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Eating placenta is a postpartum tradition in many cultures around the world. A young woman’s first period is celebrated with ritual. Postpartum healing is supported by the community. What time-tested traditions related to all of the above are we overlooking in our modern age? How can we embrace them once again?
Eyla Cuenca is a childbirth educator and doula with over a decade of experience supporting women through the transformational threshold of birth and postpartum. Today, she sheds light on how women were supported traditionally through childbirth and postpartum. She gets specific about how to avoid interventions during labor, how to celebrate our daughters’ maturation process, and how to approach a vaginal birth after a cesarean. She brings us back to the body’s innate intelligence, our personal sovereignty, and deepest inner knowing.
Visit Eyla’s websites: uncoveringbirth.com and eylacuenca.com
Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation at westonaprice.org
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Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda
What time-tested traditions related to labor, delivery, and postpartum have we forgotten or overlooked? This is episode 563, and our guest is Eyla Cuenca. Eyla is a childbirth educator and doula. In this episode, she covers the gamut as we discuss how women were traditionally supported through the maturation process, childbirth, and postpartum.
She gets specific about how to avoid interventions during labor, for example, how to celebrate our daughter’s first period, why eating placenta is a time-tested tradition, and how to approach a vaginal birth after a cesarean. Before we get into the conversation, I want to tell you about Hearth & Homestead.
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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Eyla.
Thank you for having me.
Real-Life Stories Of Mothers And Childbirth
Let us start with the story of a woman who came to you because she had a cesarean with her first child, and she did not want to have that experience again. Often, aren’t women told that to have a vaginal birth after a cesarean is not likely?
They are very often told it is not likely. One of the main reasons is that the way we used to do C-sections, we would do a vertical incision along the uterus. When a woman goes into labor naturally, because of the way the uterus is, she runs the risk of that scar opening again and causing a lot of risk for the woman. Now we have changed the way that we do C-sections, and we have a lower abdomen incision that is side to side, which is horizontal. We run less risk. However, it is still not ideal for many providers because they do not want that spontaneous labor to cause any issues with the scar tissue or the former wound site.
How common is that, by the way, for issues to arise?
In my world, it’s not very common. I have never worked with a woman who has done a VBAC without any issues. I know that it used to happen a lot more, where women’s incisions would open. There are also other factors like nutrition, diet, and movement that can make birth easier. In combination with that, we see lower numbers of instances where women have negative experiences attempting a VBAC.
Tell us this particular woman’s story.
In the case of this woman, she had had a C-section in her early twenties, and it was very traumatic. She intended for a natural birth experience. I will not go into too many details here, but things took a turn, and she ended up with a C-section and sustained what she described as many months of postpartum depression and difficulty breastfeeding. She felt that it was all connected.
She was recovering from surgery. She did not have the energy, the wherewithal to breastfeed, felt low and depressed, depleted as far as her nutrition went. It was a traumatic event for her. It took her a long time to make peace with it. She wanted to have another baby, but was too frightened that it would happen again.
She came to me wanting birth education and wanting a doula. I offer birth education and also a doula, and I also do birth trauma processing. We worked together throughout the pregnancy to basically dispel a lot of the myths that she was holding about birth in general, and then also do a lot of movement, redirect nutrition, and work with her partner to be her core support person so that she could attempt her VBAC or vaginal birth after cesarean.
Her doctor was not on board. He did not want to do it. She went around to four different OBs, was shopping around, and started feeling the stress of, “Who is going to support me?” Eventually, she did find an obstetrician who would and was like, “I am here to collaborate with you, and we have been preparing, and I am all for this.” We went on to have an incredible birth experience.
Her whole family, her husband, and the other baby were there. He was not a baby anymore. He was already eight by this point, but he came, and he was there, and she got what I call the redemptive experience that she wanted. It was deeply emotional for me because I know where she started, and I witnessed her arc. I was there as a support and as a guide. It was her doing all that work of disburdening herself from the beliefs and what she was being told by many people.
I would not say she went against medical advice. She was actually looking for someone to collaborate with her and meet her where she wanted to be. If it had been dangerous, someone would have said it. They kept saying, “No, it is not likely it will be successful,” which is not hard evidence that she cannot do it. It is more like, “We do not want to do it. We do not want to collaborate.”
