Postpartum Vaginal Steaming Benefits (Episode 355)

Full Transcript: Episode 355

LISA: Welcome to the Fertility Friday podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of the fifth vital sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery charting journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles, regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I know I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with us today.

Today’s episode is all about vaginal steaming and the implications of it postpartum. If you’ve tuned into the podcast for a while, you may have heard one of my fairly recent episodes with Keli Garza of Steamy Chick and Kimberly Ann Johnson of Magamama. They were talking about their Fourth Trimester Vaginal Steam Study, and I’ll link that previous episode to the show notes page for this episode, because it’s a great podcast episode to listen to alongside this one. Essentially, Keli Garza and Kimberly Ann Johnson got together and conducted a study on the potential benefits of postpartum vaginal steaming — what’s the difference between women who were doing the steaming postpartum versus the women who were not. We went through the study results in detail in the episode I mentioned. And today, I’m actually interviewing Raquel Lemus, who is the midwife who conducted the study — who went ahead and did the data collection and helped design the study. So it’s a very informative episode. I’ll start by introducing you to Raquel. Raquel Lemus is a licensed midwife based in Los Angeles, who has worked with families since she was 16 years old, and has been a birth worker and uterine health specialist since 2012. Raquel serves the LA community as a full-spectrum midwife, peristeam hydrotherapist, placenta specialist, yoga instructor, and educator. It’s her goal to connect people back to the known wisdom and intelligence of their uterus in order to help them experience more joy and alignment with their life purpose. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into my interview with Raquel.

And I’m really excited to welcome Raquel Lemus to the show. Raquel and I were connected a couple of months ago because I did an incredible private session for my postpartum live clients about postpartum steaming, and I had nothing but amazing feedback from my ladies in the group. So I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to invite Raquel to the show. For those of you who listened to the Fourth Trimester Vaginal Steam Study episode that I recorded with Keli Garza and Kimberly Ann Johnson, Raquel is the midwife who was basically the backbone of the study. So I’m just so excited to have you here to share your insights and experience. Welcome.

RAQUEL: Thank you. Thank you so much, Lisa. I’m excited to be here.

LISA: Well, I’m excited to have you. And before we dive into all things steaming, I’d love to get a sense from you of what your background is, what drew you into midwifery, and how you got to where you are today with your practice.

RAQUEL: Thank you. What drew me into midwifery? That’s funny — I have so many things, and I get this question a lot, and I always feel like the answer is changing. But everything that always sticks in my mind is this phrase from a mentor friend I used to have, who said, “You’re born a midwife.” And I really feel that. For me, part of my work with babies is that I believe in things that are larger than myself, and I really feel like I came to this planet to work with the uterus, to work with families, to work with women, to work with the expansiveness of that portal — the portal that is the uterus. So there’s a part of me that had that from the moment I was being created, I would say. And then logistically, my earthly-realm story is that I was working in the nonprofit industry — I’ve always worked with families ever since I could. And as I started coming back into my own health — I was getting fatigued, tired, not feeling my radiant self, disconnected from myself — that’s when that ancient memory kicked in and said, “You wanted to do this thing, you wanted to serve in this way, so you need to go back to that.” That’s when I really started to study periods, gynecological health, birth work, and ultimately midwifery.

LISA: I love that. It sounds like a calling — like it was meant to be.

RAQUEL: Yes, it definitely is, even though there are for sure moments — I think I say that too, and people are like, “Wow, what’s my calling?” — I wake up very frequently thinking, is this what I’m supposed to be doing? I think that’s a really healthy question, and I want anybody else trying to connect with their purpose to know it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, but all roads lead back to me, to families, to the uterus.

LISA: Yeah, I resonate with that, because I built a fabulous, fun, wonderful career that I love around the menstrual cycle, and I get to work with amazing women every single day — it’s like a dream. But there are still aspects of the job that require work. I think because there will always be aspects of what you do that are work, it’s helpful to align what you do with something you’re passionate about, so those less fun parts are completely fine in that context.

RAQUEL: Totally, totally. I was just listening to one of my favorite spiritual teachers talk about the idea of no pain, no gain, and how yes, there should be joy in what you do, but part of that is also, what are you willing to suffer for the things you love? That’s what the work is like — as a midwife, I’m willing to forego sleep sometimes, or deal with certain things that other people would say no thank you to. When you said that about your work not always being fun, I realized the pictures I get are probably pretty G-rated compared to yours — mucus, sometimes a little tinge of blood — I’m guessing yours are different.

