Welcome to the follow-up.

I'm Dr. Mona, your pediatrician and mom friend. This is your Monday pick-me-up a little wisdom from a past episode to carry you through whatever today may bring, whether that's a toddler tantrum, cluster feeding, or the great mystery of where all your matching baby socks went.

Today we're revisiting a chat with Leasel, teen, a labor and delivery nurse and founder of Mommy

Labor Nurse.

Leesel's the friend you wish you had in the delivery room with you, calm, funny, and full

of practical advice.

Plus, she knows her way around a peri bottle like a pro.

In this episode, we talk about how to actually advocate for yourself during

labor without feeling like a difficult patient, plus must-know recovery tips after both vaginal

and C-section deliveries. Trust me, this is a must listen. Spoiler alert, make sure you grab

those grabbers and stool softeners because those make the list. Let's get into it.

How best can I, a pregnant woman, advocate for myself during labor? I basically start off when

we start talking about advocacy as I start talking to people on how to actually advocate for

yourself because a lot of people just don't really understand what that means. And a lot of people

kind of like have a negative connotation to advocacy. And it's really not about being negative.

It's just about, I mean, I really just kind of teach it as like, okay, you know,

you want to talk to your care provider in a respectful way, first of all, right? You don't want to

like curse at them or rub them, you know, completely the wrong way. But you want to be clear and concise

and firm and say, hey, like, this is how I feel. Let's do an example of,

I don't know, let's say, I want to stand up during labor or something or I want to move around

more during labor. So if your provider's coming in and saying, you know, we have to put you on

the monitor, you have to be on bed rest, you know, we have to put you on the monitor, you have to be

...