This birth experience, the second one that you said was redemptive, actually took place in a hospital, right?
Yeah. She made switches to four different doctors who were associated with different hospitals before she found this one. It is not like I am saying any doctor is going to say yes, but it is about having that wherewithal to find the doctor to get the second opinion. They were not saying, “No, it is dangerous for these concrete reasons.”
They were like, “Do not attempt it, make it easy. You already know what a C-section is like. It is not a big deal.” They were sweeping it under the rug. I do not know that they understood how important it was to her until she met that last doctor who said, “I can see how important this is for you.” There was an emotional connection that was made between her and the practitioner that I think is missing in a lot of dynamics when it comes to birth between women and their care providers.
It seems to me that a lot of physicians are concerned about departing from the standard of care. If the standard of care is that there is a low success rate for vaginal birth after cesarean, then we are going to stick with what is recommended generally, because if they depart from it, then they would be liable. I would imagine that is going through their head too.
It’s not only what they have to consider as far as their license goes. It is also the hospital protocol. It is also the management of the nurses. It is like getting a bunch of different entities on board. I know that with this doctor specifically, he was there for most of the labor, which is also not common. He was invested. That makes a difference when the medical and support team is invested in the same outcome as the woman.
When a medical team is invested in the same outcome as the pregnant woman, it makes all the difference in childbirth.
Generally speaking, everybody wants a healthy baby and a healthy mother, of course. That is the standard. Everybody wants that. He went a few extra steps in making sure that she was held and supported, which is not super common when it comes to the conventional system, simply because there is a high volume of women, and the ratio is a little off.
Dispelling Myths Around Labor And Delivery
Let us talk a little bit about the myths that need to be dispelled for women who either want to have a VBAC or want to have a more natural or harmonious labor and delivery.
If you have had a VBAC and you want to attempt a vaginal birth, and you are even saying, “I do not want a high-intervention birth,” it is totally possible. We have to analyze the differences. What did I do then versus what I am capable of doing now? Maybe then I did not have the awareness that the medical provider and our relationship were so important. The harmony between us and the collaboration between us is actually so key for this to be successful.
How did I prepare my body? Hilda, you and I talked about this. It is like, “What type of daily movement am I doing to support the birthing process throughout the pregnancy?” Not just a yoga class here and there, but am I actually priming the body for the marathon of labor? How do we fill those nutrient stores so that during that marathon of birth, I have what I need, I have the energy, and I am going to have an easy postpartum because I am completely nourished?
There is a component of birth education. You do not know what you do not know. If you did not take a comprehensive class that first time and you ended up with a C-section, this is an opportunity to say, “It is like I am doing this for the first time, and what would I do?” I would learn more about the physiological process, not just what I see on social media or in movies. How does this work? What is my body doing, and what are the signals? Also, a little bit deeper understanding of interventions. We do have a high C-section rate in the United States, and it has already been analyzed. The majority of the C-sections are caused by other interventions.
What do I mean by that?
There is a classic example. For a woman whose baby is measuring a little big in an ultrasound, the doctor might suggest an induction earlier than her due date. Inductions tend to cause stress on the baby. It is a synthetic form of oxytocin, it is called Pitocin. It is the most common drug that is given. They might do something like Cervidil to soften the cervix and see if they can coax the baby out. It does cause a level of stress to the baby, which can raise a red flag in labor. If the baby sustains a high heart rate or a deceleration in the heart rate, they might call a C-section.
In this scenario, you can see how there was not actually something inherently wrong requiring the C-section, where maybe the baby was transverse lying, feet and head parallel to the ground, or it was a breech, or there was another scenario that required the surgery. This is something that had she not been induced, it is very possible that she would have been able to have a vaginal birth. This is what I mean when I say that we have seen over the last three decades that many of these C-sections that happen unplanned are often caused by other interventions.
Inductions are also sometimes planned depending on the family schedule or the doctor’s schedule. The doctor is like, “I am going on vacation next week. Why do we not do this sooner?” That way, everything seems neat and tidy. You are saying that a simple decision can lead to a cascade of interventions that the mom might not have wanted in the first place.
