Category: Maternal Mental Health

Categories
balance Maternal Mental Health Yoga

The Symbiotic Journey: How Prenatal Yoga Teaching Enriched My Doula Practice

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1726606915460{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]The worlds of prenatal yoga teaching and doula support may initially seem like separate realms, but my experience has taught me that they are beautifully intertwined. As someone who has worn both hats, I’ve come to appreciate how teaching prenatal yoga profoundly enriched my role as a doula. This symbiotic journey has enriched my life as a birthworker and prenatal yoga teacher, and elevated my offering of comprehensive support and nurturing guidance to expectant parents as they embark on their unique paths to parenthood.

Mind-Body Connection:

My experience as a prenatal yoga teacher has deepened my understanding of the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of pregnancy and birth. It has allowed me to provide holistic support to expectant parents, empowering them to embrace the beauty and strength within themselves as they navigate the profound journey of childbirth. Prenatal yoga is all about cultivating a deep mind-body connection. 

Breathwork Mastery:

As a yoga teacher, I learned to guide expectant mothers through postures and breathwork that foster this connection, preparing them for childbirth. This understanding translated seamlessly into my role as a doula, where I could emphasize the importance of staying connected to one’s body during labor, enhancing relaxation and coping strategies.

Teaching various pranayama techniques helps to explore the profound impact of breath on the body and mind. As a doula, I now guide birthing individuals in harnessing the power of breath to manage pain, stay grounded, and maintain focus during their pregnancies and in labor.

Adaptability and Personalized Support:

Prenatal yoga classes are filled with individuals at different stages of pregnancy, each with unique needs. Teaching yoga honed my ability to adapt and provide personalized support to cater to these diverse requirements. As a doula, I can now better understand and meet the individualized needs of laboring people and their partners, ensuring a tailored and empowering birth experience. Many yoga postures can be adapted and used as laboring and birthing positions. Practicing this and embodying natural pelvic and spinal movements is hugely beneficial.

Empowerment Through Education:

In both roles, education is a cornerstone. Prenatal yoga teaching reinforced the importance of providing expectant parents with knowledge about their bodies and birthing options. Armed with this understanding, I can empower my doula clients to make informed choices during childbirth, fostering a sense of ownership over their birthing experiences.

Creating a Safe Space:

Prenatal yoga classes are sanctuaries of support and community. As a yoga teacher, I discovered the significance of creating a safe and welcoming space for expectant mothers to connect, share, and grow. This experience translates directly into my doula practice, where I prioritize helping individuals feel at home in their bodies and creating a supportive environment where birthing individuals feel heard, respected, and cherished.

Embracing Mindfulness:

Prenatal yoga introduced me to mindfulness practices that encourage present-moment awareness and self-compassion. My own practice of mindfulness and my ability to guide individuals with compassion, empathy, and a deep appreciation for the sacredness of pregnancy and birth is something that I feel stands out to my clients. These tools have become invaluable in my doula work, where I guide individuals in staying centered, reducing anxiety, and embracing the beauty and intensity of their birthing experiences.

The journey of teaching prenatal yoga has been a symbiotic one, enriching my doula practice in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. It’s a reminder that our roles as prenatal yoga teachers and doulas are interconnected, both focused on nurturing and supporting individuals on their transformative journeys into parenthood. 

If adding yoga or embodied pregnancy and postpartum education has been calling you, check out our new offerings here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1726604707769{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Julia Forest

About the Author

Julia (she/her) is an international yoga teacher, birth doula, women’s health advocate, and closet artist who is passionate about health, environmentalism and empowered birth. She is co-creator of the internationally renown “Sacred Birth Yoga & Doula Training”, is founding director of Awakened Spirit Yoga and co-founder of the Wellkind Foundation, a non-profit that focuses on community empowerment and wellbeing through the lens of permaculture. She also created the Sacred Earth Yoga Training, the first yoga teacher training program that combines yoga, mindfulness, permaculture and leadership to transform lives and communities. Julia is Co-Director of Doula School.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Anti-racism work Canada Health Care Maternal Mental Health Uncategorised

2024 Medicaid & CHIP Beneficiaries at a Glance: Maternal Health

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text title=”2024 Medicaid & CHIP Beneficiaries at a Glance: Maternal Health” css=”.vc_custom_1718910346497{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]In the United States, publicly-funded healthcare is provided through Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program). These are joint programs of state and federal governments that provide health insurance to low-income people, children, people with disabilities, and pregnant people. These eligibility parameters mean that there are individuals who are eligible for coverage during their pregnancies and the postpartum period who are not eligible at other times. Medicaid finances 41% of births in the United States. Federal law requires states to provide coverage up to 60 days postpartum. A bill in 2021 gave states the option of participating in an extended coverage program offering coverage up to one year postpartum.

