Maternal Health

When your sessions fall

The program is built in four-week modules. Sessions come thickest at the start, when what you decide matters most, and step down as things settle. That is 5 sessions of 45 minutes across 8 weeks, counting the visit before week 1.

Week by week

1. Before you begin
   Before you begin

   This is the reading before your first visit. It explains what we measure, what to bring, and why this pathway is ordered the way it is. Nothing here replaces your obstetric provider or your midwife. This program runs alongside them.

2. Week 1
   Perinatal mental health

   This week is about mood, anxiety and the things people do not say out loud in a prenatal appointment. It comes first because the evidence base here is the largest in the pathway, and because untreated symptoms make every other week harder.

3. Week 2
   What actually helps

   This week you meet Christine Squires for a 45-minute stress management session. Before that, here is what the trial evidence supports, so you can spend the session on your situation rather than on what to try.

4. Week 3
   Prenatal nutrition

   Pregnancy nutrition advice is loud, contradictory and often sold to you. This week separates the small number of things with strong evidence from the large number of things without.

5. Week 4
   Your numbers, and the warning signs

   Halfway. This week you sit with Cindy for 45 minutes and repeat every measure from week 0: the EPDS, the mood and anxiety questionnaires, and your numbers. The point of repeating them is direction, not score.

6. Week 5
   Moving, and the pelvic floor

   Activity in pregnancy is safe for most people and useful for more reasons than weight. This week is about what it actually does, and about pelvic floor training, which is the piece almost everyone is told about too late.

7. Week 6
   Birth preparation, and who is in the room

   This week you meet Yasmin Dera for a 45-minute maternal health coaching session: your birth preferences, your questions, and what to prepare for the weeks after. First, the part of maternity care with the best evidence and the least attention: who provides it.

8. Week 7
   Sleep in the third trimester

   Insomnia in late pregnancy is close to universal and is usually treated as a joke. It is not a joke: it is a treatable condition with its own trial evidence, and it is tangled up with mood.

9. Week 8
   The first twelve weeks after birth

   Last week of the program. This is a handover rather than an ending, because the twelve weeks after birth carry more risk than most people are told and receive less care than any other part of the maternity year.