Bridging Eco Maternity, Postpartum Support & Healthier Home Environments
Meet Katie Madill, founder of Eco Nesting Co., Eco Maternity Consultant, postpartum doula, mother of three, and graduate of the International Parenting & Health Institute’s Eco Maternity Consultant Certification Program.
Based in Lawrence, Kansas, Katie has created a distinctive approach to supporting growing families, one that considers not only the baby and parent, but also the home environment and systems surrounding them.
Her work brings together:
Eco Maternity.
Environmental awareness.
Pregnancy preparation.
Postpartum support.
Healthier home environments.
Maternal wellbeing.
Family support.
Through Eco Nesting Co., Katie helps families create healthier, more intentional home environments while reducing the overwhelm that can accompany preparing for a baby and navigating low-tox living. Her approach is individualized around each family’s budget, priorities, health concerns, preferences and capacity.
And at the center of her philosophy is a message that makes her work particularly relatable:
Progress over perfection.
Her goal isn’t to make parents afraid of everything around them.
It’s to help them understand their options, identify priorities, and make realistic changes according to their capacity, budget, health concerns and values.
The Moment That Changed Her Perspective
Katie’s interest in environmental health began during her first pregnancy.
Six months pregnant and deep in the instinctive process of preparing her home for her baby, Katie encountered research concerning environmental chemical exposures.
The experience changed the way she thought about health.
Nutrition and genetics mattered, but Katie began asking another question:
What about what surrounds us?
Her awareness of environmental exposures became a catalyst for examining the products, materials and environments that would surround her growing family.
It was the beginning of a professional interest that would eventually become Eco Nesting Co. Econesting Co.
When Healthier Living Becomes Overwhelming
Katie’s story took another turn following the birth of her third child.
She describes experiencing a difficult personal health challenge while also feeling deeply burned out. During that period, she began considering another kind of environmental and physiological burden:
stress.
That experience influenced an important part of the philosophy she uses today.
Creating a healthier environment shouldn’t become another source of fear, guilt or chronic stress.
Katie founded Eco Nesting Co. specifically to help families address environmental concerns without the overwhelm and anxiety that can accompany the low-tox or “non-toxic” movement.
That distinction matters.
Because parents can easily become overwhelmed by an endless stream of messages telling them what they should remove, replace, avoid or purchase.
Katie’s approach asks families to start somewhere manageable.
Baby steps can still create meaningful change.
Building a Foundation in Eco Maternity
In 2022, Katie expanded her professional education through the International Parenting & Health Institute’s Eco Maternity Consultant Certification Program.
Her own professional website credits the program with providing extensive education surrounding environmental toxins commonly encountered in pregnancy and newborn products.
Today, Katie continues to publicly identify herself as an IPHI Eco Maternity Consultant, and her FAQ independently lists:
Eco Maternity Certification — International Parenting & Health Institute, 2022.
The education became a natural extension of work Katie had already begun exploring with families—and ultimately became an important foundation for the services she created through Eco Nesting Co.
Creating Eco Nesting Co.
Eco Nesting Co. was created around a deceptively simple idea:
The home is an ecosystem.
Katie works with families to examine the health and function of that ecosystem while recognizing that no two families have identical resources, concerns or priorities.
Her consultations can consider:
air quality
water quality
materials
household and personal-care products
mold susceptibility
lighting
electromagnetic-field awareness
cleaning practices
nursery products
and the overall function of the home.
Rather than handing every family the same checklist, recommendations are personalized according to factors such as budget, health concerns, urgency, preferences and the family’s current capacity.
That final factor is particularly important:
capacity.
A recommendation isn’t especially useful if a parent is too overwhelmed to implement it.
Toxin Awareness Without Fear
One of the most refreshing aspects of Katie’s current work is her emphasis on context rather than fear.
Her Eco Maternity Registry service explicitly describes developing a healthy level of toxin awareness through informed risk assessment rather than fear tactics. Econesting Co.
That’s an important distinction within environmental-health conversations.
Families do not live in perfectly controlled environments.
Parents have different budgets.
Different homes.
Different medical concerns.
Different amounts of time.
Different levels of support.
And different priorities.
Katie’s work therefore isn’t built around achieving an impossible version of a perfectly “non-toxic” life.
It’s about understanding what matters, identifying realistic opportunities for improvement, and making changes gradually.
Progress over perfection.
Eco Nesting the Nursery
One of the clearest examples of Katie applying her Eco Maternity education is Eco Nesting the Nursery.
Rather than approaching nursery preparation primarily through décor, Katie looks at the baby’s room as an intimate environmental ecosystem.
Her consultation can consider air and water, materials, lighting, mold awareness, household exposures and other environmental factors. Families receive recommendations customized around their priorities and circumstances.
It transforms a familiar pregnancy activity—preparing the nursery into a broader conversation:
What kind of environment are we preparing for this developing baby?
And importantly, families don’t have to change everything at once.
Rethinking the Baby Registry
Katie has also applied the Eco Maternity philosophy to another familiar part of pregnancy:
the baby registry.
Her Eco Maternity Registry helps parents choose baby products with greater attention to safety, sustainability, necessity and their personal values.
But Katie takes the idea even further.
Instead of simply helping parents determine what to buy, she encourages them to consider:
What do we actually need?
Her philosophy is essentially self over stuff.
Families may consider secondhand items when appropriate, avoid unnecessary purchases, evaluate materials and ingredients, and even register for services and practical support rather than accumulating more belongings.
