Finding Peace and Confidence Through Pregnancy & Postpartum ft. BirthWell Founder, Shana Kosofsky
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Today’s episode takes you to the other side of the world, in the heart of Jerusalem! Shana Kosofsky, founder of BirthWell, is an ultrasound technician, yoga teacher, and a certified pre and postnatal coach living in Jerusalem, Israel. Shana shares fascinating details of her experience living in Jerusalem during her first pregnancy, and now her second, along with the planning of having the birth of her second baby in Jerusalem. Victoria and Shana continue the conversation around the ways in which Shana is harnessing her expertise and personal experience to bring American-style warmth to Jerusalem’s prenatal care. It’s a dialogue that mirrors the collective hopes and challenges faced by women worldwide, as we seek to find connection to our bodies throughout the transformational season of pregnancy and childbirth. The power of education in transforming fear into confidence during childbirth becomes a central theme, reminding us all that the journey to motherhood is as much about preparation and strength as it is about love and resilience.
Shana and Victoria round off their discussion with the strategic groundwork that goes into successful brand building, applauding how the principles gained from The Branding Business School have shaped BirthWell's brand strategy. So, settle in, and let's celebrate the powerful symphony of women thriving in business and motherhood.
Who is Shana Kosofsky? [03:29]
Shana Kosofsky lives in Israel, in the heart of Jerusalem, with her husband and her baby boy. She is also expecting her second baby in July! While she currently lives in Jerusalem, Shana grew up in Long Island as the youngest of eight kids, so pregnancy and babies have always been something she was fascinated by. Shana’s professional background is as an ultrasound sonographer and she worked in high-risk OB for a few years while also being a yoga teacher. Now, Shana is able to combine the clinical knowledge from her healthcare experience with her personal knowledge and experience with yoga and breathwork to develop a very specific niche, which is to help women prepare in every way to have an empowered pregnancy and birth experience.
The Birth of BirthWell [05:33]
Shana was working in New York, pre-COVID, and when the world shut down, so did her job. With her time now free, Shana leaned into studying yoga. It was during this same period of time that she met her husband, and in a whirlwind, they got married and moved to Israel. Both Shana and her husband had spent time in Israel previously, but once they moved there, Shana quickly realized that there wouldn’t be a job opportunity that would ever compare to what she was comfortable with. There would be a different language, a different culture, and even with working in a clinic, with American clients, it still would not compare to working in New York City. So, she relied on yoga and taught classes out of her house. She fell in love with the women and the setting that she had created, but still found herself missing ultrasound. Shana has been an avid listener of The Branding Business School podcast (formerly known as the BrandWell Podcast), and after three years of thinking creatively of how she could have the best of both worlds, she was inspired to create something of her own. She could put together her skill sets and make something new that hasn’t been there before and something that so many people could benefit from.
Initial trips to Israel [07:43]
In the Orthodox Jewish community, it is common to go to Israel post high school as a gap year. Shana went right after high school for a year, lived there, studied there, explored, and connected with her heritage. Her husband went to college first and then went to Israel when he was 22. He spent two years there, and actually overlapped at the same time Shana was there, though they didn’t meet at that time. Being in Israel was an adjustment, specifically to the culture. There’s no Target, Amazon takes a month, and there’s no customer service. Everyone is extremely direct; it’s not an overly polite culture but it’s very honest with very upfront people. While Shana loved her experience in Israel, it didn’t really seem realistic for her to live in the Middle East while her whole family lives in New York, so moving to Israel only came to be when she realized that she and her husband shared that same passion. On a deeper level, there are incredible mentorship opportunities in Israel and the whole country is infused with a spiritual and growth–oriented energy. You can feel yourself being pushed because you don’t have so many of the physical comforts. Things are more real and they see it as a tremendous benefit to being there for themselves and now raising their children there, which has been a whole new level of challenges. These challenges are what are pushing them to grow and communicate together, while also pushing their minds. Shana says it’s an empowering experience to reflect on how far they've come in the last few years.
Moving to Israel [10:29]
Shana and her husband had talked about moving to Israel when they were dating. They got married six months after they met and they wanted to move to Israel then, but there were no visas. During COVID, everything was shut down. While they were on a waitlist, Shana’s husband made the bold decision to quit his job in order to energetically move the ball forward. The day that he was going to quit, his boss also happened to call a meeting to let the team know the department was restructuring and everyone had three months to find a new job. That same day, they received an email that they would have their visas ready in three months from that day. Three months later, they were in another country and adjusting, happy and so sure that they made the right decision.
Pre and Postnatal care differences from the Middle East and America [12:39]
Israel’s society as a whole is tough. They are very tough people. Every home has a room that looks like a bomb shelter, because that’s a normal part of life. Sometimes there are missiles and they’re under attack, but regardless, they are strong people. Combining that strength with pregnancy and motherhood makes a lot of sense and shows very clear resilience, but at the same time it can be very jarring for an American looking for obstetric care to be in a place that’s so opposed to American care. On another level, there are very little aesthetics and close to no client experience. While the healthcare is super affordable, there are extremely long wait times and crowded offices. Not to mention the language barrier. Many Americans living in Israel long term could feel the need or desire to have more of the American style prenatal care and support going through their pregnancies. That said, Shana is on a mission to solve this desire and bring the feeling of higher end, loving, warm support to Americans that are living in Israel.
