Motherhood & Microdosing:
Being a mother can be a tough job with immense responsibilities. It can reveal triggers you were never conscious of before, and can bring up a lot of emotions that may have been suppressed for years prior.
In trying to balance it all, more and more women (particularly mothers) have taken up microdosing psilocybin as a way of being a more present, calm, and patient parent.
Which means not only more voices are being heard as advocates of the legalization of mushrooms, but more people are becoming aware of the magic medicine that could potentially supersede antidepressants and SSRIs in the future.
“The practice allows a mother to retain her responsibilities while also being able to manage their self-care.”
For many, psilocybin has become a lifeline of personal and parental care management. After having tried many other self-care methods, mental and emotional strains of parenthood were not alleviated.
Some parents even said that it made them better parents, saying that microdosing helped:
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Properly managing the anxiety of their kid’s safety and mom guilt, as well as, the potential depression that comes with raising a family.
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New moms with a heightened sense of overprotectiveness towards their littles ones admit that it prevented them from spiraling down their anxious thoughts.
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Mothers feel a stronger sense of connection with their children, and actually enjoy the time they spend with them on a deeper level.
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Mothers who practice gentle parenting report that it makes them see their children through a more sympathetic view and gain better control over their nerves.
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Many women who were in a committed relationship showed a deeper relationship with their partner and confidence within their skills as parents.
While the benefits of microdosing differ from one mom to another, there are certain aspects that they all seem to agree on. Microdosing is not necessarily about chasing a high or adding a certain element of excitement into their daily routines.
A lot of the mothers turn to it for the complete opposite motive, to remain well and functioning enough to go on with their usual task-filled days.
Now, let’s dive a little into the history of pregnancy in America, what is considered “safe” to take during pregnancy (and what isn’t considered “safe” by the FDA’s standpoint, *cough* anything from mother nature *cough*), and the steps being taken to reclaim sovereign and intervention-free births with the integration of pyschedelic medicine.
History of pregnancy in America:
Over the past several decades, the maternal mortality rate has been steadily rising, with over 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births compared to Germany or Norway, which only see 3.2 deaths per 100,000 live births.
These rates vary significantly across demographics and between geographic regions, but overall the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any similarly developed nation.
There is an alarmingly high rate of cesarean sections at over 30%, compared to the United Nations’ recommended rate of 10%.
“…overall the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any similarly developed nation”
The unnecessary dangers attributed to giving birth in the United States are uncommon in other modernized nations. This is an unfortunate reality relevant to prenatal care, as well. Those with concerns may begin to question whether the standardized prenatal approaches are safe and trustworthy, and may explore alternative ways to prepare themselves for pregnancy.
Some say that psychedelic medicines, and the spiritual healing and empowerment they can cultivate, are a powerful way to do just that.
Before we continue, please be advised that I am not a doctor and am not suggesting it is safe to use psychedelics while pregnant. Here, I’m simply sharing knowledge around certain speculations on how psychedelics may help make conception, pregnancy, and childbirth safer in a country where women’s reproductive health has historically been a means of oppression, in addition to being prohibitively biased according to race and class.
Psychedelics and Pregnancy
Because of prohibitive drug policies that halted psychedelic drug development for a period of time following the War on Drugs, there is currently no clinical research on the impacts of psychedelic therapy during pregnancy. .
For people who experience mental health conditions during pregnancy, psychedelics could one day be a treatment option if they are determined to be safe. Many psychiatric medications are harmful to use during pregnancy, including common mood stabilizers such as lithium. Once the research is expanded in the coming years, it could be possible that low-dose psychedelics are a less harmful alternative to anti-anxiety or depression medications.
But for now, it’s advised to come to your own conscious decision in using psilocybin in pregnancy, similar to cannabis use in pregnancy.
There is evidence of the use of psychedelic plants during pregnancy among indigenous cultures, however. Ayahuasca, for example, can help support lactation and is used occasionally during pregnancy or in childbirth by indigenous people in South America. LSD is derived from ergot, a psychoactive fungus traditionally used by midwives to help progress stalled labor. Interestingly, Texas is the only state that directly prohibits the use of ergot in midwifery.
Psychedelics and Midwifery
“By the early 20th century, mothers were routinely strapped to beds and narcotized for days while giving birth.”
The birthing experience is different for everyone involved, but women, midwives, and doulas were the caretakers of childbirth for most of human history. Birth rites, rituals, and traditional practices were cultivated across cultures for millennia — until male surgeons began dominating the profession.
As childbirth began shifting from midwifery practice to surgical practice in the 19th and 20th centuries, births were moved from homes and into hospitals where mothers’ spiritual and mental health were not generally taken into consideration.