LISA: Very similar, actually — in another life, I was going down the list of possible careers, and midwifery was one of them, but I thought, I like to sleep, and babies aren’t always born nicely! I think it’s an amazing calling, but I can see how there are real challenges, because babies seem to like coming at nighttime. But let’s jump in — I know before we started recording I asked you a general question about what we could talk about, and one of the things you mentioned was wanting to share your philosophy around birth. I feel like that’s a nice way to segue into our conversation about steaming.

RAQUEL: Thank you. Yeah, I want to call in and recognize my lineage and where I come from — I’m born on Tongva land, also known as LA, and my ancestors come from El Salvador and Colombia — Afro-Indigenous, Latinx, French, and Spanish. I want to call on that lineage, because I think part of my philosophy is going back to the idea that if we’re thinking of any place that stores wisdom and intelligence through generations, it’s the uterus, and it’s women — or what I’d say, uterine carriers, for those who don’t identify as women but carry that organ. I see the uterus as a very intelligent, self-cleaning organ — a portal. My philosophy really is about honoring the uterus as a form of natural cycles. I always say that the uterus is a representation of the earth — people who carry a uterus have the responsibility to move through cycles the way the earth moves through cycles. That’s how I formulate my care through each phase the uterus goes through — birth, but also menstruation, miscarriage, loss, menopause, menarche — all the different phases. Even on a monthly basis, most women are going through cycles that represent the seasons. So how do we optimize that connection with ourselves, and with the earth, because I feel like communities are born through the uterus — every single being is created through it. This is a source of creation, which is why I focus mostly on the uterus. Honoring those cycles and that work is how I feel connected to everything — how I relate to giving gratitude for the water I drink and the air I breathe is in direct relationship to how I’m relating to my uterus, and how I’m honoring the people I work with as sovereign beings who hold wisdom about what they need and what they’re capable of. My goal is always to help people connect back to that inherent wisdom within them, which specifically comes through the uterus, so we can live more aligned lives — and steaming is one of the ways they do that.

LISA: Yes, absolutely. And isn’t it interesting how many women are disconnected from that part of their body — how the menstrual cycle can be looked at so negatively? It’s interesting because people don’t really talk about it this way — they don’t say things like, every human being on earth is here because of their mother’s menstrual cycle. We tend to say periods are annoying, disgusting, messy, but it’s literally the foundation of life. Because our culture doesn’t really have a lot of reverence for this aspect of ourselves, or for the natural cycles we go through — including pregnancy, birth, and postpartum — there’s also not a lot of guidance on how to naturally care for that aspect of ourselves. I think that’s one of the reasons steaming has come up so much — I’ve done many podcast episodes about it, and I’ve had clients see really significant improvements in their cycles because of it. And learning that the majority of cultures around the world that steam use it specifically for postpartum is incredible — I didn’t know that postpartum steaming is actually the most common use of vaginal steaming worldwide. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, especially for listeners who aren’t familiar with it.

RAQUEL: Yeah, thank you — where to start! If I miss something, just redirect me, because I can go on lots of different tangents that are all related. So, steaming — like you said, there’s not a lot of care available now, but a lot of care existed before. I have an elder who talks about ancestral trauma, and she says you have to go beyond the point that the trauma started, because nobody starts within trauma — you have to go beyond it to call on the support that existed before. That’s how I think about steaming. We have this trauma around gynecological healthcare — I say trauma because that’s when a lot of disconnection started, when midwives were persecuted and the practice was criminalized in many places. That’s a whole conversation in itself. But if you look across cultures, there’s this tool that takes different forms — same, same, but different, as another teacher of mine used to say. All these cultures around the world, who seemingly had no connection with each other at the time, recognized that water, herbs, and fire — steaming, to create steam — can bring healing into the body. We know this: what do you do when you have a cold? You steam it out. So why should it be any different for the vagina and external and internal genitalia? I think it’s about reaching back to the wisdom of indigenous traditions around the globe. People can get stuck in the dichotomy of “it’s not proven fact,” but this knowledge existed, and now we have the tools to refine it and look more closely at different conditions in this multicultural world we’re living in, where our borders are more porous — in any given place, we’re blessed to have people from all over. So there’s a refinement that needs to happen in how we work with steaming for specific conditions. It’s an old, simple practice that we’re really just utilizing. And in the postpartum specifically, it’s because that phase of life was recognized as so important, and there’s still a lingering truth that if you take care of the birthing parent, you take care of the whole community — because our community is made through the uterus. So there’s an honoring of that time, recognizing the uterus is more receptive during that period — it’s more open, the cervix is more open, and there’s nourishment that needs to happen. This is ancient wisdom that we’re putting into place in the postpartum.