BirthWell [18:59]
A goal for Shana is to network with other English speaking prenatal specialists such as massage therapists, pelvic floor therapists, acupuncture, nutrition, etc., and build more of a support system that’s organic for women in Israel. Another major piece will be birth education because many women find it scary to not know what’s coming and not know what the changes are on a biological level of what’s happening to their bodies. People feel out of touch with themselves during their childbearing years and Shana wants to make them more familiar and take away some of the fears surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. At BirthWell, she will be doing workshops and classes to give women the skills to integrate them throughout their everyday lives. What has been extremely powerful to creating BirthWell is that Shana is her own ideal client, so she gets to practice on herself and it motivates her to stay up with the research and evidence based practice. As she continues to learn, she implements it herself, and then sees the effects on her own body, mental health, and her own relationship with herself, her husband, and her family.
Shana had her first child, her son, in the states, but they plan on having their second child in Jerusalem. Her experience not only worked out in terms of timing for family to be around her, but also because some of her clients at BirthWell will also be having their second or third child in Israel after having their first in America. It’s also very common for newlyweds in the Jewish community to spend their first year of marriage in Israel because it helps couples build their relationship since they have to really trust each other and be there for each other. So, there are also a lot of very young first time moms being away from their families and needing support.
As Shana continues through her second pregnancy and is preparing for her first birth in Israel, she considers herself a petri dish. She’s learning through her experience of going to her prenatal appointments in Israel so that she can empower American women who are also having their child in Israel and learn how to navigate the system as a foreigner, because it’s very important to her that women are empowered in their own skin. Shana says that when women start to feel out of touch with their bodies, and their sense of self as their bodies are changing, everything can start to get really confusing. Shana’s goal is to help women go through their childbearing years without feeling like they lost themselves.
Shana’s first birth experience in the States [30:02]
As a yoga teacher and ultrasound tech, Shana was shocked when she recognized dread setting in while she was pregnant with her first child. While she was grateful and excited to be pregnant, she was also scared. She knew so much about other people having babies but when it was happening to her, she lost her confidence. Reflecting on this, she finally realized that she had grown up hearing about many traumatic births and particularly that the first birth is so painful and traumatic no matter what you do. This idea of birth didn’t resonate with her, so Shana decided to do her own research and created her own experiment. She decided to do everything she could to prepare for birth and then make her own judgment of her experience after. Shana began practicing yoga with a more prenatal focus, strength training, yoga visualizations, walking everyday, sitting on the ball, drinking all the water; Shana did it all. During this process she decided that she also wanted to try no intervention and see how it goes. The day of, she expected to feel anxious but instead she just felt calm. Once the contractions started to come, she just couldn’t wait to meet their baby boy! It was a transformational, yet intense, experience, but also one of the happiest days of her life. Pre-pregnancy particularly set her up for a great birth and she knew that there was some kind of secret combination in the modalities of the things that she had combined and that the knowledge needed to be shared. Shana needed other women to know that women can feel connected and close to themselves through their childbearing years and approach their births with calmness and confidence, and actually get to enjoy their babies instead of healing their fractured bodies after birth.
BirthWell’s philosophy [40:02]
Shana’s favorite study comes from the University of Michigan where they found that women on average expel three times more oxygen in labor than a marathon runner expels during a race.
Whether you feel that or not, that’s what’s happening in your body, so there is an art to training and preparation to build the strength and endurance in order to support those changes. Additionally, you have to simultaneously train to relax and surrender and find softness in order for your body to change for the baby to come out. Every athlete trains to improve performance, reduce risk of injury, and speed up recovery time. If women approach having babies with the mindset of how hardcore it actually is, and how deeply you’re pushing your body to the limit, then we would have different outcomes and different confidence levels. When you feel strong and connected, it increases the chance of having a smooth delivery.
Shana’s experience with The Branding Business School [43:49]
Shana has felt a deep connection to BrandWell and The Branding Business School and has felt an amazing feeling of understanding. The Branding Business School has helped her develop who her girl is, who she’s serving, and brainstorm how she can cultivate attracting clients. Shana has found the course a pleasure to go through and says that it’s helped develop her goals of her business along with creating a really clear brand strategy. She was originally just looking for design, but now has greatly appreciated knowing what her brand strategy was before making an investment into design. She says that she has leveled up BirthWell in more ways that she could have even fathomed. After taking the course she knows who she wants to serve, who she doesn’t want to serve (because she’s not the best fit for them), and she has been able to totally knock out imposter syndrome by knowing how deeply she can impact the women around her. There have been many transformed mindsets just from taking The Branding Business School.
BirthWell’s differentiator [47:30]
BirthWell’s classes are designed to meet women where they are in their motherhood journey. The movements are handpicked to train the exact muscles needed to support a healthy, strong pregnancy and facilitate a smooth delivery. Shana also infuses all of her classes with labor prep, contraction prep, and breathwork exercises to facilitate a better birth.
The Branding Business School
Are you ready to find clarity in your brand strategy like Shana did? Join The Branding Business School Waitlist here! Next enrollment opens in June!
Key Quotes
“When you feel strong and connected [to your body], it increases the chance of having a smooth delivery.”
Shana Kosofsky
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