Tending to Your Womb

Auteur

Dr. Anietie (Tia) Ukpe-Wallace, PT, DPT, is an orthopedic and pelvic health physical therapist who specializes in providing a continuum of care and support from pregnancy loss to postpartum, while emphasizing the importance of self-care. Tia’s life-long fascination with the human body and its inner workings ultimately led her to this path and a practice that has morphed from one of structure and ego to one framed by humility and independent thinking. Following her own formal introduction to movement in college, and eight years teaching yoga, Tia’s own chronic struggles surrounding her pelvic floor and multiple miscarriages inspired her personal interest in a part of the body that is rarely talked about and often misunderstood. And it was the loss of her first child at 20 weeks of pregnancy that prompted her to offer holistically based pelvic care to a population that needs it, at the most vulnerable time in their life. Tia is a wife, mother to her 9-year-old daughter and a Doctor of Physical Therapy in Oakland, CA, where she offers both telehealth and clinic-based physical therapy services through her practice, Self-Care Physio.

Texte du rabat

A heart-centered, science-based guide to caring for your reproductive health

Anietie “Tia” Ukpe-Wallace was 32 years old when she suffered a stillbirth halfway through her first pregnancy. It was her first major loss, but would not be her last; and it would set her on the path to learning everything she could about her own body, not only the anatomy and the physiology, but also reconnecting with the feelings and sensations of her own womb and its attendant emotional aspects: love, joy, as well as distrust, fear, anger and grief.

Tia’s path would lead her to becoming a doctor of physical therapy specializing in pelvic health. In her practice, Dr. Ukpe-Wallace sees everyday evidence of the disconnection between women in their bodies. That disconnection has a variety of sources—trauma, embarrassment, miseducation—and results both in a lack of understanding and awareness and a reluctance to physically connect with their own bodies.

Tending to Your Womb is the book that Tia wishes she had when she started her own journey towards conception, pregnancy and loss. Through self-care exercises, science-based information, and her own personal experiences and those of her patients, she helps women better understand and reconnect with their own bodies. The heart of the book is walking women through the journey from conception through pregnancy, with the full spectrum of outcomes considered.

Also covered:

• Menstruation
• Grief
• Perimenopause and menopause
• Post-partum self-care
• Herbs for womb health Tia’s holistic approach draws on traditional knowledge (“to tend to our womb is not new”), and honors the relationships between the reproductive system and the rest of the body: for example, our feet, posture, breasts, heart, and brain. She encourages women to get personal with their anatomy, become curious observers of their own bodies, and become their own best advocate in a medical maternity care system that is not stacked in favor of women, and even less so for women of color.

Tending to Your Womb is a trustworthy guide to improving your relationship with your most intimate parts.

Contenu

Preface
Chapter 1: Let’s Get to Know Your Body: Touch and Observe
Chapter 2: Establish/Know Your Baseline
Chapter 3: A Look at Other Cultures and how they tend to their womb
Chapter 4: The Interconnected Womb
Chapter 5: The Journey Towards Conception
Chapter 6: When Your Journey Has a Few Bumps in the Road: Illness in Pregnancy, Obstructions in Uterus and more
Chapter 7: When Your Journey Ends: Pregnancy and Neonatal loss, abortion, TDMR
Chapter 8: Grief–Winding a New Path Forward: Infertility, Surrogacy, Navigating sex/intimacy
Chapter 9: Pregnancy After Loss: Chasing the Rainbow
Chapter 10: Postpartum–Wading into Unchartered Waters: the mind, the body, common ailments and how to address, community care for mothers-for the caregivers, practical self-care for mom
Chapter 11: Peri-menopause and menopause: removal of organs and how to care for them (hysterectomy), tending during this phase and what that may look like
Chapter 12: Grimoire–Use of Herbs for Womb Health
Acknowledgments