Ep.16: Welcome Me Back, 2026! Thank You For Sticking With Me!

~~~

I'm back on The Postpartum Wellness Show!

It's been a very unexpected 2025 with major life changes. While I've been silent on the digital front, my plate has been overflowing.

Yet, this podcast hit 1000 downloads in November last year (2025)!!!!

I'm so thrilled!!!

THANK YOU for the new listens and for those who are sticking around.

I've scheduled a bunch of weekly episodes starting today - so you'll be hearing more of me this year!

Welcome back and I appreciate you <3

~~~

Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and informational purposes only. Please see your medical provider for medical advice.

~~~

CONNECT WITH DR KRISTAL LAU!

• Website: Bridges In Health
• Buy My Book! 'Postpartum 30: Thirty Days To A Nurtured Fourth Trimester'
• YouTube @drkristallau
• Instagram @mamaswingwoman
• TikTok @drkristallau
• LinkedIn @kristallau

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to The Postpartum Wellness Show. I’m Dr Kristal Lau, your host.

Actually, this is more of a welcome-me-back to the podcast because it’s been a while. A bit of a long but also unexpected hiatus. The last time I posted was in March of 2025. But, you know, life happens. Story for another day for you guys.

But most importantly right now, I’m back. And I also wanted to start off with a big thank you. Thank you for all of you who have stuck around for the podcast, and the new listeners who have been downloading the episodes. Because I received an email from Buzzsprout a couple months ago letting me know that there has been a thousand downloads.

I cannot believe that. Because for many reasons, when I first started this podcast in February of 2022—yes, I know the dates because I went to look it up in my Buzzsprout dashboard to see when did I start this podcast—I was just not expecting that many people to listen to this type of show. Mainly because postpartum, you know, sometimes isn’t as popular a topic.

But when I started it, I wanted to talk about something that I enjoy talking about. And also, my postpartum journey was incredibly difficult, but also a huge kind of learning—a huge learning time—for me. And I honestly can’t say I really enjoyed a lot of it for many reasons, but it has taught me how to enjoy the rest of my motherhood and what’s to come for me.

So I think in that sense, it was very important for me to share what I know about postpartum. And to also share with you a lot of things that come from the clinical side, from the research side, and to make things make sense for your daily life. Because, you know, we have a lot of guidelines, a lot of clinician knowledge out there, and their opinions as well as science. But sometimes the real question we’ve got to ask is, “Is this going to work for me in my current situation, in my reality?”

So that’s why this podcast exists. And also to reassure you, the theme of exploring parenthood, postpartum wellness, and heritage—that will remain exactly as it is. Because it’s important for me to impart with you a lot of my experiences and stories that have come from my medical school days, my medical training, and when I was practicing back in Australia.

Because I find that not only misinformation is rife, but there is, for some reason, an idea that medical doctors don’t practice holistic medicine. That somehow holistic health is only for those in wellness. But that’s not true. I can reassure you.

Because for as long as I can remember, when I started studying medicine—where I started in Malaysia and finished in Australia—holistic was basically in everything I was taught. In the textbooks, in the clinical simulations, and especially when we started interacting with real patients rather than what we call simulated patients. It was always drilled into us—us meaning me and my cohort—that you must view the patient holistically. You must view their case, so to speak, holistically. You never just see them as a disease or a pathology or a problem that’s meant to be fixed.

So it does baffle me that today we have this great big assumption that medical doctors don’t practice holistically or don’t view patients holistically. And somehow doctors, you know, need to be taking special courses to learn how to provide holistic health when literally the crux of learning and providing medical care and service is to do it holistically.

But perhaps that’s just my experience with my training and my practice of medicine. Maybe I’m lucky that I had mentors and consultants and bosses who did that and so imparted that practice to me. Can’t speak for the rest of the world, of course.

But off my soapbox about that now.

I just wanted to let you know I have bulk-recorded a bunch of episodes for you. And they will only be published in audio form. So I’m going to focus on the postpartum topics on this podcast. It will be published every Wednesday.

And if you wanted to look at more stuff that I’ll be doing, go to my YouTube channel. The link will be in the show notes for this welcome-back episode. And you can just follow what I do there.

Just a little snippet: I am going to approach my content on YouTube through the lens of “Living with Change with Dr Kristal Lau,” of course, because the only constant in life is change. And it sounds a bit cheesy, right? I know. But it is what it is, and that’s the fact of it.

Yeah. So I wanted to bring a lot more information and experiences to you, especially once you’re out of postpartum. And perhaps you have more questions about the rest of your parenthood journey, or about yourself as you go through change and life stages. Then you transition from my podcast to the YouTube.

All right. And just again, to give you a little idea of what to expect for 2026: I have been doing a bunch of postpartum-type lectures for my peers in medicine and academia as well over the past two years, actually. And I haven’t really shared it with anyone. I mean, I recorded what I did, but I didn’t really put them up anywhere either.

So I decided all the slides that I’ve been teaching, I’m going to take them bit by bit, here and there, and share them with you on this podcast. Because I’ve already done the lectures, and now I want to share them with you. And of course, if anything new comes up from the world of medicine or research regarding postpartum, I’ll be sharing them with you on The Postpartum Wellness Show for sure.

So that’s that for me, welcoming you back as I welcome myself back. I’m very excited. And, you know, have a great start of the year.

Oh, and before I forget to touch on the heritage side of things: the year of 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese zodiac. And that’s supposed to be good for dragons, I’m told. When I say I’m told, I mean I’m told by people who practice Chinese metaphysics. And that’s what I grew up with. You know, I believe in that stuff to some degree, no different than those of you who have your spiritual practice or religious practice. And I like it. I like to merge that part of me with the sciency part of me, because that makes me whole.

And also, if you hear my kids in the background, that’s because I record at home. So sometimes they could be hiccuping in the background or having a little hi and bye as I tell them to wait. I say that now because I’ve got one right here.

So anyways, welcome back, y’all, and I will see you in the next episode. Okay, take care.