We would like to welcome our newest PWCB provider! Carolyn Yates, DPT, comes to us from NYC where she started her career as a Physical Therapist. Physical pain and injury, including pelvic pain, impacts the mental health of many women. Carolyn is here to support you so that you don’t have to live with unnecessary strain and stress. One of Carolyn’s specialties is Pelvic Floor PT which is extremely useful for women in childbirth recovery.

Welcome Carolyn!

The PWCB is so please to introduce you to our newest provider, Yrma Perdomo, OTR/L NDS. Yrma is a pediatric OT who supports our families through her expert understanding in early brain development and how it relates to attachment. Please enjoy the interview with Yrma.

Man, are we lucky to have Cameron on our team!  Cam comes to the PWCB with a long history of experience in treating sports injuries as well as a myriad of women’s health challenges, and she carries a strong commitment to overall wellness in her patients.

*The following blog first appeared on the Denver Metro Moms Blog.

As moms, we are told it all the time- by family, neighbors, media, and commercialism- having a baby is the happiest time of our lives.  We will glow, feel blissful, and spend romantic hours in the sunlight nursing our sweet and peaceful bundles of joy.

But is it?  

And will we?

By Jessica Harrison

With a mental health practice primarily serving young families, I predictably face questions about parenting. I routinely bear witness to the distress that accompanies insecurity, fear and overwhelm in parenthood. This distress is often amplified by pregnancy/postpartum depression and anxiety (or the lingering symptoms and effects of PPD/A as children grow). Plus, we're all familiar with the plethora of expert (and novice) advice ranging dramatically in approach, adding to (causing?) the confusion and frustration. 

By Jessica Harrison

Postpartum depression has become a part of the vernacular in many communities, thanks in large part to advocacy efforts emphasizing routine screening and increased training in health care settings. Online and/or phone support networks, such as Baby Blues Connection (local to Portland, OR), Postpartum Support International, and Postpartum Progress, are increasingly common.  Because of this work, more families are receiving appropriate support and postpartum outcomes are improving. 

By Kate Kripke

In light of the recent uproar over the article on antidepressants and pregnancy that was published this week on the New York Times‘ Well Blog, I thought I would pause today on the unknowns that likely burden every single mom who suffers with a perinatal mood or anxiety disorder like PPD. There is so much mixed-up and contradicting information out there: co-sleep/don’t co-sleep; breast-is-best/healthy mom-is-best; have a birth plan/let go of the birth plan; cloth diaper/disposable diaper; medicine for depression and anxiety is safe/medicine is not safe. As if being a mama wasn’t confusing already, all of this conflicting info is enough to make a mama’s head take a double-spin. And its exhausting!

By Kate Kripke

Some of you may have read and been hugely upset and worried by the recent piece published in the New York Times' Well Blog. There is no doubt that if you are a mom and have read that article, that you are concerned, angry, and confused by the content of that piece.

By Kate Kripke

Losing a baby though miscarriage, elective termination, stillbirth, childbirth, after a NICU stay, SIDS, or any other time is, without a doubt, one of the most difficult experiences that a parent will ever endure. There are no words to explain the depth of despair that a parent goes through when attempting to understand the shift that occurs when all hopes and expectations suddenly drop out from underneath anything stable.

By Kate Kripke

Is it possible to prevent postpartum depression?

I am asked this question a lot.  Experts believe that because there is no definite way of knowing how a woman’s body will respond to childbirth, so we cannot say that there is a specific prevention, so to speak, for postpartum depression.  However, I do believe that there is much a woman and her family can do during pregnancy that will lessen her chances of a postpartum mood and anxiety disorder like postpartum depression, or that may, at least, play a role in the reduction of symptoms.