Beyond Caring for the Baby: Helping Mothers Rebuild Their Health, Strength & Sense of Self
What happens when a neonatal intensive care nurse who has spent years caring for newborns becomes a mother herself—and discovers how little support exists for the woman recovering from childbirth?
For Emily Riemer, that experience became the beginning of a new professional mission.
Based in Ontario, Canada, Emily is a registered nurse, postpartum health coach, mother of three, and graduate of the International Parenting & Health Institute’s Holistic Pregnancy and Child Sleep Consultant Certification Program.
With approximately 14 years of nursing experience, including work in neonatal intensive care and pediatric cardiac critical care, Emily brings extensive clinical experience to her work supporting women through pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and motherhood.
Today, through her business, Motherhood With Emily, she combines her nursing background with specialized education in perinatal nutrition, pregnancy and postpartum exercise, corrective movement, and holistic sleep.
Her mission centers on an often-overlooked reality of maternal health:
The arrival of a baby should not mean the disappearance of the mother’s own health, identity, and aspirations.
Emily believes women deserve individualized education, meaningful support, and practical strategies that account for the physical and emotional demands of motherhood.
Her professional journey illustrates how clinical knowledge, personal experience, and holistic education can come together to address an important gap in postpartum care.
A Career That Began in Neonatal Intensive Care
Emily’s healthcare journey began at the University of Ottawa, where she completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2012.
After graduating, she entered the demanding field of neonatal intensive care.
She began her nursing career at The Ottawa Hospital, where she worked in neonatal intensive care from 2012 to 2014.
She subsequently continued in neonatal intensive care at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
From 2016 to 2019, she worked at The Hospital for Sick Children, commonly known as SickKids, in its Cardiac Critical Care Unit.
In 2019, Emily joined Southlake Regional Health Centre, returning to neonatal intensive care.
Throughout these roles, she gained experience caring for medically vulnerable newborns and children in specialized hospital environments.
Neonatal intensive care requires clinical knowledge, careful observation, communication, and the ability to respond to complex medical situations.
It also places healthcare professionals in close contact with families experiencing some of the most emotionally demanding moments of early parenthood.
Yet even extensive professional experience caring for babies cannot fully prepare someone for the personal transformation of becoming a mother.
Emily would eventually discover this firsthand.
When the Nurse Became the Mother
Before having children, Emily had spent years developing the skills required to care for newborns.
She understood infant care from a clinical perspective.
She was familiar with feeding concerns, developmental needs, and the challenges that can arise during the earliest stages of life.
But when she welcomed her first child, she encountered an entirely different experience.
In her professional biography, Emily reflects on how motherhood changed her understanding of what women need after childbirth.
Despite her nursing education and clinical background, she felt unprepared for the changes in her own body, the physical demands of recovery, and the experience of functioning on fragmented sleep.
In a personal reflection shared on LinkedIn, Emily described struggling with exhaustion during the postpartum period, including nights when she slept for only short intervals.
She also shared the emotional difficulty of caring for a crying baby while feeling overwhelmed herself.
This experience revealed something important.
Knowing how to care for a newborn is not the same as knowing how to support a woman through postpartum recovery.
A mother can understand her baby’s needs while struggling to understand her own.
She can be highly educated, professionally accomplished, and deeply committed to her family—and still need meaningful support.
For Emily, motherhood highlighted a gap between the attention directed toward the baby and the resources available to the mother.
That realization would help shape the next chapter of her career.
Recognizing the Missing Piece in Postpartum Care
Pregnancy and childbirth involve significant physiological changes.
After delivery, women navigate recovery while adapting to infant care, interrupted sleep, changing routines, and new family responsibilities.
Depending on individual circumstances, recovery may involve changes in strength, pelvic floor function, nutritional needs, emotional wellbeing, and the ability to participate in everyday activities.
These experiences vary widely.
Some women have relatively uncomplicated recoveries.
Others face significant physical or emotional challenges requiring specialized healthcare.
And many find themselves somewhere in between—managing everyday responsibilities while trying to understand what their bodies need.
Emily recognized that postpartum education frequently focuses on the baby while leaving mothers with unanswered questions about their own recovery.
Women may receive general advice to rest, eat well, and gradually resume activity.
But translating that advice into everyday life can be difficult.
How does a mother prioritize recovery when she is waking repeatedly throughout the night?
How does she rebuild strength when her schedule changes every day?
