{"id":37503,"date":"2025-06-09T20:37:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T20:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/updates-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/?p=37503"},"modified":"2025-10-20T20:49:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T20:49:57","slug":"perinatal-support-washington-you-are-not-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/updates-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/perinatal-support-washington-you-are-not-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Perinatal Support Washington: You are not alone","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcoming a new child into your family brings a mix of emotions \u2014 from happiness and excitement to anxiety and overwhelm. The good news is you don&#8217;t have to face any of it alone.<\/p>\n<p>Asking for help when times are hard, though, is its own challenge. Perinatal Support Washington is on a mission to change that.<\/p>\n<p>Perinatal Support Washington (PS-WA) is a statewide nonprofit committed to shining a light on perinatal mental health by supporting families through all stages of their journeys, including the transition to parenthood as well as infertility, loss and trauma.<\/p>\n<p>PS-WA operates the Parent Support Warm Line; provides therapy, support groups and culturally matched one-on-one peer support; and serves as a point of contact for health care providers seeking support for patients, explains Kimiko Goldberg, PS-WA development and communications manager.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of people use the term &#8216;baby blues&#8217; after birth, and while that is real, it usually resolves after the first couple of weeks. What we&#8217;re talking about is something that lasts longer, and people need help identifying what they&#8217;re feeling,&#8221; Goldberg says. &#8220;The main thing I want you to know is that you&#8217;re not alone. People are afraid to ask for help, but there&#8217;s a whole community of people who are ready to help and have been through it, too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>You&#8217;re not alone<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are the most common complication of pregnancy and a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, Goldberg says. PMADs can also affect non-birthing parents and partners.<\/p>\n<p>The prevalence and severity of PMADs speak for themselves:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One in five women will be diagnosed with a PMAD<\/li>\n<li>One in 10 men\/non-birthing partners will be diagnosed with a PMAD<\/li>\n<li>75 percent of PMAD instances are untreated<\/li>\n<li>Approximately 22 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are the result of PMADs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s important to know how critically important this situation is,&#8221; Goldberg says. &#8220;It&#8217;s especially important through all stages, because people with preexisting conditions are more likely to get a PMAD.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Normalizing the mental health conversation before someone begins their perinatal journey is key to keeping people safe throughout, she adds.<\/p>\n<p>But PS-WA staff understand that&#8217;s easier said than done.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s the stigma and so many other layers of why someone is not asking for help,&#8221; explains Karina Saunders, MEd, community outreach and training manager for PS-WA. &#8220;We believe we&#8217;re supposed to be happy and enjoying everything, and there&#8217;s a sense of shame when you aren&#8217;t having that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;The main thing I want you to know is that you&#8217;re not alone. People are afraid to ask for help, but there&#8217;s a whole community of people who are ready to help and have been through it, too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You may feel pressure to meet cultural expectations, struggle with trusting or accessing health care, worry there&#8217;s something wrong with you, or fear that if you name what you&#8217;re experiencing your child will be taken away, Saunders says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s pressure in society to &#8216;suck it up.&#8217; Moms are expected to do it all,&#8221; Goldberg adds. &#8220;But these factors that make people afraid to ask for help can be detrimental. They can last for years, and the secondary effects can last a lifetime.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Finding a resource, whether that&#8217;s friends, family, your health care provider or an organization like PS-WA, takes trust.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Exhaling for the first time<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>PS-WA\u2019s Parent Support Warm Line is staffed Monday through Friday, 9am-4:30pm, with prompt callbacks on evenings and weekends in English and Spanish, and includes birthing and non-birthing parents to meet every caller&#8217;s needs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Calling a line like ours takes a lot of courage, and often takes (people) getting to a really hard place,&#8221; explains Victoria Cherniak, MSW, PS-WA senior warm-line manager. &#8220;The biggest thing we offer is nonjudgmental listening. It&#8217;s about having someone to hold space for you, especially if you have guilt or shame for how you&#8217;re feeling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Women are fed a message that they have to be selfless, so they internalize those challenges out of shame or fear that they&#8217;re a &#8220;bad parent,&#8221; she says. That&#8217;s not sustainable.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For a lot of people, they haven&#8217;t told anyone what they&#8217;re feeling, or if they did, it got written off,&#8221; Cherniak adds. &#8220;When I went in to see my therapist after my son, it was a traumatic birth and I knew I needed help. I was there within the week of delivering and was told &#8216;at least you have a healthy baby.&#8217; So, who else could I tell that to?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When you&#8217;re able to finally tell someone what you&#8217;re feeling and truly be heard, there&#8217;s often a huge sigh of relief, explains Erin Reidy, PS-WA warm-line volunteer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had multiple miscarriages before my daughter, and when I was pregnant, my anxiety was through the roof, but I didn&#8217;t know perinatal anxiety was really a thing,&#8221; Reidy says. &#8220;My OB would remark as I got past phases (in pregnancy) that I hadn&#8217;t before and would mention my anxiety level \u2026 looking back, why didn&#8217;t I get referred to someone for that?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As her anxiety got worse, Reidy says she just figured that&#8217;s what parenthood was.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My mother had perinatal anxiety for her entire life after a stillbirth. It wasn&#8217;t called that back then, but I knew as a kid she had anxiety,&#8221; she says. &#8220;But as an adult, I didn&#8217;t even connect those dots myself after seeing her experience.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those shared experiences are what makes the PS-WA Warm Line unique, Cherniak says. And at the end of a call, you&#8217;re provided a plan that includes wellness and self-care planning, referrals and next steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcoming a new child into your family brings a mix of emotions \u2014 from happiness and excitement to anxiety and overwhelm. The good news is you don&#8217;t have to face any of it alone. Asking for help when times are hard, though, is its own challenge. Perinatal Support Washington is on a mission to change [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,143,115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behavioral-health","category-community-stories","category-womens-health"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.6 (Yoast SEO v27.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Perinatal Support Washington: You are not alone - MultiCare Vitals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Perinatal Support Washington supports parents and families through infertility, loss, trauma and other parenthood challenges.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/updates-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/perinatal-support-washington-you-are-not-alone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Perinatal Support Washington: You are not alone - 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