In July, Kayla Peterson and her 4-year-old son, Kareem, were living out of her car in Chicago. Peterson was working at a call center for $10 an hour — and preparing for the birth of her daughter. She was seven months pregnant and knew her high blood pressure was a potential risk to her baby.
“I was in a bad place, living in my car, getting put on waiting lists at shelters,” Peterson, 24, says. Then she saw an advertisement on a van: “Are you pregnant and need help?” The sign included a phone number. Peterson called, and a staff member at Aid for Women, a Chicago-based organization that provides services to women facing difficult and unexpected pregnancies, arranged for her to come in for an interview about her situation.
Within days, Peterson and Kareem moved into Heather’s House, a home in suburban Chicago that Aid for Women provides for expectant homeless women. It was a safe place to live, with food and clothing, at no charge. Aid for Women would have connected Peterson to a hospital for prenatal care, but she already had a provider through Medicaid. Heather’s House was “a safe space where you could prepare to have your baby,” Peterson says. In September, she gave birth to Olivia, who came into the world at a healthy 7 pounds and 12 ounces.
[See: 10 Ways to Make Your Childbirth Easier.]
Safeguarding Pregnancies
Prenatal care helps reduce the risk of complications arising during pregnancy. Doctors and nurses make sure pregnant women take prenatal vitamins, such as 400 micrograms of folic acid (a B complex vitamin) every day, which reduces the risk of neural tube defects by as much as 70 percent, according to the Harvard Medical School’s Pregnancy Guide. These are defects of the brain, spine and spinal cord that occur during the first month of pregnancy. Common neural tube defects include spina bifida, in which the fetal spine column doesn’t close all the way, and anencephaly, in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull. A 2011 study published in the journal Epidemiology found that women who did not take a daily prenatal vitamin before and during their first month of pregnancy were almost twice as likely to give birth to an infant with autism as women who took the supplements. Verifying that an expecting mother’s immunizations are current and that she’s avoiding drugs and alcohol, plus confirming she’s properly treating chronic conditions such as diabetes, are also part of a prenatal care regimen.
Aid for Women is one of thousands of facilities nationwide that provide prenatal care and support services for pregnant homeless women. Many of these programs are affiliated with churches that oppose abortion. Aid for Women, for example, was founded by a Roman Catholic deacon in Illinois and is part of a network of about 2,600 service providers that are either affiliated with Heartbeat International and/or Care Net. Heartbeat International is an international Christian organization, and Care Net is an evangelical crisis pregnancy center group that operates mostly in the U.S. Additionally, Catholic Charities USA provided prenatal care and support services to 83,000 women in 2015, says Maureen Varnon, a spokeswoman for the organization. Apart from the church-affiliated organizations, many of the 1,400 community health centers spread throughout the country provide prenatal care or referrals. Community health centers are nonprofit clinics located in urban and rural areas that are medically underserved. They provide a variety of services, including care for acute and chronic conditions; immunizations; basic primary care related to family medicine, pediatrics and obstetrics; and prenatal care and referrals.
[See: The Best and Worst Exercises for Pregnant Women.]
An Array of Services
Women who reach out to Aid for Women are encouraged to meet with a client advocate, who will assess their physical, medical and emotional needs. If the expectant mom needs prenatal care, the program will refer her to hospitals that work with the organization and provide such services to homeless women at no cost, says Susan Barrett, executive director of the nonprofit group. If the woman is not already on Medicaid, the advocate will try to sign her up for that benefit. The program also provides classes on childbirth and breast-feeding and access to a psychologist, who can provide treatment for such conditions as postpartum depression.
Heather’s House can accommodate as many as 16 people at a time. Some of the women who stay there can, after they give birth, move into a transitional home in Chicago, says Faith Bohlin, residential program manager for the organization. The women who go on to the transitional home either attend school or work or both, and develop a life plan with specific goals.
