The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions, and Restoring Your Vitality

A guide to help support women through post-partum healing on the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual levels.

This holistic guide offers practical advice to support women through postpartum healing on the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual levels—and provides women with a roadmap to this very important transition that can last from a few months to a few years.

Kimberly Ann Johnson draws from her vast professional experience as a doula, postpartum consultant, yoga teacher, body worker, and women’s health care advocate, and from the healing traditions of Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and herbalism—as well as her own personal experience—to cover

   • how you can prepare your body for birth;

   • how you can organize yourself and your household for the best possible transition to motherhood;

   • simple practices and home remedies to facilitate healing and restore energy;

   • how to strengthen relationships and aid the return to sex;

   • learning to exercise safely postpartum;

   • carrying your baby with comfort;

   • exploring the complex and often conflicting emotions that arise postpartum;

   • and much more.

KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON was a yoga teacher and bodyworker whose body, and life, was permanently altered when she sustained an injury during childbirth. Determined not to get a full pelvic floor reconstructive surgery, she traveled the world learning about postpartum practices. After healing herself, she became a doula, Sexological Bodyworker, and Somatic Experiencing practitioner so that she could help women through this important and overlooked phase of development that is the postpartum period. As is taught in many traditional cultures, she believes that when nurtured and taken care of properly, women can emerge from this rite of passage stronger, more whole, and with more access to their power. She believes the same is true of relationship, that with the right tools, marriages and partnerships can be more connected and robust after children. For this reason, she wrote The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing YourBody, Balancing Your Emotions, and Restoring Your Vitality to be published by Shambhala Press in November 2017. To learn more about how to have a radiant postpartum experience and how to do a decent Kegel, go to her online home at magamama.com.
 
Kimberly has a private practice in Encinitas and LosAngeles, CA specializing in birth injuries, birth trauma, and sexual health. She is the co-founder of the School for Postpartum Care with her mentor Ellen Heed, where they train professionals to help women heal from painful sex, birth injuries, and genital trauma. Her most outstanding accomplishment is being a single mom to fiery 9-year-old, Brazilian daughter, Cecilia.