In this episode, hosts Ash and Dusty discuss the unique challenges faced by individuals with ADHD during pregnancy. Dusty shares her expertise in pregnancy coaching, highlighting the importance of understanding how ADHD can impact the pregnancy experience. The conversation touches on various topics, including the emotional and practical aspects of managing ADHD symptoms during pregnancy, the lack of research surrounding ADHD and pregnancy, and the recent developments in guidelines for medication use. Dusty emphasizes the necessity of community and support for neurodivergent parents, advocating for greater awareness and resources to empower them during this significant life transition.
The discussion also explores the realities of postpartum life, including the heightened risks for postpartum mood disorders among individuals with ADHD. Ash reflects on his experiences, expressing how knowing about his ADHD could have altered his pregnancy journey. They wrap up by highlighting the importance of preparation, flexibility, and finding a supportive network to navigate the complexities of parenting with ADHD, ultimately aiming for a positive parenting experience rooted in understanding and empowerment.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: . Hi, I’m Ash. [00:00:02] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:03] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. Quick reminder that I am offering two group coaching courses in the new year. Purpose explores exactly that question: Who am I, and what do I want to do with my life? Project X is about that thing that is important to you and only you, be it a personal project, a career milestone, or something else. Purpose begins Monday, January 13th. Project X begins Tuesday, January 14th. They both meet at 8:30pm Eastern time for eight weeks. For more information about each course and to apply, visit the website TranslatingADHD.com and click on the group coaching tab.So Dusty, our topic today is something I’m not sure I have a ton to say about, even though I have the lived experience, just because it’s been so long ago for me and B, I had no idea I had ADHD at the time. But listeners, we are talking about ADHD and pregnancy.
So Dusty, you have a lot more to say on this topic than I do. This is one of your areas of specialty. So where do you want to begin?
[00:01:12] Dusty: Well, it’s funny that you mentioned Project X because if you will recall, I actually joined that group coaching in the past, the Project X group coaching, to get my pregnancy journal off the ground and get it written and to manifest the pregnancy coaching that I do now. [00:01:28] Ash: That’s right. That’s right. That was your Project X at the time. And look at you now. [00:01:33] Dusty: Look at me now. It’s like a thing that I do some of the time, but it’s a thing. And since I’ve started and I work in conjunction with a midwife named Alex Bacon, who brings more of the medical perspective of this. But since we’ve started doing this work and doing talks on it, there’s been a huge uptick in people talking about perinatal ADHD in pregnancy.In 2024, just this year, they released the first guidelines on the usage of ADHD medication during pregnancy and breastfeeding that just happened this year. So look, I don’t want to say that like, I started all of this, but I think I maybe started all of it. And now it’s a thing that everyone’s doing, but y’all, I was there first.
[00:02:16] Ash: Nice. [00:02:16] Dusty: I’m very humble about it. [00:02:18] Ash: So, so humble. But this is really important because particularly when it comes to women and people assigned female at birth, we are very underserved when it comes to medical research. Certainly, when I was pregnant now, I didn’t know I had ADHD at the time, but it was, it’s really infuriating that there are.So many non-answers. Well, we don’t know. So just don’t, well, we don’t know. So just don’t take it. We don’t know. So just, you know, that seems to be the answer a lot with pregnancy. We don’t know what the effects are. So just don’t. So it’s nice to hear that there has been some progress there in the realm of ADHD and pregnancy.
[00:02:53] Dusty: Well, and I’m only half-joking because I was pregnant six years ago, and it was the same experience for me. Part of why I started doing this work is because I wasn’t able to find really any ADHD in pregnancy. There was like one YouTube video of one person being like, I’m going to document my Pregnancy because I have ADHD and it was just like one person’s personal vlog and there were like some articles that I found about The use of medication during pregnancy and basically as you said, you know, like we don’t really have clear data but probably don’t that was all that existed six years ago and it is like night and day now the amount of studies because you can go on like PubMed and you can see the number of studies based on like a keyword or a topic and the number of studies You happening surrounding ADHD and pregnancy have like more than tripled, just in the past couple of years.And so I’m only half-joking because I don’t actually think that is because of me. I think what’s happened is the new DSM has put out guidelines around like what autism looks like in women.