By the 1950s, nearly 99% of U.S. births occurred in hospitals, where mothers were less likely to have the kind of emotional support offered by doulas, midwives, or family members.
The troubling history of gynecology has left an impact on U.S. society and culture, and mothers are still working to restore access to sovereign, culturally relevant, and integrative birth care.
By the early 20th century, mothers were routinely strapped to beds and narcotized for days while giving birth. This was called “twilight sleep,” a common procedure wherein high doses of scopolamine and morphine were administered to women to the extent that they would not remember childbirth at all.
Though twilight sleep was eventually phased out, pregnant people were — and are — drugged, treated miserably, and subjected to experimentation as patients rather than with dignity as people.
Psychedelic drugs, often called entheogens when used in spiritual contexts, have been a part of this effort to rewrite the modern birth story for many.
Psychedelic Birth Stories from Ina May Gaskin and The Farm
Many stories are told about the 1960s psychedelic counterculture and the Summer of Love in 1967 that preceded the Controlled Substances Act. One that is often forgotten is how psychedelics helped nurture the restoration of home birth in the United States.
Home birth never truly disappeared, but was often the only option for poor and marginalized mothers, who often had safer births than mothers in hospitals.
By the time Ina May Gaskin arrived in Tennessee in 1970 with her partner Steven Gaskin, a former professor at San Francisco State College, the pair had completed a tour of lectures at universities across the country — along with a caravan of 200 followers packed into several buses.
During the course of the trip, eleven babies were safely born on the road without any professional intervention. Under the guidance of Ina May and the support of neighboring Amish doctors in Tennessee, home birth was “rediscovered” among women who were raised to fear a natural process. Instead of fear, many were reporting ecstatic childbirths and even orgasm during the birth process.
Psychedelics helped them prepare to give birth.
“One that is often forgotten is how psychedelics helped nurture the restoration of home birth in the United States.”
Familiar with the fear of intense and overwhelming rushes of inescapable energies, this new generation of birthing women drew from their psychedelic experiences and began realizing that they had more control over birth pains than they were led to believe.
After several thousand successful births on The Farm, with less than 2% ever requiring emergency cesarean sections, Gaskin published Spiritual Midwifery in 1976. The book details the stories and processes that weave together midwifery and the psychedelic-inspired spirituality of the time.
Entheogenic Midwifery and the Restoration of Birth Wisdom
Perhaps one of the most significant obstacles that psychedelics can help pregnant people overcome is any disconnection from their own intuition, wisdom, and sense of empowerment.
Doulas are specifically trained to help support mothers during pregnancy and birth. And according to some, the support they offer might also translate to the intense energies experienced during high-dose psychedelic rebirths.
Receiving the name from a revered mentor and expert in the psychedelic community, Kilinid Iyi of Detroit, Omolewa is an experienced doula known widely as The Entheogenic Midwife. Entheogenic midwifery speaks to the process of rebirth, restoration, and resurrection of self, not only through pregnancy but through psychedelic experiences.
For Omolewa, the birth experience, and even the experience of menstruation, offer windows into the sacred realms of transformation made possible through embodied awareness and empowerment practices. From this place of divine wisdom, the idea of pregnancy having a prescribed pattern begins to shift and open up to new possibilities. For example, instead of a due date, she teaches about a birth month to help encourage women to look past any fears that they might not be functioning properly or “on time.”
In Entheogenic Midwifery, one important teaching about psychedelics and birth comes down to the themes of surrender and control. In modern childbirth and arguably modern psychedelic therapy, a great deal of emphasis is placed on isolating and controlling the mental aspects of the experience. But in discussion with the author, Omolewa offered instead that we “let birth and psychedelics do exactly what they were created to do, which is change us forever.”
Omolewa also reminds us that psychedelics are not just about ego death but about rebirthing oneself and their inner child at the same time. Similarly, childbirth is also a rebirth of self and identity as mother and nurturer. It is also a rebirth of one’s own inner child as the self returns to the realm of childhood experience and curiosity.
From this grounded and embodied approach to psychedelics, mothers can draw upon transformative states to nurture a sense of empowerment that can sustain them throughout childbirth.
The Effects of Psychedelics in Overcoming Postpartum Depression
Through microdosing, mothers are now able to recover from postpartum depression faster and relieve the symptoms in a more natural and long-term manner.
The evolution in the study of psychedelics has come to a definitive point in which researchers can prove its undeniable benefits. Specifically the effects of psilocybin are studied.
