Active Mom Podcast: Pregnancy, Postpartum, Perimenopause, Menopause & Beyond

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This should not be revolutionary in 2026.
They asked the women. Went out across Canada, asked postpartum women what they were actually desperate to know, and let the answers drive it. What came back was mental health and sleep.
That's the 2025 Canadian postpartum guideline.
 Dr. Margie Davenport, PhD, was primary author on it.  She's the director of the Program for Pregnancy and Postpartum Health at the University of Alberta, and this is her fourth time on the show.  
(Yes, we're already talking about Green Jacket choices)
Quite honestly this one turned into a state of the union on pregnancy and postpartum exercise guidance. What we finally have. What changed. And the part she says nobody ever asks her about.
The how.
Not "is it safe." We have a LOT of that now. HOW do I use it. On Monday morning. With this patient. At mile two. On the pitch, in the moment, when you've got about four seconds to decide.
🔹 What the 2025 Canadian postpartum guideline actually changed, and how they built it
 🔹 Why six weeks was never the right number, for anybody
 🔹 The Get Active Questionnaire for Postpartum, and what changed about needing clearance before you move
 🔹 The 140 beats per minute rule in PREGNANCY: ACOG put it out in 1985, pulled it in 1994, and women still hear it in 2026. Margie has more heart rate data coming.
 🔹 Sleep and mental health, in a guideline instead of a footnote
 🔹 Vaginal vs cesarean, and the gap researchers hadn't thought to split out
 🔹 Informed risk: how you counsel climbing, soccer, cycling, skiing
 🔹 Inside the IOC consensus meeting she chaired this year
 🔹 FIFA's Female Health and Performance Project, free, with a pelvic health module in it
 🔹 Margie as an athlete on her national team years, and the label she gives herself now (which I did not accept)
Dr. Davenport's whole personality is: tell me why. And if you can't give her a good reason, she's doing it anyway. I love that about her.
Press play. And then tell me, what's the postpartum question you've been trying to get answered that nobody will answer?
TIME STAMPS:
 00:00 Fourth time on the show
 01:59 Why she left the lab for social media
 03:32 The 140 rule that will not die
 05:51 The question nobody asks: the how
 06:44 Frameworks instead of hard timelines
 08:44 Two C-sections, same day, two very different postpartums
 10:48 2021: the first heavy lifting in pregnancy study
 14:24 What the 2025 Canadian postpartum guideline changed
 15:37 Sleep and mental health, because that's what women asked for
 16:00 Vaginal vs cesarean, and the gap nobody had split out
 18:17 The Get Active Questionnaire for Postpartum
 19:54 The six week clearance problem
 23:50 Informed risk
 27:41 Three points of contact on the wall
 33:58 Inside the IOC consensus meeting
 38:03 FIFA's Female Health and Performance Project
 43:06 Where physios can actually be effective
 46:20 Margie on her own athlete journey
 55:37 What's coming out of her lab 
The Active Mom Podcast — a real mom's guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond, for active moms and the professionals who help them get there.
Quick-hit conversations with moms, providers, and researchers... because you don't have a lot of free time (you're probably listening at 1.5x right now).
Follow so you don't miss an episode. Rate & review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — it's how the next mom searching for these answers actually finds them. Share it with the friend who needs it.
Questions or topic requests? DM me 💌

Send us Fan Mail
Not everybody has time to sit down and read the whole paper. Not everybody wants to. I get it. But you do need to read beyond the abstract, so let's do it together.
For this summer rewind episode, I'm bringing back my 2024 conversation with Dr. Rita Deering, PT, DPT, PhD, one of the authors on the two international Delphi studies and consensus statements on postpartum return to running. This is the one where we take the research apart.
Rita walks through what a Delphi study actually is and how this one ran. Over 100 clinicians and coaches from around the world, three rounds, anonymous voting so nobody gets swayed by a name they respect, and a 75% bar for consensus. Then the piece that made these two papers different: once the panel agreed, the authors went and checked those recommendations against the published literature. Sometimes the literature did not cooperate.
(Her explanation for why they couldn't just put everybody in one room together is one of my favorite things anybody has said on this show. You'll know it when you hear it.)
🔹 What a Delphi study is, and why that literature check after the vote matters so much
 🔹 What everyone agreed on: a period of relative rest, gradual increases in duration and intensity, starting with a walk-run, strength training all the way through
 🔹 The variables that have nothing to do with mileage: sleep, fatigue, lactation, fueling, hydration, mental health, social support
 🔹 Where it got contentious: support belts, back extensors, lower extremity strengthening, and the honest problem that for some of it there just isn't literature yet
 🔹 The hardest line in the whole paper. Somebody can be ready to return before 12 weeks AND still deserve protected parental leave. Both are true.
 🔹 Why so many people getting this care are self-referred and paying out of pocket, and who that leaves out
 🔹 Screening for REDs in a lactating athlete, when a missing period may be completely normal
 🔹 The question that lives in my DMs: does running early postpartum increase your risk of prolapse?
Both consensus statements were selected as editor's choice and are open access, so when we're done you can go read them yourself. No paywall, no institutional login, no favors required.
Rita's on Instagram at @ritadeeringphd.
If you could get one research question answered tomorrow, funding no object, what would you ask?
The Active Mom Podcast — a real mom's guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond, for active moms and the professionals who help them get there.
Quick-hit conversations with moms, providers, and researchers... because you don't have a lot of free time (you're probably listening at 1.5x right now).
Follow so you don't miss an episode. Rate & review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — it's how the next mom searching for these answers actually finds them. Share it with the friend who needs it.
Questions or topic requests? DM me 💌