We’re starting to realize that there’s this connection between estrogen and dopamine. , we’re realizing that hormones Influence like what ADHD looks like for people who have cycles. So this is all happening at the same time. And of course, since we are expanding our understanding of the fact that like ADHD impacts people with hormonal cycles and with uterus is different.
We’re also seeing that big uptick in interest in our meds safe during pregnancy. How do you manage ADHD during pregnancy? And now that more and more women are getting diagnosed and they’re of childbearing age and people, right, child, not everybody having a baby is a woman, but you know, all the, all these people are coming of age where they are wanting to have children and they’re like, but what do I do about managing my ADHD?
Do will I have to go off meds? It’s a very scary possibility for some people. And, you know, even if the assumption is, yes, I will go off meds or maybe I don’t take meds. What does this mean for like how I function day to day during this, you know, nine months is not a short time, right?
[00:04:45] Ash: It’s not. And pregnancy has such an impact in so many ways. The one I thought of first, because I had a client going through this recently who has type one diabetes and was pregnant, is just the sheer number of things that you have to do in addition to your daily life; extra doctor’s appointments in this client’s case – many extra doctor’s appointments because it was a high-risk pregnancy – having to watch what you eat, having to be careful about certain things, not being able to treat routine issues/illness in the same way, which can really knock you down.I had the worst sinus infection of my life when I was pregnant, and they wouldn’t give me anything for it. I ended up in the urgent care. I didn’t know this could happen, by the way. I ended up in the urgent care with snot coming out of my tear ducts, out of my tear ducts, which by the way, yeah, it was pretty gnarly. My face was so puffy. And when that happened, I was like, yeah, I gotta do something about this.
So what would have been a routine thing that would have been easily dealt with otherwise, I couldn’t take the standard medication for that. And so I ended up with this really awful infection that knocked me down for like two weeks.
So there’s all of these impacts. And I think the only consistent thing as far as what’s happening to your body during pregnancy is change. So you’re also feeling different. Almost every single day, and there’s always something new.
[00:06:15] Dusty: Oh, yeah, and that’s not even to get started on, like, what happens after pregnancy. I mean, again, that could be a whole episode in its own, that transition, like, early parenthood. So, I try to do, like, pregnancy, postpartum, and, like, early parenting. There’s a lot of people out there who have great resources on, like, ADHD and parenting.But for me, I’m interested in that transition where You know, you go from just being your own person, minding your own business, and now all of a sudden you’ve got this, like, forevermore. You’re, like, responsible for this other human, keeping them alive, your body’s still changing and the human that you’re caring for is gonna change, like, every couple of months.
And so just, you know, there’s no such thing as routine. Getting your feet under you, like, coping through all of that. Again, we know that it’s hard on everyone, but especially for neurodivergent people, there’s these extra challenges. And so, I also think, yeah, like, just completely aside from the, you know, all the stuff you have to keep track of, there’s the piece around how we conceptualize of ourselves as pregnant people, because many people with ADHD are very binary thinkers.
So I see a lot of people getting very perfectionistic, having higher levels of anxiety because they’re worried about doing things wrong or worried about doing everything right. And we know that stress is not good for your developing fetus. So we need, you know, that’s part of the reason we need to take this seriously, right?
A person with ADHD is likelier to have more challenges and more stresses during pregnancy, which has a measurable impact on the fetus. But here’s what’s really interesting, Ash. We don’t know why, but we know that people with ADHD whether or not they’re on meds during pregnancy and whether or not they were even diagnosed with ADHD at the time of their pregnancy have a higher likelihood of certain birth outcomes such as neonatal resuscitation, NICU admission, C sections and preeclampsia, and low birth weight.