LISA: I love that, and I really appreciate how you explained it. There are certain challenges, because I’m big on science — I love a good research paper and study — but I think it’s important to recognize where information comes from. It comes from individuals doing research, looking at what’s actually happening in the real world. The fact that something doesn’t have a ton of peer-reviewed published science doesn’t negate its potential value — it simply means we don’t have a lot of peer-reviewed science yet. And women’s experiences are very frequently discounted in our culture. When you have women like yourself, Keli Garza, and Kimberly Ann Johnson legitimately gathering hundreds of case studies of how this is really working in the real world, and creating grassroots studies that can launch future research, we can’t just say there’s no science. So with that in mind, could you share what your experience has been as a midwife incorporating steaming into postpartum practice?

RAQUEL: Yeah, thank you. I just want to note too, like you said — only about one percent of research funding goes to gynecological health and wellbeing. So it comes down to who’s creating these studies, who’s designating what’s important.

LISA: Right — who’s posing the questions, who’s getting the funding, whose completed research papers are getting published. It’s even deeper than that.

RAQUEL: Totally, yes, all of that. So I think we have to be more expansive — yes, I’d love to see this reflected in research, but I’m not going to stick to a binary that doesn’t include me yet. As far as the postpartum specifically, there’s so much beauty in steaming there — it’s really nourishing the birthing parent who just opened their whole being to bring another human through. It never ceases to amaze me — I’m still a baby midwife, but I’ve caught a couple hundred births, and every time I think, whoa, do you realize you just did that? A whole human being came out of you.

LISA: When my son was born, I looked down and thought, where did you come from? I couldn’t believe he came out of me.

RAQUEL: Yeah, I’m in awe of that — I haven’t been through that initiation myself, but I’m in awe of that journey. Steaming is really about supporting and honoring that transition — honoring the fact that you just did that and should be revered for your capacity to bring life into the world, regardless of how that life comes through. I’ve seen it logistically support recovery — clearing the uterus, retonifying, increasing circulation, helping with tears and suturing, helping with hemorrhoids, and keeping the bowels regular as well as incontinence. There are very real physical things it’s supporting. But ultimately, one of the biggest things is just the emotional connection — having somebody, whether it’s family, a midwife, or a doula, come and say, I care about you, I see how important what you just did is. In our society, so much of the focus goes to the baby — everybody’s goo-goo-gaga over the baby, and the mom gets pushed to the sideline.

LISA: I find that to be such a theme. I remember when I was pregnant with my son, the doctor made the comment that the baby will always get what it needs — so don’t worry too much about eating a specific way or whatever. There’s obviously validity in not obsessing, but that idea has always stuck with me — the baby will get what it needs, but the mother won’t necessarily get what she needs. From a nutrition standpoint, this is a human being growing in your body, drawing off of you, and it’s very common for women to become nutrient deficient postpartum, which then makes it more difficult to parent the child once they arrive. It’s interesting you frame it that way, because one of the things that stuck with me — I think Kimberly Ann Johnson said this — is that our medical system doesn’t really offer much for that initial discomfort. If you had a vaginal birth with sutures, you’re going to have some discomfort for a couple of days, and our medical system offers very little for that — it’s almost taboo to even talk about it. There’s a really quick learning curve after birth, with all these acute, distressing, uncomfortable things happening in a very short period of time, and steaming can actually alleviate or minimize a lot of that. Without it, what do you get from the doctor — “take two and I’ll see you in six weeks”?

