#57 Back for Season 4! Let’s Catch Up!

Hi, I’m Justine.

I’m Sarah Lavonne.

And we are so glad you’re here.

We believe that your life has the potential to make a deep, meaningful impact on the world around you. You, as a nurse, have the ability to add value to every single person and patient you touch.

We want to inspire you with resources, education, and stories, to support you to live your absolute best life, both in and outside of work.

But don’t expect perfection over here. We’re just here to have some conversations about anything birth, work, and life, trying to add some happy to your hour as we all grow together.

By nurses, for nurses, this is Happy Hour with Bundle Birth Nurses.

Sarah, it’s officially the start of our fourth season of this fake podcast that we keep forgetting that we record.

And we keep finding out that there are actually people listening.

I know.

Which is so exciting.

It’s so nice.

You know what I think though? I think that the podcast has actually been a really fun source of my time. And I was thinking as much as we’re like, “Wow, we’re back here. We’re back to recording,” it is really fun. It feels like a really fun way for us to connect with everyone and share what’s going on, and for you and I to sit down and riff about things and talk to other people. So I’m actually really excited about this season. I think it was a really nice break. A really, really nice break, and really good timing.

Yes, yeah.

But we’re back, and we’re excited to have another season of this fake podcast that we somehow keep doing and you roped me into. Now I’m the one that’s like, “Ooh, fun.”

No, it is fun. And what’s funny is you say it’s a good way to connect, but it is the main source that we’re like, “Is anyone out there?” Because with podcasts, it’s so interesting, because you don’t know if people are listening unless they write an email or whatever. And so if you are and you want to say hi, we’d love to hear from you, because going into the void.

Yeah. Like, “Anyone out there? Hello, hello?” And then we see the downloads and we’re like, “Oh no, they’re listening, I think”

They’re listening, yeah.

And then people mention, “Yeah, I listen to your podcast on blah, blah, blah.” And even when I was teaching Physiologic Coping a few weeks ago, I kept finding myself referencing podcast episodes-

That’s true. You did it a lot.

…I’m like, “Oh, listen to this, listen to this. And we talk about it here and we talk about it here.” And so we’ve done, in the meantime, we did the Unleashing The Power Of Physiologic Coping To Lead To A Successful Vaginal Birth. It’s the longest title in all of history, which actually is available on demand online. But we did this little one hour thing, and I think we need to do more of those. Let us know if you want them. Because I do think that having that hour teachy thing is a really nice hit, and I think that’s where I kept finding that, “Where do you fit the conversation about pushing?” Or “Where do you fit the conversation about building rapport?” I don’t know. I could create a class, but that feels like a lot of pressure. And this is just like… And we sit down and we just riff and we’re friends having an hour of happy, for you, as we talk about, hopefully, mostly happy things. And sometimes they’re not happy, but then we want to make them happy and make them helpful, for you.

Yeah, helpful and hopeful.

Helpful and hopeful.

Yeah, so we’re going to talk about what we’ve been doing and then where we’re going. So since our last season we had our retreat, our biggest staff retreat yet.

Fun. It’s always fun.

If you don’t know, every end of November, beginning of December… I think this was our fourth one? Or third one? We go to Palm Springs. That’s just been the… Who knows if we’ll go again this year, but it’s our Palm Springs retreat, and that was lovely. Sarah always chooses the best places. And they’re just really nice and cup-filling. That was in December, and then… Beginning of December-

What was your takeaway from retreat? What did we do? Give them the insider scoop.

Oh, that’s on the… I have to get my notes. I don’t think that’s a good question.

“I have to get my notes,” she says.

Yeah. This is not a question for me.

I can remember, I led multiple sessions.

Yeah

She’s like, “I just liked sitting and being with people, but I didn’t actually take any [inaudible 00:04:02] away.”

The snacks were really good.

We talked about teamwork. Because we have a building and growing team, and so we talked about-

That’s true. I feel like Slack came out of that. We’re like totally-

Slack came out of that. And then remember the crab shacking? Should we tell them our insider joke now from a Bundle Birthism?

