The Fourth Trimester
BY KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON
The Fourth Trimester is a holistic guide that offers practical guidance for women making the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual transition into motherhood.
Deeply impactful on both the individual and global level, it’s shifted the experience of motherhood for women all over the world — and helped make this universal, yet widely-ignored experience of postpartum healing a priority in national policy.
- GET YOUR COPY OF THE FOURTH TRIMESTER
Praise For The Fourth Trimester:
“While there are many books about pregnancy and birth, there has been a scarcity of quality books, information and education about postpartum health. Kimberly Ann Johnson remedies this with equal parts empathy, education and elegant prose. Her personal experience lends a power to her observations, and her years of experience with new mothers in different countries and cultures lends her recommendations a universality and accessibility. I would recommend this book to all new mothers."
"There are several excellent books about the first nine months in utero and the process of birth. What has been less addressed is 'The Fourth Trimester.' In this remarkable book on the postpartum period, Kimberly Johnson provides specific tools to help the new mother rebuild her core strength, contact and restore her vital energy and reclaim her capacity for intimacy and deep sexuality. A book for all mothers in preparation for the unfolding mystery of gestation, birth and restoration."
"The Fourth Trimester is like having your own wise and loving post-partum midwife. Kimberly Johnson curates this guide through the intense postpartum time so that your transition into motherhood is the sacred experience it is meant to be.”
How we tend to the primal continuum of life -preconception through the postpartum period- is directly reflected in the general health and wellness of our human communities. Kimberly Johnson's book is an essential contribution to our collective re-membrance of how to properly caretake Life upon Earth.”
“Twenty-seven years after the very traumatic, emergency caesarean section of my daughter, Kimberly Ann Johnson has worked her wisdom and magic on me. The Fourth Trimester is so comprehensive, so accessible and so consummately useful, that all these years later Kimberly has helped me to create my own coherent, and healing, narrative. This is nothing short of miraculous.”
“We must be grateful to Kimberly Ann Johnson for popularizing the concept of “fourth trimester”. The timing is perfect. To understand the current crisis in the history of mankind, we must refer to the previous spectacular crisis, when our ancestors started to dominate nature, particularly through the domestication of animals and plants, and also through the socialisation of childbirth. Before that time, women used to isolate themselves to give birth and, soon after, they were living with their baby among an extended family. Today it is exactly the opposite: women don’t have privacy when giving birth and, in the age of nuclear and one-parent families, they often experience a high degree of isolation during the ‘fourth stage.’
It is becoming urgent to phrase new questions regarding unprecedented situations. This is what Kimberly has successfully done when studying a crucial phase of what we have called the ‘primal period.’”
"I've long wished for a book like this-- one that helps fill what I call The Black Hole in women's health. Thank you, Kimberly, for embarking on your Heroine's Journey and transforming your pain into a path of hope and awareness for other women. The Fourth Trimester holds a beautiful blend of personal stories; practical checklists, reflection questions, recipes, and movement practices; and a compilation of postpartum healing arts from cultures around the world. I know every woman on the journey to motherhood (and, in turn, her entire family) will experience greater sovereignty, peace of mind, and vibrant health as a result of this book."
“Reading The Fourth Trimester from the cocoon of my own fourth trimester with my second son, I feel mothered in the deepest sense. Both gentle and firm, poetic and precise, this book is gifting me the understanding necessary to be fully reverent to the miracle I am living. Feasting on both the practical tools and expansive perspectives that come from one who has lived this path earnestly herself, I move through these precious days with my new baby in kindness and awe. I truly wish every mom-to-be can be blessed with the wisdom contained in this book!”
"This book saves the mothers-to-be that don't even know they need saving yet. When my friends give birth I'm on-the-one-hand overjoyed for them, but on the other, I'm so apologetic—because rarely are they ready for what will come over their first month of motherhood. Seldom have I seen them receive the help they will need.
With the release of the Fourth Trimester, I feel a relief for expecting moms because author Kimberly Johnson has finally penned a book that we all should have had before giving birth. Johnson left no stone unturned, covering everything from what postpartum moms should be eating, to how they can heal their pelvic floors.
Following Johnson's postpartum guide, which pulls from a rich multicultural world heritage, can be the difference from a woman never recovering fully from childbirth, or being completely renewed within a matter of weeks. Johnson has created a timeless piece of work that has the power to change the lives of the next generation—by caring for their mothers."
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It happens to all of us. But nobody’s talking about it.
Birth is one of the most fundamentally human experiences there is — and yet, many mothers go through it, and the vital postpartum healing period, largely on their own.
We’re left to navigate this incredibly important time in our lives through trial-and-error and best guesses, while we’re already worn down and emotional from the upheaval that even the happiest, most ease-filled birth is.
The Fourth Trimester changes all of that.
In it, somatic practitioner, postpartum authority, and birth doula Kimberly reframes the birth and postpartum experience, teaching you everything you need to know both on a physical and energetic level to have an empowered birth and a safe and healthy transition into motherhood.
With a mix of practical how-to’s and fiercely compassionate emotional support, The Fourth Trimester is the grounded, gentle guide every mother-to-be and mother should have.
- GET YOUR COPY OF THE FOURTH TRIMESTER
You'll Learn:
- How you can prepare your body for birth, including practical strategies for minimizing trauma and injuries.
- How to organize yourself and your household for the best possible transition into motherhood.
- Simple practices and home remedies to facilitate healing and restore your energy.
- How to strengthen your relationships postpartum, and aid the return to sex.
- The keys to exercising safely postpartum.
- How to carry your baby with comfort.
- Ways to explore the complex, and often conflicting emotions that arise postpartum.
- How to work with your body, not against it, during your postpartum healing.
- The six elements that make up a supportive postpartum sanctuary plan.
- Ways to reconnect with yourself and heal after a traumatic birth — and how having a healthy individual fourth trimester helps the whole world mother better.
- GET YOUR COPY OF THE FOURTH TRIMESTER
About Kimberly
Kimberly Ann Johnson is a sought after practitioner and lead authority in postpartum health. Johnson has been working in integrative women’s health and trauma recovery for more than a decade. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Vogue, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, Today.com and many more. She has most recently published Call of the Wild, a data-driven guide to shifting your relationship with trauma.
In The Fourth Trimester, she meets readers where they’re at — in the critical transformation from woman to mother — and guides them through this rite of passage with a grounded compassion that comes from years of being a somatic practitioner and birth doula.
Bonus Resources!
The Fourth Trimester Card Deck
Looking for that little bit of extra support as a new mom? The Fourth Trimester Card Deck is here for you. With 52 cards, organized into the 5 main themes of postpartum healing –Nourishment, Body, Mind, Relationship, and Inspiration – this beautiful deck makes a wonderful companion to the book, and can make life easier for any new mother.