How does she support her nutritional needs while breastfeeding, working, and caring for children?
And how does she continue pursuing meaningful professional or personal goals without overlooking her wellbeing?
Emily began seeking additional education to help address these questions.
Expanding Her Expertise Beyond Nursing
Drawing on her clinical background and personal experiences, Emily pursued additional professional education across several interconnected areas of maternal wellbeing.
Her specialized training includes:
- Pregnancy and Postpartum Exercise Specialist — Core Exercise Solutions
- Education focused on exercise considerations during pregnancy and after childbirth.
- Perinatal Nutrition Expert — The Food Doula
- Specialized education relating to nutritional considerations during the perinatal period.
- Pregnancy and Postpartum Athleticism — Brianna Battles
- Training related to supporting physical activity, strength, and athletic participation during pregnancy and postpartum recovery.
Emily also describes education and experience in corrective exercise, personal training, and health coaching.
Together, these areas reflect her interest in understanding how different aspects of a woman’s health interact.
Nutrition influences energy availability and recovery.
Physical activity must account for individual capacity and medical circumstances.
Sleep affects daily functioning and wellbeing.
Emotional demands, family responsibilities, and work schedules influence what is realistic.
Rather than viewing each concern in isolation, Emily has developed a professional approach that considers how these factors affect one another.
Integrating Holistic Sleep Education Through IPHI
Another important part of Emily’s professional education is her training through the International Parenting & Health Institute (IPHI).
Emily is a graduate of IPHI’s Holistic Pregnancy and Child Sleep Consultant Certification Program.
Her LinkedIn profile identifies maternal and child sleep consulting among her areas of professional education and expertise.
At IPHI, our Holistic Science of Sleep Method™ approaches sleep as a natural physiological process influenced by interconnected systems.
Our educational philosophy encourages professionals to explore the physiological, psychological, developmental, emotional, environmental, and lifestyle factors that may influence sleep.
Rather than relying on sleep training or standardized behavioral interventions, we emphasize individualized education and understanding the whole person.
This perspective has particular relevance during the postpartum period.
When a new mother experiences fragmented sleep, the solution is not always as simple as recommending more hours of rest.
Infant feeding needs, caregiving responsibilities, household support, health concerns, work schedules, and family circumstances may all influence her opportunities for sleep.
Sometimes additional sleep is not immediately available.
In those situations, professionals can help families explore realistic strategies for rest, recovery, shared responsibilities, and appropriate support.
Emily’s work reflects an interest in the relationship between maternal recovery and sleep, rather than treating sleep as an isolated concern.
Her broader professional approach recognizes that supporting the baby’s wellbeing and supporting the mother’s wellbeing are connected priorities.
Motherhood With Emily: Putting the Mother Back Into the Conversation
In January 2023, Emily established Motherhood With Emily, her postpartum coaching practice based in Ontario, Canada.
The business emerged from her belief that women deserve more individualized support after having children.
Her work focuses particularly on ambitious, high-achieving women who are navigating motherhood while continuing to pursue professional, physical, and personal goals.
These may include entrepreneurs, business owners, healthcare professionals, and other women balancing significant responsibilities.
Emily recognizes that becoming a mother does not automatically eliminate a woman’s ambitions.
She may still want to build her business.
She may want to return to exercise.
She may want to feel physically capable and energized.
She may want to maintain aspects of her identity that existed before motherhood.
But her circumstances have changed.
And the strategies that worked before pregnancy may no longer fit her daily life.
Through Motherhood With Emily, she offers individualized postpartum health coaching that considers the practical realities of each woman’s circumstances.
Her work brings together education and support related to nutrition, physical activity, sleep, recovery, and sustainable routines.
The goal is not to ask mothers to ignore their responsibilities or push through exhaustion.
It is to help them develop approaches that account for the lives they are actually living.
Supporting the Woman Who Still Has Ambitions
One of the most distinctive aspects of Emily’s professional philosophy is her focus on women who want to continue pursuing meaningful goals after becoming mothers.
Her website communicates a central message:
Ambition doesn’t stop at motherhood.
For many women, motherhood changes how their time, energy, and attention must be distributed.
A professional who previously followed a predictable exercise routine may now have to work around infant feeding, interrupted sleep, and unpredictable family schedules.
An entrepreneur may be navigating business decisions while recovering from childbirth.
A mother returning to work may be managing both professional expectations and the ongoing demands of caregiving.
