Beyond the Birth Plan: Why Mental Preparation Matters

A conversation with Namrita, birth keeper and founder of The Nesting Heart

When Namrita became pregnant with her first child ten years ago, birth work wasn't even on her radar. She was deep in academic research, living what seemed like a completely different life. But her own pregnancy journey—and the transformative power of proper birth preparation—changed everything.

"Something in me said, wow, I need to go tell other moms this," Namrita recalls. Remarkably, this realization came just three months postpartum, when most new mothers are simply trying to survive the sleepless nights and endless diaper changes.

The Missing Piece in Birth Education

Today, Namrita runs The Nesting Heart, offering birth and parenting education with a distinctly holistic approach. But what sets her work apart isn't just her master's in psychology or her certification in Lamaze childbirth education—it's her refusal to treat birth preparation as a purely physical checklist.

"I don't have shock classes if someone's looking for a quick touch and go kind of thing," she says with characteristic honesty. "I love going deep. Lots of prep, because these are deeply transformative experiences."

And she means it. Her most popular classes—labor and birth prep, and newborn care and parenting—go far beyond teaching parents how to diaper or when to push. They dive into mindset work, belief systems, and the emotional architecture that will either support or undermine new parents in their most vulnerable moments.

The Birth Keeper Philosophy

Namrita describes herself as a "birth keeper"—a poetic term used by women deeply embedded in the birth space. Unlike the medical model that often reduces birth to a series of managed risks, birth keepers preserve "the sacredness of it, the sanctity of it, all the parts of it—the good, the bad, the rough, the raw, the real."

"We lose out on really the fullness of the experience because we're so focused on pain," she explains. "And I'm not denying that it's intense. It is really intense, but it's not the only thing."

This perspective is especially important in Southeast Asia, where birth remains heavily medicalized and the element of transformation and empowerment is, as Namrita puts it, "far and few between."

Unpacking What You Didn't Know You Were Carrying

Here's where Namrita's psychology background becomes invaluable. She understands that everyone comes to birth with conditioning—preexisting beliefs about pain, strength, independence, and what "good mothers" should be able to handle.

"Women will come in and say, 'I'm great with coping with pain,' or 'I'm not so great with coping with pain,'" she notes. "That's already a preexisting belief that will influence how you show up in labor."

Even more critically, she addresses something many childbirth educators skip entirely: how becoming a parent can trigger unresolved childhood trauma.

"That baby is literally a mirror to yourself when you were a baby," she explains. "If something had happened to you during that time, it's so important to unpack that before going into birth—and not just for the mom, for the dad too."

But Namrita is quick to clarify that you don't need major trauma to benefit from this work. We all carry conditioning about what birth should look like, how to cope with pain, and whether asking for help is a sign of weakness.

"A lot of women are told from a very early age that we have to be independent, that we can't ask for help, that that's what strong, modern, independent women do," she says. "But birth and postpartum is all about asking for support."

Beyond Baby Care: Planning for Real Life

When couples come to Namrita's newborn care class, they typically want to know how to keep their baby alive—how to diaper, how to feed, the basics. But Namrita has other priorities.

"Let's talk about who's supporting you beyond confinement," she redirects. "What does your particular home situation look like? Who's coming in for support after that very initial scaffolding goes away?"

She works extensively with fathers, recognizing that this generation of dads is well-intentioned but often lost. "They don't quite know what they're supposed to do," she observes. "I love doing that because I can see the wheels turning as I talk and they're like, 'Wow, we never even thought of this.'"

One of her recent success stories perfectly illustrates the long-term value of this approach. A Singapore couple who took her class reached out months later during a difficult sleep regression. The mother wrote to Namrita in the middle of the night, explaining that she'd remembered the class discussion about responsive parenting and brain development.

"I was so close to feeling like I was doing something wrong or there was something wrong with the baby," the mother wrote. "And we just responded. And a week later she's kind of back to her sunny self."

"That even gives me goosebumps as I speak now," Namrita says, "because that is my work—giving parents permission for babies to be babies."

The Reality of "Doing It All"

As a mother of two (ages 10 and 3) who runs her own business without a team, Namrita has strong feelings about the pressure on women to "have it all."

"I don't do it all," she states plainly. "I think that's what I've made peace with. There are parts that I have to let go in all my roles—both as a mom, as a professional, as a business owner."

For years, she watched other birth workers zoom ahead in their businesses while she struggled with feeling behind. "But I've made peace with the fact that my trajectory is gonna be slower," she says now. "I'll get where I have to be. It's just gonna take a little bit longer than maybe someone who has a different work-life situation."

You can trace the busy periods in her life by the dips in her Instagram posts. When her kids are sick or her daughter has after-school activities, work takes a back seat. "I am giving where my attention should go, which is right now first to the children, then to work."

Her advice to other mothers? "The important thing is to love yourself through that. We forget to do that—to have compassion for ourselves."

The Golden Nugget: The Power of Listening

When asked for her single best piece of advice for partners and family members supporting new mothers, Namrita doesn't hesitate: "Listen. Listen a lot without needing to fix."

This is especially important for husbands and intimate partners, she notes. "We are very quick to wanting to fix for people we love, and I understand that it comes from a good place of wanting to save them, but new mothers need to be listened to a lot."

When a new mother shares her pain, frustration, overwhelm, or even disappointment with how motherhood is going, those feelings are valid. "It doesn't define you as a mom, it's just a moment you're having, it'll pass," Namrita explains. "But if someone doesn't allow us to say that and is quick to say, 'Oh, you can't think that way,' or 'Look at all your blessings'—you are quick to invalidate."

This invalidation prevents mothers from releasing what they're actually feeling. "If you fear judgment, you're always stuck in that cycle of shame and guilt and overwhelm, and it never comes away really."

The same principle applies during labor. If a mother who was adamant about not wanting an epidural suddenly says she wants one, don't second-guess her. Support her. Understand the context and love her through it.

A Different Kind of Birth Education

What makes Namrita's work at The Nesting Heart special isn't just the depth of preparation or the psychological insight—it's the underlying philosophy that birth is not something to be feared and managed, but something to be kept, preserved, honored in all its complexity.

In a region where birth is heavily medicalized and doulas aren't always welcome in hospital settings, educators like Namrita provide a crucial counterbalance. Not by dismissing medical care—she's clear that everyone has their place in the birth space—but by ensuring parents have access to different voices and different ways of understanding this transformative experience.

"It's good to always have different voices in the space and just different ways of looking at parenting and babies," she says. "There's things that certain trainings might not allow you to see about birth because there's a sort of tunnel vision with the way we prep."

For parents-to-be in Kuala Lumpur and beyond, The Nesting Heart offers private sessions and classes covering everything from labor preparation to postpartum mental wellbeing to parenting children up to six years old. But more than specific skills, Namrita offers something harder to quantify: permission to feel all the feelings, space to unpack what you're bringing to parenthood, and the reassurance that you're not doing it wrong—you're just doing it.

As she reminds her clients: "Hormones are real, and they are surging and coursing and leaving and coming, so be gentle with yourselves."

Namrita offers birth and parenting education through The Nesting Heart, including labor and birth prep, newborn care and parenting classes, breastfeeding support, and parenting coaching. You can find her at thenestingheart.com or on Instagram @thenestingheart.