Finding a Peat friendly Midwife?

[j2mugs]

Hi all,
After nearly 6 years of peating my wife is pregnant! She struggled since her teens with having consistent cycles and now at 37 she has been carrying the baby for 10 weeks. We are so grateful for the healing that has taken place due in part to the advice of this forum - so thank you!

She did become pregnant in 2017, but it was shortly after her periods started to regulate (only three consecutive periods). She lost the baby at 8 weeks. We had a bad experience with her OB/GYN freaking out becuase her TSH was 0. She blammed the miscarriage on her "hypO-thyroidism" (shaking my head as I write it out). So we decided to pursue a home birth this time and began interviewing midwives. Our best referral just turned us down because I told her kindly up front we probably wouldn't follow any of her nutritional advice and explained how changing our diet made it even possible to get pregnant. We definitely weren't going to change midstream. Once she "researched" Ray Peat she said it was too crazy and she couldn't go along with it. So she dumped us.

Now we're struggling to figure out what to do. We want to be honest with the midwife up front because we don't want the relationship to become adversarial along the way. But at the same time it's nearly impossible to try to explain eclampsia or gestational diabetes in differen terms.

I'm sure someone else has come up against this. Any advice on how to select a midwife while walking this road? Trying to get any form of "traditional medical care" is such a pain, the dogma is real.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Peachy]

Aw, congratulations! You just need to find a practitioner that will let you follow your own rules on the big stuff. Even my very mainstream OB was ok with my alternate plan for strep b, not washing/vaxxing the baby, etc. - because it's all evidence based. But he said that particular hospital would treat us as toxic so I switched to a midwife in a hospital that was much more used to people like me :) I wouldn't share nutrition or lifestyle choices with the midwife at all. No need.

 

[dogtrainer]

What is your wife doing that’s so crazy? Eating lots of fruit?

 

[noordinary]

@j2mugs it's the most amazing thing, congratulations!
try VIrtual Prenatals if you feel comfortable, and see where it'll bring you. I've used their virtual prenatal because ended up in lockdown in Europe, they helped me find a midwife from UK

However it's not you, it's the mother who should choose where and with whom she feels safe, and safe means different to everyone. DM me if you want more details.

PS: my 1.5 yo wears size 3 yo hat wink wink

 

[j2mugs]

What is your wife doing that’s so crazy? Eating lots of fruit?

Haha, yes basically. She said that was too much sugar. She is worried about gestational diabetes...

@Peachy - thanks for your thoughts. Most of the midwives we talked to are SUPER nutrition focused. Maybe it's different in our area but the prenatal part seemed unusually overreaching to me (but this is all new to us), that's the only reason I even brought it up. Maybe we just need to look harder to find a "baby catcher" midwife, or maybe just nod to the nutrition advice and ignore it.

@noordinary - thanks for passing along this resource - we'll check it out for sure!

 

[JamieP]

Congratulations! Very important that your wife avoid folic acid (which is synthetic folate) which will be in any prenatal vitamins, just in case she has the MTHFR gene mutation. There is a very strong correlation between MTHFR, folic acid, and miscarriage. Methylfolate is the active form and preferred. Folic acid is in all fortified flours (not Peaty but cravings ) so read all ingredient list. Best wishes to you both!