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Episode 813: Empowering Pregnant Women with Tomilyn Ward · The Trauma Therapist

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Trauma Therapist Podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early and ad free right
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now. Become a Plus listener by going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma
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Therapist Podcast and signing up today or welcome back to the Trauma Thepist podcast.
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My name is Gamiferson. My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible
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selves, to be human, to be real, not just a clinician.
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I'm a big believer in who we are is more important than what we know,
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and this requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires
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intention. Can learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma
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Therapist project dot com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get
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started, all right, here we go. So five four three two one,
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our folks, welcome back to the podcast. That's very excited to happens.
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My guests day, Tomlin Ward, Tomlin, welcome, Thank you so
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much for having me all right. So, Tomlin has a master's in professional
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counseling from Carlo University and she's also an eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing partitioner.
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She works with clients who've experienced traumatic births, adoption issues, PTSD,
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grief and loss, and voluntary and involuntary termination of rental rights. Tomlin is
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also the founder of The Mayor Organization, a nonprofit focused on supporting people both
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during and after pregnancy. Tomlin welcome, Thank you so much. So before
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we get going here shared with the listeners where you're from originally and where you
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are originally. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I did spend a good portion
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of my twenties in the Northeast, and I did teach business English overseas for
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a minute, and then i ended up coming back to Pittsburgh. It's my
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hometown. I really love being here and I'm happy to be back. Awesome
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business English. Yes, interesting. I taught business English and Poland for about
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a year and that was a very interesting and eye opening experience. I got
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to learn a lot about culture. And one of the biggest things I learned
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there was small talk is really an American conversation piece. Small talk isn't something
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that was used in business. So I would teach people about small talk and
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they would laugh and laugh and just think was the funniest things. We would
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like do role plays and stuff like that. Yeah, So how did the
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shift to becoming a therapist, counselor come along? Well, Originally, my
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parents want me to go to a school to study business, which I did.
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I always wanted to be a psychologist, so I ended up going back
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to graduate school in two thousand and nine and I kind of hit the floor
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running becoming a trauma therapist. Originally, when I went back, I wanted
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to facilitate adoptions, which I did. I facilitated ten newborn adoptions and I
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at that time I was working in a homeless shelter for pregnant women, so
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I really had a lot of eye opening experience. I learned a lot about
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the world through that position. Working with the homeless pregnant women. I was
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providing counseling, provided support to them. Of course, there was shelter provided,
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and the nonprofit kind of just came out of the work we were doing.
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So working at a homeless shelter for pregnant women, how did that come
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about? I mean, what did what? What are some of the things
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you did learn and some of the experiences you did have there? It sounds
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pretty fascinating. I had so many experiences there. One of the things that
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I started doing when I was there. I was. I was a therapist,
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but I was also attending berths, especially for women who were placing their
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children for adoption. So I was finding myself just in this this birth space
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with the women. So I was eventually trained as a doula. So I've
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attended over thirty berths. So a lot of attending the berths was advocating for
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helping the patient to advocate for their own rights, making sure they had their
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needs met. If partners were involved, helping partners to encourage the mom to
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be comfortable, to be able to relax, also to help to calm the
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partners down if things went a little hairy, if there may be was a
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C section. I know a lot of times partners are there's an emergency sea
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section. Partners are given an outfit to put on and told to sit in
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a room until a doctor comes back to get them. And that may be
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a short period of time that it would be ten and it's maybe an hour.
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But when you have no idea what's going on with your partner and their
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child, that can seem like an eternity and there's usually no information given to
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the partner at that time because they're really focusing on the woman and the baby.
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So what was the inspiration for you to work at a homeless center for
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pregnant women. Well, actually, in I experienced my own birth trauma in
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two thousand and eight, and at that time, there was no there is
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no mental health support at all. I went to when I went to my
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six week checkup, they gave me an SSRI and they're like, hey,
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we'll see you later. Nobody ever suggested mental health counseling. I was able
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to get into mental health counseling with the university. I believe I did five
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CBT sessions. And back then they were still using GAFF, the Global Access
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of Functioning, and they're like, your gaff's the highest we've ever seen.