Medicaid Insurance card with thumb holding it

In May 2024, Centres for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) released an infographic summarizing beneficiaries’ maternal health data. CMS collects demographic data on age, race and ethnicity, and geography. They collect outcome data on maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity (SMM), underlying causes of maternal mortality, dental care access, postpartum contraceptive utilization, spacing between pregnancies, chronic conditions, timeliness of prenatal and postpartum care, smoking, behavioral health and substance use, neonatal abstinence syndrome, postpartum depression (PPD), preterm birth, and low-risk cesarean delivery. Additionally, they collect health system data on healthcare service provider distribution, state quality improvement activities, and state participation in an opt-in extended postpartum coverage program.

Key Take Aways

The data highlight key areas of disparity for Medicaid beneficiaries and provide an important road map for healthcare policymakers and system designers regarding where care could be enhanced. For example, the data show that Black birthers experience mortality 2.6 times more often than their white counterparts. This finding corroborates other research and supports advocacy efforts for publicly funded doula care as an intervention to reduce Black maternal mortality rates.  Another useful observation is that birthers under the age of 19 experience higher than average rates of PPD (22% compared to an average of 17%). This suggests that in addition to universal PPD screening, additional attention should be paid to this group during the postpartum period.

Black pregnant person with long braids and mustard coloured dress

This 9-page resource provides invaluable information to support US birthworker advocacy on expanded access to birth and postpartum doula care, freedom of provider choice and birth location, and mental healthcare. For birthworkers in Canada and other jurisdictions, it is an illuminating example of what can be learned from comprehensive demographic and outcome data collection practices.

 

Keira Grant (she/her) Inclusion and Engagement Lead – Racialized Communities

Keira brings a wealth of experience to the Online Community Moderator role. She is a Queer, Black woman with a twenty-year track record in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) education, projects, and community building initiatives.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Maternal Mental Health Mental Health Uncategorised

Embracing the Postpartum Mind

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text title=”Embracing the Postpartum Mind” css=”.vc_custom_1715196675524{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]One of my biggest frustrations as a doula is the inattention paid to women and birther’s postpartum health and recovery. It’s a stark, ongoing manifestation of medical misogyny. Historically, women were seen as vessels for babies. Our health during pregnancy was paramount because a healthy baby was the priority. Once the baby is born, the focus shifts to the baby’s health. Moms and birthers get put in the corner. This is reflected in the growing body of research on the benefits of doula care, most of which focuses on birth support, with little attention paid to the benefits of having a postpartum doula.

Among other concerns, this sweeping aside of birther’s postpartum health contributes to postpartum mental illness, both its development and escalation as it goes unrecognized and untreated.

In every postpartum interaction, I ask the birthing client how they are doing. This often elicits a response about the baby. I hold space for this, answer any questions, and then bring the focus back to how they are doing. There’s often a sense that focusing on themselves after having a baby is somehow “bad parenting”. I use the routine guidance we’re given on planes as a metaphor: You have to get your own oxygen mask on before you can help anyone else. When new mothers and their health concerns get left behind, it’s like we are asking them to sustain someone else’s life with no oxygen mask of their own.

Prenatally, I review what routine postpartum care should include so clients know if anything is falling through the cracks. I also review things that aren’t routine but should be. This includes how to tell if you should be assessed by a pelvic floor physiotherapist, as well as how to tell if you are experiencing postpartum mental illness that should not be dismissed as “baby blues”. In our birth intention setting practice, I ask clients to reflect on the mental health interventions they are open to if the need arises. I ensure that I have referrals at the ready to culturally appropriate therapy, support groups, and self-help resources, along with information on pharmacological and naturopathic options.