[00:07:57] Ash: That is really interesting. I had no idea that statistics existed, and we don’t know why. Geez, [00:08:03] Dusty: I don’t know why. Alex and I often we often theorize that it probably does have a lot to do with, like, unmanaged stress because we know that stress can lead to a lot of these outcomes as well. There could be other genetic factors, right? Like, we’re still very, we’re in the very early days of understanding all the ways that ADHD and autism are linked to our genes.Right? And it’s not. I think people really like to oversimplify this. Like, I’ve heard a lot of people being like, Oh, do you have that MTHFR gene? But, like, genes don’t work like that. It’s very complex. But, you know, we just don’t know how much of this is genetic and physiological and how much of it might be like, Okay, if you have ADHD, yeah, like, you’re having a higher stress and so that’s having different impacts on your body.
We just don’t know. But we also know that pregnant people with ADHD have a higher risk of postpartum depression, anxiety, and other postpartum mental health concerns. Again, whether they take meds or they don’t.
[00:08:52] Ash: Or whether they knew or didn’t know. I, it was six years before my ADHD diagnosis when I was pregnant with my child, and I had postpartum OCD, which I did not know existed. And for those of you unfamiliar with what OCD really is, most people think about OCD as the compulsions, right? The hand washing or whatever the compulsion is, but the compulsion comes from an intrusive thought that is anxiety-producing.It’s a thought of something that you don’t, you desperately don’t want to do. And the compulsion is warding it off. You get postpartum OCD. Those intrusive thoughts are all about harming your kid. I thought I was losing my mind. And nobody, everybody talked to me about postpartum depression. Everybody talked to me about postpartum depression.
They talked about it so much in the hospital. My OB asked about it. I had never heard of postpartum OCD and so I was scared to do anything. Anyway, that’s not what this episode is about, but that was certainly my experience and it was really harrowing. The first year of my child’s life was really tough.
I ended up going on an SSRI which did stop the intrusive thoughts, but also kind of emotionally flattened me out. And that was my first year.
And what you just said about anxiety really rings true for me. I said, before we hit record, I don’t know how much I’m going to have to say about this because my pregnancy was so long ago and I didn’t know anything about my ADHD at the time, but it’s coming back to me that perfectionism was definitely there.
When we brought my kid home, I was having trouble breastfeeding. I didn’t produce enough. So I was making myself crazy with that, like pumping all the time. Like it was just this insane cycle. And whenever the baby was down, I was always doing laundry or folding and making sure to fold up the little burp cloths and everything.
Oh, so perfectly. And I think that at least in part, it was that. just hyper-anxiety state that I was in that propelled me into postpartum OCD because it started there and then kind of took a turn.
[00:10:56] Dusty: Yeah, and it makes sense, right? Like if you have a lifetime of struggle and failure, and now the stakes are so high, right? Especially like if you’re the kind of person who wanted to be pregnant, you wanted a child, maybe this is something you’ve always wanted. The stakes are really high. You really want to get it right, and you’re really scared that you won’t.I think for me, there were two reasons that There were sort of two big things that compelled me to do this work beyond just like that, you know, when I was pregnant, that info wasn’t there and I was really interested in it. But what I think compelled me to want to do it is like two things for me, I had four pregnancies and only one birth and, you know, I’ve since learned that you know, fertility loss is a pretty normal part of pregnancy.
Pregnancy, it’s, you know, we don’t talk about it enough, but it is, it’s a normal part of being pregnant, but I had one mis miscarriage, and so a mis miscarriage is where you don’t, your body doesn’t know that the fetus has stopped developing, so you’ve essentially miscarried, but it, like, it just hasn’t happened yet, there’s like a delay, so you think you’re pregnant, but you don’t know that you’re not.
And so I had a miscarriage around eight weeks and I carried to ten weeks and I got a scan and found out that my baby didn’t have a heartbeat and I had to take some medication to induce, like, a miscarriage. What, two things happened in that pregnancy? One, I was like talking to somebody about how I was pregnant and I like kind of, I was trying to be funny and I slapped my belly really hard and then I was like, Ooh, that was kind of a hard slap.
I hope I didn’t like hurt anybody in there. And then another thing that happened is exactly as you say, I took a medication for something that I wasn’t supposed to take and it didn’t say, the medication didn’t say like, don’t take this in pregnancy, but it didn’t, I didn’t know if it was safe to take in pregnancy.