RAQUEL: Yeah, exactly — and there’s still so much risk, especially for Black mothers and their high mortality rates, which doesn’t just stop after birth. Having this way to care is so important. I also want to bring up something Kimberly said once — we were reviewing the study results over Zoom, and she wondered how much of postpartum depression is related to physical discomfort. And I thought, wow, of course — it’s going to be really hard to tend to your baby if your vagina hurts, if you can’t have a good poop. All of that gets amplified in the postpartum, when now you have steaming as something to help with the physical transition that’s physiologically normal after having a baby. So I really appreciate that this is a tool for physical health but also for securing mental health and wellbeing for new families — and it’s still a whole new thing every single time it happens, regardless of how many children you’ve had. It’s also kind of nice, in a world that doesn’t have a lot of reverence for the feminine or for the process of birth — which is how human beings are brought into this world, and could be called sacred — because there’s not a lot of care given to that healing process. For someone who’s not familiar with steaming, I remember the first time I heard about it was from a Gwyneth Paltrow post, and I actually thought it was a new fad related to keeping the vagina “clean,” tied into some of those negative myths about the vagina. There’s a lot of questionable practices around vaginal rejuvenation and so on, so I didn’t understand what it was. And there’s often a lot of negative backlash and misunderstanding — people think you’re burning yourself, that it’s unnecessary, that there’s no medical basis. So from a practical standpoint, could you share how one would actually do a steam — what it entails, what it’s like?

RAQUEL: Totally, it’s very beneficial. In my philosophy, steaming is simply the practice of lightly warming water, with or without herbs, and using the steam to create alignment within the uterus so it can do what it inherently wants to do. We’re blessed now to have a lot of options for stools — most commonly there’s a chair, stool, or box setup with a hole in it, or a toilet seat, exposing the genitals. Underneath is a small pot — it really only needs about two and a half to three cups of water for a good steam. You sit over the steam and absorb it through the porous system of the external genitalia and vagina, largely through the blood system — we don’t necessarily have research to prove this precisely, but based on a basic understanding of anatomy, the skin is one of our largest organs, and the tissue in the genitalia is incredibly porous. You’re absorbing this “steam tea” through that system and reaping the benefits through the circulatory system in and around the uterus. In the postpartum, when everything is a bit more open and the cervix is more open, we suspect the steam is actively reaching the uterus. There are also ways to steam without a specific chair — over a pot on the ground, using a pot that fits within a toilet, or even two yoga blocks or chairs to sit over. It’s just some system that suspends you over light steam. One important thing: it shouldn’t be too hot. It makes me a little upset when I hear about people burning themselves, because — who’s forcing you to stay there? If it’s too hot, stand up, let it cool. I tell my clients I trust you to take a warm shower without burning yourself; I trust you to find the right steaming temperature. It should be warm and comfortable — not something you have to grit your teeth through. I think that “no pain, no gain” mentality is really ingrained in women’s health generally — like painful cramps are treated as just normal, deal with it. That’s not the case with steaming. Overdoing it can actually create more damage; less is more, and it should be comfortable.

LISA: I’m so glad you brought that up, and I like how you framed it in that broader context of what we expect from treatment and care. It makes me think of something you mentioned earlier about obstetric and gynecological trauma. For anyone listening who doesn’t know much about the history there — there’s a specific term for how births were once handled, where women were essentially knocked out and the baby pulled out with forceps. I can’t remember the exact word, but it was a horrifically traumatic process for both the baby and the mother. That’s an extreme example, but honestly, I don’t think it is that extreme, because what comes to mind immediately is IUD insertion and removal, and how to this day so many women experience extreme pain with it, while some physicians will claim the cervix doesn’t even have nerve endings.

RAQUEL: I know — it’s shocking that’s still a belief held by some percentage of physicians.

LISA: Right, so history — and present-day experience — contributes to this expectation that something has to hurt in order to work. The one thing I’ll add is that I’ve started using the analogy of a sauna or a warm bath — steaming is like that. You’re not forcing yourself into something painful; both are very pleasant, relaxing, and calming, which is exactly what a steam feels like when done correctly.

