Episode 95 - The Truth About Postnatal Depletion Syndrome with Eric Scott from Postpartum Care USA
Episode 95 Show Notes
In this episode of the Strong Like a Mother podcast, Tiffany Wickes interviews Eric Scott, co-founder of Postpartum Care USA, to discuss the critical need for improved postpartum care in America. Eric shares the story behind the founding of their clinic, the challenges faced by postpartum women, and the importance of holistic approaches to maternal health. The conversation emphasizes the need for education, advocacy, and the involvement of fathers in supporting postpartum recovery. Eric outlines key priorities for postpartum care and highlights the significance of addressing postnatal depletion syndrome. The episode concludes with resources for mothers and fathers seeking support in their postpartum journeys.
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Takeaways:
Postpartum care in America is severely lacking.
Education is crucial for postpartum women and their families.
Postnatal depletion syndrome can last for years after childbirth.
Investing in postpartum care is essential for mothers' health.
Fathers play a vital role in supporting postpartum recovery.
Holistic approaches can significantly improve postpartum symptoms.
Proper lab work is necessary to identify deficiencies in postpartum women.
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Tiffany Wickes (00:07.041)
Hey friends, welcome back to the Strong Like a Mother podcast. Today I have Eric Scott here to talk about postpartum USA. Is that how you say it?
Eric Scott (00:15.84)
It's postpartum care, USA.
Tiffany Wickes (00:18.243)
Postpartum care USA. So as a mother of seven, I am very intimately aware of the postpartum faux pas in America. And I would like to talk to Eric and share a little bit of his knowledge about why did you guys start this? You have a beautiful wife, you have a bunch of kiddos. So tell me all the things about who you are, what you do, why you do it, and why you think this will benefit American postpartum mothers.
Eric Scott (00:44.238)
Sure, sure. So I am Eric Scott, one of the founders here at PPCU. My wife, Stacia Scott, she's actually a nurse practitioner and she's the actual original founder of this clinic. And it happened by happenstance. We really never wanted to be in this position. My wife and I have three beautiful boys. We had our own careers. My wife was doing some bedside nurse, practitioner work on the weekends, but she was also selling for a genetic testing kit.
company and this was four years ago. I was selling travel and traveling the globe, doing something that I loved and was very passionate about. What happened was our best friend, Chelsea, she went into preeclampsia, had cardiac myopathy, and was lifeline to a local hospital here in Indianapolis. And we got alerted of this, you know, via FaceTime by her husband, Tyler. And actually,
rewind about a day before that, they FaceTimed my wife and just kind of said, hey, Chelsea's having some heart palpitations and her feet are swelling up. Is this normal? They thought it was. They were just gonna go to bed. And by the grace of God, they FaceTimed Stacia and she kind of sounded the alarm. Said, I know you don't wanna hear this. The last thing you wanna do with a two or three day old baby is rush back to the ER.
But she had them do that and thank God she did. She was intubated less than 12 hours later and she was on life support for about three or four days. Her life was spared and something in my wife kind of snapped that day. You know, we were terrified we were going to lose Chelsea. And when she lived through that, my wife just said, I'm done. I'm going to advocate for women in the state of Indiana. That was our goal. It was just the Hoosier state because we had the second leading most mortality rate postpartum in the nation.
still do. And that's when we built postpartum care of Indiana. And my wife just started digging into empirical data and studies from all over the world, pulling protocols from other nations who are doing it better than we are here in the United States. And slowly but surely just started to educate herself and build this team. And now we've been doing it three years. We've serviced over 2,500, almost 2,600 postpartum women.
Eric Scott (03:03.15)
And yeah, it's amazing. We're significantly reducing symptoms, defeating some symptoms for women that have been afflicted for years. We treat these symptoms up to 10 years. So it's quite convicting. And I'm actually on the sales and marketing side of it. I don't have a clinical background. That's what my wife does. She built this and essentially asked me to help her build a team where we could reach the masses. And so that's where I came on the team and that's what I do for PPCU.
Tiffany Wickes (03:15.137)
Why?
Tiffany Wickes (03:32.981)
Why is America doing postpartum so poorly?
Eric Scott (03:36.0)
It's definitely a question for my wife. But we believe we have a very polarizing position on this. We believe that we are conditioned kind of to be in this perpetual state of at the at the mercy of insurance companies and big pharma. We really we really take a holistic approach, you know, integrated medicine approach to this. We treat from the root cause. We understand that postpartum care is not linear.
