Hispanic Heritage Month 2022: Mariel and David Mendez
“It’s the reality of being a first-generation daughter of immigrants who is trying to live the American dream but also be a good parent to a newborn after this experience. There's a lot of complexity. ”
Mariel Mendez brings her experience working with urban and rural communities at the intersection of mental health, social justice, and immigrant rights to her role as an Associate Program Officer at the Perigee Fund. She holds a background in global public health and works towards creating stronger and more equitable policies and systems that support parents and their babies. She is excited about opportunities to empower immigrant families who experience cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic barriers, and who also embody tremendous strength and resourcefulness. Her greatest joy are her two daughters, Milea Katali and Kamila Ixchel. She is originally from and living in Washington State but lived in Boston for over two years.
David is the proud father of Milea and Kamila. He was a former teacher in Passaic, New Jersey where he taught 5th Grade bilingual education through Teach for America. David is now on staff at Teach for America Washington as a Senior Managing Director, Reimagining Learning and Leadership. He is passionate and dedicated to making sure all students and families have equitable opportunities for an excellent education and upward mobility.
This blog is made possible by a sponsorship from Sage Therapeutics. All content on this page has been curated by the Mass. PPD Fund without input from Sage Therapeutics, Inc.
September 2022 | Interviewed and edited by Jessie Colbert, Executive Director, Mass. PPD Fund
Mariel and David Mendez asked that their story be featured in September for Hispanic Heritage Month. They also wanted to share it together because of all of the ways perinatal depression and anxiety impacts the whole family. Their journey points to many ways we can improve the system – from person-focused obstetrical care, to culturally congruent and multi-lingual mental health care, to supporting partners, and more. Like all of our Amplifying features, their story is a call to action. We are honored they are sharing it here.
A Spanish-language version of this post is coming soon.
Did you have expectations about bringing home a new baby? What were your hopes and fears?
David Mendez: Our first-born was a surprise. We weren't really planning it and expecting it. And [it was hard] being in different spaces in our professional careers, and also being so far away from family. I mean, all of our family’s on the West Coast. We were pretty much alone in Boston. I think I was expecting parenting to be difficult and challenging, but at the same time, I [felt] excitement. The unknown was kind of thrilling, because we didn't know what the baby was gonna look like, and how she was going to be when she was born and stuff.
Mariel Mendez: I was two months into starting a post-bac program for medical school. I was like, Oh no, there's no way we can have a baby right now! And I was pretty sick and exhausted. I am a very energetic person, and to have no energy was really, really hard for me. I think I spent most of my pregnancy really scared. It was also the first time that a lot of things from my childhood started coming up for me. I was raised by a single immigrant mom who had to work a lot. And I just had all of these fears, like, Am I gonna be a good mom?
David: Yeah, it was harder to show my excitement because I knew how she was feeling. You know, wanting her to be healthy and not feel that anxiety. I think [that anxiety] did affect the postpartum pieces.
Oftentimes when a baby is born, parents have plenty of support for the baby, but not a lot of support for themselves. Mariel, as the birthing person, did you feel like you had people looking out for you? If so, who?
Mariel: The only thing I really thought about was, Okay, when I have this baby, how long is my mom or mother-in-law going to stay? My mother-in-law came a week before my due date, but the max she could stay was two weeks. And then my mom stayed a couple days – she has a job where she can’t really take a lot of time off. But once my mom left we were on our own. I didn't even think about the support I might need to recover or anything. I was just like, Once they leave, who's going to be here to tell me what to do?
Mariel, tell me about your journey with mental health challenges around your new baby. When did you realize something was “not right”?
Mariel: I was about six months pregnant when I had a really bad anxiety attack. I was getting ready to take an exam and I just froze. I couldn't breathe. It was like my body just cemented. I started taking the test and I had to get up and hand it in and say, I can't do this. I went to the bathroom and threw up. And then I called David and I was like, I don't know what's happening to me. I've never experienced anything like that. I have lived with Hashimoto’s disease, which is a thyroid disease, for majority of my life. I attributed [the anxiety attack] to the Hashimoto’s. And my OB was like, Yeah, that's probably what it was, don't worry about it. I still felt this sense of heaviness and anxiety through the remainder of my pregnancy.
When birth came, I had asked for an epidural. The epidural went wrong, they punctured too far – throughout all of this I was by myself – I had asked them, like, don't continue, and they tried again. It was just not what I was expecting or wanted for my birth. I had an awful spinal headache for a week. I actually don't remember the first week of my daughter's life, which is still really heartbreaking for me. I remember just feeling like, Why do I not feel attached to my daughter from the beginning? I had a really hard time breastfeeding her as well. I just felt like, Oh God, I’m failing so quickly, so fast.
And then my mom and my mother-in-law left, and David went back to work. I had 12 weeks off, then he was going to take paternity after. So once my mom left I was by myself with the baby. And I remember being so sad and confused as to why I didn't have baby bonding or baby attraction. I felt like David did the parent thing so naturally and I didn't. My feelings just kept getting bigger. And sometimes I would talk about them, and sometimes I wouldn't. I pushed David away. All I wanted to do was work, sleep, and disengage.
Interestingly, I went to the doctor for psoriasis when I was six or seven months postpartum. The doctor was like, It sounds like you might be going through some stuff and maybe you should find help. They referred me to an agency. And it took me two weeks to finally call, and I asked, Do you have anybody Spanish? And they said, We don’t, but we’ll set you up with someone. I was supposed to have an introductory call with them, and I got on the call and no one ever showed up. I was like, maybe this is a sign that I should do it on my own. It just felt like a lot of energy on my end to seek help.
