A note from our co-founder, Jessa
When I had my first baby, my partner and I took hours of classes, designed the perfect nursery, and built a detailed birth plan. I felt prepared – until an emergency c-section left me unprepared for everything that followed: the recovery, the hormone shifts, the strain on our relationship. The classes we'd spent hundreds on had skipped the very things I needed to know most.
When I got pregnant with my second, I was determined to have a different experience. I built a care team who balanced honesty with warmth – Megan and Whitney were the cornerstones, both by my side as midwives as our second son was born. Their prenatal, postpartum and lactation care made my second postpartum season night and day from my first: instead of surviving the fourth trimester, I found joy in it. I still struggled with the challenges inherent to this phase – sleep deprivation, feeling constantly needed, renegotiating my relationship with my suddenly oh-so-grown-up toddler – but there was a sense of peace I'd never experienced after my first. Part of that was simple reps, but much of it was the care team that held and supported me.
In our follow-up visits, I found myself thanking them for flipping the script. We realized what had actually changed wasn't so much the clinical care, but the honesty and the community it was grounded in – and that we could infuse those same elements into a class to help other families navigate this acute period. Roost was born out of that idea, and hope that more parents are able to meet this chapter with calm and confidence.