Every single mom has a different experiences. They may have the same symptoms, but they're rooted from different places. And when you do the proper blood work and you, pardon me, and you take the proper precautions and steps, you can actually treat some moms and significantly reduce these symptoms in 90 days or less. And we're just not taught that the medical profession has been conditioned to treat this with pharmaceutical drugs and keep moms walking around for life as these zombies full of fatigue.
low libido, rage, brain fog, where we're lifting moms from that darkness every single day.
Tiffany Wickes (04:39.085)
So what are the most common things you're seeing in these postpartum moms that need to be addressed even before they get pregnant?
Eric Scott (04:46.7)
Yeah, you know, what we're seeing is that the epidemic really is that there's just no education out there in America. What we have conditioned moms to do is only care about the baby. Thank God, you know, the baby's first in so many people's eyes, but that leaves moms just left behind. So they buy all the expensive cradles and the video monitors and everything you can imagine before and after the baby for the baby. But we are not.
conditioning moms and educating them to invest in their postpartum care. So they're just, they think it's six weeks long and they're going to start to feel better. And then when these signif, these, these symptoms last for up to 10 years after baby, because it's of something called postnatal depletion syndrome. And that comes out in the form of symptoms, just like I said, rage, low libido, anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts. There's about 40 symptoms attributed to postnatal depletion that we are masking with drugs.
and very linear approaches to this care. So to answer your question, yeah, I could pull up a list of about 40 things that we are able to significantly reduce in 90 days, just using natural holistic remedies.
Tiffany Wickes (06:00.151)
That's amazing, so you do virtual consultations?
Eric Scott (06:02.498)
Yeah, it's a hundred percent virtual. We partner with a company called Rupa Labs. So we have about 4,000 approved Rupa Labs across the country. That does not even include mobile phlebotomy. So in some cases, moms actually can't get out to a brick and mortar location. So we'll have a phlebotomist travel to them. They will draw the blood and they will spin the blood up and they send us the labs for interpretation.
And then we do a full blown interpretation call of about 55 biomarkers for each mom.
Tiffany Wickes (06:34.464)
my gosh, that's incredible. Do you guys work with peptides yet?
Eric Scott (06:37.35)
That's a question for my wife. I'm not entirely sure about that. Yeah, I'm marketing and sales mostly. know enough to be dangerous, but I'm no provider. That's for sure.
Tiffany Wickes (06:40.32)
Okay, that's...
Tiffany Wickes (06:46.337)
Yeah, no kidding. Well, I mean, that's still really important information because how do you reach? So let me just tell you a quick story. When I was teaching natural childbirth, I taught the Bradley method of natural childbirth for about seven years. And in the small town that I lived in, I was arming these women with so much information because I'm a nurse by trade also. And I was arming these women with so much information about their bodies and their choices and how birth should happen physiologically.
that eventually after a few years, the obstetricians in that office said, if you take birth preparation classes from that woman, we won't take you as a patient. So from a marketing standpoint, when is the best time to start reaching these women and educating them about, hey, look, this is what's happening to your body from a physiological standpoint, and this is how you're going to set yourself up best. it before they're pregnant, early in pregnancy?
afterwards. mean, guess any time is better than no time, what do you guys think about that?
Eric Scott (07:48.622)
It's a great question. It's a series that we just started. So my wife is actually trying to change the culture. We're trying to change the status quo in America. So we are actually reaching out to young women who are not in childbearing years. They are, but they're not married. They don't want kids yet. So we're trying to teach young women that they need to invest in this care because we're seeing a rise in the divorce rate in this country. And we are able to attribute a lot to these postpartum symptoms.
It's 53%. And so the quicker we can educate women in general, we think the better. But in terms of where we are able to intervene, it's in the third trimester. We can actually start to, it's obviously before that because some people, quite frankly, don't have the budget for this type of care. It's not covered by insurance, right? This is self-pay. Insurance covers like literally six biomarkers of our 55 panel protocol.
So that's nothing, that's not gonna do anything for anybody. So you have to budget and invest for this care. So I would say as soon as possible, as soon as you think you wanna start having children, as soon as you're married and you start talking to your husband, hey, let's set aside a couple hundred dollars a month to provide for my recovery, my postpartum recovery, not just for baby, but for me and our wellbeing. Because we akin it to, you're in an airplane and you lose oxygen, you don't reach for the oxygen and put it on the baby first. You put it on the mom first so that you can then,
put the mask on the baby or the young child. You wanna protect yourself so that you can help others. that's moms aren't doing that. They are the last one to use the family budget. They'd rather their husband be able to go golfing before they're gonna take care of their own postpartum care and recovery. But what we do is we can actually get moms on supplements in the third trimester to reduce significantly some of those symptoms that may rear its ugly head after baby is born.
