Hello!
My name is Jess and I am the founder of MAYA.
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The idea for MAYA stems from my own combined professional and personal experience of pregnancy and parenthood.
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I’ve always found myself being drawn to wanting to help people in tricky situations and often wished I was better equipped to do more in every circumstance (having to know my limits and sit on my hands in the 'is there a doctor on the plane?!’ scenario!)
For over 15 years I've worked in roles which involved me supporting people, especially parents and children, during pivotal moments of their lives. I began teaching and mentoring children and teenagers receiving long term inpatient hospital treatment. Often finding myself sat on the floor with parents in corridors as they informally offloaded and tried to grasp the upcoming invasive treatment or palliative care protocol for their child. I yearned to offer the parents more.
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I moved onto working with new parents in residential family assessment settings. Here were parents who had children in very difficult family circumstances and required intense support and assessment from the moment their baby was born. A stark reminder of the importance of those first 1000 days in a child's life and the need for mum and baby to have their needs met. This motivated me to train as a social worker, which I decided to do on the job – social working by day and studying during all other antisocial hours! My social work approach always being relationship-based, trauma-informed and strengths-focused to bring about long-lasting change with families.
I’ve spent the last seven years as a social worker for families in very complex and unfathomable situations. It doesn’t do justice to families’ lives to list what they, and importantly their children, faced. However, in the most challenging of circumstance, I witnessed the tenacity that people have to change their lives around especially when they are bolstered by a strong support network who work openly, honestly and empathically with them.
Pregnancy and beyond
My professional and personal worlds entwined when I became pregnant in 2021 and was positioned on the receiving end of having support from health professionals. It was fascinating seeing how it felt to have interactions as a service user. At times I didn't feel listened to when I was having some pretty awful pregnancy related symptoms. I thought a lot about this in relation to the experiences of the families that I worked with and the importance of advocacy. Communication was also key; I felt most understood and less defensive with health professionals who really sought to listen, empathise and build a kind rapport with me (I had some brilliant hospital midwives who were just this). Importantly, some of the best and most supportive conversations I had during my pregnancy and beyond were with peers - often second/ third time mums-to-be in the waiting rooms - who just got it, heard me out, and offered a calm listening ear to my woes and anxieties.
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Fast forward to my baby being here: in shock and awe of my birthing abilities and with this gorgeous bundle in our arms, we made it home and life as new parents began. There is a lot to dwell on here, but I will get to the focal point which is the postnatal time (i.e., the initial days, weeks, months of your new baby). This can be very hard. You’re all over the place – either quietly or loudly, suddenly or over time. I think I was calmly and happily all over the place for the first three months and giddy on the novelty of it all. From then on in - the fanfare quietened down, the adrenalin wore off, the sleeplessness increased, my physical recovery continued, and my mind threw anxiety daggers, irrational thoughts, and gentle lapping despair my way regularly. It was so conflicting to the love and joy that I also felt and it felt tougher than ever to catch a break. I remember thinking that I needed a bit of help here. Not professional help as such just a strong listening ear.
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My reality was (/ felt like) that close friends without babies (me prior to baby arriving, included) were not equipped to truly get it, friends with older children were very busy themselves and friends with new babies were all in my echo chamber of ‘WTF is happening to us all?!’ (Side note: if you’re a helper by nature, by training or by necessity – in my case all three in my life – then, in my experience, it can be so difficult to admit, seek or accept the need for help at key times).
What I needed and struggled to find was accessible, informal, judgement free, regular emotional and social support from someone who ‘got it’. Someone who had been there - not currently but recently - and who could help me to offload, open my eyes to the normality of this postnatal experience and just hear me out.
Peer to peer
As my maternity leave drew to a close, I'd found my support people and outlets but I kept returning to this idea of postnatal peer to peer support. It niggled at me so much that I applied for and was accepted on an innovation development programme for social workers. This was the catalyst that I needed to pursue this idea, research how other parents had felt postnatally, understand more about the landscape of postnatal support and create an action plan about filling a support gap.
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I conducted research with hundreds of other mothers and they too shared this sentiment of there not being enough informal emotional support postnatally. Many new mums experienced the transition into new parenthood to be very hard and felt like they were rarely asked 'but how are you really?' This led to their worries and feelings of overwhelm growing during that tricky new parent adjustment phase and risking longer term impacts on their mental health. 1 in 10 women experience postnatal depression and my own research showed that 80% of new mums surveyed experienced a whole range of mental health difficulties.
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A large cohort of women emerged – who not dissimilar to me – did not have postnatal needs that met the threshold for free professional state/ charitable support; could not justify private therapeutic support and/ or were simply not in the habit of asking for help but needed to offload. Many women in this group had babies in their mid-thirties and beyond and often lived away from close family support.
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I spent – and still do spend – a lot of time speaking with researchers, community organisations and postnatal professionals who support women during pregnancy and beyond. There is a consensus that there are many new mums with unmet emotional and wellbeing needs who don’t or can’t access – for a whole variety of reasons - existing support in their local area.
Here and now
Last year I left my senior social work role to focus on building MAYA. It is me alone at the helm of MAYA currently and as a result the service is personal, responsive, relationship-based and flexible. Things do have to be paced according to what I can achieve in a week and with a toddler. However, be assured that, due to my perfectionist tendencies, great strides are being made and MAYA’s pilot has now launched in Oxford.
I am very much bolstered by a collection of informal advisors – from business, postnatal, therapeutic and research worlds (and closer to home, the unwavering, ever-patient support from my partner) who all continue to kindly champion me and this cause.
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I'll keep you all posted with updates on the 'Get Involved' page of the website and please check out MAYA on social media (Instagram: mum.as.you.are) for regular postnatal reflections.
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Please do get in touch if you’d like to be part of this in any way, shape or form.
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Warm wishes
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Jess x
