Coping with Change

Coping with Change is an innovative psycho-educational maternal health promotion program offered by the Women’s Health Clinic in Winnipeg to assist pregnant and postpartum women with their transition to mothering. In a climate of the mother/ child dyad and family support programming, where most programs for mothers focus on the child or on the physiological changes mothers may be experiencing, Coping with Change offers a different perspective based on the feminist philosophy that mothers are at the centre of care, and that shifts in social expectations and relational pressures are as equally important to physical changes in understanding women’s transition to motherhood. Drawing on a detailed evaluation of the Program, this article illustrates how Coping with Change successfully integrates the practices of feminist consciousness raising and feminist praxis during the “teachable moments” when postpartum women are wondering about the normalcy of their feelings as mothers. More specifically, the piece discusses how the feminist practice of speaking collectively helps to normalise women’s experiences, encourages them to recognise and acknowledge their strengths as mothers, and to identify when their experiences may require further attention. It also concretely illustrates the success of feminist praxis in the cognitive shift participants have in their understanding of postpartum emotional adjustments as a continuum rather than as a singular medicalised view of postpartum depression and the use of this shift by practitioners in their work with postpartum mothers.