Tiffany Wickes (09:44.277)
No, you're absolutely right. And when you use the phasom ask analogy, I'm like, yeah, but every mother basically would probably put it on her baby first because we've been conditioned to believe that we are of lesser importance and that just because we're biologically made to have babies, therefore that equals resilience. And that is not at all what we're finding. So can you point out maybe the top five things young women in America or even women in their third trimesters?
Eric Scott (09:52.928)
Yes.
Tiffany Wickes (10:14.709)
need to be focused on in terms of their postpartum care and recovery that perhaps they're not even thinking of right now since all of their registries have onesies and cradles and all the things that are supposed to make their life easier except your body being fueled and efficient and physiologically capable is what's going to make motherhood easier. I've been there, I've been depleted, I have been renewed and as a mom of seven,
having born seven children across three different decades of my life, I can tell you exactly when I was the most burnt out and it is not after the seventh baby at 40 years old. It was actually in my early thirties when you should be the most primed and capable after my third. That's when I was the most burnt out. So what are the top five things young women and even, you know,
childbearing women currently need to be thinking about in terms of their postpartum care.
Eric Scott (11:13.954)
Yeah. And you just said it. That's what we see every single day is moms of multiples experience so much nutrient depletion and deficiency. Again, that's probably a question for my wife and I bet she could reel off about 20. The number one thing we focus on is labs, postpartum expert labs. Again, PCPs, OBs, midwives, nutritionists, they all have a place in this, right? But they don't
Tiffany Wickes (11:27.811)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Scott (11:42.766)
draw the proper labs for postpartum women. We are postpartum experts. So that's number one. If you don't know what you're deficient in, it doesn't matter what prenatal you're still taking. If you don't know where your deficiencies lie, it doesn't matter. Even if you guessed, by the grace of God, you guessed the exact supplemental protocol based on your symptoms, you still don't know what to be taking in terms of dosages. It's so curated and personalized the way we do it because
Every single mom has different deficiencies and you have to know exactly where that lies. So number one is just expert labs. Number two is educating yourself. And that's kind of where we have put ourselves at the top of this mountain where we are screaming that moms need this education. So we've curated programs that we are just giving away. So we have 22 courses inside of school, SKOOL.
22 courses teaching men and women how to navigate these symptoms. And you're not going to find this anywhere else. This doesn't exist because America just hasn't gotten this far. Everything comes kind of west from Europe over to America. We kind of plucked it. We curated it and we're giving it away in the forms of guides, courses, videos. And we just want to educate as many moms as possible. It's a great start, but it's not.
how you start to become optimal. And the third one, would say, just kind of spit balling is when you go to a provider and you actually, you demand this type of holistic and integrative health, it's about optimal reference ranges. hear my wife and all of our NPs talk about it all the time. These practitioners are looking at these lab values based on reference ranges. And that's just men and women across the board, doesn't matter what age.
We look at optimal reference ranges for postpartum women and those ranges are completely different. And that's something that we know. And I can't imagine a world where they don't know this is true, but they're not doing it. They're not doing it for moms. And so these women get these labs and they go back and they say, yeah, everything looks normal. And they just sit in silence for three years with low libido, low sex drive, affecting their marriage, rage, irritability, intrusive thoughts.
Eric Scott (14:02.592)
hair loss, you name it, I could reel off 40, that we can identify with one blood draw, and then we basically supplement for a short period of time. We work on nutrition with a registered dietitian, and you have to have environmental changes, personal lifestyle changes as well. And we look for that inflammation, we look for gut health issues, we look for high cortisol, and we treat it from the root.
giving you three and my wife, like I said, would give you 20, but that's what I know to be true.
Tiffany Wickes (14:33.973)
No, do you guys have a, like advocacy portion of what you do talking to insurance companies? And, I hate to involve the federal government in anything, but unfortunately they're there and they're pulling the strings with the insurance companies and truly postpartum care in America lacks on so many fronts. Like, let's just talk about the mechanism of birthing a baby through a birth canal and the amount of trauma that is
Eric Scott (14:45.304)
to know.
Tiffany Wickes (15:02.819)
to a woman's pelvic health. Do you have like, you know, pelvic health specialists that you guys work with directly that you can refer people like a national directory?
