“I had given birth to my fourth daughter, and she was born at 23 weeks and 2 days. She was in the NICU for the next 118 days, and I was convinced that once she could come home, everything was going to be fine.

But when we came home, I really wasn’t fine. I was really anxious, and I felt like I was experiencing some sort of NICU withdrawal, like I couldn’t sleep without the beeps of the machines. I didn’t feel like I could take care of my own daughter, and I was also worried about what was to come. She had grade four bleeding on both sides of her brain, so we were told things were going to be different for her developmentally. This complicated the impacts of the birth trauma I experienced and I was beyond overwhelmed with anxiety around what was going to happen to my daughter.

I ended up looking for help, because I needed to talk to somebody else who had been through it. When I went to my first POEM support group there were three other people there who shared that they had little ones who had also navigated medical complexities. I had finally found other moms that I could actually relate to and I needed that. That was the first time, in months, that I could remember feeling like we could be okay, like my family still had a chance to be happy and like my baby girl could thrive in life no matter what her diagnosis was.

When I gave birth to my youngest daughter, I was finishing my master’s program, and in my mind, I was going to work with couples, nothing was going to change that, or, at least that is what I thought up until the experience I had with my daughter. 

Because POEM volunteers and staff had been amazing to me, in my postpartum experience, when the opportunity to volunteer arose I couldn’t help but to say yes. Shortly after, a position on staff opened up and someone who meant a whole lot to me during that period of my life encouraged me to apply. I submitted my resume, and I was like, ‘If I get the job, then it’s meant to be.’ Then I got the job, and from that moment my whole trajectory changed. In my heart, being a part of POEM truly just felt like what I was supposed to be doing.

I joined the program as staff, shortly after the Rise branch launched and have been immersed in the work since. This part of the program emerged as a direct response to gaps in mental health care for Black Moms and Birthing Persons. When I first started, I knew that numbers looked different for us, and I knew that Black moms were dying at much higher rates than other moms. What I didn’t fully understand was how deeply those numbers were tied to access to care. With POEM and POEM Rise, we really focus on establishing trust and making good, solid connections to appropriate care, available resources, and meaningful supports. We utilize program evaluations and participant feedback to inform our services and support offerings.

In the work we do, it is important to hold space and provide meaningful connection. POEM provides peer support group meetings, peer to peer mentor connections, care navigation, and perinatal mental health education and advocacy. We try to be really intentional about making peer support accessible because we truly are the moms we serve and we all have an unbelievable story behind why we do the work we do. POEM also has an amazing team of volunteers as well as a network of providers and partners who have helped us to build trust. The love and support from everyone in this community, the staff, the participants, and the volunteers – we all want to do our part to help the next person.”

– Hailee Childs is the program director for POEM (Perinatal Outreach and Encouragement for Moms), a program of Mental Health America of Ohio.