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You don't need the therapy, and I was like I need therapy, Like
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I really need to be in therapy. There was no support at that time.
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I'm happy to report things are really changing. But we did a lot
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of advocacy work around pregnancy and postpartum periods. We've done a lot of work
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with a nonprofit around the maternal mortality rate here in Pennsylvania, which it is
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very high. It's actually higher than Guatemala, and the maternal mortality rate is
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the maternal death after before babies one year old, so that could include birth
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or any postpartum mental illness or any postpartum complications within that first year. They
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consider that. But we have a very high rate here in Pennsylvania. So
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we did a lot of work to bring dullah programs into the hospitals. The
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Myle organization offers programs in Spanish so that people are able to have support in
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their native language. We've we also have other languages that are available. We've
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certainly offered support through translation phones as well, which can be you know,
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you learn how to say that certain words and certain languages really fast when it
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comes to labor. But it's you know, just really supporting the people who
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are in this space and a lot of times without family and scared and alone.
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Yeah. I mean, to me, that population of homeless pregnant women
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just seems like a mind field of trauma and absolutely and everything. I'm wondering,
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can you can you share some of the stories. I mean read that
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everyone is different, but what what are some of the stories or experiences you
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had there specifically? Oh, I don't even know where to start. I
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would say that most people had generational trauma Most people who were in that situation
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certainly grew up in poverty. They may not have had the best parents themselves.
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A lot of times we were dealing with younger women, like in their
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late teens early twenties. It might have been their first baby. For that
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particular site, you weren't allowed to have another child with you, so but
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a lot of times there it was we were working with people who may have
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had children staying with relatives or children who had been removed by children, youth
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and family at some point. So we would try to help them build their
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parenting skills if they wanted to parent, not everybody. We did also facilitate
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adoptions. Most people chose to parent, but there were people who knew that
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parenting wasn't the best idea for them, and they would make a birth or
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an adoption plan for their child. We haven't even talked about substance use.
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Oh. Substance use was a huge part of that. I've certainly seen some
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really intense things. Most of the people who would make it to the program
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would be actively working on their recovery, So even if they were in a
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maintenance program, a methadone program, if they were on subuttach. We would
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there would be drug testing on the program in the program. Is this this
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a homeless shelter program? Okay? So leader to get in there, they
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had to be in recovery, they had to be working towards them. There
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were certainly a lot of people who slipped through the cracks. Marijuana wasn't legal
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at that time. Here it's legal medically now, but there are people who
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would test positive for marijuana for their entire pregnancy and have a story about it,
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and it wasn't our place to put them on the street. But we
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did a lot of work with opiates. Opiates were huge at that time,
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Benzo's. We were seeing a lot with benzos. I did spend a lot
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of time in NICK. In the Nick you with biological parents and with adoptive
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parents, having the babies go through withdrawal symptoms, helping them to calm the
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babies, supporting them in whatever way the way we could. There. There's
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also, as you can imagine, there's a lot of discrimination from hospital systems
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when we have women who were in recovery or especially early recovery, and if
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babies were anytime that a baby is born exposed to opiates, they're going to
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go through at least a five day withdrawal, at least a five day a
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five day check at the hospital, even if they don't have any symptoms.
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I've had babies withdrawal for as long as sixty days. I want to ask
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about that, But before I do, walk us through your process of Granted
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with the idea that everyone's different, but generally speaking, when you first meet
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a or first met a woman in that in that shelter, what do you
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what are you assessing, what are you asking? What are you trying to
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learn about? First? Sure, now that this was about ten years ago
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and there wasn't much structure to that for me as a therapist. That was
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one of the first therapists there. There were other you know, bachelor level
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social workers, things like that, There was programming. I would really sit
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down and get to know the person and learn where they were coming from,
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give them that space to open up. I'm a trauma therapist. A lot
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of that came from that work, and then I also worked in the county
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jail with women as well, but just really getting to learn about them,
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where they they came from, how they had to live, how they survived
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up until that point in how they potentially saw themselves as a parent or functioning
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member of society. Most people did not want to be there, you know.
