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motherhood Archives - Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: the Montana Coalition

Sep 19
Love0

Just Showing Up

By Parenting

By Mindy Petranek

This story appears in the 5th Annual LIFTS Magazine, where Montana parents share honest experiences about connection, resilience, and the journey through early parenthood.

 

It can be challenging to make friends in your adult life. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to connect with people and then they don’t ever call back. I just really crave that community.

We live on a ranch, a cattle operation, so things run around the schedules of what’s happening at the time: calving, branding – ranching kind of stuff.  

One Christmas, my husband got me a gift certificate to a pottery class. I was super excited, but when it came time for the class, calving had begun. He said he thought I’d be able to sneak away for a couple hours in the evenings, but when it came down to it, we couldn’t make it work. We didn’t have any childcare, and it was just too crazy of a time.

Sometimes you have to cancel plans, and do what maintains your livelihood. 

I was stuck in a period of feeling really low and lonely, and didn’t know how to break the cycle. I started looking for resources and found a baby storytime in the nearest big town. So I took a chance.

My son had really long hair at the time, and one week this gal came up to me and complimented his hair. That’s all it took: just her kind openness to tell me it was okay that I was doing things differently. 

The next week I went to the library again, and saw the same gal. I thanked her for what she’d said about my son’s hair. She told me she was starting a mom’s group, and invited me to join. We exchanged numbers, and that’s how I started going to the Bad Moms Group.

The name of the group either sparks an interest or people are turned off by it. I love the truth of it, cause as a mom there are so many moments where I feel like I’m botching the job. 

The moms group was an hour’s drive away, and the first time I went I was nervous, but excited to be out of the house by myself, listening to music as loud as I wanted. I felt like I had a grip on a little of me. When you become a mom, you can lose yourself, and it’s all about figuring out how to reinvent.

The way the group works is you just show up. Each meeting starts with the mission statement: to create a safe space for mamas to share in order to gain understanding and compassion for ourselves and others. Zero judgment. No one is to repeat what we say here. No interrupting, and only give input if the person sharing welcomes it or is asking for advice. 

Connecting with other women about the challenges of motherhood gave me reassurance, comfort, and camaraderie. It was so much better than just packing all of my feelings into a hole and telling myself that I’m tough enough to handle it. A friend in the group once said to me, you’re always so tough – do you ever get tired of being tough?

A moms group can help you find a better head space, which will be tenfold worth it for yourself and your family. You can’t understand how much you need that outlet till you’re on your drive home and thinking: oh, I feel like me again. 

Just stick with it and go out of your comfort zone. It will be worth it. A little bit of discomfort will help you grow.

Stories like this remind us that finding connection can make all the difference. If you’re looking for parenting support, mental health resources, or ways to connect with other families, visit HMHB-LIFTS.org.

May 15
Love0

Honoring Stories. Elevating Care.

By Maternal Mental Health

By Emily Freeman, HMHB Storytelling Coordinator

Photos by Kim Giannone

May is Maternal Mental Health Month.

Maternal Mental Health Month can be a good time to remember that motherhood doesn’t always feel – on the inside – quite the same way it appears on the outside. All manner of challenges and stressors may lurk behind the smiling family portrait posted on social media. That perfect mom you see at pre-school pick-up? She may be holding back deep grief over a lost pregnancy, or shame about needing help with a problem she can’t yet put words to, the solution to which she can’t yet identify. 

Perinatal mental health challenges can vary widely. While some issues may require robust support from trained professionals and systems, others can be helped along through person-to-person, community-based care, which we can all be a part of. This can be as simple as smiling at a struggling mom to make her feel seen, and not like her crying baby is a burden; it can be a few small words spoken to a stranger in line at the grocery store: You’re doing great. It can be a weekly moms meetup at the park that begins as a group of strangers, and soon becomes a place to connect, to vent, to heal. These points of human connection are so important. 

Real Stories from Montana Moms

At HMHB, Maternal Mental Health Month provides us with an opportunity to highlight some of the lived experiences that mothers across the state have been bold and generous enough to share. In last year’s issue of LIFTS magazine, Shayla Horner wrote about the support and medical advice she received for her bipolar disorder, allowing her to become the strong and stable mom her daughters deserve. Kelsie Christensen wrote about the encouragement she received from a local moms group which helped her manage her anxiety in the early months of motherhood. On the Mother Love podcast, Rachael Watters shared her harrowing journey through postpartum psychosis, and how she continues to grow and heal.

