A Trauma-informed Approach to Postpartum Care.

Distressing or traumatic perinatal experiences and adverse health outcomes can lead to particularly challenging postpartum experiences for patients and families. By adopting a trauma-informed care approach, the health care team can provide much-needed support, prevent additional harm, and promote healing. We propose practical communication, behavioral, and procedural considerations for integrating trauma-informed care principles into routine postpartum care, with attention to populations that have been marginalized. We see postpartum care as a critical component of holistic patient recovery and an opportunity to facilitate posttraumatic growth so that all families can thrive.

The Climate Crisis and Breastfeeding: Opportunities for Resilience.

The climate crisis is an emerging global challenge that poses potential risks to breastfeeding practices and outcomes. There are multifaceted effects of climate change affecting the breastfeeding dyad across environmental, societal, and human health dimensions. Breastfeeding support in the face of climate change will require solutions at the structural level-healthcare, community, and workplace settings-and at the mother-infant dyad level. Breastfeeding can additionally be an adaptive response to crisis situations and can mitigate some of the environmental challenges associated with climate change. Despite the undeniable significance of climate change on breastfeeding (and vice versa), our perspective as experts in the field is that this topic has not been systematically addressed. Although we highlight some of the challenges, potential solutions, and co-benefits of breastfeeding in the context of climate change, there are numerous issues that could be further explored and necessitate additional preparedness planning.

Education in Trauma-Informed Care in Maternity Settings Can Promote Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Globally, the pandemic has adversely affected many people's mental health, including pregnant women and clinicians who provide maternity care, and threatens to develop into a mental health pandemic. Trauma-informed care is a framework that takes into account the effect that past trauma can have on current behavior and the ability to cope and can help to minimize retraumatization during health care encounters. The purpose of this article is to highlight the pressing need for perinatal clinicians, including nurses, midwives, physicians, doulas, nurse leaders, and nurse administrators, to be educated about the principles of trauma-informed care so that they can support the mental health of pregnant women, themselves, and members of the care team during the pandemic.