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The goal was to this was a transitional housing situation so that women could
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move on to either another program where they would be able to have their baby
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with them, or move on to some independent living be able to have their
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own housing. So let's talk about the Maya Organization. When did you found
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that and why? Sure? I founded my organization in two thousand and nine.
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The reason that I founded Maya Maya's stands for me and you always,
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so we celebrated all the ways families come together. At that time, I
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had already experienced a traumatic birth. I was exploring adoption myself, and it
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was so expensive to adopt, and this was prior to graduate school. So
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I started fundraising to help families be able to afford to adopt. At that
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time, I thought you should have to decide between having a car or adding
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a child to your life. That was essentially the cost was astronomical it still
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is, and adopt Yes to adopt. I had my first daughter was born
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in two thousand and eight. I adopted my second daughter in twenty eleven and
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that was the first birth that I was actually in aside from my birth,
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my birth with my daughter, and they it was this woman was not treated
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with respect by the agency that was providing the adoption services. She was essentially
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a paycheck, and I developed a relationship with her. She was giving me
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her child, and I really wanted to move into a space where women who
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were making that decision were able to be respected and to grow from that and
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to feel supported. And we did a lot of that with my organization,
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and then the services grew the very first time, our first year that we
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actually had funding, I think we had ten thousand dollars in funding. That
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was in twenty fourteen funding outside of donations. We had state funding. The
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next year our services grew two hundred percent. We were supporting a number of
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pregnant women throughout the our county, and we had developed programs by that time.
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We were given away our seats and cribs if people attended so many classes.
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We were providing counseling, and we also started, almost accidentally, we
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started a counseling program for women and the local GEO we have originally went in
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there to meet with some birth moms that we were working with and I stepped
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foot into the jail and people were begging for counseling. So I just brought
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on an intern from Carlow, where I'd graduated from, and within the first
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month we had already clients and wait to wait list. We couldn't handle.
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All they wanted was mentalality. Hang on. You are just like a one
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woman toward a force here. It's like you see an issue or a problem
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and you're like, boom, it needs attention, it needs light on it.
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It's like so freaking impressive it is. Well, I well, thank
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you for that. But it grew because of the dedication of a lot of
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people. The nonprofit. I had just supervised their therapist at this point,
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I'm not the executive director at this I stepped down in twenty twenty, but
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there they are doing so much. They are teaching classes at the local hospitals,
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they're teaching in their teaching classes to providers. They're teaching anti racism and
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abstratic racism to a very large local hospital. They're also teaching a numbers astritt
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Yeah as anan, Yes, what is that specifically? Well, it's too
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the highest maternal mortality rate is going to be with our African American community,
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our black and brown moms in Pennsylvania, so making sure that that our moms
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are heard, that their bodies are respected. A lot of times the birth
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trauma is coming from women of all colors, of course, but from not
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being heard, from saying hey, there's something wrong, whether it's before or
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after the delivery, like I know there's something wrong with my body, from
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people not being heard. Serena Williams is a really good example. She said,
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hey, there's something wrong here postpartum, and she was really she really
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had to advocate for herself, and she is, you know, yeah,
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you just kind of stars in the world, and she really had to advocate
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for herself. So teaching people how to advocate for themselves, also teaching doctors
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how to listen to that, to those voices and to know when someone knows,
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hey, this is my body and I know there's something wrong. And
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I've seen in the berth that I've been in, I have seen I've certainly
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seen berths where And an example that comes to mind, I had a woman
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she was a refugee, and I was called into the berth as a dola
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and she kept saying, I can feel the sea section I can feel the
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sea section, and they kept saying, if you don't stop complaining about the
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pain, you can't be in pain. We're gonna put you under and we're
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gonna take your husband out of the room. And she was so scared and
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she was so terrified. And the afterwards one of the delivering nurses pulled me
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aside, and I could tell there was something else going on in the room,
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but I wasn't going to say that. I was focusing on her.
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But she pulled me aside. She was like, did you catch what was
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going on there? And and I was like, I didn't. I knew
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there was something going on. And she said her uterus was about to rupture.
