Early on in my career in psychotherapy, I felt like there was something missing from the work that I was doing. I really didn't like how focused my work was on fixing a problem, because it meant that people felt there was something wrong with them that needed to be fixed.
Sure many of them qualified for a diagnosis of some kind, which actually validated how they had been feeling for months or years - major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, etc. But our work was so much about fixing a problem and that didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.
As much as I loved solution-focused therapies, it bothered me that the focus our work together was so negative.
Life will always be imperfect, filled with challenges
What I realized is that I’m really drawn helping people function most optimally even if they have life circumstances or health issues that complicate their life.
Truth is, there really isn’t anything within the field of clinical psychology or psychotherapy that allows for that: optimal functioning. Psychotherapy and mental health counseling is very much built around the medical model: assess, diagnose, treat.
That never sat well with me but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what to do about it.
It wasn't until I started looking into alternative forms of support that I stumbled on this idea of wellness.
The more I read, learned and studied it, the more it was exactly what I had been looking for. I loved the idea that we can help improve the functioning of our bodies, minds, and souls even when there are medical or mental health challenges.
Achieving wellness became really personal
This didn't really hit home though until I was going through fertility treatments and my very high-risk pregnancy.
The whole process of trying to grow our family was riddled with this feeling that I was broken. Of course none of my doctors said that to me and my husband never, ever led me to believe that he thought I was broken either.
But when I found out my fallopian tubes don’t work. Or I don’t ovulate. Or I can’t carry a pregnancy safely….When my medical chart became stacked with new medical diagnoses, the feeling that overcame me was: broken.
There was such a sense of failure every step along the way as we tried to grow our family.
After my son was born and I had a chance to breathe again, I returned to my study of wellness.
It opened my eyes to all the different ways that we can still help our bodies function optimally even when there are health complications that are making it difficult to do so.
A recent conversation with leading obstetrician Dr. Raja Gangopadhyay really hit this home.
We discussed how, though important, the awareness on maternal mental health - through critically important - is still focused on treating a problem, fixing an issue, instead of optimizing women's health.
The reality is that our health is a combination of a variety of different factors that impact our body and mind’s ability to function optimally.
It's wonderful that in recent years so many celebrities are talking about mental health awareness, especially maternal mental health. Mental health in general is shrouded in a cloud of stigma, maternal mental health even more so.
Adele, Chrissy Teigan, Aarti Sequeira all sharing their experiences living with postpartum depression and anxiety helps normalize this conversation.
But to have a deep and profound impact on how we support women going through mental health challenges, we have to start talking about it not from a place of what's broken and how to fix it, but how to really help women thrive despite the circumstances they find themselves in.
That is the only way we can prevent these challenges from arising in the first place!
What is perinatal wellness?
To me, perinatal wellness is our ability to have our bodies function optimally to help us get pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy.
That’s not to say that it will cure or make disappear existing health issues. It’s more about the different ways that we can help our bodies do the best that it possibly can...despite those physical and mental health challenges.
When you make the necessary changes to improve your overall wellness, you’ll find incredible changes happen to your health.
Menstrual cycle regulates
Pain decreases
Inflammation lessens
Preterm contractions slow
Blood pressure declines
Blood glucose levels even out
This idea of wellness is essentially to help our bodies be the best that they possibly can be given the circumstances we have to deal with. All of that is critical to helping you get pregnant (even if you have medical complications causing infertility) and help you stay pregnant (even if you have pregnancy complications threatening your baby and pregnancy).
Where do you begin?
If you’re like me, and many of my clients, this is all super exciting and you’re ready to dive in to help yourself achieve your family building dreams.
But it can feel overwhelming because there’s so much to change and...can you even do it all? Achieving wellness can sound like a really tall order and almost impossible to achieve!
The intention of working toward wellness is not about perfection but about optimization...how can you make your body work better? Even small improvements to your wellness will have a profound impact on your fertility and pregnancy health.
What’s included under the umbrella of wellness?
Factors that impact wellness include (but are not limited to):
Physical and emotional stress
Sleep hygiene
Nutrition
Hydration
Relationships
Mood and anxiety
Pain management
There are so many free resources with tips and strategies on these various aspects of wellness that you can check out here.
Now I know what you might be thinking. I don't have time for any of this stuff!
I've got a job, I've got a partner to take care of. I have other children to care for. I've got a house to manage.
I get it. We all have tremendous responsibilities on our plate.
But we have an epidemic going on right now.
One in eight couples experiences infertility.
One in 10 babies are born preterm, and prematurity is the leading cause of neonatal death.
Far too many women struggle with antepartum and postpartum depression and anxiety, impacting their ability to be fully present with their babies.
This idea of wellness is help your body do the best it can, despite these challenges.
It’s to give your body and mind all the tools that your need to improve your chance of getting pregnant and being able to carry a healthy pregnancy to term to so you can bring home a healthy baby.
Your first step to improving your fertility and pregnancy wellness starts here.
Look at each of these different areas of wellness listed above and pick one. Just one. Pick the one that is the easiest for you. What is going to be the simplest change that you can make right now?
Is it going to bed an hour earlier than normal?
Is it going out for a walk everyday for 30 minutes?
Is it reaching out to friends or having a date night to increase a sense of connectedness and ease the isolation that you live with?
Is it to get support to relieve the pain that you live with everyday?
What is one thing that you can do right now to improve your overall wellness? Start doing that but be careful not to underestimate the impact of the change you're making!
So many women believe these changes are so tiny that there’s no way they’ll matter in the grand scheme of infertility or a high-risk pregnancy.
The problem is, we make concessions on so many of these tiny things - sleeping late consistently or telling ourselves we’ll deal with our stress later - that they all start to pile up and end up having a profoundly negative impact on our fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum health.
What’s worse, this impacts our ability to have and raise healthy children.
The best part about focusing on wellness instead of illness
Through infertility and a high-risk pregnancy, when we focus on helping our bodies function optimally, it gives us back a sense of control, a sense of power, a sense of hope that we are not defined by our diagnoses.
It reminds us that we are so much more than the health complications that are complicating our journey to being healthy women and healthy mothers.
It reminds us that we can transcend these labels and diagnoses, to show that we are more than statistics, and opens our eyes again to the possibilities that maybe, just maybe, we can experience miracles on our journey to bringing our baby home.
Does this hit home for you?
If so, leave me a comment below and let me know what strikes you the most. Which aspect of wellness are you going to focus on first?
I'd also love it if you can share this article on your social channels so we can start this much needed conversation about wellness and empowering women even when they're going through infertility and a high-risk pregnancy!
Looking for more?
If you're going through fertility treatment or a high-risk pregnancy right now, I'd love to personally guide you through my private program that is designed to provide deeply customized support so you can experience results fast.
Check them out here and reach out if you have any questions.
You're not alone in this.
Take it one day, one step at a time. You can do this.