Send us Fan Mail
Meghan Rabbitt has been a health journalist for 25 years. And the thing she said to me about reporting this book was: why don't I know this?
If she didn't know it, what are the rest of us working with?
Meghan writes about women's health for Women's Health, Oprah Daily, Prevention, and Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper. Her book, The New Rules of Women's Health, came out of years of interviews with the people actually doing the research. Her phrase for what she wants for all of us is that we become our own health journalists.
🔹 Your pregnancy history is heart information. Preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, even recurrent miscarriage. Pregnancy is the heart's first stress test, and the results don't expire when the baby arrives.
 🔹 The lifetime breast cancer risk number you can calculate yourself. Meghan ran hers, brought it in, and that is the only reason she got her first MRI.
 🔹 Why joining a research study can mean free care. She got a thousand dollars of genetic testing out of one.
 🔹 Vaginal estrogen, and the applicator that was clearly invented by a dude. Zero instructions in the box. I spend real time counseling people through this.
 🔹 What happened when she finally went to pelvic floor PT, and why "just do your Kegels" was never an assessment
Something I say on air and mean: ask us. We will talk to you for days. Nobody has to pry this out of us.
What questions have YOU been waiting to have answered?

Meghan's book: newrulesofwomenshealth.com · Instagram: @MeghanRabbitt
The Active Mom Podcast — a real mom's guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond, for active moms and the professionals who help them get there.
Quick-hit conversations with moms, providers, and researchers... because you don't have a lot of free time (you're probably listening at 1.5x right now).
Follow so you don't miss an episode. Rate & review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — it's how the next mom searching for these answers actually finds them. Share it with the friend who needs it.
Questions or topic requests? DM me 💌

Send us Fan Mail
Prolapse might be the single most fear-loaded word in postpartum health. Not because of what it is. Because of how little anybody tells you about it.
This week we're rewinding to one of our season one conversations, with Dr. Cheryl Iglesia, MD, urogynecologist here in Washington DC and one of the very first mentors I had in pelvic health. 
My first pelvic health job was at National Rehab Hospital back in 2001, and a couple days a week I was over in her office with absolutely no idea that I was standing next to a LEGEND in the field. (I figured that out later. Much later.)
Here's what I want you to hear in this one. She says out loud that part of being a good surgeon is knowing when NOT to operate. Then she spends the rest of the hour showing you what that actually looks like.
🔹 What prolapse is, and how urogynecologists actually grade it
 🔹 Why "elective" does not mean "cosmetic"
 🔹 How much bigger conservative care is than most people realize: pelvic floor PT, pessaries, local hormones, bulking agents
 🔹 What changed in prolapse surgery over 30 years, and the honest version of the mesh story
 🔹 The average age of a prolapse surgery patient, which is younger than you're picturing
 🔹 Why two women with the same exam can have completely different symptoms, and what muscle tone has to do with that
 🔹 How to tell whether the provider in front of you is actually listening
If you've been handed a diagnosis and a surgery date and not a whole lot in between, this is the conversation I want in your ears. You are not doomed to a life in an armchair. You have options, and you're allowed to ask for all of them.
Which option did nobody explain to you?
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Cheryl Iglesia, MD, FACOG, FPMRS is Director of the Section of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery at MedStar Washington Hospital Center and Director of the National Center for Advanced Pelvic Surgery at MedStar Health. She is also Professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology and Urology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and is double board-certified in Ob/Gyn and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery with more than 30 years in the field. Find her on X at @cheryliglesia.
Free resources for pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause are at carriepagliano.com.