Women who are pregnant and homeless should take these steps to ensure they receive the prenatal care they need for a successful delivery:
Don’t panic, and seek prenatal care immediately. Expecting a child while dealing with homelessness may feel overwhelming, but help is available, says Michelle Lovlie, executive director of Elinor Martin Residence for Mother & Child, which is part of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York. Women can find prenatal care resources by contacting Catholic Charities, their nearest community health clinic or a free clinic provided by an area medical school. A 2014 study in the Journal of American Medicine found that there were 208 student-run free clinics associated with medical schools nationwide. That represented a doubling of such clinics in the last decade. These clinics most commonly offer outpatient adult medical care, chronic disease management, health care maintenance, social work and language interpreters, the study said. There were student-run clinics at 75 percent of the institutions that belong to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
It’s important to seek care immediately, because pregnancy carries health risks for the mother and the fetus, says Dr. Anne Cardile, medical director of Unity Health Care’s Community for Creative Non-Violence Clinic. CCNV is the largest homeless shelter in the District of Columbia, with a capacity for about 1,000 people. Unity Health Care provides care to the homeless at about 20 sites throughout the District.
Obtain WIC (Women, Infants and Children) benefits. This federal benefit is provided to low-income women. WIC provides funds for food, health care referrals and nutrition education for low-income women who are pregnant or breast-feeding; non-breast-feeding postpartum women; and infants and children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk.
The children of women who participate in WIC have significantly improved rates of childhood immunization, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture evaluation. A series of U.S. Department of Agriculture reports based on 1988 WIC and Medicaid data showed that every dollar spent on prenatal WIC aid for low-income women in five states resulted in fewer premature births; a lower incidence of moderately low and very low birthweights; fewer infant deaths; and a greater likelihood of the mother receiving prenatal care.
Be resourceful if you’re breast-feeding and don’t have your own refrigerator. If every new mother breast-fed her infant, more than 800,000 child deaths a year could be prevented worldwide, according to a two-part study published last January in the medical journal The Lancet. Children who are breast-fed have a decreased risk of infection and lower death rates, the study says. Breast-feeding may also cut down on diabetes and obesity in ensuing years, plus help decrease the odds of the mother developing breast and ovarian cancer and Type 2 diabetes.
Homeless women may not have their own refrigerator to store their breast milk, but if they’re living in a shelter with a cafeteria, workers will probably allow the mother to store her milk there. The same holds true for women who are staying with relatives or friends, who would likely allow them to store their milk in the refrigerator. If a woman is on the street or living out of her car and has access to a clean container and a breast pump, she can store her milk in a cooler or wraparound ice pack for up to a day, says Julie Larson, nurse care manager at the Stephen Klein Wellness Center in Philadelphia, which provides health care and other services to the homeless. Many hospital lactation consultants provide free coolers to patients, who can ask for them during prenatal visits. Some local businesses, such as a coffee shop, restaurant or convenience store, might help an expectant mom who is on the street by letting her use refrigerator space temporarily, Larson says. It’s important to label the milk, which is good in a refrigerator for three days and can stay in a deep freezer for up to six months. Women with no access to any refrigeration can also simply breast-feed when their baby is hungry, says Stephen Schilling, chief executive officer of Clinica Sierra Vista, a community health center in Bakersfield, California. “Breast-feeding is the healthiest thing a new mother could do for her child and for herself,” Schilling says.
[See: 10 Weird Mind and Body Changes That Are Totally Normal During Pregnancy.]
Carry your prenatal records wherever you go. Homeless people tend to move frequently and don’t always end up at the hospital they intended to go to for their delivery, says Dr. Jeffrey Norris, medical director at Father Joe’s Villages, which provides services (including prenatal care) to homeless people in San Diego.
Having access to prenatal records will be crucial for the physicians conducting the delivery, so it’s important for homeless women to have copies of them. Without those documents, physicians may have to repeat a wide array of tests to determine whether there are any problems with the pregnancy.
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Where Can Pregnant Homeless Women Get Prenatal Care? originally appeared on usnews.com