I got into this conversation with a group of women recently. They said, “What if you go past the due date?” I said, “If it is a first-time mother, it is very common that the average first-time mother will go anywhere between 7 to 10 days after her declared due date.” We have to consider that. There are ways to check the health of the baby and the status of the pregnancy. We can listen with a Doppler. We can listen with a stethoscope.
She can get an external exam on the abdomen to see the positioning. If the baby is vigorous and has a heart tone, we do not have to jump to conclusions. Sometimes a doctor will say, “It is your due date today, it is Tuesday. If you do not go into labor by Friday, I want you in here.” There is not a big window of flexibility when it comes to going past the due date. The doctor says there are a lot of risks that can happen. It is possible we are getting into the 10-day, 14-day past the due date mark.
Yes, risks do increase with the placenta and things like that, but we are seeing that even before a due date, a doctor is saying, “Baby is looking a little big. We might want to get them out in case.” We do not explain to women the risks associated with the induction because it does not go without risks. Like with anything, the food we consume or the beauty products we consume, we have to be informed about potential risks with the ingredients or with the procedures.
Is there anything else besides an unwanted C-section that could become a complication from an induction?
With an induction, it is possible. I have actually seen it happen myself, where a woman can sustain a uterine rupture. Her body does not respond well to the Pitocin, or it is too much, too soon. The dosage is too high. Because it is happening on any given day, her body is not hormonally primed for the intensity of the contractions. What can happen to the muscle, the uterus, is that it can tear. We deal with issues like amniotic embolism, where the blood of that tear can mix into the amniotic fluid and the baby can ingest it.
Now we are crossing blood between the mother and the baby. As the labor progresses, the tear can get bigger and bigger. That would be a cause for an immediate C-section. Sometimes with Pitocin, it is possible for the placenta to detach prematurely because the body is not primed hormonally. It is a little bit too rough. What happens when a placenta detaches? The baby’s oxygen supply is cut off, and we have minutes to get the baby out.
Avoiding Fear-Based Motivation For Expecting Mothers
These are important risks for people to be aware of. I think there are also risks for going beyond the due date, which I guess is what the doctor is advocating. How can we avoid this fear-based motivation? As moms, especially as expecting moms, there are so many concerns. We want nothing more than to protect our baby and have it come out healthy and fine. How can we avoid the fear from either side? What I mean by that is natural versus conventional labor and delivery.
Of course, there is no right way to do this. I would say the best way to do it is in a way that feels authentic and aligned with the woman’s desires while also honoring that whoever she is working with also has their own needs. A doctor or midwife has a license to protect. They also have an oath that they took.
They also have certain intentions and ways that they have to work. If a woman is like, “I do not want this. No to this,” that goes down the list, then it is not a good idea to work with that provider and put them in that position. In the same way that a provider is saying no to everything that the woman needs, it might not be a good match. First and foremost, work with a doctor or a midwife who is collaborative rather than authoritative in that sense.
Pregnant women must work with a doctor and a midwife who are collaborative, not authoritative.
Power with instead of power over. What that looks like is, “We are past the due date. What does it mean for me to come in maybe every day and listen to the baby and take my blood pressure and let us do this for the next five days while also inviting in some natural induction techniques?” That is collaborative care. Rather than “I will drop you if you do not come in on Monday for the induction.” It is a little bit jarring.
Treating Due Dates As Estimates, Not Absolutes
I like that this is your number one step. It is to find someone you can work with and not someone who wants to have power over you. I wanted to ask you for a second about the due date thing, which you touched on earlier. The due date is an estimate. As moms, we hold on to it like, “My baby is supposed to come on this day.” That is our best guess, looking at the size of the baby in utero, etc., from the different ways in which we can measure that. It is not like an absolute in any way, shape, or form, but do we not treat it like that?
We do. We hold on to it. That holding on tightly is also supported by the fact that you are going to get the ultrasound, and they say, “Baby is measuring like this, we hope that they come out on time, otherwise they are going to get too big.” Something that seems like an innocuous comment can do a lot. It can do a number on the mother’s mind.
