• Many mothers talk about how their bodies have changed after having babies, but it wasn’t until she actually experienced it herself that Serenity Carr, CEO and founder of Serenity Kids, realized just how much her body changed.
• At 2 years postpartum, she kept finding herself thinking that her body would “go back” to what it was before having her daughter, Della, “any day now.” When it didn’t, she felt a little bit of everything: broken, wrong, ashamed.
• Serenity wasn’t finding many women talking about their feelings around their postpartum body, so she decided to write a post about it on Instagram. The post was a picture of her body before having a baby, and a picture of her 2 years postpartum body. She was holding up a sign that said, “This Body Carried a Baby” and she wrote a caption about her journey and struggle with her postpartum body.
• The post was so popular that they decided to turn the slogan, “This Body Carried a Baby” as a campaign to feature other mothers sharing their story of their postpartum body.
• Serenity’s intention was to share her story in order to help other moms, and it worked. And that’s what Serenity Kids is built upon. It’s built upon helping the mom and parent community to really step into their new role as parents.
• As such, Serenity Kids isn’t just a baby food company. It’s a company whose team is dedicated to helping find resources for parents to step into their identities in a powerful way.
• Since her original post in the summer of 2020, Serenity is a lot more accepting of her body. She says that two things really helped:
• A third tip that Serenity was given to help her move into acceptance of her postpartum body was to go through her old clothes and give them away. To keep what brings joy but donate the rest. She hasn’t done it yet, but she intends to.
• Serenity struggled with postpartum anxiety, and it wasn’t until she was about 6 months postpartum that she figured out what it was when she googled it one night. She worked on it and eventually the postpartum anxiety lifted.
• Serenity’s current parenting challenge is parenting her toddler, Della, who is saying no to everything, and generally doing exactly what toddlers are meant to do!
• In parenting Della, Serenity is leaning on the work of Janet Lansbury (who has a podcast called Unruffled and a book called No Bad Kids), as well as the book by Marc Bracket called Permission to Feel. 
• Serenity has also found a lot of value in the work of Brene Brown, as well as Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. 
• Essentially, Serenity and Joe are trying to parent Della in such a way as to encourage a healthy expression of her feelings: all of them. Big and small.
• Serenity’s daughter was breech for the last trimester, and she couldn’t find a practitioner who would deliver her vaginally.
• Serenity really wanted a home birth, and she tried everything to turn her daughter, but she wouldn’t budge. She even tried to ECV where they try to turn the baby from the outside, but it didn’t work.
• Serenity ended up going into labor naturally (though she believes it may have been exacerbated by the ECV), and she had a C section the morning that the company, Serenity Kids, launched!
• Serenity wasn’t comfortable having a C section, but she said that she realized one day that this wasn’t just her birth. It was also her daughter’s. And her daughter had a say in how she was going to come into the world.
• That said, it was and still is hard for Serenity to accept her C section birth story, because she really wanted to have a more natural experience and let mother nature direct things as they were meant to go.
• At Serenity Kids, they are committed to hiring people that understand their customers as much as possible, and that means parents and moms. 
• They also offer on site child care to make it easy for parents – especially moms – to be able to work without having to worry about who will take care of their children!

About Serenity

Serenity Carr, co-founder and CEO of Serenity Kids, is on a mission to promote wellness with infant nutrition. Formerly employed in tech and logistics, Serenity left her corporate career to pursue her passion of health coaching where she helped clients achieve their health goals. Having healed her digestive issues through changing her diet, Serenity is transforming the baby food industry by developing innovative, nutrient-dense products. The recipes are modeled after the macronutrients in breastmilk and stress the importance of minimizing sugar to reduce inflammation. She lives in Austin with her husband and co-founder, Joe, and their 2 ½ year old daughter Della.

CONTACT INFO:

Website: https://myserenitykids.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myserenitykids/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myserenitykids 

You Tube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMBgRm2M7vnw-eMJl3uY9rQ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/myserenitykids 

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/serenitykids/ 

Resources mentioned in this episode

Podcast Episode with Kelly LeVeque and Joe and Serenity

Beta Brand – Serenity’s new favorite jeans!

Dress For Success – to donate clothes to empower women to achieve economic independence

Brene Brown’s podcast 

Janet Lansbury – Book: No Bad Kids and Podcast: Unruffled

Marc Brackette’s new book on emotions – Permission to Feel

Book: Untamed by Glennon Doyle

The report on heavy metals in baby food: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/report-toxic-metals-baby-food-parents-need-know_l_601d852fc5b66c385ef92b86 

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