Bentley Pojo Doula Services, Fort Collins, CO (2025)

03/31/2025

my postpartum recipe guide is finally here!!

I’ve put together a guide with 6 of my favorite dishes and treats created with postpartum healing and recovery in mind. You also don’t have to be freshly postpartum to enjoy them, they’re delicious and nutritious for the whole family.

The guide also includes information about principles of postpartum eating to optimize recovery in those initial weeks after birth.

I’ve put so much love and thought into this guide and am so excited to share it with you all! I have it on sale until Friday and each purchase supports my little family, so thank you in advance!

If you comment RECIPES I’ll DM you a link to my website to check it out! 🤍

03/12/2025

Birth story part 7:
That last check was at 7:16am on 12/3.
I think we all felt discouraged. Tired. Uncertain.
But I kept going.
I changed positions again, trying to bring him lower. It hurt! Another anesthesiologist came in to see if they could offer some pain relief and she was so kind. Still wasn’t able to get pain relief though.
All of a sudden I felt intense re**al presssure. I kept screaming that my butt hole hurt lol. And then I felt his head enter my birth canal. I was breathing as much as I could and told them he was definitely coming. Midwife came in at 8:11 and I was 6cm/90%/0 station. Yay, progress!!!
I was laying on my side and Jen was supporting my top leg.
At 8:51am I was 10cm.
I pushed and felt his head maneuver my pelvis. What a wild sensation!! I remember thinking, “it’s happening!!!” All the stress and fear of the last 30+ hours started to melt away.
I reached down and felt the top of his head and kept pushing.
At 9:16am on 12/3, Camden was born 🤍
He had a really tight nuchal cord (around his neck). So right that the midwife had to somersault him out (to get the cord off his neck).
I brought him to my chest and felt immediate joy and relief and love. My son! We did it.
📷

03/12/2025

Birth story part 6:
I promise it’ll end soon lol
We got to the hospital and I asked for the tub. My plan was to get in the tub and try cytotec. My whole birth team was exhausted, understandably lol. My midwife had been with me for about 30 hours. Brady has also been awake this whole time. I told them to sleep and I kept laboring and Beka stayed awake to support me. Contractions were about 5-6 mins apart and the cytotec wasn’t doing much.
A fee hours later, I decided to get an epidural so I could sleep. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. I thought rest might help things progress. I also decided that if I was going to get an epidural, I wanted pitocin to get things moving.
Placing the epidural went smoothly, but pretty quickly afterwards I started to feel a little off. I was lightheaded and really out of it, but I thought it was just from the exhaustion. I swear 5 different anesthesiologists came in and they kept putting medications in my IV. My blood pressure was getting too low. At one point they told me I was “bottoming out.” My blood pressure got to 82/42.
They had to turn my epidural off.
They said likely due to how depleted I was, and not having enough fluids, my body couldn’t handle the epidural.
So they turned it off, and I started to feel the contractions again. At first, it wasn’t that bad. I was able to get up and walk to the toilet and p*e and labor there for a while.
And then I regained feeling and wow it hurt!!! I remember screaming out in pain, begging for them to give me the epidural back. I sat in the thrown position on the bed and suddenly felt the urge to bear down again. My body was pushing and I got really excited! The midwife came in to check me. 4cm/90%/0 station.
Defeat.
Still only 4cm??
📷

03/12/2025

Birth story part 6:
Another night was upon us and the contractions were picking up. But then they would space out. Every 2-3 minutes, then every 5-7 minutes. I would feel myself inching closer to active labor mentally, the get yanked out of it as my contractions spaced out again. Physically and mentally, it was so exhausting!
I can honestly say we tried everything. Exhausted all of our options.
Then we were inching closer to midnight, 42 weeks and I was tired.
I made the call to transfer to get more tools to help induce. In this moment, I honestly felt really at peace and confident in this decision and the drive to the hospital was peaceful, other than the contractions lol.
📷