And I think I looked it up later and it was like advised against it. And so. After I miscarried, I always had this like haunting thought, like, did I do this? Was this my fault because I was careless? Because I did, because I forgot, right? And so I was never really able to put that like little fear to bed that like, you know, did my ADHD basically, you know, make me miscarry because I wasn’t careful enough.
So that was one thing, right? And that, you know, that’s a really upsetting thought to have. And then the other thing is that I was in a lot of, when I started just working as a coach, I was in a lot of Facebook groups for women with ADHD, And something I saw coming up consistently were people saying things like, I desperately want to be a parent, I want to have a child, but I don’t think I could cope without my meds, so I don’t think I can be pregnant.
Like, people actually saying they didn’t want to be pregnant because they couldn’t conceptualize of how they would feel. Function without meds people saying that, you know, they were really struggling in pregnancy because they didn’t have meds. And this one woman in particular, she had just had a baby and she had a child about my age.
So that was about two, two years old. So she had a toddler and she had a baby and she was struggling so much. She wanted to go on meds for her ADHD while breastfeeding. And this was in the United States. She was in the States. One doctor actually kicked her out of his office. for suggesting it, and a second doctor said that she would have to stop breastfeeding at eight months.
And I was in Canada, and I had been to the reproductive mental health team about this same issue, and they gave me short-acting Ritalin, and they said, yup, it’s fine, right, and just like, if you’re worried about it, you can time your feed, so like, feed, and then take the meds, but like, really, you don’t have to worry.
And so having had a totally different experience, I was absolutely infuriated about the fact that this woman was needing help, and doctors were treating her that way, And I kept hearing more and more of these stories about doctors telling people that they wouldn’t be able to take meds or they’d have to go off meds, but then some doctors telling other people, no, you, it’s okay, you can stay on your meds because there were no guidelines.
Right? And the reason there are no guidelines listeners is that up until quite recently, the majority of studies that we’ve had on the use of stimulants during pregnancy has often been looking at illicit Stimulants like cocaine or it the data the studies haven’t been done Well where they can’t like screen for like are people properly using ADHD meds and only ADHD meds You know because there are ethical guidelines around like testing on like pregnant people and stuff So we haven’t had good studies up to this point and so nobody really knew they knew what the data said When illicit substances were involved and so because of a lack of good studies, doctors were just like, like winging it right?
Some people were saying, yeah, stay on your meds or some people were saying go to a lower dosage. Some people were saying absolutely not. And the fact that there was no consensus was really infuriating to me because like that for the doctors who did leave their patients on the medication, they were like, well, the data actually doesn’t clearly show that there’s harm.
And we know that a lot of these studies look at illicit substance use, so you’re probably fine. And lo and behold, as of 2024, the new guidelines that have come out have essentially also, like, we know what we kind of, what I sort of knew all along, but like, we know now, for a fact, that there is no conclusive harm of taking ADHD medication.
There are, like, some heightened risks, but, like, you also have to weigh those against the risks of, like, Being unmedicated while pregnant one study talked about the risk of driving accidents with people with ADHD and the fact that we, you know, we have more high accidents, guys, I had two car accidents while pregnant.
Luckily, they neither were major. But like, I literally had two car accidents while pregnant. Right? I took a medication. I wasn’t supposed to take while pregnant. I did. There were and there are tons of other things like that. The day I went into labor, actually, I was baking something and the smoke alarm started going off and I, without even thinking, I jumped up on my kitchen table and started waving a rag at the fire alarm and luckily I didn’t fall, but shortly after giving birth, one of my mom’s cousins came over and she actually told me a story about it.
Someone in our family who climbed a ladder at nine months pregnant and fell and lost her infant and that thought went through my head I was like, oh my god, that could have been me because I remembered climbing up on that table total impulse control, right? So we do have heightened like risks and dangers associated with having ADHD when we’re Pregnant and our center of gravity is different and there’s all these things we’re not supposed to take And so you have to weigh that against the risk of like potential harm with meds Which we know now is very like low and like not really like a huge concern So what really compelled me to start doing this work was just anger and frustration that so many women Were being disempowered and that this wasn’t on anybody’s radar as far as like a health concern And so when I started working with Alex my colleague She’s a midwife.