This is why we have to be so conscious about what we are taking in and digesting as women during pregnancy, not only food and information, but also conversations. Being selective and all it takes is that ultrasound tech to say one thing, and now the woman is like, “Will my baby be too big? Will it?” Just know that people will say things. Take it with a grain of salt or be judicious about how you are assimilating it.
I am thankful. With my first, I was so big. I am a petite person. I must have gained like 35 or 40 pounds, and I was not on the Wise Traditions protocol at that time. I went in, and I did have the baby naturally. We had a doula with us, so I had her vaginally, no interventions. It was amazing. It was everything I wanted.
The doctor told me afterwards, “I was looking at you and thinking, C-section.” Here she was judicious, actually. She did not say that to me because that might have freaked me out. I am a small person. Am I capable of delivering a baby who is 9 pounds and 15 ounces? I was. If she had mentioned that, that might have freaked me out and led to a different outcome.
Thankfully, she kept a close eye as is her role, and did not say it. As you said, it can throw you into a tailspin.
Why Pregnant Women Must Keep Moving
I have a friend who gave birth to her second child at home. That was the choice she had made. It was not an accident. It was in a little tub of some sort. She said that the labor with the second child was markedly different from the first. I guess she had some complications with the first. Part of her secret, and what she thinks is the reason that the labor was so easy, was that she was walking so much more in preparation for delivery. What do you think of that?
One of our prescriptions at Uncovering Birth is walking every day, 30 minutes, twice a day minimum. It is not about little spurts. It is more like, “Can I hold this to build the endurance?” Also, get the heart rate up, and then also do this movement that alternates the pelvis. Walking on uneven ground barefoot is one of the best ways to prepare the body for the marathon of labor. I always suggest free movement. What does it mean that I am not paying for it? What do you do? You walk, you find a park, you take your shoes off, and you walk on uneven ground. If you can find a manageable tree to climb, that is also one of the best ways to get your body prepared for labor.
A tree to climb?
A tree to climb or swimming, which is also something that supports natural movement patterns of the body and does not put pressure on the joints and the low back and the knees, and then dance, which also women follow natural movement patterns with, like African dance. Those are the best ways to prepare the body.
When people say, “I am doing this CrossFit pregnancy class,” I am like, “This is not actually going to support what you need in labor and can actually cause a lot of strain that we do not want and put a lot of pressure on the lower back that we do not want.” Even if something is marketed as a pregnancy exercise, I would be judicious and return to nature, basically return to the source, and what women were doing to prepare for giving birth for thousands and thousands of years.
They were carrying toddlers on their backs. They were baby wearing. They were carrying baskets on their heads. They were squatting. They were walking barefoot between the village and the water. It could have been a few miles back and forth, typically barefoot or with sandals, swimming, climbing trees, and gardening.
This is so beautiful, and it resonates with me because I have connected with Ben Lion Heart, whom we have interviewed on the show, and he is about primal movement. In the movements you are describing, there is this natural swinging and swaying that happens. I can picture a mom holding onto a tree branch. She is elongating her spine, probably relieving some lower back pressure. Those movements are different than doing bicep curls and making more linear movements in a gym.
What we are doing when we are squatting, even when we are resting. We want to take a rest. We need to be active all day, even when we’re resting. I am sitting in the tailor pose, with my feet together. This is a way of actively resting while we are doing something. If we have to be at a desk, we can squat, and then we can tailor sit. This is going to add elasticity to the perineum, prevent tearing in natural birth, and give the woman that body memory so that she can be in these poses that help her during labor.
Recommended Diet For Pregnant Women
You said you also offer some guidance when it comes to nutrition. How does that align with or differ from the Wise Traditions principles if you are familiar with those?
That is what I recommend. I sent everybody back that way. Some people are ready to take that leap in, and then some people are like, “I am still primarily plant-based, and I do not know.” I referenced Dr. Tom Brewer, who worked with Dr. Bradley in the ‘60s. Dr. Tom Brewer’s thing was fats and protein. His goal was to get every pregnant woman to 100 grams of protein a day so that she could avoid toxemia, which is the more old-school diagnosis, and preeclampsia, and a lot of things that women were suffering from because of a high processed food diet.
