Erica McAfee is the Founder and CEO of Sisters in Loss, a maternal child health company that helps Black women replace silence with storytelling around pregnancy and infant loss and infertility. Sisters in Loss provides pregnancy, birth, postpartum, bereavement doula, and grief services to help women step beyond anxiety and fear and into trust and peace after loss. It's self-titled podcast spotlights resilient Black mothers who share intimate details of their journey to motherhood through painful, but inspirational loss and infertility stories. Sisters in Loss has been featured in Forbes, Black Enterprise, Women's Health, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and The White House.
Erica McAfee went through 9 months of pregnancy, 16 hours in the hospital with 13 hours of labor, a couple hours of pushing to have a C-section to deliver a baby and then to be told the baby has died. She said we were excited to meet our baby boy but instead we were catapulted into planning a funeral for our baby who's lungs had never developed. She then became pregnant again only to lose a little girl at 18 weeks due to an incompetent cervix.
After the 2nd loss Erica said she took time off from trying again to conceive and worked on doing things differently within herself. She talked about making a lot of changes so she could pour back into herself to become whole again. She mentally had a yearning to have a baby in her arms but she knew she needed to be whole mentally and emotionally to navigate through another pregnancy. Erica talks about the work she put in to become mentally and emotionally whole again.
Erica's words of advice and encouragement: Your journey is your own and you should not compare where you are currently to the person next to you or your friend. Also that you should seek out 2nd, 3rd and 4th opinions. You should not rely on one answer or diagnoses when it comes to infertility or loss, seek out multiple providers for answers to form a healthcare team to help you. Every path to motherhood is different, though this journey may not be what you expected it to be, embrace and honor it. Be assured that you are doing everything in your power to get the answers you need and that you're making the right decisions. Know that there is not only one way to become a parent and you do not need to push a baby out to be a mom.
Connect with Erica: https://sistersinloss.com/ or @sistersinloss on Instagram or Facebook
Connect with me:
EMAIL teresa@livingaftergrief
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Instagram: @livingaftergrief
Website: www.livingaftergrief.com
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