What happened was we were actually in the same postpartum prenatal class together. Alex and I were in the same prenatal class together, and I asked her what she knew, if anything, about ADHD and pregnancy. And she was like, nobody’s said those two words in the same sentence to me before. And she said that once she started screening for neurodivergence in her midwifery practice, a lot of people started disclosing, but that nobody had ever self-disclosed neurodivergence as like, A health thing to be on the radar during pregnancy.
So one of the things we do now, you know, we give a lot of talk to birth workers and care providers, and we encourage all of them to screen for neurodivergence and to consider the impacts that neurodivergence might have on that pregnant person’s functioning, not just ADHD, but especially like, and I know this is a little outside of the scope of what we’re talking about, but like autism, right?
Sensory issues. How autistic people are perceived, the changes in routine that’s something that I’m still learning about as a birth worker myself and something I tend to defer to the autistic people who talk about this but wherever I can, I talk about what I do know. And, you know, there’s a huge impact for autism and autistic birthers as well.
So now just, even just screening for neurodivergence and considering that’s going to have an impact is like a revolutionary thing. And that’s really what I’m advocating for. And in six years, Ash, it is like crazy how far we’ve come. And I’m very glad, but yeah, I was really like, I just got into this work because I was like, Just so choked.
[00:18:17] Ash: I love that you got into this work and it’s so necessary. Again just sitting here talking about this has been so long since I’ve even thought about the pregnant period of my life 15 years ago. That was a long time ago, but I do wonder. How much of my experience might have been different if I did know that I had ADHD.If I did know that I was at higher risk for things like postpartum mood disorders. If I did know about ADHD and those perfectionist tendencies that I was falling into so, so hard. I mean, I was insane during my nesting period. My co-parent has pictures of me eight or nine months pregnant with power tools, putting together furniture in my kid’s room.
Everything had to be just so I was restless. I couldn’t stop. Everything had to be done. Everything had to be just so. And at the time I was like, Oh, I have so much energy. This is that third-trimester energy. Everybody talks about, no, it was just. Plain old anxiety that was fueling me and it was taking a toll, I am sure, on me and my kid.
[00:19:19] Dusty: Yeah, so, so part of the reason this matters is I think there’s a larger implication here, right? It’s not just like, oh, well, you know, Crappy nine months, that sucks, but whatever. Like, how we give birth and how we manage that, that early parenting does have an impact for things like bonding, attachment, parenting outcomes epigenetics, right?Like, again, we don’t know all the hard science on this stuff, but we know that, like, ADHD is genetic. I’ve heard, I don’t know if this has been scientifically validated, but I’ve certainly heard that, like, more people with ADHD have, like, anxious attachment. And there are theories that is a result of the way that we are parented by parents with ADHD who are, like, distracted and who are emotionally dysregulated themselves.
If you have higher stress during pregnancy, that can have some, like, and so I do think that, like, it’s not just about, like, oh, can we help this person have a less crappy pregnancy? I think how we start a parent with ADHD out on their parenting journey is Can make a huge difference in what that the outcomes for that child look like, right?
And I’m not trying to like, overstate the importance here, but like, everything is connected, right? So I think, you know, helping people have an empower pregnancy, understand themselves in pregnancy, manage stress and transition and start get off on the right foot, recognizing that, like, for them, their parenting journey isn’t about doing everything right.
And it’s also not just one more big failure that they’re going to have is hugely important and can have. A big ripple effect.