Yes.

We ended up using this rowing analogy where it was-

Yeah, because we didn’t know, Jen Atkinson, who’s on our team now, used to be a rower.

Wait, is it a rower? It’s a-

Crew member.

… a crew. You’re on the crew.

She’s on a crew.

Do you practice or play crew?

We don’t have Jen here.

You crew.

I don’t know.

It’s that where you row and you have rowers and the oars, I don’t know if they’re oars, the paddles that you push the water with and it makes you move.

People that actually do this are in pain right now.

They’re like, “These idiots.” But we appreciated the sport. And what ended up being a spontaneous Bundle Birthism was the idea of being a part of a team, and it’s like being on a crew team. It is crew team because now we have a Notion collaborative thing, and I looked it up, it’s a crew. You’re a part of the crew team, but the actual sport is rowing because you have a rower machine at the gym. We got to look this up. Anyway, you’re part of a rowing team. And so the analogy is that if we are rowing together, we win, right? That we have to be at the same pace. And there’s a pacer. And I see myself as that, although my pace is uber-duber fast, and sometimes I have to slow down. That we have to be able to slow down enough that we can work together as a team. Otherwise we end up crab shacking each other.

Which again, if you’re do this sport, this is not the right terminology. But what ended up coming out was there’s a crab. It’s a crab.

I don’t know.

You crab each other, you crab, shack crab, you something, whatever. How it came out was you crab shack. And so I had said, you crab shack, like everyone laughed. But the idea is that if you’re not at the same pace, if you’re not working together, you bump into each other and it can actually be really painful. And so what it does is it throws the entire team off. And either the entire team or the member needs to speed up or slow down in order to make up the difference. And so if you continuously crab shack each other, which is not the right terminology, we get the idea, that eventually you either get kicked off the team or the whole team is affected.

And so the request and the discussion was we own our jobs and understand that as a part of a small team, it’s really important that we understand that we are a part of a team and that even little baby stuff matters. And so you need to hold your weight and try not to crab shack each other. So actually this morning in a meeting I was like, “Yeah, it was kind of a crab shack, that did not go well and it affected everyone.” And so to be mindful that when you’re a part of a team, this goes for our units too, that sometimes we feel really isolated, but it ultimately does have a trickle-down effect. When even I think about an attitude, think about that one nurse who’s just like the sour one on the unit, it crab shacks everybody. Everybody gets sucked into that energy. Don’t do it. So that was a fun little thing I remember.

I need more time to prepare for that question.

That’s a pace situation. I’m ready to go at all times.

All times.

And not everybody on a team functions in the same way. And so throw a question at me, I’ll probably be able to find an answer, as I’m sure you’ve seen.

Fair. Yes.

But you were part of the crab shacking conversation and-

Yes, for sure.

… as an integral part of our team.

One of the things I’ve loved about every leadership retreat so far is your emphasis on leadership. And Sarah’s been going to leadership conferences for years, and I think I didn’t realize how important that development was as an employee and as a person. And so this year she gave us this book, and I like it because short and sweet and almost like a children’s book, and I want to read it to my son soon. But it has all these nuggets in it. What was it called, Sarah? I can’t remember.

It’s called Together is Better by Simon Sinek.

Do you think you can open it up real fast and pull up one of your favorite quotes? You probably have it.

Oh God, one of my favorites? Now you’re putting me on the spot.

Well, no-

Oh God. Okay.

Well I feel like every time I open it I’m like, “Oh, that’s a good one.” So you could just throw any of them.

Okay. Are you ready for this? We’re going to have a really moment.

Yes.

If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it probably is not that important.

Yeah, that’s like, ooh.

Ready? Success is when reality looks like what’s in our imagination. Oh, that’s like our Motion app. Oh, this is nice.

It’s a good book.

It is so cute. We’ll link it down below. Life is beautiful not because of the things we see or the things we do. Life is beautiful because of the people we meet.

Oh, that’s lovely. That could be like your patients, how many people you meet.

