the level of, you know, birth education classes. She’s actually saving lives of pregnant and postpartum women in the Atlanta metro area. And I think my key takeaway from this conversation is that when you are building your women’s health coaching practice, having the depth of coaching skills allows you to have the depth of relationships with your clients that become your raving fans.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:38:45 Your entire community knows who you are. You are networked with other practitioners in the niche space that you’re working with. So if you give to your community and build a strong foundation, your practice will be literally planted and will blossom within your community because everyone will know who you are. They’ll know what you do and do that often enough. Stay focused on your mission. It doesn’t take very long to be a go to source in your community, and then quite honestly, your marketing is done for you. All right, see you next time on our next episode. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.