Because sometimes what a postpartum parent needs most isn’t another blanket.
It’s a meal.
A clean kitchen.
Rest.
Someone to hold the baby.
Or someone willing to ask:
“What can I take off your plate?”
Reimagining the Baby Shower
That philosophy inspired another creative part of Eco Nesting Co.:
Nesting Parties.
Rather than centering the gathering entirely around gifts, Katie helps families organize celebrations built around quality time and acts of service.
Friends and loved ones might help prepare food, organize feeding or diapering stations, prepare clothing, support household systems, or help the family prepare for postpartum recovery.
It’s a subtle but meaningful shift:
From celebrating the arrival of a baby with things
to
preparing a family for the arrival of a baby with support.
Extending Her Work Into the Postpartum Period
Katie’s professional development didn’t end with pregnancy and environmental-health education.
In 2023, she completed 30 hours of postpartum doula training through DONA International. Her professional listing also reports additional 2024 training in Perinatal Mental Health through Postpartum Support International and Bringing Baby Home through the Gottman Institute.
Her postpartum services now support families with areas including newborn care, feeding, sleep, recovery, bonding and maternal wellbeing.
And the practical nature of her support is worth emphasizing.
Sometimes postpartum support means education.
Sometimes it means helping a parent get nourishment.
Sometimes it means creating an opportunity for an uninterrupted nap.
Sometimes it means spending time with another child.
Sometimes it means helping restore a little order to the home.
And sometimes it simply means making sure a mother has enough time to eat, rest and shower.
Supporting Mothers, Not Just Preparing for Babies
This may be the strongest thread running through Eco Nesting Co.
Katie’s work is certainly about creating healthier environments for babies.
But it is equally concerned with the wellbeing of the mother and family.
Her Nesting Parties emphasize support.
Her registries encourage families to register for help rather than only products.
Her environmental-health work considers parental capacity.
Her postpartum doula services prioritize nourishment and rest.
And her philosophy recognizes that asking parents to obsess over every possible environmental exposure can undermine the very wellbeing we’re trying to support.
That’s what makes her interpretation of Eco Maternity especially compelling.
A healthier home shouldn’t come at the expense of a parent’s mental health.
Years of Supporting Natural Approaches to Health
Katie’s work with families also predates Eco Nesting Co.
Her website describes approximately eight years of experience helping families explore natural approaches within their homes and health.
As a Certified Essential Oil Specialist, she has taught classes addressing areas such as sleep, pregnancy and birth, children’s health, immune support, digestion, pain management and lower-tox cleaning.
She has collaborated with psychologists, chiropractors, physical therapists, health coaches, teachers and other professionals.
One experience became particularly meaningful to her.
Katie helped support the implementation of aromatherapy within a Veterans Hospital hospice unit in Wichita, Kansas, teaching volunteers and staff about aromatherapy and comforting touch as part of the No Veteran Dies Alone initiative.
It demonstrates another recurring theme in Katie’s work:
Environment matters, but so does how people feel within that environment.
Supporting Families Who Need a Village
Katie has also volunteered with Selah Home in Lawrence, Kansas, supporting at-risk pregnant mothers with postpartum care.
That experience fits naturally into the philosophy she has built around nesting.
Preparing for a baby is not simply preparing a nursery.
It is preparing:
the environment,
the household,
the support system,
the parent,
and the family.
A beautifully prepared nursery means relatively little if the person recovering from birth has no one helping her eat, sleep or recover.
Katie’s work continually brings the conversation back to the whole ecosystem surrounding the growing family.
Professional Profile
Katie Madill| Eco Nesting Co.
Eco Maternity Consultant | Postpartum Doula | Founder
Location: Lawrence, Kansas, USA
Business
Founder — Eco Nesting Co.
IPHI Certification
Eco Maternity Consultant
International Parenting & Health Institute
2022
Additional Training
Postpartum Doula Training
DONA International — 2023
Perinatal Mental Health Training
Postpartum Support International — 2024
Bringing Baby Home Training
Gottman Institute — 2024
Certified Essential Oil Specialist
Professional Focus
Eco Maternity
Environmental Toxin Awareness
Healthier Home Environments
Pregnancy & Nursery Preparation
Eco Maternity Registries
Sustainable & Secondhand Choices
Nesting Support
Postpartum Doula Care
Maternal Wellbeing
Family Support
From Nesting Instinct to Professional Purpose
Katie’s story began with something millions of expectant parents experience:
The desire to prepare.
But for Katie, nesting eventually became something much bigger than organizing drawers and preparing a nursery.
It became an exploration of the environments in which families live.
Then an education.
Then a profession.
And ultimately, a business designed to help other parents navigate those same questions without becoming overwhelmed by them.
Today, through Eco Nesting Co., Katie combines Eco Maternity education, environmental awareness, practical nesting support and postpartum care to help families prepare not only for a baby, but for the transformation of the entire family.
Her work reminds us that healthier living doesn’t have to mean doing everything.
It doesn’t require perfection.
It doesn’t have to begin with fear.
Sometimes it begins with one informed decision.
One manageable change.
One person offering support.
One baby step at a time.
💙 Congratulations, Katie!
We are proud to recognize you as an IPHI Eco Maternity Consultant graduate and celebrate the thoughtful way you have transformed your education into practical, compassionate support for mothers, babies and growing families.