Time Stamps
1:00 introduction
3:15 fear surrounding pelvic organ prolapse
10:00 conservative care before surgery
18:14 pelvic floor prolapse or decreased tone
26:45 recommendations for getting additional care
28:45 tissue healing and RED-S
30:10 PTs collaborating with surgeons

CONNECT WITH CARRIE
IG: https://www.instagram.com/carriepagliano/
Website: https://carriepagliano.com
CONNECT WITH CHERYL
IG: https://www.instagram.com/cbiglesia/
Website: https://www.medstarhealth.org/doctors/cheryl-bernadette-iglesia-md

The Active Mom Podcast is A Real Moms' Guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond for active moms & the professionals who help them in their journey.
  
 This show has been a long time in the making! 
  
 You can expect conversation with moms and professionals from all aspects of the industry. 
  
 If you're like me, you don't have a lot of free time (heck, you're probably listening at 1.5x speed), so theses interviews will be quick hits to get your the pertinent information FAST!
  
 If you love what you hear, share the podcast with a friend and leave us a 5 start rating and review. It helps us become more visible in the search algorithm! (Helps us get seen by more moms that need to hear these stories!!!!)
The Active Mom Podcast — a real mom's guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond, for active moms and the professionals who help them get there.
Quick-hit conversations with moms, providers, and researchers... because you don't have a lot of free time (you're probably listening at 1.5x right now).
Follow so you don't miss an episode. Rate & review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — it's how the next mom searching for these answers actually finds them. Share it with the friend who needs it.
Questions or topic requests? DM me 💌

Send us Fan Mail
"It is probably nothing."
The swelling is probably the third trimester. The breathlessness is probably the stairs. The ache in your calf is probably that run you should not have done. And most of the time, all of that is exactly right.
Most of the time is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Dr. Rachel Rosovsky is a hematologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has spent twenty years on blood clots, and she co-authored the first ever AHA/ACC guideline on acute pulmonary embolism. 
The American Heart Association reached out about this one, and I said yes immediately, because this is the conversation I do not think most of us have ever actually had.
🔹 What a blood clot actually is, explained the way a former math and science teacher explains it
 🔹 Why the symptoms of a clot and the symptoms of a normal pregnancy look almost identical
 🔹 The risk factors worth raising before you are pregnant, not after
 🔹 Why the postpartum window is the highest risk stretch, and also the one with the fewest appointments
 🔹 Why the standard D dimer cutoff does not work in pregnancy, and what the guideline uses instead
 🔹 Whether imaging is actually off limits when you are pregnant, and the honest answer
 🔹 Blood clot history and hormones later on, including what the evidence says about the patch
 🔹 Dr. Rachel Rosovsky's rule: take it out of your hands and put it in mine
This is not an episode about being afraid of your body. It is an episode about being allowed to ask a question without needing a good enough reason first.
Most of the women in the largest survey we have on this were never told what to watch for. That part is fixable. That is the whole reason this conversation exists.
Guest: Dr. Rachel Rosovsky, MD, MPH, hematologist, Massachusetts General Hospital. With thanks to @american_heart.

Time Stamps
0:00 introduction
3:10 from math teacher to hematologist
6:13 having a baby during med school
10:10 choosing hematology
12:31 explaining blog clots
17:11 addressing the guidelines for pregnancy
20: are you at higher risk if you’re pregnant? 
24:41 potential problematic symptoms
31:47 seeing a rise in risk postpartum
35:53 where to seek care
40:23 what care can look like
47:12 looking ahead to perimenopause and menopause
52:50 follow your intuition

CONNECT WITH CARRIE
IG: https://www.instagram.com/carriepagliano/
Website: https://carriepagliano.com
Course waitlist: https://course.carriepagliano.com/RSAWL
R2R Screen: https://course.carriepagliano.com/R2Rreadyscreen

CONNECT WITH RACHEL:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-rosovsky
Website: https://www.massgeneral.org/doctors/17898/rachel-rosovsky
Guidelines: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41712898/

The Active Mom Podcast is A Real Moms' Guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond for active moms & the professionals who help them in their journey.
  
 This show has been a long time in the making! 
  
 You can expect conversation with moms and professionals from all aspects of the industry. 
  
 If you're like me, you don't have a lot of free time (heck, you're probably listening at 1.5x speed), so theses interviews will be quick hits to get your the pertinent information FAST!
  
 If you love what you hear, share the podcast with a friend and leave us a 5 start rating and review. It helps us become more visible in the search algorithm! (Helps us get seen by more moms that need to hear these stories!!!!)
The Active Mom Podcast — a real mom's guide to pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause & beyond, for active moms and the professionals who help them get there.
Quick-hit conversations with moms, providers, and researchers... because you don't have a lot of free time (you're probably listening at 1.5x right now).
Follow so you don't miss an episode. Rate & review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — it's how the next mom searching for these answers actually finds them. Share it with the friend who needs it.
Questions or topic requests? DM me 💌