Emily’s approach acknowledges these realities without suggesting that women should have to choose between caring for themselves and caring for their families.
Instead, she emphasizes adaptability.
A nutrition plan should fit a woman’s actual circumstances.
A movement program should consider her current capacity.
Recovery strategies should account for sleep disruption and other demands.
And expectations should be adjusted when circumstances change.
This is an important distinction.
Sustainable support is not necessarily about doing more.
Sometimes it is about identifying what matters most and adapting accordingly.
Sleep, Nutrition, Movement & Recovery: Understanding the Connections
Emily’s professional website organizes her approach around four interconnected priorities:
Sleep. Eat. Move. Thrive.
These concepts reflect her belief that maternal wellbeing requires attention to multiple aspects of health.
Sleep and Recovery
Sleep can be especially challenging during early parenthood.
Emily acknowledges that many mothers cannot simply increase their sleep duration whenever they need to.
Instead, she considers the practical circumstances affecting rest and recovery.
Her coaching approach includes strategies that account for the realities of family life rather than assuming ideal conditions.
Nutrition and Energy
Pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding can influence nutritional requirements.
Postpartum nutrition may also be affected by time constraints, food availability, fatigue, and the demands of caregiving.
Emily’s additional education in perinatal nutrition supports her interest in helping women understand nutritional needs within the context of their everyday routines.
Individual medical concerns or nutritional deficiencies require appropriate clinical assessment and care.
Movement and Physical Recovery
Emily also emphasizes individualized approaches to postpartum movement.
She recognizes that recovery experiences differ and that returning to physical activity should account for symptoms, medical guidance, personal goals, and functional capacity.
Her education in corrective exercise and pregnancy and postpartum athleticism contributes to this area of her work.
Emotional Wellbeing and Personal Identity
Becoming a mother can change how women experience their bodies, relationships, responsibilities, and sense of identity.
Emily’s work acknowledges that maternal wellbeing involves more than physical recovery.
It also includes helping women navigate changing expectations and reconnect with goals that remain meaningful to them.
Together, these areas form a multidimensional approach to postpartum support.
A Personalized Approach to Coaching
Emily’s website describes individualized coaching designed around the realities of motherhood.
Her services include personalized guidance related to nutrition, physical training, sleep, and recovery.
She also offers asynchronous communication, allowing clients to receive support and adjustments without always needing to schedule a traditional appointment.
This approach recognizes that a mother’s availability may change unexpectedly.
A child may become ill.
A night of disrupted sleep may affect the following day’s energy.
Work responsibilities may shift.
And a previously realistic plan may need to be adapted.
Emily emphasizes that each woman and family has different circumstances.
Rather than expecting every client to follow the same schedule, her coaching model is designed to respond to individual needs.
This reflects a broader principle of holistic education:
Support becomes more meaningful when it adapts to the individual rather than expecting the individual to fit a predetermined system.
Rethinking Postpartum Strength and Performance
Emily’s work also challenges the idea that postpartum exercise should follow a rigid timeline or standardized program.
Drawing on her nursing experience, fitness education, and personal experiences, she encourages women to consider recovery and physical capacity in relation to their changing circumstances.
In her professional writing, Emily discusses the importance of adapting exercise to factors such as sleep, stress, symptoms, available time, and family responsibilities.
She has also introduced programming concepts focused on adaptable strength training for mothers.
Her LinkedIn posts describe The BUILT Method, a 12-week adaptive strength-training program intended for women whose schedules and recovery needs change from day to day.
The central idea is that consistency does not always require doing exactly the same thing every day.
For mothers, a realistic program may need to accommodate interrupted nights, changing energy levels, childcare responsibilities, and fluctuations in physical capacity.
This approach reflects Emily’s interest in helping women pursue strength and functional wellbeing without ignoring the realities of postpartum life.
The Emotional Transformation of Motherhood
Beyond physical recovery, Emily has written about the psychological and emotional transition into motherhood.
This transition is sometimes described as matrescence—the developmental process through which a person experiences changes in identity, relationships, priorities, and self-understanding while becoming a mother.
Emily has reflected on how motherhood can challenge the expectations of women who are accustomed to structure, measurable progress, and a strong sense of professional identity.
For someone who has spent years building a career, managing responsibilities, and setting ambitious goals, the unpredictability of early motherhood can be particularly difficult.
Her writing emphasizes that women benefit from having their experiences understood within a broader context.