Right? Don’t complain. Contribute.

That looks great. Yeah. You can read one quote a day for some motivation to just-

Oh, here’s another. I got to put this aside. I could do the whole thing. Hold on. Ready? Bad leaders care about who’s right. Good leaders care about what’s right.

Oh, amen. Drop the mic. All the nurses are going to be like, “Dang.”

Okay. Write that one on your bulletin board on a Post-it. We love Post-it’s around here.

Oh man. Yeah. So then we went into Christmas, which you actually, I feel like got to slow down for two or three days.

I did. It was so nice.

Which is nice.

I feel like-

Bundle Birth is, yeah, Bundle Birth is an interesting company because I say now we’re corporate girlies. If you had a chance to see my icon on any of my business things, you would laugh at my picture, my profile photo. But we’re corporate people now, but we’re still nurses in the nursing world. But people usually slow down in the winter and we don’t always slow down.

Yeah, that was really nice.

And then we had our January Mentorship group who is amazing if you’re in our January 2024 Mentorship group. And I love just how many groups are we on now?

Oh, so many

14, maybe more. And so it’s seeing it grow from 2020 to now is amazing. And I feel like our mentors, Jess, Carly, Bree and Mykel, they’re constantly trying to make it better. And so we’re just constantly, “What could we do on this call? And let’s pivot. And that works really well.” And we just really want nurses to feel seen, safe and soothed on these calls. And that’s just the ultimate desire. The ultimate desire is to just make them feel loved and heard and listened to. Because so many times on the units it’s not. And we had our January, actually our January 2023 group graduate, and we asked them, we were like, “Why did you keep coming?” Because sometimes for people start off strong and come to the calls, and then by the end on the 13th call, which is we’ve spent 13 months together, we’ve built connections with these people, but not everyone can do that or make the time for it.

And 8% of people complete what they say they’re going to complete. And those people that are in those last calls, I’m like, “You were the 8%, and why did you come?” And we got really great feedback of just it’s constructive conversation. They can vent about something that’s happening and the responses are always positive and hopeful and how can we help, instead of just continuing to make the narrative negative, we see it all the time, right? Like, “Nothing seems to be [inaudible 00:11:33].”

Just like a complaining fest.

Like two or three in the morning when you’re just frustrated and it’s like you don’t believe in change and you haven’t seen proof of it. And so it’s hard. And so it’s just a positive time. So we had our mentorship calls, which are great. And then you may have noticed we are taking a little bit of a break from our April mentorship call. And so if you want to be in our next cohort, that’s going to be July. And so if you’re like, “Where was the April group?” It was strategically placed for many reasons to not do it, but our next one will be July. And so we’d love to have you.

You can also purchase mentorship though at any point and get started. It’s just if you want to join a cohort and go to the calls, they’ll start in July. So it’s still available. But if you want the community piece, which is to me one of the really fun benefits of many for it.

And then we had, okay, so two things. So we had a, Sarah decided to do, well, we decided to do an app, and then we found out the apps are really expensive. I don’t know if you know this, but they’re very expensive.

I’m regretting my entire life at this moment, to be honest.

Life is expensive. You can imagine apps are expensive.

It’s bad.

Apps do well is expensive. And so we were like how, we need money. Physiologic Coping online came, hundreds of you came to support us in the goal of pushing the app out and coming to learn and leveling up your care. It was a two-day event, which is fun.

I’ve never done that. I’ve only ever taught a big class like that online with just Physiologic Birth, which that one I could probably teach in my sleep at this point. It was very stressful, I’m not going to lie. As much as I taught it in Cancun, but to move things online and navigate 450 live faces is stressful. And that class is an advanced level class, and so it’s real heavy on the brain science. It’s real heavy on the hormones and the breaking down a physiology of a breath and how do you alter that to alter various things in the body. I had so much fun teaching it, I’m not going to lie. I was very nervous about it.

