About Kestrel Gates
“I see this work of tending to the postpartum time as way to cultivate cultures of care, supporting our individual and collective resilience. .”
I’m Kestrel. I’m a mother and perinatal health advocate on the Oregon coast…
I wrote the Build Your Nest postpartum planning workbook and am created the Postpartum Navigator training because I believe that all families should have the information they need to make a postpartum plan that is right for them.
More than anything, it is my roles as mother and as community member that have given me with the deep knowing of the importance of the postpartum time. Our shared stories of struggle and triumph have nourished my sense of mission.
I am now having these conversations with mothers and professionals around the world. Regardless of culture and health care system, we are seeing many of the same struggles and coming to the same conclusions about what is needed.
In my community, I run the Build Your Nest Postpartum Navigator Pilot Project, a community-based program that helps families prepare for the postpartum time and supports them through the first three months. The program is fiscally sponsored by Baby Blues Connection, a perinatal health organization based in Portland, Oregon. I am on the Oregon Perinatal Collaborative steering committee, the chair for the Resilient Clatsop County community sector workgroup, and am the co-founder of the Clatsop Perinatal Task Force. I am also a La Leche League leader and have training in doula work, lactation, and perinatal mental health.
Looking Back
I attended my first birth in 1996 and went on to do a doula training in 1997 and did another doula training in 2017. In college I majored in dance and minored in ethnobotany and then went on to work as a massage therapist. I gave birth to my son in 2007 and daughter in 2011.
It wasn’t until I had my own children that I realized how important the postpartum time is. After my son was born, I did not give myself maternity leave from our family business of making handmade paper lights (HiiH Lights). Within 10 days of giving birth, I was on a construction site, looking at the ceiling where one of our custom lights would be installed. When my son was 4 weeks old, I was helping create a community performance project and was up late writing press releases. It was too much. I had the idea that jumping back into everything quickly, was natural and showed how well I had adjusted to motherhood. I paid for it hard. Those first weeks and months were so much harder than giving birth.
Nearly four years later, I gave birth to our daughter. This time, I planned. I cleared my plate. I called in help. And it was such a sweet, sweet time.
These experiences set me on a mission to help other families have more rest and support.
Speaking + Poster Presentations
International
Co-presenter at Attreverso Il Periodo Perinatal, online, Italy, 2024
Presenter at Postnatal Support Network Conference, online, France, 2021
Interview with Instituto Psicologia Funzionale, online, Italy, 2021
Interview with Association Humanly, online, France, 2021
Presenter at Birth Conference, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2017
National
Co-presenter at Postpartum Support International Annual Conference, 2025
Poster presenter at Lamaze International Annual Conference, 2024
Poster presenter at Postpartum Support International Annual Conference, 2023
Oregon
Presenter at the Resilient Clatsop County Convening, Warrenton, 2025
Panelist at the Oregon Doula Association Conference, Salem, 2024
Presenter at Oregon Health Authority’s Home Visitor Summit, Bend, 2024
Poster presenter at the Oregon Public Health Association Conference, 2023
Presenter to Early Head Start and Health Families home visitors, Astoria, 2022
7 module live online training for Postpartum Navigation, online, 2020
Panel at OHSU's Moore Institute Nutrition Consortium, Astoria, 2019
Speaker at Community Baby Shower, Astoria, 2018, 2019
About Build Your Nest
The Build Your Nest Mission: To provide parents and professionals with tools and education that promotes REST, SUPPORT, and CARE during the postpartum time.
Our vision is that parents everywhere have REST, SUPPORT, and CARE after their babies are born.
Build Your Nest Values and Understandings
The health of babies, children, and all of society is rooted in maternal health.
Parenting is big, important work of great personal and collective significance.
REST, SUPPORT, and CARE are universal postpartum needs.
We all need rest, support and care, not one particular class or culture. Racial, class, and gender equity are central to this work.
Antiracist ideologies and policies as integral to maternal health.
Not all mothers give birth and not all birthing people identify as mothers, while recognizing that worldwide, the majority of parenting is done by women.
Build Your Nest is inclusive of all genders, sexual orientations, and family structures.
Maternal health solutions need to be community based, recognizing the huge impact in-person relationships have on individual health.
We recognize that postpartum traditions are cultural. We honor and celebrate them, while walking with care and respect, listening to the voices of the people to whom they belong.
Our Story
Having had two very different postpartum experiences and seeing a huge need for cultural shift, Kestrel set out to create change. She wanted to give parents a simple tool that would empower them to work with the resources at hand to have better postpartum experiences. This led her to writing the workbook. In turn, each translation has come into being from a similar response in women around the world: the knowledge that huge change is needed and this can start one family at a time. The workbook is now in 7 languages, with more translations in the works.
Kestrel created the postpartum navigator role in response to existing gaps in maternal health care and the crisis of the pandemic which highlighted the need for greater care.
The community that is forming around Build Your Nest including the translators and postpartum navigators who are doulas, midwives, psychologists, nurses, journalists, social workers -all share a common vision of improving maternal health in their communities.
We share the understanding that postpartum recovery is a basic human right and that the health of mothers and birthing people, is foundational to healthy societies.
No One Right Way
“[Kestrel] Gates opens her text with a very important reminder to readers that there’s “no one right way” to prepare for or process your postpartum experience. Like births, each one is different. A lot of women get caught up in societal or even self-imposed expectations of what this period in their lives should look like but Gates assures that the most important thing be that you “do it your way”.”
Build Your Nest: A Postpartum Planning Workbook is available on Amazon or in bulk options.