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She was feeling the pain, but they weren't allowing her the space to
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say, I mean, that's a very big deal. She could have passed
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had her uterus rupture, so they weren't managing her pain, and they were
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being confrontational when she was saying, I can feel this, I can feel
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this in my body, and was this predominantly this happens with what lower scs
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woman of color, predominantly, but it can happen. I've had it happen
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with all kinds of women. It's just about not being heard or not I
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know, in my own experience with my breath trauma, I thought that you
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know here, I was educated at a four year degree. But these are
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doctors, they know what's right. Who am I to say, like I
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never had a baby before, Who am I to know what I should be
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doing or shouldn't be doing. So allowing people to have that voice or to
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at least have that space to advocate for themselves or say, hey, this
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doesn't feel right or I think maybe we need to move this in a different
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direction. So how does it so? I was just saying, how does
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MAYA do that specifically? Well, Maya does that through their doula program,
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particularly with the dula program in people's native languages. Like allowing them that voice.
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I've been to births or I've been called into births after the postpartum,
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maybe because someone was considering her adoption, where the woman they didn't ask for
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water because they didn't know how and they didn't have any water birth or after
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they didn't know how to ask for it, or they were afraid. So
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just having more of a safe space, having at least one person that they
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can rely on, so that they can hear themselves. And also someone who
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knows what is kind of happening, knows the way out of the hospital,
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knows what to expect if there's anything going on or if it's a normal,
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really easy birth too, Like, hey, you know, like you're at
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eight centimeters, this is how you're going to feel, this is how you're
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going to look. Things are probably going to start moving a little bit faster.
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It's not there to give medical advice, but it's there to provide emotional
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support and as a doula. As a doula okay, but also the classes,
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the advocacy classes that are being taught at at local university, at local
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hospital, the jail program. MAYA has just expanded their contract they are creating.
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This is the first time ever. I'm so proud of them. They
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are creating a safe space at the jail for pregnant women so that they can
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have this DULA program. We've been providing classes in there for a number of
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years, but we've never been given our own space. It's always been in
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the gym. And also they just got a contract with the jail to provide
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dual services for our incarcerated women who up until twenty seventeen were still being shackled
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to the beds when they were in labor and delivery, so you know those
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I've been to some of those berths as well, and there's usually a male
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guard standing there in the delivery room. There's been times where there's been a
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respectful guard. People step out, but you know someone's in the middle of
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labor. If they're outside the door, there's really not too many places they
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can go. And if you're in the county jail, you're probably not convicted
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of well you're clearly not convicted yet, but it's probably not a high risk
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crime either. Now you said you since stepped down from the myle So my
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organization was was my first baby, and I have been in private practice since
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twenty twenty and we still focus on birth trauma. We're actually having a CEU
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program in January and partnership with White Deer Run, which is a rehab in
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this area. We're teaching about reproductive trauma, not just birth trauma perinatal postpartum,
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but we're also going to be focusing on infertility, yeah, and other
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birth loss. Perinatal loss is huge. It is something that we see quite
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often how to help people both both partners hope through that and you know,
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repair their relationship if there's any breaks, it's it can be very hard,
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especially on a newer, younger relationship, just helping them to to find a
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space to heal and also a lot of times be able to honor their child.
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We need a lot loss. How do we How does that defined?
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So paranid a loss I believe is I would really say any loss during pregnancy.