The vibes were so good. Sophia and I, we kept chatting about how fun the chat was, and it was a bunch of Bundle Birth nurses like, Hey, they saw each other from mentorship or Cancun or just other events or they worked together before. So that was really neat to see. So that happened, and part of that was a big reveal, a grand reveal.

Oh, finally.

So we lied to you. I’m just kidding.

Half lied. I think what the consistency that I’m learning about myself, this was a blind spot, was that my own nervous system cannot commit to certain things until I’m ready. Even I think about back to Physiologic Birth, I was like, “I’ll never put it online. There’s no way. I cannot, it’s too overwhelming. No.” And mind you, we said that we’re not doing it again. And my script ended up being was I cannot commit to doing it again. And that is half still true actually. But we did.

Yeah. And we knew at the end of the week that it was going to happen again.

We did. Yes. And everybody, every time I was in an alone moment in Cancun, people were like, “You can’t not do this again. This is too incredible.” This was way beyond our wildest dreams. And honestly, I will say I had very big dreams and very big hopes and expectations of it, and it was way beyond my wildest dreams. Mind you, we were very intentional with every decision that was made. But at the same time, you can be all intentional and you’re moving a group of people. That’s why it’s called Move. We wanted to move you in your bodies to another place to relax. We wanted to move your nervous systems out of sympathetic. We wanted to move your brains to somewhere new and somewhere excited and with new tools. And then we also wanted to move your spirits to each other and create friendships to last a… There was so many beautiful goals. But-

Speaking of friendships though, I have to say we just found out that there’s a group of 12 nurses that met at Move that still meet monthly on Zoom just to connect. That kills me. That’s the best.

I cried when I heard that. I’m like, “I’m sorry. No, you’re kidding, right? You’re kidding.”

Right? Isn’t that incredible?

That is beyond our wildest expectations. And mind you that that’s one of our dreams and goals and why we exist.

And I think they’re a group of people that came alone and they met each other.

I cannot.

I think the people that came alone are just so special and really got to dive into it even more. I even think about Amy. If Amy listens to this episode, Amy Qualey, she came alone and she was nervous about that and she made so many connections and had the best time. Because you don’t have anybody to lean on. You have to immerse yourself in what all is to offer. And that’s so brave. I don’t know if I would do it.

I think that we should still match people.

I don’t know.

I was just like, we’ll just let them sign up. But now I’m like, maybe we need to let them match each other. We’ll figure that one out.

Well, we can ask the people too. Ask people that came because a lot of people will come again. So speaking of that, there’s going to be a pre-sale list. Well, when is it? It’s in-

2026,

May, April.

April 30th to May 5th, 2026. So it’s planned around.

Hopefully your graduations. I know everyone. That was a big thing.

Plan your pregnancies.

Plan your pregnancies, or be pregnant or don’t get pregnant yet. Whatever you want. And there’s a pre-sale list. So if you’re listening and you went to Cancun, you will be on the pre-sale list. You will get access to buy first. Because I think people should be a little more concerned that the tickets are going to go.

A little? The tickets are going to go probably pre-sale would be my guess. But stay tuned.

Yeah, because there’s like what, 800 people on the pre-sale list for 385 spots. So we’ll see.

But again, no promises. We thought this thing would, to be honest, I was a little in my head about this one. I was like, “Oh, it’ll sell out by August, 2022.” And it did not. It never actually fully sold out. Our goal was 300, we got to 325 think it was with staff. But the sellout is 385, it is a hard stop and-

Because of the room, space of the room.

Yeah. The meeting room has a max capacity, but I don’t actually think we actually announced we are doing Cancun Move Retreat again. We got talking about it. We’re so organized that we’re doing it again. That was a huge announcement, and honestly it feels like such a huge weight off our shoulders to be able to talk about it because the number of people I’d be at conferences or whatever, “Oh, are you doing it again? Are you doing it?” And I’m looking at them like, “You’ll have to wait and find out.” But I don’t like keeping secrets like that. That’s too fun of a secret.

So plan your lives, plan your calendars.

And it will come back.

