Lydia Simmons Develops Equitable Maternal Healthcare Solutions with Moms Official Objective (M.O.O.)

The conversations surrounding maternal health have significantly increased to create an overdue change in treatment and solutions for mothers. For as long as we can recall, both prenatal and postnatal questions, concerns, and care for mothers have been blatantly ignored or neglected.

According to the American Hospital Association (2020), the maternal mortality rate for Black Women has significantly increased to 2.9 times the rate of non-Hispanic White women, with nearly 54 deaths per 100,000 live births.

With alarming statistics at hand, Lydia Simmons is shedding light on the situation and leading the charge to make the voices of mothers heard and understood with Moms Official Objective (M.O.O.).

M.O.O. envisions motherhood wellness through clean postpartum products, maternal education, and resources to help moms feel like themselves again.

Simmons explained her intentions behind the brand, stating, “It really stems back to asking a woman who’s had a child what she’s trying to seek or get back. It’s always ‘to herself’; that may be physical, mental, or emotional. Of course moms want to take care of their kids, provide for their families, do well in business, or whatever their objectives are, but the main one has to be ourselves.”

Her fearless and transparent approach addresses the taboo topics of motherhood, maternal health, and women’s reproductive rights. From doctors to relatives, Simmons notes education as a primary focal point for M.O.O. With generations of knowledge being passed down, the postnatal care founder is noticing a change in the information being distributed.

“I think what happens when we start to lose ourselves is that the people around us are also uneducated. We may sound and look good, and be able to pull it together, but they don’t understand what depression, high-functioning depression, and stress looks like,” she explained.

What Does Postpartum Depression Look Like for Mothers?

It is a known fact that many socioeconomic factors, such as income, trauma, and equitable care, play a role in the high postpartum depression rates of Black Women.

But Simmons is determined to keep postpartum depression and postnatal care education from being a singular conversation. She noted how the yoga pants and messy bun look can be indicative of the deep emotions moms feel in those moments, but can’t quite communicate to loved ones and support teams. 

In her research, Simmons has made multiple connections between the lack of postpartum care and postpartum depression. She clarified how postpartum depression often starts in pregnancy, with medical, financial, or domestic stressors as contributors carried into postpartum before the baby is born. 

“We’re talking about two different stages in motherhood. It starts when we have to fight with OBGYNs for certain care, get denied services, and question why things are or are not being done. The protection of the child starts in the womb. There’s this switch that turns on when that baby is in our belly, that you don’t know where it comes from, but you know you wish a [explicit] would! There’s this high vigilance of ‘I need to know and understand’”, she explained.

Postpartum Trauma and Disparities

Throughout her pregnancy, Simmons noticed some predatory actions by care providers. A midwife later informed her that the 22 hours of labor endured after her water broke was far from normal.

“What I didn’t know is that there should have been provisions made earlier and were not offered in my delivery journey. I brought the baby home and started having some issues, but I didn’t know how to pinpoint them. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. I had these dark circles around my eyes, but they didn’t really jump out to me. I didn’t know that it meant that I possibly had an iron deficiency. In hindsight, when I left the hospital, my doctor told me that I have a touch of anemia, but it’s not severe so they’re sending me home and it’ll rectify itself. The conversation that should’ve been had is, ‘you have anemia, and if you don’t do these things, this is going to get worse.’”

While it’s become an unfortunate occurrence for minority women, Simmons sees the bigger picture with treatment from healthcare providers. She didn’t contribute the disparity solely to her race, but believes any woman would have received the same discharge advice

“This was 6 weeks postpartum. I was having a lot of things happen that I couldn’t communicate. Because there was no postpartum care, the doctor wasn’t checking if I was meeting all of these [postpartum] statuses. What they were looking for was a vaginal exam to see that the body was healing the way that it should have and that was it,” she explained.

Her disheartening bout with the trauma was similar to those that many women experience leading up to postpartum depression. Simmons reflected, “I saw the disparities, negligence, and experienced the emotional things that start the cycle of postpartum depression. I had a one-year-old when I gave birth to another baby. In the moment, you do what you need to do. When I look back, it’s traumatic and you can’t get rid of it.”

Postnatal Care Solutions for Mothers

Since Simmons provided her own financial backing for M.O.O., preparation became a matter of figuring out who belonged in the organizational chart and how they would pour into M.O.O. Simmons brought in professional teams of chemists, physiologists, gynecologists, and scientists for maternal health research and product development.

Before creating products, Simmons was no exception to concerns about breastfeeding difficulties overlooked by healthcare providers. When making attempts to understand her personal struggle with producing breast milk, she was told it was normal and to be thankful it’s not worse.

“I said this may be common, but it can’t be normal, so I took it back to food. Food is at the core of perfecting a health plan. I figured out I was missing a certain amount of nutrients and fixed it for me,” she recalled.

For the development of her first product, she envisioned solutions that needed to be clean, food-based, and easily accessible, while reducing work and effort for consumption. “Moms don’t have time to chop up and package 24 superfoods, so we encapsulated them and took it to market,” said Simmons.

“We’re taught that prenatal vitamins are what we take for maternal fetal health. But we need another set of nutrients for maternal postpartum recovery. So we created the first superfood postnatal.”

With M.O.O. on the rise as a maternal health shop, educational resource, and community, mothers are turning to the safe space for healing and answers that they otherwise wouldn’t find. They’re finding their place and pace in life again to get back to the core of who they are in and outside of motherhood. Encouraging moms to remember who they are, Simmons asserted, “You are nothing to nobody if you are not whole to yourself”.

Lead Image Source Lydia Simmons