Back in high school, I heard a story about someone close to me being “unable” to give birth and needing major surgery to have her baby. She was healthy, and so was the pregnancy and the baby, but the doctor told her she was too “small”. Her whole story left me afraid for my own experience one day.
In college I stumbled across a book about maternity care and it opened my eyes to the travesty that is our healthcare system. The utter lack of respect for the normative course of healthy childbirth, and its participants, was leading to trauma, unnecessary interventions, and increasing risks to the mother and baby – not to mention, costly.
I’ve been working, for over a decade now, at the grassroots level with my birth-worker community to inform parents, maternity care providers, and the public about how the odds are stacked against them, and how to avoid unnecessary risk and trauma.
But I’ve become frustrated with the lack of action from the top, and so have my friends and colleagues. The lack of policy focused on protecting our most vulnerable; protecting our liberties, our choices, and our freedom – to choose where and with whom we give birth, to be free of trauma, to live.
There are simple ways that we could be saving lives, improving the mental and physical health of mothers and babies (and ultimately, our entire population), and saving a whole heck of a lot of money.
Expanding access to midwives and doulas, for example, would save lives, improve experiences and outcomes, and save BIG on cost. Evidence shows that investing in home-visiting programs for postpartum and early childhood leads to better outcomes and cost-savings for individuals (as well as economies) across the life-span.
We won’t wait anymore.
It’s time to take this fight to the top.
I’m running for our Colorado State Senate and I need your support!
My race will take lots of teamwork to win. My opponent has more connections (he’s been voting against progress in the State Legislature for more than a decade already), and he knows more folks with lots of money. He votes against healthcare, votes in favor of companies that pollute and against protecting our communities, and he is far removed from what it takes to raise a family in Colorado today.
Please follow my campaign, make a $10 donation to show your support, and share this with a friend.
We’ll win this for families, together!
About me:
I’ve been a birth doula (providing emotional, physical, and informational support to a birthing person/family), and provided postpartum support to families as an Internationally Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). I’ve served in Early Head Start and Head Start as a home-visitor and Parent Educator, and I’ve worked with children on the Autism Spectrum providing in-home and clinic-based ABA services. I have a Master’s Degree in Public Health, worked in state-wide hospital quality improvement, and directed multi-state public health programs.