It will be here so fast. And we needed a year to breathe. We’re not even at a year, but we’re almost to a year. It will be a year and two months. And so the fact that we’ve been able to focus on our other things that we do has been really lovely because come May, we’re going to need to start actually thinking about this again and starting to, we have a basic plan in play, but starting to figure it out. Tickets will go on sale this year. So if you’re part of pre-sale, expect an email to actually add yourself to the pre-sale. So that’s also the thing. There’s like 800 that have the opportunity to be added to the pre-sale. But those of you that are listening that are like, “Wait, I didn’t go to Physiologic Coping. I missed out, or I didn’t go to the last one.” I hope there’s still opportunity for you. We’re not trying to be exclusive, we’re just trying to create urgency.

Yeah. So those are the main things that we’ve been doing in the past two, three months.

We had a Physiologic Birth class, if you haven’t been to that. There was also that.

It feels so easy now even though hundreds of people come and it’s like, oh yeah.

And then you’ve hopefully listened to our bonus episode, but if you haven’t, go find that bonus episode because our big big launch and where we’ve been enslaving is in our Motion app. Motion is lotion. Go lubricate your patients, slip and slide those babies out and use the app to do so and track your stats over there.

I’m going to go slip and slide.

Go slip and slide, lube them up. What we didn’t say in that episode was related to how it all unraveled. So we’ve had this idea going on, you’re going to, it’s like, go listen to that and then add this on. Now you know the whole story. We’ve had this idea in my head where we’ve been like, “Yeah, we should do The Flow. Yeah, it’s the app, it’s The Flow. It’s The Flow.” Finally, it was early July that I was like, we just need to block off a week of my time to get my brain on paper and then we can shop it to a developer. Literally in the beginning of this, I don’t remember if you were part of these conversations, Justine, but I remember being like, “So if we were to build an app, do we just hire an app person? What’s their title?”

Literally, I went to coffee with somebody who’s developed, or it wasn’t coffee, it was happy hour, and we went to happy hour and I was like, “So what type of person, what’s their title I’m looking for?” And he was like, “Well,” I was like, “That was a really dumb question.” But that’s how stuck we are as far as we literally don’t know anything. And now I do speak tech a lot more than I have in my life, but we started there. We ended up finding the most amazing company that, and I will say this also, we didn’t say in that episode, so fun. They fought for this project. So there was two options. There’s two teams, one in Asia and one in Europe, and obviously the Europe one for time zones and meetings and stuff. I was like, “Okay, we’ll go with the cheaper one.” Because I’ll meet at 11:00 or midnight for these meetings, which I am so glad that is not what we’ve been doing. I’ve been doing 7:00 and 8:00 AM meetings for-

You are awake at 11:00 PM though every day.

I know. And that’s why I was like, “Oh, it’ll be fine.” But now looking at it, I’m like, “I am wiped by them.”

That’s true.

I’ve had a whole work day of meetings and then I’ve had an another eight hour day of my personal stuff, of my own tasks to do, so it would’ve killed me. Anyway, the Europe team fought for this project because they were so excited about you and about the impact that this one would make. They’re used to, a lot of apps are venture capitalist companies that backing by VC firms who are like, “Just make me money,” and they just want to do some sort of techie thing. And this is tech, but it’s so much more intuitive. It’s so much more impactful. And they were so excited to be a part of the mission. They still are. And so they just have been a shining light and have gone above and beyond, worked so many unpaid overtime hours to try to get this thing to you. I hope someday we can bless them with something once this thing is a huge success. Because they’ve been so excited about it. They’ve actually matched the rates of Asia, that’s why we took the Europe team because they were all like, “Nope, we’ll do it for less. It’s fine.” They fought for this project. Isn’t that amazing?

Yeah, that is.

They’re just so excited about you guys and it keeps them going. So anyway, but I was like, I have nothing to shop out to an app person who unnamed title do. We hired someone on our team, whatever. And so we flew in Hannah, who’s my sister, and sat for, it actually only took three and a half days-

Yeah, I was impressed.

