Dr Kenneth Spielvogel On What Mothers Can Do to Heal Emotionally and Physically After a Challenging Childbirth
An Interview With Lucinda Koza
I would begin with physical healing. This means regular check-ins with your provider, ensuring that whatever physical issues that need to be addressed are taken care of.
Childbirth can be a beautiful yet challenging experience that impacts women both emotionally and physically. The journey to recovery is often filled with unique hurdles and personal growth. We are featuring professionals who have helped moms navigate this journey to share their stories and insights on the steps they use to help people heal emotionally and physically after a challenging childbirth. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Kenneth Spielvogel
Dr. Kenneth Spielvogel is a board-certified OB/GYN and the Senior Medical Advisor at Carrara Treatment Wellness & Spa. He is dedicated to providing comprehensive and compassionate care to patients throughout all stages of life. With nearly 30 years of experience, he combines his expertise with a genuine warmth and attentiveness, making him a trusted choice for patients seeking personalized healthcare.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you tell us a bit about you and your backstory?
Thank you for having me today. I am a board-certified OB GYN with a special interest in addiction medicine. I graduated from George Washington University School of Medicine. I trained at the University of Colorado residency in OB GYN. Prior to my life in medicine, I worked for Apple Computer as well as being a teacher and a high school football, basketball, swimming and track coach.
Can you share a bit about your professional background and what led you to work in this field?
My entire life, I’ve been interested in health and wellness. Within the last decade I have taken up a special interest in addiction medicine. I currently work as a clinical faculty member of the UC Irvine OB GYN residency and still practice inpatient medicine with the Memorial Care Foundation. In addition to this, I serve as Senior Medical Adviser for Carrara Treatment Wellness & Spa. I took a special interest in OB GYN, seeing the need for compassionate, capable caregivers. The unique journey of caring for the entire life spectrum of women and their families in both surgical and non-surgical approaches is so very rewarding. My work in addiction is also a vital component of my work and lifesaving for so many individuals from all walks of life.
I love the journey of pregnancy to delivery and postpartum. The relationships that I can form with entire families. When it comes to my addiction work, I saw the ravage that drugs and alcohol had upon not only new mothers, but many of my patients outside of pregnancy as well as their family and friends. I lost a close family member to a Fentanyl overdose and just made it a point to learn as much as I could to help prevent even one overdose in the future.
What are the first steps you recommend to begin the healing process after childbirth, and how can they help women cope with the initial emotional and physical aftermath?
The healing process after childbirth is not only a physical one, but a mental health and emotional journey as well. Physically, the patient’s delivery is an important consideration. Whether c section, vaginal delivery, vacuum assisted delivery, forceps assisted delivery…the healing process is different for every patient. I encourage patients NOT to share or compare their healing experience with other family members or friends. Every patient is different. So, from the physical healing aspect, there are specific guidelines for each patient.
The most important principle in emotional healing is to NORMALIZE the dramatic changes affecting one’s mental health. I strive to make patients feel seen, heard and aware that they are not alone in this process.
It is a dramatic change, especially for first time parents. A disturbance in sleep, a disruption in routine and a full focus on a new family member with little to no feedback or reward for a full disruption and focus on a newborn.
Did you recommend support from healthcare professionals, family, or community groups during your recovery? If so, how did their involvement contribute to your healing journey?
The healing process in the postpartum period is a multidisciplinary approach beyond provider and the provider’s nurse. We have lactation support as an example, where they will perform home visits with patients to assist them. We offer both individual and group therapy as well too. Other postpartum patients gather in person and via Zoom to share experiences and offer support. Telehealth extends our potential reach for many. Individual and even group check-ins are possible without the need for a major disruption in routine.
Frequent visits/check-ins and recognizing the need for social work, therapists, psychiatrists and other team members is an integral part of healing. Even the American College of OBGYN has recognized that close interval follow-up of patients is the best way to decrease the chances of postpartum blues, postpartum depression, or postpartum psychosis. Making patients feel supported is an integral piece in this practice.
Are there any specific practices, such as mindfulness, therapy, or physical exercises, that you think play a significant role in emotional and physical recovery?
In terms of physical activity, let’s go back to the original notion that every delivery is different. Some patients will be able to begin exercise, which may be as simple as a short walk within days of delivery. Others who have had surgery or more traumatic deliveries may be limited and follow a much broader timeline when it comes to recovery.
Physical activity recommendations for me as a provider center around listening to your body and not causing harm. Beginning with simple activities, as I said, such as walking, moving on to light weights and slowly progressing. REMIND patients that images of celebrities in bikinis within weeks of delivery are NOT the norm. Societal pressures and imagery play a major role in the negative self-talk many postpartum patients engage in. There is NO accepted timeframe or expectation of how long one takes to recover.
I encourage people to utilize mindfulness practices such as yoga, even Pilates, working with physical trainers and continuing to check-in with both individual and group therapy as needed. Outside the typical medical world, meditation, breathwork, and other relaxation and mindfulness activities are of great value in stress reduction and overall well-being.
Can you please share “5 Things You Need to Heal Emotionally and Physically After a Challenging Childbirth”?
1 . I would begin with physical healing. This means regular check-ins with your provider, ensuring that whatever physical issues that need to be addressed are taken care of.
2 . A second key element of recovery is the primary need for sleep. Obviously, a newborn is disruptive to sleep and subsequent deprivation in the face of being postpartum, it is vital that new parents can have a minimum amount of sleep that is considered healthy.
Obviously, this varies from patient to patient. This goal is centered in support, whether it’s the addition of a caregiver at night to allow new parents to sleep or enhanced partner, family or friend support in order to allow new parents the freedom and the emotional letdown to have some semblance of uninterrupted sleep if only for a few hours.