A mother may be experiencing physical recovery, disrupted sleep, emotional adjustment, and changing responsibilities simultaneously.
These experiences should not automatically be interpreted as a lack of discipline or motivation.
They may instead indicate that her circumstances require different forms of support.
Emily’s own experience as a mother of three has contributed to her interest in helping women navigate these transitions with education and practical resources.
Why Maternal Support Matters
One of the recurring themes throughout Emily’s work is that women should not have to navigate postpartum recovery without adequate support.
New mothers often receive substantial information about infant feeding, sleep, safety, and development.
Yet their own needs may receive comparatively little attention.
Emily’s professional journey highlights the importance of addressing both sides of the parent-child relationship.
A baby’s needs matter.
And so do the needs of the person providing much of that care.
Maternal wellbeing may be supported through appropriate healthcare, practical household assistance, adequate nutrition, opportunities for rest, emotional support, and individualized education.
The right combination depends on each woman’s circumstances.
Coaching can be one component of this broader support system, while medical and mental health concerns should remain within the care of appropriately qualified professionals.
Emily’s work reflects her commitment to helping women access practical, individualized guidance during a demanding stage of life.
Professional Profile: Emily Riemer
Name: Emily Riemer
Location: Ontario, Canada
Professional Roles:
- Registered Nurse
- NICU Nurse
- Postpartum Health Coach
- Maternal Wellbeing Educator
- Pregnancy and Postpartum Exercise Specialist
- IPHI Holistic Pregnancy and Child Sleep Consultant Graduate
Business: Motherhood With Emily
Education:
Bachelor of Science in Nursing, University of Ottawa, 2012
IPHI Education:
Holistic Pregnancy and Child Sleep Consultant Certification Program
International Parenting & Health Institute
Additional Professional Education:
Pregnancy and Postpartum Exercise Specialist — Core Exercise Solutions
Perinatal Nutrition Expert — The Food Doula
Pregnancy and Postpartum Athleticism — Brianna Battles
Selected Professional Experience:
Registered Nurse — Southlake Regional Health Centre, 2019–Present
Registered Nurse, Cardiac Critical Care — The Hospital for Sick Children, 2016–2019
Registered Nurse, Neonatal Intensive Care — Mount Sinai Hospital, 2014–2015
Registered Nurse, Neonatal Intensive Care — The Ottawa Hospital, 2012–2014
Postpartum Coach — Motherhood With Emily, 2023–Present
Areas of Professional Focus:
Postpartum Health Coaching
Maternal Wellbeing
Holistic Pregnancy and Child Sleep
Perinatal Nutrition
Postpartum Recovery
Corrective Exercise
Pregnancy and Postpartum Fitness
Maternal Sleep and Recovery
Personalized Health Education
Women’s Strength and Functional Wellbeing
Website: https://workwithemilyriemer.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilyriemer-motherhoodwithemily/
Bringing the Mother Back Into Maternal Healthcare
Emily Riemer’s professional journey is a reminder that experience, education, and personal understanding can come together to create meaningful change.
Her years in neonatal intensive care gave her extensive experience supporting newborns and families in clinical environments.
Becoming a mother introduced her to the challenges of postpartum recovery from a deeply personal perspective.
Her additional education in nutrition, exercise, maternal wellbeing, and holistic sleep expanded the tools she could bring to her professional work.
Today, through Motherhood With Emily, she supports women who want to care for their health while continuing to pursue the lives and goals that matter to them.
Her work reflects an important message:
A mother’s wellbeing should never become an afterthought simply because she has become responsible for someone else’s.
At the International Parenting & Health Institute, we recognize the importance of educating professionals to consider the interconnected factors influencing individual and family wellbeing.
Emily’s multidisciplinary professional journey demonstrates how specialized education can contribute to a broader understanding of maternal needs.
Congratulations, Emily!
We are proud to recognize Emily Riemer as a graduate of IPHI’s Holistic Pregnancy and Child Sleep Consultant Certification Program.
Your commitment to maternal wellbeing, your extensive neonatal nursing experience, and your dedication to helping women navigate postpartum recovery reflect the value of individualized, compassionate, and informed support.
We celebrate your work through Motherhood With Emily and your continued efforts to bring greater attention to the health and wellbeing of mothers.
Because when a baby is born, a mother deserves care, education, and support, too.
Learn more about Emily’s work at:
https://workwithemilyriemer.com/