… that we put it all on paper. But the thing is I’ve been mulling on this for years in my head, years, got it all on paper, digitalized it, and then started to shop. And so-

That’s been a big portion of what’s been happening.

Yeah, that’s been my whole life, my whole and days and everything. So go to the app store and download Motion. It’s there for you. And head to the landing page, so you can go to our website bundlebirthnurses.com/motion and you can access all that there. And then there’s actually a discount for you to be a game changer. Join the Game Changers.

Yeah. So that’s all what we’ve been doing. And let’s talk about what’s coming on season four. This is episode one. Welcome back. You already listened to it. Way to go. We are going to be talking history of Lavonne Circuit in this season. We’re going to have some night shift. Just kidding. We’re going to have some night shift stuff in this season. We’re going to have some, I committed to an EFM basics episode this season. I’m going to put that out there right now.

Yeah, you are.

Be ready.

I’m going to talk about my EMDR experience.

Yes, we’re going to talk about that.

I’m really excited about that one. And I’m going to share a trauma that I had and how I found a therapist and had the most insanely, I literally was like, “What the bleep is this?” With my eyes shut mid-therapy session. Because I felt the shift in my nervous system. Guys, I’m so excited to tell that story.

And EMDR has been so helpful for nurses with the hard stuff we face at the bedside, so that’s going to be really cool. We are going to have Jen Atkinson back. She’s a fan favorite among our seasons. We’re going to talk about some fun things. We’re going to have our mentors on the call, Carly, Jess, Bree and McKell. We’re going to talk about starting committees, specifically an NTSV committee. And so if you’ve been someone that wants to join a committee and be a productive person on a committee or start a committee, that’ll be good. And then we are going to chat about ACOG ACOGing for a little bit.

ACOGing?

Yeah, ACOG Be ACOGing.

Is that the title of our episode? I’m just finding this out now. I love it. ACOG Be ACOGing. ACOG comes after us. What is this? What PR situation have been created?

And yeah, then there’s also some flexibility. We like to open, we keep some space. Then if something happens while either of us are in a birth, we could be like, “Let’s talk about that,” or you guys message us. You guys had a lot of suggestions. And Sarah and I haven’t even been able to chat about that yet, but we will. And so this episode, season four, we’ll have 12 episodes. And we’re excited to hang out with you for the next 12 episodes. Well, technically the next 13, no, technically the next 11, but yeah.

Yes. I want to just say a quick little thank you in gratitude to this community. It has been a wild ride, and the fact that we’re still here. I remember she kept being like, “Podcast, Sarah, we should do a podcast.” I was like, “I am not touching it. You have to manage the whole thing,” which now you don’t, which is so nice. We have a team, so we’re so grateful for everyone on our team that makes it possible. And the fact that we’re on a season four is just so wild to us on this fake little podcast. And the fact that you’re listening and you’re applying what you are learning, and I hope you find it as a really fun chat reprieve. We want to see you in person. We want to see you in our classes, we want to see you in mentorship. Join the app. There’s lots of ways to get involved. If you’re looking for a community, if you’re looking for a group of people that really care about their jobs, but more than that care about their lives and being better for their patients, yes, but also for yourself. That’s really important to us.

And particularly with this podcast, what I love is it’s also an opportunity to just share how we keep leveling up for our personal lives. That’s why I’m willing to share a very intimate, traumatic experience and that, because I want you to be motivated to heal as well. And we want to help you do the work that ultimately is the catalyst for you being better for everyone around you. We say we want you to live your best life and thrive in and outside of work, and so we really mean that. And this is part of our give back offering to you to help support you in your practice in just one more way.

Thanks for spending your time with us during this episode of Happy Hour with Bundle Birth Nurses. If you like what you heard, it helps us both of you subscribe, rate, leave a raving review, and share this episode with a friend. If you want more from us, head to bundlebirthnurses.com or follow us on Instagram.

Now it’s your turn to go and pay attention to where you might be crab shacking other people in your life. And pay attention to how we can be better team members to one another as you live your life and as you throw your starfish back into the water. We’ll see you next time.