I grew up in NYC and attended public school. I come from an activist family and became involved with the women’s movement (High School Women’s Liberation and the Harriet Tubman Brigade of Redstockings) and particularly the fledgling anti-rape movement (New York Women Against Rape) when I was a teenager. NYWAR lasted until my second child  was born when I was 35 and I sank like a stone till he started sleeping through the night. One especially wonderful thing about the women’s movement in the seventies was having older women tell me what was what, which led  pretty directly to health. Our Bodies Ourselves was an epiphany in my life.

  I’m  a social worker and love primary care. I love working where the waves of the soul crash on the rocks of the body but I don’t much like working with hospitals where  a social worker is mostly there to empty the bed . I like working with people at a pace they have chosen and I like the full range of normal life.

  I am especially interested in birth, I think, in part because my mother made a point of telling me how different and much better my birth at New York Hospital in November 1953 was than that of my brother – during WWII probably under general anesthesia and with a LONG separation of mother and child, or my sister’s birth later in the forties during which Mom’s legs were held together so my sister couldn’t be born before the Doctor got there (I am relieved to report that she is herself a doctor and has excellent fine motor skills.) But at my birth Mom was shown pictures of where she was at, was given control over the anesthesia – gas of some sort – and best of all I was placed on her chest. Not skin-to-skin but eye-to-eye and it was clear how much of a difference management makes. She also had been stopped from nursing my brother because he was in the special nursery, my sister was stopped at three weeks because she wasn’t gaining weight fast enough and only a pervert would suckle. She made it three whole months with me and I always felt that was special. I also loved staying with her when I had my sons. Despite having had a hard time with parts of childbearing she sure came through for me as many a grandmother (friend, mother-in-law, sister) does when babies are born.

   

I was recruited by Ruth Watson Lubic, CNM of Maternity Center Association (now Childbirth Connections) to create the first social work program in an out-of-hospital birth center at the Childbearing Center of Morris Heights in 1988. I had had my sons with Maternity Center (or the Mothership as we called it in the Bronx,) taken a training at MCA and worked in Maternity/Newborn at Bronx Lebanon, the birth center’s back-up hospital CBCMH, the first out-of hospital  birth center in an inner city. To be able to bring that kind of care to that community was a great joy.

  Working with midwives is kind of a mixed blessing because while they get what you are talking about they notice too darned much. However I have to work with providers I trust and I trust the midwives at Full Circle to give good care so it has been often very rewarding working with them.

  I am pleased that mental health is now out of the closet in maternity care but dislike the trend to look for symptoms and not figure out who each pregnant woman is and what she wants in her care in the context of her life.

  I have worked in many health care facilities and created social work programs in four of them. I think social work is a tool that different people use in different ways but it is usually a good idea to plan for a birth and postpartum that will be maximally pleasant. I really enjoy figuring this out with people and am honored to share this special time with our families.

Bring Back Lying In

By: Janet O’Hare Posted in: Mental Health, The Childbearing Year It’s time to put a stake in the heart of the notion that we should expect a majority of women to suffer from the “Baby Blues”. It is normal for women to be labile and tired postpartum. It is not necessary for them to be miserable. Major depression with a postpartum onset and postpartum psychosis are found throughout history and around the world. The Baby Blues are endemic in a time and a place where women routinely receive grossly inadequate …