03/12/2025

Birth story part 4:
We decided to kind of reset at this point. I had been up all night laboring and I was exhausted and hadn’t even technically hit active labor yet (around 5-6cm). My contractions had also pretty much stopped. The castor oil didn’t work.
I decided to get some sleep. The whole team left, other than Jen (my midwife). Tyler took Raury so I could have some uninterrupted sleep. I slept from 6:30am-10am and when I woke up I was so sad. The night before felt like a dream honestly, like it didn’t even happen. Still pregnant. 41+6.
I went downstairs and Jen was sleeping on the couch. I remember feeling so grateful that was still there. It meant things would pick up, it was going to happen. I ate some food and hydrated. I tried to rest a bit more but I was pretty anxious to get things going again. I started pumping again, and then Brady and I went for a walk. At this point I was having contractions again, every 6-8 minutes or so. But they weren’t picking up. I continued with herbs and pumping—I got so much colostrum over these few days haha.
At 2:30pm, we had an acupuncturist come to the house to do cupping and e-stim acupuncture. It was really relaxing but it did nothing for my contractions.
I was trying to remain hopeful but also getting really sad and scared honestly. Why wasn’t my body working?
My midwife checked me again at 3pm. 2cm.
This is when we started having conversations about transferring for medical induction. Beka came back and so did Raury, I thought seeing her might give me some oxytocin, and it did! Beka brought in some fresh energy and encouraged me to keep trying at home. Baby was doing well and we weren’t in a rush. So we decided to exhaust every possible option at home before transferring.
We had a dance party! This was so much fun. Brady, Tyler, Beka, Raury, Jen, me, and baby. We danced and laughed and I had some intense contractions in between. The oxytocin was flowing!! I kept pumping and taking the herbs, doing all the positions. Eventually Tyler took Raury to her house so I could keep laboring.
📷

03/12/2025

Birth story part 3:
I got in the tub, so excited that things were seemingly processing so smoothly! But as soon as I got in the water, my contractions stopped. Remember feeling really worried. I looked at Beka and my midwife and was like “they stopped.” My midwife helped me calm down and told me to take this rest. So I did, and it felt so nice! We all rested a bit and we all needed it. I’d been going on about 12 hours of laboring, pumping, herbs, positioning, mental work.
Then the contractions came back, and with a force! They felt different with my water being broken and I felt some pressure.
From the outside, my birth team thought I was in transition. I was struggling and having a really big emotional release along with feeling the urge to bear down a bit. It was really intense and emotional there for a bit. I reached down to see if I could feeel my baby but he still felt really high in my pelvis. And mentally, I still didn’t really feel like I was in active labor. It was incredibly confusing. Raury woke up around 5am and she got to see my laboring in the tub. For those few moments they I thought this was the end, it was so beautiful. But then contractions spaced out and stopped again and I decided to get a cervical check to see if he was lower and what progress we had made.
I was 2cm, could stretch to a 4. He had finally engaged in my pelvis, but this wasn’t the news we wanted. The whole energy of the room shifted, none of us expected this. We still had a long way to go.
These photos are kind of hard for me to look at. I wanted this to be the end of my labor. The picture perfect water birth with my daughter, sister, and husband present.
📷

03/12/2025

Birth story part 2:
At that appointment I told my midwife I was nervous. She was reassuring that sometimes babies just need a little nudge. I said “I’m scared the castor oil won’t work.” She assured me it would—she had just had two successful natural inductions the previous month.

So at 2pm on 12/1 I drank the castor oil. The thought is that castor oil causes bowel contractions which oftentimes stimulate uterine contractions. So with tin a few hours of drinking the drink, you’re likely to have GI upset along with son cramping and contractions. When I drank it, I felt pretty icky and nauseous immediately, but then I felt fine. No cramping and no contractions. My midwife decided to come over around 4pm so we could start pumping and an herbal protocol to try to induce labor. I pumped for 10 mins every hour and took herbs as she dosed them. From here, that night is kind of blurry. Contractions started and they were pretty intense. I was also doing lift and tucks with contractions, a move to try to get baby to engage in my pelvis. I started to get into a bit of a flow but my contractions were inconsistent and not in an active labor pattern. Around 10pm I took a second dose of castor oil. This one definitely hurt my stomach! I threw up and went to the bathroom a few times lol. But I was also having bloody show and feeling some pressure, good signs!! My midwife seemed to think things were progressing, as she called (my amazing doula and photographer), my sister to be with Raury, and the assistant midwife. She also got all of the supplies out and set up the tub.
I wasn’t totally mentally present, as I was exhausted. But I was just surrendering to the contractions. But I could tell I wasn’t really in active labor, but I didn’t tell anyone that. I was second guessing myself, because maybe things felt different with castor oil. It felt like it was game time now that the whole team was coming, but my intuition told me we weren’t quite there.
But then at 2:23am after laboring on the toilet, my water broke! It was a huge pop, and gush. Clear fluid (a rarity at 41+6).
📷:

03/12/2025

Birth story part 1:
I’m going to start before labor started, because for me the mental work of labor started in those final days. Raury was born at 41+3, so I was expecting to go over. But there was still something so challenging and almost agonizing about going past. I was exhausted, uncomfortable, and I just felt so ready and at peace with meeting my baby. I was also very eager to labor. I had a really challenging birth experience with Raury and I was so excited for this one to feel redemptive. I had spent 2.5 years preparing for a second chance, I just needed the process to start.
I decided to get acupuncture at 40+5 to see if that could get things going. I was having zero signs of labor and baby was still super high in my pelvis. I was walking and stretching every day to encourage him to come lower, but he was chillin. The acupuncturist said she felt my body was just on the brink of labor and that she expected I would be in labor within 48 hours (spoiler: I was not).
At 41+4 I was officially frustrated. I’d passed the gestation Raury was born at (and labor with her started at 41). Everyone says your second *usually* comes earlier but that clearly wasn’t the case for me. I was doing my best to trust his timing.
I decided I would get a membrane sweep. My midwife checked me and I was 1cm/ 50% effaced. She attempted to do a sweep but my baby was super high, my membranes were soft, and my cervix was posterior. Due to all of these things, she was unable to sweep.
So I decided to go home and pump, walk, get oxytocin flowing with Brady, rest, and come back tomorrow.
I remember waking up at 41+5 and feeling nervous and sad that nothing was happening. Still pregnant.
In the state of Colorado you must be in active labor by 42 weeks to have a home birth, so I was also starting to feel the pressure of the clock.
I went back to my midwife’s office and we did a non stress test. Baby looked great, which was reassuring! We decided to do a membrane sweep and then I would take castor oil that afternoon if the sweep wasn’t causing contractions. I was 2cm/60% effaced, but baby was still not engaged in my pelvis. Nonetheless, I was feeling excited!

03/11/2025

milk on tap ✨

02/24/2025

One of the best things you can do for yourself postpartum is focus on nourishment! Your body and your hormones are undergoing immense changes and with that can come a lot of depletion.

I would also add vitamin D and a lot of quality hydration to this list.

02/20/2025

I am very over winter right now and looking forward to sunshine and days where we are all healthy. But these things have made me smile lately:
+ sledding fun with my girl
+ juicing is about to become my whole personality
+ homemade bread and marshmallows
+ new running shoes and moving my body
+ alllll the contact naps with my boy

02/03/2025

simple dal recipe

this has been a postpartum staple for me! easy, delicious, warming, and full of healthy fats and protein.

ingredients:
1/4 cup butter or ghee
1 tbsp fresh grated ginger
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1 teaspoon coriander
2 tbsp dried shredded coconut, unsweetened
1 cup dried red lentils
1 cup full fat coconut milk
3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
Lemon juice
Cilantro, fresh

Directions:
1. In a large part, melt the butter. Once it’s melted, add ginger, garlic, cumin, yellow mustard seed, coriander, and coconut. Stir and cook for about 3 minutes.
2. Add lentils, water, coconut milk, salt, pepper, and turmeric and stir. Cover and bring it to a simmer. Simmer for about 40 minutes. Lentils should be soft and buttery!
3. Add lemon juice and cilantro and cook for 3-5 more minutes.

It tastes great on its own or with rice or quinoa. You can also add any veggies that sound good! This makes about 4 servings. Great to eat fresh or store in the fridge or freezer!

Bentley Pojo Doula Services

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