[00:20:46] Ash: Dusty, I’m honestly learning so much about your work here in this conversation, because even though you took project X to launch this I haven’t heard a lot of this before. So this is really fascinating. And now you have me curious, what does this client work look like? What does it look like to support your ADHD clients and having an empowered pregnancy a, Better transition into parenthood. [00:21:12] Dusty: Yeah, so I mean again, this is like such a huge topic and this is like makes up the bulk of my work. So for me, what I really try to focus on is helping that person with ADHD have a good pregnancy and a good labor, right? So meaning a pregnancy where they feel calm, comfortable, collected, organized A labor that’s not traumatic and a transition into parenting that helps them feel like empowered and confident as well.Right? So, just really kicking them off on the right foot. And I think there’s a lot that can be done there. And for me, it really boils down to kind of the same thing we do with ADHD coaching and kind of the same thing we do with ADHD in general, but running it through the lens of pregnancy and like.
Yeah. And just zipping it down to like just these nine months, right? Because again, like, there’s those common issues like perfectionism. Pregnancy is not the time to be like trying to improve yourself, or like make major changes to your life, right?
And I think that sometimes we do go way too big because You know, we just get enthusiastic about there’s this one change happening in our life, and maybe we start to pile on, right? But it’s also about managing impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. You know, pregnancy hormones, In general, for anyone can make people like really moody and really emotional and so with ADHD, when we combine that with emotional regulation and again, impulse control we have to like, help pregnant people make safe choices, make good choices, protect themselves from like, you know, rash behaviors and really upsetting, you know, fights with maybe people that they love, you know, when maybe they’re That’s not really how they feel, but they’re just like super like hormonally charged.
on emotional regulation techniques and also boundaries and like, self-soothing strategies is a big part of pregnancy coaching. That organization piece around like, what do you need to be ready for your baby? What’s maybe like, not necessary? Like, where are you getting too perfectionistic?
And how do we like, help you get all this done? Well still working if you’re working because a lot of pregnant people are gonna be working or maybe you already have a kid managing Your other kid, right? So so adding in those demands of pregnancy on top of your life already the act like you mentioned the extra appointments the things that you can and can’t eat managing illnesses without medication Getting your nursery ready like applying for mat leave whatever and you’re doing all of that on top of your regular life And maybe you’re doing it unmedicated to boot, right?
So there’s that and so strategy-wise wise there, I often am really putting a big focus on helping people prioritize as well as like ask for help, right? Learning to ask for help, learning where you can outsource learning like how to manage your energy when it’s fluctuating during pregnancy, and so more flexible planning I think is really important.
And then also like, that piece around labor. So if people have never had a child before Learning what labor is going to be like and going into it in like a neurodivergent friendly way. So one of the things I did ash after project access, I actually got certified as a doula so that I could have more of that pregnancy background to come at it from.
So when I’m coaching. Pregnant people it’s kind of a combination of ADHD coaching on a nine-month scale like a smaller scale mixed with prenatal class And so when we’re talking about stuff like chestfeeding or body feeding or we’re talking about labor, we’re talking about not just what people can expect but also what do you know about your ADHD?
That might impact this, right? How do you react in these types of situations? And what are some things we can put in place in advance that are going to be likely to help you? And so all of that pre planning, I find helps people go into their labor. Interestingly enough, one of the things that I do a little differently than other prenatal educators is I give people a lot of information.
I find that a lot of my clients with ADHD, because they are so ruminative and perfectionistic and anxious, Limiting information or not knowing what to expect provokes more anxiety. So often healthcare providers who work with you during labor, they don’t want to scare you. They don’t want you going on the Internet, looking up all the possible, like, terrible outcomes and like, knowing everything.
But for my pregnant clients, I’ll often talk about all the different possibilities of what might happen during labor so that when they go into it, they are already prepared for any outcome and they can be more flexible when they have all the data upfront.
[00:25:35] Ash: Dusty, I really love this notion of zipping it down to just this nine months because the only constant is change. And something that I tell pregnant people even now when they ask me, just anybody, right?Friends, family, clients, whoever, if they’re asking for my advice or my experience as a parent is That lived experience of having a child and then bringing that child home and the ways that’s going to change your life. There is no amount of reading or secondhand experience that is going to adequately describe that experience to you.