Recently, Yale produced a study in which a single dose of psilocybin was shown to improve neural connections within the brain. It was even proven that microdoses were able to spur new growth of neural connections that were lost during depression.
A level of guilt may also typically be associated with mothers who suffer from postpartum depression as the chemicals in the brain are out of balance, microdosing could potentially aid in helping overcome these feelings of guilt, depression, anxiety, and even rage.
Psychedelic Therapy and Pregnancy Stress
On the other side of end-of-life anxiety, fear of childbirth is an established mental health condition that can have dangerous complications, not only psychologically but also for the health and safety of the mother and child.
Working through emotional fear before giving birth can help alleviate stress and fear, whereas suppressing fear and stress can make things worse.
Pregnancy is not only a physical experience but also a neurological and spiritual experience. As the mother’s body undergoes rapid changes and waves of hormonal fluctuations, a neurological and spiritual transformation also occurs in preparation for parenting a newborn. Just as psychedelics can help relieve end-of-life anxiety, so too might these experiences help alleviate the fear of giving birth — and postpartum depression that might arise after.
One of the risk factors for postpartum or natal depression is a history of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and untreated trauma or mental health issues.
Due to the intensely transformative outcomes of pregnancy and parenthood, there is something to be said for seeking out psychedelic therapy before conception to begin working through any potential fears or traumas related to childbirth or parenting.
As acclaimed psychedelic researcher Stan Grof believed, this can include the trauma of our own births.
Psychedelics for Childbirth Support
Childbirth itself can appear scary for many, in part because of media portrayals of birth and the high rates of maternal mortality and emergency cesarean procedures used in the United States. For some, fear of childbirth or the pain of childbirth itself can create additional levels of anxiety, which may amplify the experience of pain and catalyze a psychological and physical feedback loop until emergency surgical intervention is called for.
Like psychedelics, a person’s birth experience has a lot to do with their mindset and the setting in which the birth is taking place. While it is well established that women experience gender bias in a hospital setting, those who also experience racial bias in a healthcare setting may feel that hospital birthing is a riskier alternative to a community-based birth model.
While the maternal mortality rate is high at the national level, some mothers are at greater risk than others. Still, those who have supportive staff consistently have lower rates of maternal mortality. Doulas and midwives can go a long way in helping to reduce these rates, but supporting these roles requires shifts in healthcare administration, funding priorities, and state laws that limit women’s access to the safety provided by personal, holistic birth care.
The Future of Psychedelics and Pregnancy
Given the historical uses of psychedelics in childbirth, and the nature of psychedelic healing as we know it, it is possible that psychedelics could help support people approaching pregnancy or through integrating traumatic birth experiences — someday. But so too can parental leave, childcare support, and culturally informed policies that prioritize maternal mortality outcomes.
As a field of research, there are incredible opportunities yet to come at the intersection of women’s health, midwifery, psychedelic therapy, and even drug development. But in the meantime, providers might consider supporting community birth and mental health models developed by those most impacted in these current health crises.
Though psychedelics may one day be a great resource in women’s health, there is no reason to wait to address the lack of diversity recruitment in psychedelic and women’s health research now.
Psychedelics and Breastfeeding
The fact that microdosing psychedelics is helping many moms suffering from stubborn postpartum depression, raises another question, is microdosing safe while breastfeeding?
There’s a reason why it’s difficult to get a straightforward answer; it’s unethical to put a baby’s health to risk to study the unknown effect of a certain substance.
While the general recommendation is to wait until the baby is fully weaned, for some mothers suffering from postpartum depression, that may seem like a lifetime.
It’s fair to say that while some mother’s drink alcohol while breastfeeding, why should other’s feel scared to use a small amount of plant medicine?
After having a child, around 11% of moms and 4% of fathers suffer from their mental health.
Symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD) include:
- Feelings of hopelessness
- Irritability
- Lack of interest in daily activities
- Inability to experience joy
- Sleeplessness
- Exhaustion
- Suicidal tendencies
- Memory problems
- Difficulties focusing
These symptoms not only affect the mother but also their spouse and their child if left unattended.
By microdosing, new parents can balance out their feelings of depression while still maintaining some sense of presence in their family’s lives.
As with any vitamin, supplement, or plant medicine, you should always make your own informed decision based on your judgement.
With the information provided above, only you know if you’d feel comfortable or not using psilocybin while pregnant or breastfeeding.
Getting started on your journey
If you’re feeling ready to start your own journey with psychedelic medicine, I’d love to get you started on your path to healing. Feel free to send me a message on Instagram ( @mushroomsandmotherhood ) or you can email me at: notyournormalparent@gmail.com
