Like you, I do a lot of things. I am a wife, a mother, a physical therapist, a business owner, a homeschooler & a believer. So if you are like me & do a million things, let’s be friends! First, Let me tell you the story of how I came to help mothers navigate their journeys through pregnancy, childbirth & postpartum recovery.

When others ask about my career, I always seem to connect my answer to my children, so…

Before my first baby was born I worked in pediatric aquatic rehab & adult orthopedic rehab before landing my dream job working with children at my mother’s pediatric physical therapy clinic, plus PRN at another pediatric clinic, until he was born.

His birth was both miraculous & traumatic for me. A long labor with constant pain & lots of interventions I had planned to forego left me feeling like my body didn’t work correctly. I felt let down that there weren’t better resources out there to prepare people like me — academically minded questioners who may have some control issues. As my body healed, I also helped my mind & spirit heal by learning how my body actually works during labor & how to better prepare my body & mind next time. I still worked part time with babies & heard so many moms telling me their story of long, traumatic, confusing births. So I pivoted my physical therapy career to fill a need in my community.

Mom Bodies was born six months after my son. Here is what happened. The idea for Mom Bodies came to me on my morning drive to work as I was once again ruminating on my birth experience & the depletion I had felt — both physically & spiritually. Though I had extensive knowledge of the human body, it seemed I was missing a connection between the mind & body that could lead to better birth experiences & outcomes. Not to mention the lack of knowledge & support surrounding the postpartum recovery.

Many of my friends felt the same. So I began to research, took lots of classes & started Mom Bodies Physical Therapy, a private, cash-based physical therapy practice in my home office. I heard the same things over and over again from those precious mamas as I passed along what I was learning — “Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?”

Along with working in pediatric & obstetric physical therapy, I began teaching L&D and parenting classes to mothers in need at the local pregnancy resource center. Again, the mothers & workers remarked on how valuable this information was & how little of it was dispersed. I went on to teach Functional Kinesiology as an adjunct professor at a university until my second baby was born. The knowledge I had accumulated during this time culminated into a much different birth experience. Not better or worse, just different. Peaceful, much less pain, improved physical & emotional healing, & even joy. My second birth was different & I attribute a huge part of that to the fact that I was more educated.

I believe the modern mother is seeking more for herself & her baby when it comes to pregnancy & motherhood. We want to be educated, not simply given techniques that often aren’t effective. We need context for the instructions we are given. We need to see the meaning behind our decisions, because it seems we have more decisions to make than any other generation of mothers before us. I believe in empowering mothers through education so that their pregnancies can be comfortable, their labors & births can be safe & manageable, & ultimately so that they & their babies can experience joy at every stage of the journey.

No brand-name birthing classes. Just the science & time-tested wisdom I had been studying & using with my clients for the past 5 years.

Though I had planned to take six months off from my practice, I returned to treating clients when my daughter was three months old due to the demand for postpartum physical therapy in my area. My practice continued to grow until, sadly, I had to turn mothers away due to my family’s move to the countryside. During this time I continued to teach & write in different capacities.

All of these factors — the demand for obstetric & postpartum physical therapy, the lack of information for deserving mothers & my family’s circumstances — have led me to develop virtual courses where mothers can access this needed information from the comfort of their own homes, at their own pace.

There is so much about childbirth & parenting that you can’t control. My courses help you see the beauty in that — the natural design of pregnancy, childbirth & baby development — as well as recognize what you can control so that you can make empowered choices & enter motherhood with comfort & confidence.

Thank you for letting me be a part of your motherhood journey!

Supporting Motherhood,
Dr. Caitlin Deems
PT, DPT, ATC