It’s just a lived experience. You have to have, you have to be there to really understand what it’s like when. My co-parent and I brought my daughter home. We brought her pumpkin seed in, we set it on the coffee table, and we just looked at each other like, now what? Now what? It’s a really wild time.
And one that you really can’t adequately prepare for too much in advance because you’re not going to really understand what it feels like to be there until you’re there. So narrowing this focus to let’s get Up to and through labor and delivery with his lowest stress and as high of organization as possible.
And then at this inflection point, at this transition, this major transition point, then let’s start to focus on looking forward and looking more towards the bigger picture and the rest of your life. What just, I’m really appreciating how, you know, thoughtful your approach is, and really, again, wonder how different my experience would have been if something like this would have been available to me when I was pregnant because there is nothing remotely like this.
Heck ADHD itself, ADHD awareness itself, circa 2010, was in a vastly different place than it is today.
[00:27:37] Dusty: Yeah, and it’s interesting because there’s sort of two, there’s sort of one of two outcomes that you get, and of course what motivated me to do this work was wanting to support those people who were in crisis and who are having a terrible time. But there’s no, you know, there’s no rule here that says that you’re going to have a crisis and going to have a terrible time.Some people go totally the opposite direction. Right? The rising estrogen that happens when you’re pregnant sometimes means that some pregnant people will experience like a kind of mental clarity that they’ve never had. They might have the opposite of baby brain, right? Some pregnant people with ADHD find that they actually feel the best they’ve ever felt.
And because we thrive on novelty, if you have like a fairly easy baby and you have a fairly uncomplicated birth, the novelty of that new situation and that infant can cause you to hyper-focus in a way where like, You’re doing great. You don’t even need any help, right? That was really the case for me.
Like, I did have an emergency C-section, but it was fairly straightforward. I healed well. My baby was very easy. Honestly, I had a great postpartum. And as you say, like, the problem is you can’t really prepare past the point of labor because you don’t know what your baby is going to be like. All babies are different.
So some people are going to be totally fine. And for those that aren’t, I do like what I do is so I do like a kind of pregnancy group coaching where I meet with people biweekly. It’s kind of like a rolling group. You can join it as needed. You can leave it when you’re done. And I’ll often follow up with people in the postpartum period.
And that’s where I think like we really have to get more into that individualized coaching. And where I really want to help clients focus on their strengths. Right? So when we come from a strengths-based approach, when it comes to those early days of parenting, it’s like, okay, well, what kinds of things did you, what kinds of ADHD strategies did you use to manage and organize information in other contexts?
Are any of those relevant here? What, where, you know, yeah, where do you have strengths that we can draw from? And how do we minimize the things that you find really challenging? So like for me, for example, I’m like, Okay. I’m not afraid to talk to people and like just go up to strangers and ask for crap.
But I am very bad at remembering things. So even right up until my daughter was like a year, I just could not remember to like restock the diaper bag and bring things with me. So , I constantly found myself out in public. But I would like, I would literally just like a cost someone with a stroller and be like, excuse me, like, do you have a diaper?
And I learned so much. Like, I learned that mall kiosks always have diapers, like the mall customer service kiosks. I once used a plastic bag as a diaper, right? Like, I used my ADHD sort of like creativity to help me manage through a chat, an area of challenge, which was like remembering to be prepared.
And so for clients in the postpartum period, a lot of it is that, but also like, I try to prepare people for what the first few days of parenting will be like in terms of like, okay, your baby’s, you know, it’s going to feed a different amount every couple of days as the stomach grows.
You know, you’re going to be expected to track, there’s a lot of tracking, you know, especially if you’re body feeding, tracking how many poops and pees, that’s how we know that baby is getting enough food. And if you’re not prepared for that as a person with ADHD, like I wasn’t, it can be really overwhelming.
Even though we don’t know what the infant is going to be like, we can kind of prepare for like, Okay, you’re probably going to be underslept. You’re probably, you’re going to need to feed yourself. You’re going to need to be tracking all of this information. What has worked for you in other areas of your life to like, Track data.