That is always what I reference, and I even tell people that if you have those convictions, philosophically or spiritually or whatever it is, you can return to that after the pregnancy. The numbers are showing. Not only are we historically shown that this works and it is time-tested, but we also can see a lot of the science now backing that this is going to support you in having a low-risk pregnancy, this type of eating.
Dr. Price noted that as people departed from their traditional diets, the pelvis became narrower. It made childbirth more difficult for subsequent generations from those who had departed from that and changed their diet to a more processed food diet, even in his time, which was 100 years ago. That meant more flour, sugar, and so forth.
The evidence is there, not just from Dr. Price’s work, but elsewhere, too. Did you see that video that I think Paul Saladino, Lindsey Meehleis, and some others put out, where it showed the placenta of a woman who included meat in her diet versus the placenta of a woman who was primarily plant-based? The color contrast was so stark. Have you seen that?
I have not, but I have over 2,000 photos of placentas because I prepare them. I have been preparing them over the last decade. I take a photo of each one with consent, of course, of the mother. I used to do a lot of Photoshop, so I have a bunch of diagrams of women who did certain things during pregnancy and the other ones who did not. I always saw a difference with the plant-based placentas.
Unique Benefits Of Consuming Your Own Placenta
Tell us then, Eyla, what did you see? Let us get specific. I did not quite finish the thought, but that is great because you have had personal experience with it. What have you seen? What are the best practices that lead to the healthiest placenta, and then obviously the healthiest babies?
What I have seen is when a woman is actually oxygenating her body a lot through movement, I have seen a huge difference. I asked women in an intake form, “How many times a day do you move?” Even if I am not her doula or her birth educator, I am preparing her placenta. I asked these questions.
I have noticed that the women who do more movement on a daily basis have more robust-looking placentas, more red, and more vibrant. Women who consume around 100 grams of protein a day, animal-based protein, have more robust, vibrant placentas. I did notice that in 2020 and 2021, there were certain things that women were doing, such as spending less time outside. I noticed a big difference in the placenta.
It has something to do with the assimilation of vitamin D, perhaps. I noticed that when women drink certain types of water, it’s also different. I ask them about their water. How many ounces of water are you drinking, and what type of water? I had a client who primarily drank tap water or used it as an afterthought, or needed to add flavor to their water to drink it. I notice a difference in their placenta. It is the water, it is the protein, it is the fat.
I encourage them to cook with tallow or animal butter. They will ask me what’s the best way to get a robust placenta, so that when I consume it, it gives me the best benefit. I will make recommendations for them to try. I do not give them any guarantees. Of course, I cannot do that, but that is the recommendation I give. High-fat, high-protein, good-quality spring water is what I recommend, and a lot of movement and a lot of time outside.
A moment ago, when you said, “When they consume it,” I was like, “Did she mean the placenta?” Talk to us a little bit about your take on that postpartum care for the mom.
There is an option to process it after the birth, where you do four hours at a high temperature to remove any bacteria that might be unwanted. It is standard protocol for organ meats. We dehydrate it at 118 degrees for a certain number of hours, then it is pulverized into a fine powder. Women can choose between an electric pulverizer or a mortar and pestle because they say, energetically, they get a different effect. It is then put into capsules.
Some women choose to take part in it and turn that into smoothie cubes, which I do, so that they will have some smoothies, some raw placenta for the first week. They will then have the capsules. Some turn it into pâté. They will keep it and have it as a pâté for the first week. What they are getting is stem cells, they are getting iron, and they are getting pregnancy hormones, so hormones that were released in the late pregnancy and in the labor to help them taper off into postpartum.
Historically and still, mammals all consume their placenta for a few reasons, to replenish after what they lost in the birth, but also to cover up evidence of their tracks for predators, because many of the females cannot hunt that day or they are busy with the new baby that moment and they need to have a meal and make sure that there is no threat around them.
If women did not consume it historically in certain cultures, there was always a practice that they would engage in, whether they honored it, they buried it with a tree, they put it behind the house in the garden, or they would set it afloat on a raft with an offering. That happened a lot in the Polynesian culture. There were so many ways to honor the placenta as the baby’s first mother, which is what a lot of these cultures would refer to it as, in Nordic culture as well.