RAQUEL: Right, exactly. I love it. One of the things I really appreciate about steaming is that beyond the physical benefits — which is honestly a whole other podcast, and part of why Keli Garza has a whole institute dedicated to peristeam hydrotherapy — there’s a benefit that’s not talked about as much, which I tell clients directly: after a while of steaming, excuse my language, but you have less “you-know-what’s” to give. You really start to value your health and wellbeing, develop healthy boundaries for yourself, and give your body the reverence it deserves. I always recommend starting with a practitioner, but over time, part of my goal is to put myself out of a job — I want people to develop an intuitive connection with themselves, to read the signs of their own body. I can never give someone a hundred percent of the reasons something is going on with them; that’s part of their own capacity to connect with themselves and take a more holistic approach. But most of the work I do is connecting people back to that wisdom — which is why steaming leaves you with “less to give” in the sense of caring less about things that don’t serve your wellbeing, because you’ve started to value your self-care in a way you may never have been allowed to before, given how gynecology has historically been implemented and internalized within our bodies. That’s probably my favorite “side effect” of steaming.

LISA: It’s so interesting how controversial it can be, and how angry and negative certain people are about it. For anyone who’s actually done a steam, it’s such a passive, pleasant experience — similar to sitting in a sauna or a warm bath. There’s really nothing to it — you’re just sitting over steam. And it’s almost ironic, given how mild and passive the experience is, that it can be so controversial. I was really floored by some of the results from the postpartum steam study, because this isn’t my area of specialty — I’m not working with postpartum women looking at those specific markers. A few things stood out to me — how it helped with overall recovery across so many different areas. You’d expect it to help a little with discomfort from sutures or itchiness, but it seemed to go beyond that, improving how quickly the uterus healed and contracted, which affects the belly and other things too. There were other health markers it helped with as well, so overall recovery time was lessened. From a practical standpoint, that’s exactly what a new mom needs in those early days — to feel good, to recover quickly, to not be in discomfort. I shared this with you before, but when I had my second baby, the process of the uterus contracting — which happens with every breastfeed as oxytocin triggers those contractions to help the uterus return to its original position — was horrific for me. I wasn’t aware of steaming to the extent I am now, and I didn’t do it postpartum. I remember you mentioning that steaming can really help soften and loosen that process so it’s not as painful.

RAQUEL: Yeah, and that’s a great example of something the medical system treats as a well-known, almost placating myth — that it’s just going to hurt more with each subsequent baby because of afterbirth contractions. Again, it’s this idea that you just have to put up with it, when steaming can really help alleviate that by increasing circulation. Honestly, my theory is that it often comes down to how well the uterus was cared for up until the second birth, and how much postpartum support you had after the first. If your uterus didn’t get a full recovery, the postpartum period can leave you in a depleted state just from having given so much of yourself to another human being. If your uterus isn’t given time to fully clear out and rest, it’s like you’re carrying forward old baggage into subsequent cycles — and then the second baby is going to be more uncomfortable and painful because the first birth was never fully healed from. So steaming at any phase can help — I still do postpartum steams with parents who are a year or more out and still dealing with related conditions. So often, people I work with trace an issue back to not having had a full postpartum recovery. Steaming helps ensure the uterus gets an efficient cleanse, so that once cycles resume, you’re starting from a healthy, aligned place — able to be fully present for your relationship with your child and for yourself as you come out of the postpartum haze and reconnect with your own desires and needs.

LISA: So for a woman who’s pregnant, or already postpartum and listening to this episode because she’s intrigued — what would you recommend in terms of how to get started? Are there any contraindications? At what point can someone start steaming postpartum, and where would they go for more information?

RAQUEL: Yeah, totally. If you’ve had a vaginal birth, you can start steaming a few days after — around day four is a good marker — as long as you’re healing well, meaning you’re not excessively bleeding, your lochia is starting to taper off, and you don’t have another health condition requiring hospitalization. If you’ve had a C-section, you’d want to wait six weeks postpartum to begin. I recommend starting with a practitioner who has knowledge specifically around postpartum steaming. Some people are still connected to the ancestral lineage of steaming — especially in Korean and Haitian communities — so if it’s part of your lineage, go with that. But if it’s new to you, I’d highly recommend a consultation with a peristeam hydrotherapist like myself — I do postpartum steaming consults with people around the world, meeting with them and their birth team to help with setup logistics. If you’re in the LA area, I also do in-person postpartum steam sessions to support and teach the family. There’s also information through Steamy Chick and Keli Garza’s site, including a directory of practitioners if you’re looking for someone local, or want a more hands-on experience — of course, taking any relevant health precautions into account. Most of my consults are over Zoom or phone, and I send people a plan to help them get started. It’s never too late — I’ve had people come to me at six months or a year postpartum, and I’ll often do a postpartum reset with them before moving into any cycle regulation work.