Insights from Perinatal Mental Health Experts

In addition to these invaluable stories from moms, we’re honored to be able to share the lived experience of our trusted network experts and providers working with, and for, moms and families during this season of life. In the 2023 edition of LIFTS, Dr. Ariela Frieder offered her wisdom and expertise as a perinatal psychiatrist, including a perinatal mood and anxiety disorder checklist for moms, and resources to guide them towards getting the help they might need.

Recent guests on the Mother Love podcast have included Amy Lowney, a labor and delivery nurse who pivoted to postpartum doula work to better address the mental and emotional needs of moms after they left the hospital. Last year, we spoke with perinatal mental health expert Diana Barnes, an episode which not only addressed the way that maternal mental health can have unintended legal consequences, but provided an opportunity for listeners to hear mothers across two generations in conversation about their own experiences with postpartum mood disorders.  

Explore the LIFTS Resource Guide

Maternal Mental Health is a good time to share and bookmark our LIFTS online resource guide. LIFTS offers a searchable, and frequently updated, database of resources around the state, with categories such as Mental Health Providers, Family Support and Education, Cultural Connections, and more. It’s a great resource to share with parents, or with providers who interface with, and support, families during this season of life. 

In June, we’re hosting the 8th annual Perinatal Mental Health Conference, a chance for providers from across the state to come together to share, strategize, and enjoy the camaraderie of a vast network of those who work collectively to improve and sustain the health of moms in our state. We’re looking forward to learning together, and pooling the knowledge that each of us will bring from our different pocket of this vast and diversely resourced state. You can get a taste of the conference by viewing Dr. Samantha Greenberg’s “Perinatal Mental Health 101” session from last year’s conference. If you’d like to join us this year, you can find more information and register here.

 

Jan 24
Love0

I’m Emily: Your New Host of the Mother Love Podcast and Storytelling Coordinator at HMHB

By The Power of Story

by Emily Freeman, HMHB Storytelling Coordinator and Mother Love Podcast Host

Welcome Back to Mother Love!

Emily Freeman

After a summer hiatus, the Mother Love podcast is back in action with a new host (me!) and a new mini-series that I was lucky enough to co-host with Cass Weber, a mom of two from Butte. Cass was a guest on Mother Love last year, and her story resonated far beyond her original conversation with previous host, Claire. Not only did she share her own lived experience, but that of a community, as well. Her observations of the changes in the perinatal landscape in Butte, from one birth to the next, seemed well worth digging into more. So we did.

In five linked episodes – a series we’re calling “A Mining City Story” – Cass and I connect with some of the nurses and other providers who are working hard to improve resources and supports for moms and babies in Butte. The conversations are informative, accessible, and hopefully inspiring, both to healthcare providers for moms and babies, as well as to birthing families across Montana and beyond.

Looking Back

Cass Weber

An unexpected delight of co-hosting with Cass was having an opportunity to revisit my own years of pregnancy and early parenting in Montana. My children are now 12 and 14, and babyhood seems at once a million years ago, and like it happened just yesterday. In conversation with our podcast

guests, I was able to reflect on the supports and resources that I had (or didn’t) during those years, as well as my willingness (or not) to seek out the help that I needed.

I’m heartened by the shift I see in the generation of moms that came after mine, and the overall cultural shift towards normalizing asking for support in the early years. If I could go back in time and advise my younger self – deep in the trenches of early parenting, postpartum depletion, and general overwhelm – I might sit her down, take her hand, and encourage her to reach out to someone; to let her know she’s not alone, and that there’s no shame in asking for help.

Looking Forward

Since its inception, the Mother Love podcast has provided a source of connection for moms and families in the perinatal season of life, a season which can be isolating, particularly in a rural state such as ours, or when experienced in combination with any other life stressors. I believe deeply that sharing stories creates connection, and that through connection comes strength. I couldn’t be happier to facilitate this strengthening of Montana families through storytelling, and am truly honored to be the new voice of the podcast, building on the good work done in the past, and charting an exciting new course for the future.

The next Mother Love series will explore the Montana State Legislature. The legislative session can seem mystifying or inaccessible, and our guests will help us to better understand how it works, what’s interesting about it, and how to get involved. I look forward to these conversations, which will showcase the people behind the work, including parents, providers, advocates, and others offering insights on issues that impact families in the 0-3 years. The episodes will be short and sweet, perfect for listening on a lunch break, or while folding tiny pieces of laundry.

Share Your Story!

As we think about the podcast and our storytelling efforts in general going forward, our hope is to create the kind of content that you want, sharing stories from across the state, exploring bold ideas and creative solutions for supporting the littlest Montanans and their families.

Is there a voice or a topic that you’d like us to amplify in a future episode or series? Don’t hesitate to reach out via email at  stories@hmhb-mt.org to share your ideas.