It is not saying that you have to consume it. A lot of women note that they did not for their first birth, they did for their second birth, and they noticed a huge difference in energy levels and better sleep. It is all anecdotal evidence. However, if that does not sound good to a woman, she can always do something else with it. She can bury it in the garden, whatever the case may be.
There is a book called Placenta – The Forgotten Chakra. The author talks a lot about how, in old midwifery practices throughout the world, when a woman was hemorrhaging after birth, she would swallow a piece of the placenta immediately, and all of the oxytocin in the placenta would stop the bleeding. I actually had one of the doulas that I trained in my program. She wrote to the group, we have a private membership, and she said, “It worked.”
We said, “What worked?” She said, “Eyla told us in class that it worked. The woman was starting to hemorrhage, and the midwife was looking for her Pitocin injection. We took a piece of placenta, dipped it in honey, and she swallowed it, and it decreased the bleeding almost instantly.” They still gave her the injection of Pitocin. However, the midwife was in shock. She said, “I have always heard of this, never tried it.”
Childbirth And Postpartum Traditions We Should Return To
That is so fascinating. A friend of mine, the one who had the nice, easy birth I mentioned a minute ago, was telling me that she had a cat that had kittens, and she saw the mother cat eating the placenta, and she is like, “That’s all I needed to know. This is what happens in nature. I’m going to do that too.” I want to ask you, Eyla, as we start to wrap up, what traditions do you think we have forgotten about related to labor, delivery, and postpartum that are seen across cultures? As you mentioned, actually eating the placenta is one that is seen frequently. What else is seen that we have lost sight of?
It is so huge. Everything from holding the mother in pregnancy, and for her to nourish herself. We are so industrialized. We are going, going, and going. I am sure you have touched on this in other conversations, that it is that the nutrition piece is so forgotten, and women arrive at the birth and slide into postpartum so depleted. It is hard because they might have challenges breastfeeding, they might be exhausted, there is this natural occurrence that happens when you have a newborn, and you have given birth.
That is already something we are contending with, managing, and figuring out. To be depleted as the baseline for her experience makes it that much harder. Going a little further, she is in postpartum, and there is no kinship. We have, cross-culturally and historically, women holding that space for this young woman or this woman through her pregnancy, through the birth, and then into postpartum. Now women are dropped.
They might have a few visitors here and there or things like that. At home, she is alone with her baby and still trying to answer work emails or do this or that. She is spread thin. That affects the mother-baby dyad, where she is now getting it sometimes, and the women I work with postpartum feel this guilt-shame loop that they get into because they say, “I am doing my best, and I am dropping the ball here with my toddler and my husband and I are disconnected and the baby is crying and colicky and it feels insurmountable.”
We used to do is we would hold the women, we would nourish them. We would take care of household tasks for them so that they could focus on uncovering their maternal instinct rather than surviving and putting out fires left and right, and then missing out on the magic of that postpartum window, those first 2 or 3 months, and connecting with the baby.
I am seeing a huge disconnect. What I would say is we have to create more opportunities for women to be held and supported, and it starts with young girls. When they initiate into womanhood. Are we holding that? Are we educating about the body and nutrition, how to support the female anatomy through nutrition, and how to make certain choices?
Is that why some moms are now almost having period parties and different things like that, because they want to recognize this is a very special moment in their child’s life? Whereas in the past, I do not know how people handled it exactly, but it is like we have lost that honoring of the feminine.
Yes. It goes pretty deep. In my adulthood, when I was growing up, in the ‘90s, no one ever talked about it. Now it is like my girlfriends, they all have girls who are 14 to 18. My core group of friends, all girls, we all have girls, all seven of us. They have all had these moon parties for their daughters, and we will go, we bring them gifts, we write a letter, we sit in a circle, we read them the letter, which is like our offering for what we hope that this next chapter into womanhood will feel like for them, and that we are here for them. We give them some sort of a gift, whatever it might be.