3 . A third element would be emotional support. I think this begins with family and friends being there for new parents. It can also move on to both individual therapy with counselors who are specialized in postpartum emotional issues, and group therapy is a very important component. We run a group program for new parents. We gather patients in a conference room to share stories and offer support. The isolation patients so often feel is lifted in group therapy. The sense that they are NOT alone in their struggles in caring for themselves and a newborn is invaluable. The ability for new parents to share their experiences, the triumphs and “failures” with peers is incredibly healing.
4 . Exercise, as I alluded to earlier, is a key component. Simple walking is a great place to begin. Then onto more rigorous strengthening of the “core” to prevent injury. Back pain and other injuries limit one’s ability to parent and care for a newborn. Lifting, carrying car seats and the many other rigors of parenting, as well as the emotional benefits of physical activity are key components to recovery. I try to guide patients specifically in terms of what they can and cannot do in the first several weeks of the postpartum period depending upon their specific delivery. I offer recommendations for both individual and group exercise. There are a growing number of new parent exercise groups that combine many necessary elements for a healthy postpartum. They get the group element of sharing their experiences with other members as well as getting exercise in the process that is guided and safe.
5 . Keeping patients safe seems obvious but is a key component as well. This means screening for domestic violence as well as for other risky behaviors, which the potential for abuse of is increased in the postpartum period. This goes for drugs and alcohol. Patients with a previous history of drug or alcohol Use disorders are at high risk for recurrence in the postpartum period. Sadly, the threat of domestic violence towards women is drastically increased during both pregnancy and the postpartum period.
In what ways do you think society is good at supporting a new mother recovering from a traumatic birthing experience?
The question of do I imagine society is good at supporting a new mother recovering from a traumatic birth experience? I would argue that there is room for improvement here. Less comparing of stories, which at times can be shaming, and a true understanding of a patient’s emotional trauma or even physical in the aftermath of a traumatic birth. I feel as though we do hear more about difficult and even tragic birth stories in the news. But the number of women that are traumatized because of childbirth that goes undetected is alarming.
In what ways can society improve at supporting new moms recovering from childbirth?
We can do better as providers and as a community to stop, listen, get a true sense of what a new parent is experiencing and the potential for a trauma syndrome in the aftermath of childbirth and directing them to the appropriate resources to ensure their healthy recovery. Extending on this, having better options for group therapy as well as individual and enhancing home health visit options for all groups of patients is a key element of recovery.
How have you seen the experience of childbirth and recovery contribute to personal growth in new mothers? Can you share a story that illustrates this transformation?
I have seen triumphant experiences with patients who have had traumatic births. How those experiences affected them in a positive way. One patient I became involved with during the critical stages of her delivery, nearly died during a c section because of a postpartum hemorrhage. She required multiple units of blood and underwent an extensive hospital stay, including postpartum infection.
In the aftermath of this, she became a champion of postpartum support groups and even formed her own that has become a widely utilized outlet for many of our postpartum patients. She offers a mommy bootcamp where diet, exercise, emotional support, and a network of nearly 200 women who support one another both in the antepartum delivery and postpartum period lift one another up.
How can moms navigate the balance between taking care of their newborn and prioritizing their own healing needs during the postpartum period?
Navigating the balance between a new parent, taking care of their own healing needs, and those of a newborn is a difficult dance. On the one hand, patients feel guilty if they are not focusing all their attention on their newborn, potentially neglecting their own postpartum needs. I try to emphasize with patients in the first couple weeks to have adequate support to allow them to rest and recover and address any physical needs as we discussed earlier. This can be as simple as a family member or childcare specialist who can give them even just one hour to themselves for either physical activity or rest. The feeling that they are not chained to responsibility and are able to have some freedom for self-care.
Wonderful. We are nearly done. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)?
I would love to have a conversation with Alex Cooper, the host of “Call Her Daddy”. She has such a broad audience and reaches women of all ages. I have so much to say regarding not only these very important issues, but also the struggle for reproductive freedom and choice.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This is a critical time in women’s health, and I am proud to be an advocate. I want to share that message and my experiences with as many people as possible. Our future depends on it, I believe. I want to start a movement that truly allows people to see the importance of having quality reproductive leaders to advocate for women’s reproductive choice. This is not a black or white issue. It is NOT just about abortion and the health and safety of women worldwide depends upon a greater understanding of this vital issue. I have seen women marginalized in the health care world, and quite frankly I find it appalling. We need to do more.
How can our readers follow your work online?
People can follow me on our Carrara Treatment website https://carraratreatment.com/author/dr-kenny-spielvogel/ or on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@CarraraTreatment have several videos from both national meetings as well as individual. Please feel free to email me as well with any specific questions.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
About the Interviewer: After becoming her father’s sole caregiver at a young age, Lucinda Koza founded I-Ally, a community-based app that provides access to services and support for millennial family caregivers. Mrs. Koza has had essays published in Thought Catalog, Medium Women, Caregiving.com and Hackernoon.com. She was featured in ‘Founded by Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Female Founders’ by Sydney Horton. A filmmaker, Mrs. Koza premiered short film ‘Laura Point’ at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and recently co-directed ‘Caregivers: A Story About Them’ with Egyptian filmmaker Roshdy Ahmed. Her most notable achievement, however, has been becoming a mother to fraternal twins in 2023. Reach out to Lucinda via social media or directly by email: lucinda@i-ally.com.
Dr Kenneth Spielvogel On What Mothers Can Do to Heal Emotionally and Physically After a Challenging… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.