Is it a sticker chart? Is it something on the wall? Is it an app on your phone? Do you do best when you ask your partner for help? Do you know that your partner is going to be more stressed out than you and they’re not the person to ask for help? What have you done at other times in your life when feeding yourself has been really challenging?
Right? So all of this information becomes relevant when we put it in the context of what you’re likely to struggle with. And I find that largely And, you know, maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I, or maybe I’m just really good at my job but I find that largely my clients, when they go into the postpartum period, they’re often telling me that it’s not as bad as they thought it was going to be, and that they’re feeling more prepared than they thought they would, and it’s often actually easier.
And I like to hope that’s because we put so much effort into helping them be ready. Because again, I think that can make a difference on those postpartum mental health outcomes, right? Yeah, so like, it’s a little of both. I think you, I think there are some things you can do in advance.
To globally prepare, but then there’s that piece that’s hard for people with ADHD. We’re like, we just don’t know how it’s gonna be We can’t know in advance and no matter how it is with your infant It’s gonna be continually changing which requires of us a level of flexibility that often We’ve never had to have before
[00:31:58] Ash: Yeah, that flexibility was tough for me, and I had a pretty easy kid too. But even with an easy kid, feeding schedules, change nap schedules, change things come up in a child that of that age can’t tell you if they’re not feeling well, they can’t tell you what’s wrong, what hurts. So you have to figure out as a parent, dude, is this just routine illness?Do we need to go to the doctor? I feel like that first year, the only constant is, and that was really tough for me and my co parent who is also neurodivergent. I do believe I’ve called him neurotypical on this podcast before. He took great offense to that. He does not have ADHD, but he is in fact quite neurodivergent.
And the offense was mostly a joke. That was particularly tough for my co parent who really does thrive on routine, who lives a pretty regimented and routine life in a lot of ways. That constant change was tough on both of us and tough on both of us. differently and again, not something that I was thinking about in advance, not something that I was prepared for in the way that you prepare your clients.
So I know you said that you would like to hope that it’s the work that you do with your clients. I can absolutely say it’s the work that you’ve done with your clients. This is brilliant work that you are doing. And I’m so glad that we did this episode today, Dusty, because I have enjoyed getting to hear a lot more about this work and what it looks like.
This is so cool. Dusty, any parting thoughts for us before we wrap up today’s episode?
[00:33:26] Dusty: Well, I’ll just say, like, if you are pregnant or planning on being pregnant, and this is interesting to you on my website, there is a pregnancy journal. We’re just about to release our postpartum journal. Right now it’s just digital, so you can download it and fill it out as a digital file, or you can print it.But there is also a pregnancy notion template. So we took the journal, we turned it into a notion for techie friends. And in 2025, we do plan to release, like, a print one. And then I also have the, I have the drop in coaching the Pregnancy coaching of people feel like they need more support. I’m doing what I can to be able to give people the level of support that they need.
But I think just like knowing that like ADHD can and really does have an impact on your pregnancy and early parenting experience. And that there’s more resources now more than ever to understand what that might be like and to prepare. Think the biggest parting thought for me is just that, like, being a parent with neurodivergence does mean that you’re going to have a different experience. And I know we probably talked about this in the parenting episode, but even in the early days, even when you just have a baby, right, it’s so important to have community with other neurodivergent people, other people with ADHD or other autistic people, so that you can have an experience where you’re being understood and your experiences are being validated, because there are going to be some fundamental differences there, and it You know, we, like, it’s so hard to be a parent.
You’re always judging yourself. And people with ADHD are judging themselves right out of the gate on how they’re taking care of their newborns and their babies. And they’re already, like, stacking the deck against themselves, saying that they’re getting it wrong. So, like, you need to know that other people are doing it the same way you’re doing it.
You need to know that other people are having the same challenges that you’re having. And you need to find a framework to see yourself positively and see yourself succeeding as a parent both in that early postpartum period and from there onward, you know?
[00:35:12] Ash: . Love all of that, Dusty. And listeners, we will post a link to Dusty’s website and these resources in the show notes so that you can easily find those. So until next week, I’m Ash. [00:35:23] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:35:24] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