Eric Scott (15:14.378)
not a national directory, we're still a small business. We are obviously growing by leaps and bounds. And we started down the road of trying to work with government. I was working with an Indiana Senator, working on some legislation, trying to get bills, House bills passed. As soon as he went from being a Senator back to Governor, it all went away. So all the work that we put in, we were working towards those types of advocacy groups.
They fail. There's so much red tape. So then we went straight to OBGYNs. We sent 10,000 pamphlets to offices all across the country to take care of their moms where their care stopped. We wanted to take over for them because that's not their specialty. Their specialty is in delivering babies, not treating postpartum moms. We got maybe a dozen people willing to refer to us and work with us just because there's no money in it for them. So to answer your question, we are...
Working on it. We found that the best way to reach moms is one-on-one. We reach them on Google on Meta We also have a corporate wellness program. So we've partnered with some Insurance brokerages, so it's part of a corporate wellness collective. We're doing a co-op I can't say who it's with right now just because it hasn't been officially signed but we are going to be offering our Services as a bolt-on that will be covered through corporate wellness programs
a hundred percent. So it's a, it's a huge step in the right direction, meeting working moms where they are so they can stay in the workforce, provide for their family and not be, not have risk while at work and then have to quit because there's too symptomatic and things like that. So it's something we're very proud of. yeah, reaching moms one-on-one is, is the most success we've had, in terms of, you know, less red tape.
Tiffany Wickes (17:06.783)
Okay, so reaching moms is fantastic, but there's a lot of moms that you're not going to reach because they are so baby-centrically focused. It's just our biology. So from a male perspective, what do you say to the daddies who are expecting, absolutely like, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you were to ask my husband, who were you more concerned about with the labor and delivery process? He'd say me. He was more concerned about
my health and my outcome than he was the baby. He doesn't have the same bonding mechanisms because this child isn't growing and kicking inside of him. So as a father and a partner in postpartum care USA, what do you say to the dads who are, think going to be a huge driving force to reach them as well and say, Hey brother, you have to advocate for your wife because she is focused on that tiny human being that you guys created. Here is how you're best going to support.
her and urge her to get the care that she most desperately needs that you probably don't even know you need yet until you're lethargic, losing your hair, you have no energy, you're ragey, you're thinking about throwing your baby against the wall. And all of those like psychological impairment to the mothering happens, I think, at a nutritional level that affects your psychology. So what are you telling dads? Tell me how you reach them, because they're, I think, to be the best advocate for the mom.
Eric Scott (18:24.238)
Of
Eric Scott (18:28.236)
Yeah, you nailed it. And that's something we thought too. and we've gone down that avenue. We built courses for postpartum dads, postpartum husbands, 12 modules to teach and coach dad step, step one through step 100. Here is how you support and advocate and significantly reduced by being an active participant in the recovery process. The fact is.
That's not, it's not working. We've tried to reach out to dads and they have been conditioned way more than even women that this is a six week thing. This is not real. This information that I'm telling you, jaws drop on tables when we tell them what's going on. When we reach fathers and we get to talk to them one-on-one for more than just an advertisement, their mouth is on the table. Cause they're like, wow, that's, that's been going on with my wife for the last two years. We have tried so hard to reach men and the men that do take
ownership over this, they are incredible and they are huge advocates. But in terms of what we've done, we've built courses, have guides, 55 page postpartum dad survival guides that we give away for free. Cause we are trying to change the culture. but it's, it's expensive. It's expensive to reach the masses. So all of that stuff's available on our website, online, every lead, every mom, every dad that comes through our Instagram, we now have like 30,000, 35,000 followers.
Anybody that engages with us gets that free content. It's over $300 worth of value and they get it completely for free. So as we continue to grow and reach the masses, we're going to continue to invest and advocate in dads. but I think you're right. I think we may have to re re engage with the fathers because we kind of had to abandon that because it just didn't work. They're not willing to talk about this because it's so faux pas. It's this.
just kind of this elephant in the room. And honestly, I don't blame them because they don't know. They don't know what they don't know. And when I try to jump into a conversation with them, they just think it's pseudoscience, snake wheel stuff. It's really sad.
Tiffany Wickes (20:34.049)
Mm-hmm. Well, also, tell me your perspective. Just outside of being a business owner, outside of running this organization, you are a father, you are a husband to your absolutely stunning wife, and you adore her. Tell me what you have done to support her and her postpartum journey three times over.
