Motherhood should not mean risking your happiness, health or life.
Welcoming a baby to a family is an incredible experience. Having a baby is life changing. New mothers and families face challenges in this journey including isolation, unrealistic infant and self-expectations, limited access to needed care, stigma around issues such as mental health, infant feeding, and more. New mothers can experience serious health complications. Investment in women and families during this sensitive time can improve well-being for everyone.
We envision a world where every woman receives the social, emotional, physical, and economic support she needs to successfully transition through the postpartum period and into her new identity and life as a mother. Health care systems, businesses, and society should value and respect women not only for what they bring to families, communities, and nations but also for who they are in and of themselves. The 4th Trimester Project seeks to lift up women’s voices, ideas, and needs so mothers design the change they want to see.
We want to change the way America treats new moms. With this website, we are working with people from across the country to share the best information available to support postpartum health and wellness. And, where the questions are unanswered – we want to work together to come up with new answers.
We seek to:
- Shift cultural norms and assumptions.
- Actively support the health goals of all mothers and families.
- Better prepare health care professionals to care for new families.
- Establish more equitable health care systems.
- Help build ‘villages’ of support and resources.
- Lift up the experiences of all women, with special attention to centering women of color and others whose opinions and perspectives have often been overlooked or ignored.
- Find more about “Our Commitment” here.
