Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id576793229
For decades, doulas, perinatal community health workers, and lactation consultants have been recreating ancestral models of communal care, and quietly doing the work of caring for families in their communities as a salve to the broken medical system
id576793001
Yet, as the need has increased, available state and federal perinatal support structures have not. If anything, birth workers have fewer resources available today as we are overextending ourselves to fill widening gaps in our broken health care system. My birth worker co-op, for example, devised creative ways to support and educate families during the pandemic who felt isolated and disconnected from health care and social networks, while providing mutual aid to our staff and community struggling to meet basic needs. During Hurricanes Ida and Laura in the Gulf South, we provided feeding assessments, lactation resources, and basic supplies like diapers, female hygiene products, and formula to evacuated families who were desperate for supplies they could not get from local government agencies. And during the peak of the formula shortage, we connected families to feeding supplies, provided emergency counseling on how to relactate or build milk supply, and tried to reassure new parents terrified about the prospect of their infant running out of food.
✏️ The power of community, especially in the face of natural, economic and political adversity. 🔗 View Highlight
id576792989
The lack of resource investments paired with increasing burdens do not add up for parents either—particularly for parents of color, working-class, and rural parents—to say nothing of the way systemic failures put increasing numbers of pregnant and parenting people and their children at risk.