You can always count on a doula to remind a mother that her child’s birthday is her birth day too! Every year around my daughter’s birthday my doula friends remind me that as inspiring as it is to witness our little ones blossom, we need to acknowledge our own growth. Today is my birth day.Continue reading “Happy Birth Day to Me”
Tag Archives: postpartum
Myth of the Black Woman Superhero
Popular culture would like us to believe that Black women are invincible. We don’t need help. We don’t need to be handled with tender love and care. Despite whatever trauma or abuse comes our way, we are indestructible. This is why the Welfare Queen stereotype is still so pervasive. Black women should bear the fullContinue reading “Myth of the Black Woman Superhero”
Decarcerating Perinatal Mental Health & Reproductive Care
This blog post was inspired by my participation in IDHA‘s December 2020 “Decarcerating Care Fireside Chat.” I am grateful to Jessie Roth, IDHA co-director, for facilitating a rich conversation with my fellow interlocutors Jess Stohlmann-Rainey, Dustin Gibson, and Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu. When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my first thought is that I wasContinue reading “Decarcerating Perinatal Mental Health & Reproductive Care”
PSA: Perinatal Bipolar Support Group
I am incredibly excited to announce the debut of a new support group which I will co-facilitating called Bipolar Support for Perinatal Moms & Birthing People hosted by Postpartum Support International (PSI). Since not all people with wombs identify as women or mothers, this group welcomes all birthing people (parents who have carried and birthedContinue reading “PSA: Perinatal Bipolar Support Group”
Thinking with Dyane Harwood: Birth of a New Brain
Although I lived with a bipolar diagnosis years before my own crisis with mania and depression during pregnancy, I was intrigued by both the familiarity and foreignness of postpartum bipolar.* As I began to do more research, I stumbled across Dyane Harwood’s memoir Birth of a New Brain: Healing from Postpartum Bipolar Disorder (2017). TheContinue reading “Thinking with Dyane Harwood: Birth of a New Brain”
Healing Journey: Food & Fitness
This week was the first time since 2019 that I had been inside a gym or a group fitness space. Believe it or not, in my past life (from 2017-2019) I was actually a fitness instructor. I stopped teaching fitness classes when I got pregnant and quickly descended into my most frightening and prolonged manicContinue reading “Healing Journey: Food & Fitness”
What is a Mental Health Doula?
During my training as a birth and postpartum doula, I received little education on perinatal mental health. When mental health was addressed in the postpartum doula training, the acronym PMADs was thrown around as a catch-all phrase for Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders. In a previous post titled Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum, I articulateContinue reading “What is a Mental Health Doula?”
Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum
Continue with the topic of language from a previous post, I’ve been thinking about how the terminology we use impacts our awareness of and education about people’s lived experiences with mental health challenges. This post will focus on those experiences surrounding childbirth. There has been an increasing awareness about the term postpartum, meaning the periodContinue reading “Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum”
Breastfeeding While Black (& Bipolar): A poem & reflections
In honor of our ancestors the enslaved wet nurses / their life-force liquified sentenced to sustain white supremacy’s offspring Now we celebrate our brown babies suckling / in our arms against our skin / on our bodies / at our breasts Liberated lactation is a revelation a revolution / nourishment only Black bodies can provideContinue reading “Breastfeeding While Black (& Bipolar): A poem & reflections”
Bipolar, Weight & the BMLie
I never really had a problem with weight gain from my bipolar meds until some months into the COVID-19 pandemic. A year prior, I was a group fitness instructor teaching Zumba and Beachbody’s TurboKick and PiYo classes multiple times a week. On top of that, I was participating in a 300 hour yoga teacher trainingContinue reading “Bipolar, Weight & the BMLie”
Nadia Naomi Mbonde 