Kim Jones is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Houston, Texas. She received her Master of Arts degree in Family Therapy from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 2013. Kim is currently Associate Director of the Center for Postpartum Family Health, where she provides both individual and couples counseling. In individual psychotherapy and counseling, Kim helps people to work through a variety of presenting problems, including pregnancy and postpartum-related issues, depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, grief, trauma, and family of origin issues. In her work with couples, Kim uses a combination of Emotion-Focused Couples Counseling and Gottman principles to work toward positive and lasting change. Kim is also a Certified Gottman Bringing Baby Home Workshop Facilitator. Kim does public speaking in the Houston area on topics including self-care, addiction recovery, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, and relationships. She has been featured on Houston KHOU news, and has presented on the topic of relationship health after children at Postpartum Support International conferences.
Ashley Musil, CPM, tells us about COVID-19 and the changes in the way we handle birth and postpartum in hospitals, birthing centers, and home birth or community birth.
Camellia May, LPM, shares the Strong Start Study of birthing centers – advantages of using a birthing center for reduced cesarean, lower cost to the public, fewer maternal deaths, and higher consumer satisfaction.
Camellia May is a licensed midwife (since 1993) who lived in Houston for 30 years. Last summer she relocated to northwest Arkansas and recently got her license. She worked for over 13 years at birth centers in the Houston area. She is the mother of five delightful children and grandmother of a wonderful 3-year-old. She has been baking bread and growing a garden during the quarantine.
Dr. Devin English tells us about Black teenage racial discrimination – information of which we should all be aware and working to make changes.
Dr. English earned his BA in psychology from Macalester College and his PhD in clinical/community psychology from the George Washington University. His predoctoral research was partially funded by a three-year NIDA F31 grant examining daily racial discrimination measurement and modelling its longitudinal effects on psychosocial outcomes among Black U.S. American adolescents and adults. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral research at Hunter College of the City University of New York where his research focused on examining the health effects of intersectional racial and sexual identity discrimination among Black queer men.
Dr. Devin English tells us about Black teenage racial discrimination – information of which we should all be aware and working to make changes.
Dr. English earned his BA in psychology from Macalester College and his PhD in clinical/community psychology from the George Washington University. His predoctoral research was partially funded by a three-year NIDA F31 grant examining daily racial discrimination measurement and modelling its longitudinal effects on psychosocial outcomes among Black U.S. American adolescents and adults. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral research at Hunter College of the City University of New York where his research focused on examining the health effects of intersectional racial and sexual identity discrimination among Black queer men.
Patricia “Trish” Perkins is a Certified Nurse Midwife who began her career as a labor and delivery nurse working with the Baylor midwives at Jefferson Davis Hospital. After raising her own family, she realized her lifelong dream of studying midwifery. She worked at a freestanding birth center as a full-scope midwife. She was recruited by Baylor College of Medicine to be a part of opening The Center for Children and Women at Greenspoint, where she did prenatal care including high-risk prenatal care, well-woman care, and centering pregnancy. Her experiences also include working as a lactation consultant at St. Joseph’s Hospital, helping them achieve Texas Ten Step status. She has realized her dream of opening a beautiful freestanding birth center just north of The Woodlands, Bliss Birth Center. Trish is passionate about providing quality, woman-centered, compassionate care and has the unique knowledge, skills, and experience to provide comprehensive, evidence-based midwifery care that women deserve.
She was born and raised in New York, and moved to California in 1964. She was very active in the civil rights movement, Vietnam anti-war movement, and anti-apartheid movement, as well as being a community activist in the Berkeley Unified School District. She has three children and 10 grandchildren.
Maddy tells us the story of her daughter’s and granddaughter’s death in the hospital when an induction using Cytotec (misoprostol) was used. We will also explore maternal mortality statistics.
Catrice Harris is a wife, mother, and grandmother, who has been supporting families with childbirth education, labor and birth, and lactation support since 1992. Her initial lactation training was through The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and City of Houston WIC Programs. Childbirth education came next as she began teaching Lamaze classes to expectant families, birth moms, and adopting parents. In 2012, began working as a birth and postpartum doula, becoming certifed through DONA and ICEA. As a recipient of the BIRTH midwifery scholarship for a woman of color, she is now enrolled in the National College of Midwifery, with the goal of graduating as a Certifed Professional Midwife (CPM) this summer. She teaches parenting education classes at the Woman’s Hospital of Texas and is apprenticing with Stephanie Palacio at Bay Area Community Birth Center. Having supported almost 300 women with the birth of their babies, she is truly grateful that this work found her!
Vero Pertuso is originally from Venezuela, where she went to college and graduated as a clinical psychologist. When she moved to the United States, she wanted to combine all her psychology knowledge with her passion for the birth and maternity world, so she began her journey to become a birth worker. That was the best decision she has ever made, she said. Currently she is certifed as a wellness and health fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum coach and a birth and postpartum doula. In 2018 she started her own practice, BREATHE Body•Mind•Spirit, in which she helps, guides, and empowers people through and at any stage of the entire journey of pregnancy and postpartum, both in English and in Spanish. She cannot be more passionate, driven, and committed to her work, or how she calls it, her mission in this life. Vero is in love, engaged, and soon to be married this year. She loves to cook and eat, to laugh out loud, and to be outdoors.
Melissa Nealy is a homeschooling mother of three wonderful children, two of whom were born at home. She has a fantastic husband, Dan, who facilitates the pursuit of her passions, three guinea pigs, four cats, one mealworm, and various insects her children have decided are pets (who live in the backyard mostly). She is a doula, an International Board Certifed Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), and a student midwife. Her first career was as an elementary music teacher; she found her passion for birth work a year prior to conceiving her first child and stayed home after her oldest daughter was born. She became a La Leche League leader and continued to seek out education about all things birth. Melissa has loved getting to know the other amazing people who came together to present this play.
Kelley Ellis is a labor/birth doula who previously spent 17 years in the offshore oil and gas industry as a structural engineer. She is married to her Sunday School sweetheart and they have three boys, two born by cesarean and the third was a successful vaginal birth after two cesareans (VBA2C). When her career in the oil industry evaporated, she turned her knowledge and passion gained through her own birth experiences into a new more rewarding career and doesn’t miss the corporate world at all. In her spare time, Kelley trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and shuttles her boys around to various sports and school events.
Hear all about the upcoming play, BIRTH – one of the cast members will tell us what the play is about.
Eleanor Prado is a mother of two girls and one fur-baby. Eleanor was a high school teacher for 8 years before transitioning to become a full time doula. With degrees in theology and anthropology, Eleanor is passionate about the history of birth in America, inclusion and diversity, and how science and technology continues to advance in all birth settings. As the publicist for BIRTH, she works to build community because all people deserve unconditional support as they become parents.
Dr. Devin English, a researcher and and educator with the Rutgers School of Public Health shares his recent research to investigate intersectional discrimination, coping, and bio-psychosocial outcomes among adolescent Black youth. The research examines frequencies and psychological effects of daily racial discrimination experienced individual, vicariously, online, offline, and through teasing.
Dr. English earned his BA in Psychology from Macalester College and his PhD in Clinical/Community Psychology from the George Washington University. His predoctoral research was partially funded by a three-year NIDA F31 grant examining daily racial discrimination measurement and modelling its longitudinal effects on psychosocial outcomes among Black American adolescents and adults. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral research at Hunter College of the City University of New York where his research focused on examining the health effects of intersectional racial and sexual identity discrimination among Black queer men.
