A question that has really become impactful for me lately is "where can women gather to share information about the postpartum experience?" How can I/we support more women who are navigating the various stages of motherhood?
In today's digital age, information swirls around us via the internet, and through whispers within our individual communities; so how do we navigate it at all? Especially if it is our first child, or if we are living in a new city, or have few family or community resources to lean on, etc. What or who become our trusted resources? Women are left to navigate various pieces of information pulling from here and there, to come up with a confident whole picture. Again, with so little time, and the balancing act of life - who can be viewed as the "go to experts" that can guide women through this critical experience?
As a Creative (specifically in the interior design space today) I am on a mission to help improve the lives of women and especially those that I get the opportunity to work with 1:1 through my design projects.
Being interested in this "postpartum/motherhood" space, I can now earnestly and intimately say ...given the birth of my first child last September... that there is so much noise out there but there are also very genuine women (and men) working in this space who are providing support through education from their specific discipline. You might be an expert in childbirth, nursing, pediatrics, lactation, nutrition, exercise, fashion, or interior design. All of these avenues (and many more) are angles through which we can help support the postpartum woman.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly Martin at Auburn University in Alabama who wrote her 2023 PhD dissertation on a topic of mutual interest. The title of her currently unpublished paper is "An Exploratory Study of Home Interior Design Features to Support Maternal Mental Health and Well-Being in the Postpartum Period."
I have to tell you - when I stumbled upon Martin's dissertation topic I just about fell out of my chair with excitement! And in speaking with her, I was happy to hear that she received true support for her chosen topic from her academic circle. One point we agreed upon was the need for more of this type of conversation to be available outside of academia. That there is indeed a bridge that needs to be constructed between what often thrives in that world and what is going on in everyday society.
Martin (a mother of three) is actively working to publish her paper so that more people will have access to her important research...which involves quantitative results from 410 interviews. She spoke with women from across the United States about "which interior design features [were] present in their home during the first six weeks after giving birth" [that effected] "their mental health and well being at the time." This research is truly fascinating and we have Kelly to thank for championing such an important topic. It is through individuals like this and their research, that we as a society can begin to provide women more of what they truly need today, i.e. fact-based findings that speak to the motherhood journey.