LISA: That’s helpful, because I know there’s always that question of where to start, whether you need a bunch of supplies. You mentioned it’s lovely to have a steam chair if you’re doing this regularly, but you don’t necessarily need one, especially starting out — and you can do it with herbs or without. If you’re working with a peristeam hydrotherapist on a specific challenge, certain herbs might be recommended. I fall somewhere in the middle — sometimes you just want to jump in and learn along the way rather than waiting for the perfect setup.

RAQUEL: Yeah, I think it depends on the person and how they learn. There are a lot of DIY resources — podcasts with me and with Keli — that can give you enough knowledge to start fairly confidently on your own. Others prefer to talk through the questions and see things written out first. As far as herbs, you don’t have to start with any — you can just use water, or add salt. Some basics that are hard to go wrong with and are usually readily available are lavender, rosemary, and rose. Beyond that, certain conditions call for different herbs — in the postpartum specifically, it depends on the birth experience: did you have sutures, is there an infection present, did you lose a lot of blood during the birth. Those are the kinds of things I’d consider when recommending specific herbs for someone.

LISA: As we wrap up, I feel like we covered a lot of ground — historical context, the medical system, some of the challenges women face, and how such a simple, practical healing tool can make such a profound difference in recovery, especially in those first couple of days with a new baby when comfort matters so much. It really can’t be overstated how important that is, especially coming out of a system that doesn’t offer much beyond Advil. Are there any final thoughts you wanted to share?

RAQUEL: I think it’s just, be gentle with yourself, and really create a postpartum support plan — get your partner involved, because if your teammate isn’t on board with you, it’s going to be hard to implement. Have that vulnerable conversation, share these podcasts with them and with your family, and cultivate a postpartum team that’s going to nourish you. To anyone who’s about to be, or currently is, in their postpartum period — I want to acknowledge the work you’re doing, thank you for being a portal for this new generation, and especially if you’ve had a baby this year, extra acknowledgment for your courage to bring love into the world. You deserve the care and support you need, so reach out to your team, and know that you’re not alone — there are more resources than ever to support new families.

LISA: Love that, love that so much. Well, Raquel, we could talk all day — I love talking with you about these topics, and your insight and experience with families at this crucial time is such a gift. I had a midwife both times I gave birth, and I found it to be a different level of care — longer appointments, more time to have my questions answered, feeling more like a person in the process rather than a cog in a wheel. My midwives even came to my home for initial visits — of course, steaming would have been fantastic on top of that, but that level of support was wonderful. I want to acknowledge you for the work you do and for spreading this knowledge, because so many women have no idea this is even an option. Let us know where people can go to learn more about you and your work.

RAQUEL: Sure, thank you — I always forget that part! You can find me on Instagram at Community Partera — “partera” is the Spanish word for midwife. My website is my first and last name, RaquelLemus.com, and my email is [email protected]. That’s the best way to connect with me and see what I’m about.

LISA: Awesome, I’ll make sure to put those links in the show notes page for this episode, along with the Fourth Trimester Vaginal Steam Study and the previous vaginal steaming episode we’ve referenced, so the show notes will have you covered on everything we talked about. Thank you so much, Raquel, for being here with us today.

RAQUEL: It’s an honor, thank you so much.

LISA: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/355. So although vaginal steaming remains a controversial topic — certainly depending on what corner of social media or which health professionals you follow — you can always find people warning against the dangers of steaming. You don’t find the same warnings against saunas and warm baths, which is basically the equivalent experience. The reason I continue to talk about vaginal steaming on the podcast is because I’ve seen many women experience real positive changes related to their periods — whether tail-end brown bleeding, clotty periods, or periods that look dark and muddy in a way that intuitively doesn’t seem right. I’ve seen those kinds of improvements through steaming, along with its potential implications for postpartum support and healing — a low-tech, low-cost, accessible intervention many women could benefit from in the privacy of their own home. I think it’s important to raise awareness and keep the conversation going, and I love that these women have gotten together to conduct a study so we can have more data. These are the kinds of grassroots actions that can hopefully encourage further research — this would be a fantastic opportunity for a larger-scale study to look into the potential benefits of incorporating this practice postpartum to improve women’s healing experience. So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful week, and as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.