Eric Scott (20:52.514)
Yeah. And honestly, I'm a little embarrassed because I was the father I just spoke to you about. I was the husband. I was really focused on the child, really focused on being a good husband and a good father, but I did not dig deep and help my wife the way I think I could have now knowing what I know. I was very much involved. My, my wife will tell you I'm a little too hard on myself, but after our second child, Easton, Stacia had extremely bad intrusive thoughts. She harbored this stuff for almost eight months.
And we now know that that's just a nutrient deficiency. It's a symptom. and you can have these intrusive thoughts and she basically was in a dark prison cell with these thoughts. Had she been able to confide in me, I'm her best friend. We've known each other for 30 years, married for eight, dated for like 15, but she still wasn't comfortable enough to tell me I'm having these thoughts. I'd like your support. She would have felt so empowered had she been able to tell me that, but she was so fearful that I would judge her.
maybe, maybe she was fearful of losing her children or her relationship or the trust that, that I had in her. Now, back, I wish I had known this information. wish I would have educated myself to know and empower her to tell me that so we could have done it together. But I'll admit my wife for the first two, she was basically, yeah, I'm good. I, she did her own postpartum and she was, she, she was afflicted with Hashimoto's and all these things.
With our third Cody, I was very much involved because I knew all of these things. We had been building a business for years. And now she'll tell you, I make all of her breakfast, her lunch, I make sure she's drinking enough water, make sure she's taking her supplements and we are in the trenches together, no doubt about it.
Tiffany Wickes (22:35.573)
my God, I love that so much. Unfortunately, men have been conditioned to believe that their position in the pregnancy portion and postpartum care was sperm donor. And then now I'm supposed to take over rocking and holding the baby so she can go get a shower, just a basic need of a human being. It now turns into a luxury for a mother and that's so nice of you daddy to be babysitting so your wife can just get a shower and wash her armpits and butthole.
Eric Scott (22:44.332)
Yes.
Eric Scott (23:01.943)
not enough.
Tiffany Wickes (23:02.519)
Like how disgusting is that? That that's what we have reduced men to, to think that that is all you are good for. So I'm talking to the dads right now because I know that women are researching like hell how to take care of their babies, how to be the best moms possible. And they sure they've come across these postpartum care stuff and they're, okay. Can't be that bad. This is what we've been designed to do. I'm talking to you now, fathers, you guys have to step up, get to their website.
I'm going to find out where everyone can reach you guys. You guys have to step up and find out where your place is in the postpartum role of your women because your women need you so much more than they're able to vocalize. Okay. You have a huge role in the recovery process. She can take care of that baby biologically, 100 % by herself. She cannot take care of herself 100 % while she's providing for every single need a newborn has. That's where you come in. So
Eric Scott (23:57.134)
That's well said. And I'll say one more stat before we wrap up. When we did an internal impact study, this is about a year ago, 90 % is the number. a husband is directly involved in the recovery, the symptoms are reduced by up to 90%. So that means that, isn't that wild?
Tiffany Wickes (24:15.297)
No, I believe that statistic. When I taught natural childbirth, I had husbands that were really involved in the classes. The C-section rate in my particular practice alone was less than 1%. And then everyone else who was having babies and trying to intervention-free, I hate to use the word natural because that's got such a nasty stigma attached to it, but intervention-free vaginal births.
Eric Scott (24:26.498)
Yep. Yep.
Tiffany Wickes (24:41.397)
It was less than 1 % that the C-section rate and the inter, my gosh. They needle in the back. Dear Lord. I never got one.
Eric Scott (24:51.422)
Epidur.
Tiffany Wickes (24:54.965)
Epidural I was like inter no, so the epidural rate was also less than 0.5 % So most educated fathers when they were taught how to be proper support systems for their wives because let's be honest You're not supporting the baby at that point You're supporting your wife, but it doesn't stop with the birth You have to keep going and that education is not available Eric. Tell everybody where they can find you and all the places
Eric Scott (25:00.974)
See.
Eric Scott (25:18.222)
Yeah, my wife and I have an Instagram page. It's postpartumcare underscore USA, or you can go to ppcareusa.com. All of that information's there. Book a discovery call with one of our amazing practitioners. We have 10 NPs on staff ready to help you out. We do a full diagnostic, a deep dive of your symptoms, your goals. We go over budget and we'd love to help you just like the 25, almost 2,600 moms that have reached out before.
Tiffany Wickes (25:46.211)
Man, that's awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. I can't wait till this gets out to the masses and you guys start pumping it up and helping these postpartum mamas and daddies get healthier every step of the way. Thanks so much, Eric.
Eric Scott (25:54.958)
Thank you. Yes. Yes. Thanks, Tiffany. Take care.