Whether they remember any specific information or not doesn’t matter to me. The goal is to ensure that they know that I am a trusted person they can disclose if they are not feeling mentally well after they have their baby. They know ahead of time that I view mental illness as normal, non-shameful, and usually impermanent if the right steps are taken.

A 2022 US-based study that explored birth and postpartum support found that having a postpartum doula lowered the odds of having postpartum depression and anxiety by 57.5%. This data was drawn retrospectively from Medicaid claims in three states that fund doula care. It’s a great example of why our services need to be accessible.

The non-birthing parent can also experience postpartum mental illness which is often overlooked. As part of supporting the whole family, we should be vigilant about this risk and empower non-birthing clients to recognize early warning signs and see help early. Early intervention is critical for ensuring positive outcomes for any mental illness.

Spreading the news about the mental health benefits of having a postpartum doula is a great way to observe Maternal Mental Month and World Maternal Mental Health Day on May 4. It’s especially important to raise awareness among our elected provincial representatives, and health policymakers. These are the people who can ensure needs-based access to doula care.

 

#MATERNALMHMATTERS, #WMMHD #WMMHD2024

 

Keira Grant (she/her) Inclusion and Engagement Lead – Racialized Communities

Keira brings a wealth of experience to the Online Community Moderator role. She is a Queer, Black woman with a twenty-year track record in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) education, projects, and community building initiatives.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Maternal Mental Health Mental Health Uncategorised

Shining a Light on the Prevalence of Mental Illness

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text title=”Shining a Light on the Prevalence of Mental Illness” css=”.vc_custom_1715195210027{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]At a recent public gathering, I noticed that a speaker referred to a community member exhibiting symptoms of a mental illness as “a person with mental health”. I found the turn of phrase jarring, but couldn’t quite put my finger on why. May is Maternal Mental Health Month and it’s a good opportunity to do the important work of finger placing, that is learning from what that feeling of discomfort is trying to teach.

Referring to mental illness as “mental health” is a confusing effort to euphemize states of mental ill-being. We use euphemisms for one reason: when the subject of conversation makes us profoundly uncomfortable. Clearly, being mentally ill is still taboo.

By age 40, 50% of Canadians will have or will have had a mental illness. It’s important to acknowledge that it is an unwell state that can significantly alter a person’s life. We can be strengths-focused while being honest. People with a range of mental illnesses can be resilient, resourceful, and creative. Some of the disability experienced by people living with mental illness is socially constructed, such as rigid social, cultural, and economic expectations regarding the hours and structure of paid work.

Truthfully, the acute phase of any mental illness does not feel good, and functioning to the best of what you know your ability to be, and meeting your priorities, becomes impossible. Most people would do just about anything to return to a mentally well state. Sometimes, desperation to return to a healthy state can be fatal, if people can’t see any path other than death to return to wellbeing.

Being unable to say you feel awful without shame is part of the problem. Being able to say “I feel like crap right now and I can’t function at my best, or at all” is the first step on the path to wellness.

As doulas, childbirth educators, and birth workers, we have a vital role to play in opening time and space for clients to say they feel ill. We can normalize not always feeling happy right after you have a baby. We can normalize feeling anxious rather than excited during pregnancy. We can normalize still being down months after you lost a pregnancy when everyone is saying “You can just try again.”

Recognizing that your state of ill-being is normal makes it easier to face without fear. With fear removed, it becomes easier to see that this state is temporary and become motivated to explore avenues to becoming mentally healthy.

This month we will spend time unmasking the mental illness behind Maternal Mental Health Month. It has a face, and it has a name. When we name mental illness, it’s like shining a light on the monster under the bed. We see that there’s not as much to fear as we thought and that we have more tools for safety at our disposal than we realized.

 

For more information about Maternal Mental Health visit the World Maternal Health Day website  wmmhday.postpartum.net

#MATERNALMHMATTERS

Keira Grant (she/her) Inclusion and Engagement Lead – Racialized Communities

Keira brings a wealth of experience to the Online Community Moderator role. She is a Queer, Black woman with a twenty-year track record in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) education, projects, and community building initiatives.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_header][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”540566″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row]