Everybody wears a shade of red or pink. I was like, “How different would it have been for me if I had experienced that?” It was so taboo. Maybe it was not for everyone, but specific to me, but my girlfriends and I were like, their moms did not talk about it. It was in the closet. I could go on, but I would say it is missing. That missing piece then leads to a more in-the-closet birth experience. It is celebrated because you are giving birth, but there is no holding like, “I am here for you, and you do not have to do this alone.” It is like, “Go be with your doctor, and we will have a baby shower.” That is it.
You will send out an announcement, and you are sheltered away for that experience at a hospital, which is mostly where people go when they are sick. I like that you told me at the outset, before we even started recording, that you are not trying to demonize a hospital or a conventional birth, but you are trying to inform people about their options and ways in which they can make a different choice. What do you say to the person who is skeptical, who is like, “Moon parties, eating your placenta. This girl is so woo-woo. She is out of her mind.”
I would say that we have time-tested traditions that have supported women for so long, and we can find our own version of that. We do not have to start walking barefoot everywhere, climbing trees, and having moon parties. It is like, how do I bring these traditions into my space so that I feel connected to it, because a big problem, I would say, is this epidemic of disconnection.
It does not have to look exactly how I illustrated it, but at least knowing that it is available, you can make a different choice that feels more connected. Why is that important? It’s because we want to be connected to our children. We want healthily attached children. When we are disconnected from our own body, disconnected from our experiences, we are modeling disconnection to our children. We can go on like that.
However, I would wager that we have a more fulfilling experience when we are connected, when our capacity to feel the bad also expands our capacity to feel the good. It is equal. If we can move through these hard moments without disconnecting, and we can move through these life initiations like a girl’s first menarche, then you can say, “This was not so bad. I am here for you. I am connected.” When you get to childbirth, “I am here for you. We are connected.” It is modeling a connection to a life cycle that is inevitable.
Eyla’s One Valuable Tip To Improve Your Health
It’s very beautifully said. We have to wrap up, Eyla. I do want to ask you the question I love to pose at the end. If the audience could only do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?
I would recommend that they ask themselves what they have always wanted and have not yet gotten. Something that I always wanted as a kid was to spend more time outside, and I still think about that. What have I done now that I have control over what I am up to? I spend more time outside. I would say ask yourself, “What is that thing, and is it so impossible to give it to myself now?” Start small.
Nothing is ever impossible to achieve if you know how to start small.
Great words to end on. Eyla, on behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, it has been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me. It is always a pleasure to chat with you.
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Our guest was Eyla Cuenca. Visit her website, Uncovering Birth, for more, and Eyla Cuenca. Visit our website, The Weston A. Price Foundation, and click on the podcast page. Now for a recent review from Apple Podcasts. Linda Berniak says this, “Family Health Bible, a trusted resource of helpful information. If we cannot figure it out ourselves, we always go to the Weston A. Price Foundation.”
This makes me so happy. Thank you so much for turning to us. We do our best to provide accurate scientific information that backs ancestral wisdom. We are here for you. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.
About Eyla Cuenca
Eyla Cuenca is a Childbirth Educator, Doula, Health Freedom Advocate, and Birth Trauma Alchemist with over a decade of experience supporting women through the transformational threshold of birth and postpartum. Her mission is to be of service to everyone—guiding individuals back to their body’s innate intelligence, personal sovereignty, and deepest inner knowing.
With a BA in Anthropology and Ethnographic Photography from Bennington College, Eyla brings a grounded, systems-aware lens to her work. She has studied family systems and institutional structures, offering a critical and compassionate perspective on the way women birth, heal, and initiate into expanded versions of themselves. Eyla trained with the American Academy of Husband-Coached Childbirth (AAHCC), founded by Dr. Robert A. Bradley, and has attended over 500 births in both hospital and home settings.
Her time serving as a Guardian Ad Litem for the foster care system further deepened her commitment to advocacy, health freedom, and accessible education. To date, Eyla has mentored and trained hundreds of doulas around the world through her high-impact programs. Her work is not only about professional skill building—it’s about activating women into leadership, restoring trust in the body, and transforming the birth paradigm.
Eyla believes that birth holds the blueprint for healing chronic disconnection—and that empowering education from conception through parenting is not only a basic human right, but also a key to understanding so much of who we are, how we relate, and what we’re truly capable of becoming.
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