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So if we have a miscarriage early on, if someone is really struggling
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with that, we will work with that. A lot of times we're talking
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about loss after twenty weeks, which I I that's five months. There's really
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not I don't want to put a timeline on how it hurts somebody to have
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have a loss, whether it's considered a miscarriage or a still born. Still
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born would be after twenty weeks. But we work with practitioners and our clients
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of course to recognize the signs, make sure you're reading the intake correctly so
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that you're prepared. It's quite often I see people referring to their especially if
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it's a new loss, referring to their babies as being here, as being
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present, So preparing if someone's reading the intake differently than the reality of the
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situation, preparing the clinician to handle that situation appropriately and asking the appropriate questions
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if there's a loss, because you would be working with a postpartum mom with
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a baby at home much differently with a mom than a mom who is grieving
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their their child. There's still postpartum, they're still going through all the body
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changes, but they don't have that baby at home. Oh, I mean
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so intense. What are so this work is is very specialized. What do
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you feel you you what's called you to this? I mean, you did
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mention your own experience, h but can you talk a little bit about that,
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What's like, what's what what brings you to this? Sure, I
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would definitely say this feels like a calling. My own experience definitely came into
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it in the beginning. I could say I can relate to clients in a
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lot of way. I don't bring that into session. I don't my clients
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typically do not know that I had a traumatic birth. And but just being
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you know, like being in the hospital system, understanding how the hospital works,
25:34
understanding how doctors can respond to the people of you know, the way
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that somebody responds a doctor may respond to a patient who's intellectually disabled, and
25:47
the way a doctor may respond to a patient with a PhD it can be
25:51
very different. And just understanding that the patient's experience or the you know,
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the mom's experience, let's say their perception is their experience. If they felt
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that they were disrespected or not heard by the doctor, that is their experience,
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whether that was true or not, and really meeting them where they're at
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and just helping them get to a place where they can find healing. And
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what are some of the ways you interact with the physicians or the medical staff.
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I can imagine you know, you being there, you being present and
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advocating for the mother, But in what ways do you do we have the
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mother like we help them to advocate for themselves on Really, a doula is
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not a medical person. So a doula is as an emotional as an emotional
26:47
support. So the way that I interacted with the doctors would be professionally,
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it would be respectfully the doctors and the nurses. During my time as a
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people knew I was also a trained therapist, so I would often get called
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to births where there is some mental health issues, but with a great deal
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of respects. So that that well, I mean, I understand that,
27:14
of course, but are you are you said your advocate. You're helping the
27:18
client or the mother advocate for themselves, so you're kind of guiding them or
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educating them how to ask for what they need, as opposed to you asking
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for what okay. So, and an example of that might be a breastfeeding
27:33
mom. Because we have a breast relatively normal delivery, mom wants to breastfeed.
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Some nurses would want to give the baby a formula to get their sugar
27:45
up right away and not allow that child the time. It usually takes about
27:52
forty five minutes for that first latch. So helping people to have their voice
27:56
in that space, it helping them to have a birth plan, but also
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so making sure they're aware, hey, here's a birth plan, but that
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birth is very unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen like this.
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These are your desires and your wishes, but ultimately it is up to your
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medical team. I have certainly been in births, especially with women who were
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struggling with an active addiction, where they weren't being hurt. I can recall
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one berth where this was the woman's fourth child and she was from a different
28:26
town, and she kept telling the doctors I need to have a sea section
28:30
with my last child. They said, I always have to have a sea
28:33
section, and they were just pushing and just not hearing her. And I
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was in the sea section and I could hear them in the sea section saying,
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hey, she needs she needed a sea section. She couldn't have had
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this baby another way. I've also been in a birth with a fifteen year
28:49
old girl. I went to the hospital with her early in the morning and
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they said she's not labor. They sent her home. Her guardian called me
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about six hours later. They were at the hospital. She was fully dilated.
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By the time I got back to the hospital, she was having that
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baby without any medication. And the doctors came out and they were joking about
29:14
it. They said, hey, this is biologically the best time to have
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a baby, just not psychosocially. So making sure that you know the patient
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is viewed as as a person. Here's a little girl having a baby without
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medication because the doctors wouldn't listen to her when she was in active labor six
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hours before. Oh my god, all right, tomlind Wow, very sorry
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about that. No, not at all. I mean, this is what
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this is about, all right. So how do people contact you? The
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best way to contact us is through our website, which is My Wellness PGH.
29:57
That's the abbreviation for Pittsburgh DOCT and I think that's going to be in
30:03
the show notes. Yep. We'll have that shows definitely, as well as
30:07
the mayor organization will have have that listened as well. Okay, awesome,
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appreciate you being on here and really glad you're out there doing that incredible work.
30:18
Man. We need people like you. Well, I appreciate you.
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You're really doing the incredible work as well. So awesome, all right,
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take care, Thank you you too,