David, what was it like for you through all this? How did you understand what was happening?
David: I think I underestimated the whole situation until I kind of experienced a little mini anxiety attack myself, right before our second daughter was born. I just thought she was stressed out. It felt like there was a lot of pressure on me, and in my head it was like, Why is she feeling like this?
It wasn't until I started to really understand postpartum that I realized, Oh my gosh, my wife is going through this really stressful time. And then I started feeling some of the depression symptoms. It’s hard because in our [Mexican-American] culture, no one really talks about postpartum and mental health. It’s taboo, especially for males – we always have to be strong for our partners. So I was internalizing a lot of this stuff. And even though she felt like I was thriving in this parenting thing, it was new for me and I didn’t know what to do. And then I had a partner who was kind of out of it. I just felt like I'm doing this by myself.
Mariel, what eventually helped you start to get better?
Mariel: So I want to start off by acknowledging what did not work. We both come from Mexican backgrounds, very Catholic families. And when I was sharing what I was going through, I think it was a mix of, people don't know what this is, and resorting to, like, You just gotta keep going. You just have to pray. And that just made me more upset, because I was like, I cannot control what is happening here! I can pray but I need more help.
I felt like the medical system isn't helping me. My family structure isn't helping me. My religious structure that I’ve lived under my whole life is not helping. There is no system that is helping me and us. And then I would feel guilty because I'm perpetuating this single parenthood that I came from, because now David was being a single parent because I wasn't involved. It was this really shattering sort of reality.
Almost a year postpartum, we moved to Seattle. I actually had a quick session with our Founder [Perigee Fund Founder Dr. Lisa Mennet, a psychologist and leader in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health]. In like a 30-minute conversation she helped me realize a lot of the trauma that I carried from my childhood that I had just never, ever thought about. Through my job they referred me to an organization where you can find mental health practitioners who focus on postpartum. The therapist I worked with was Cuban-American. I expressed a lot of my experience in my native language, Spanish. So having someone where I could speak in Spanish and English and go through my experiences with the language that resonates the most was incredibly helpful. She also helped me be okay with medication until I could get to a place where I could cope on my own.
I spent a lot of time getting myself to a safe place both mentally and physically, but also acknowledging some of the trauma that had been really triggered throughout this new stage in life. And then it was sort of the processing phase, and then it was the coping phase. So I always think about, like, I'm not a survivor, because I feel like I'm constantly learning how to cope. There are a lot of things that still trigger me or make me really sad. But I'm in a much better place now, because I’ve been taught to know when I'm not okay, and how to get to the safe zone – how to cope and to ask for help.
In my family and in our culture, like, if you're talking about psychiatric drugs, you're crazy, right? There’s a lot of stigma. And then the added pressure of, now you’re a mom, and your husband and your children are the priority. And I had failed at that. I still wanted to do my professional advancement, but that was looked down upon. It’s the reality of being a first-generation daughter of immigrants who is trying to live the American dream but also be a good parent to a newborn after this experience. There's a lot of complexity.
David: I think in our society, in our culture, there's a lot of gender roles. And Mariel had to break through all that. And simultaneously, me too, right? Trying to break through the masculinity stuff. I think those were added pressures to trying to get help, honestly.
Did you find some healing with the birth of your second child? What improved?
Mariel: I think it's a combination of things. I was very intentional in searching for an OB/GYN who could at least acknowledge the experience I had the first time, and my fear going into my second pregnancy. I was able to find a wonderful OB/GYN who was really caring throughout my entire pregnancy – ready to respond, just always checking on me.
And then I think our family – I mean mostly David’s mom and my mom – had seen what both of us had gone through. And through different conversations I think they both realized, Huh, this is something that we experienced too, but we didn’t know what it was called. David’s mom was like, I think that your dad felt the way you’re feeling and we just never, ever talked about it. So I think the second time around we could more freely share our concerns, based on what we had experienced. And we were also physically closer to family. And so in that sense we felt much more supported.
David: I think it's still a work in progress, to be honest. I don't think I've ever had the conversation with my dad about postpartum. Without saying anything, it’s probably us acknowledging that he went through it. But that tells you how deep the machismo is around not expressing yourself, right? I think it's been a little more open, but there's a long way to go.
Mariel: The second time around, we did have a baby under COVID. So there’s that. But I would say, like, in our culture, in my family, we pride ourselves in taking care of the mom. We call it Cuarentena, 40 days after you have a baby. Like, they come and feed you, they take care of your baby, they make sure you sleep. And the second time having that, I felt like I was able to connect with my mom and my grandma and that lineage of motherhood. And learning that even though people may not be able to express their care for your mental health, they know how to care for you in this new stage of life in these other ways. I definitely felt a different type of connection and support, and I really, really appreciate that. I love that acknowledgement through caring.
We’re still practicing how to talk about this stuff. And the reality is that there is a level of trauma that is really hard to work through. So sometimes it's purposely ignored because it just feels too big. I know that my mother had to live through a lot of very awful things as an undocumented immigrant in this country. Her words of wisdom are like, You just gotta get up. You just gotta keep going, you can't back down. And me being like, I don't have to do that because I'm not an undocumented immigrant. Like, we can get help. She couldn’t seek help because of fear of deportation, but that’s not my reality. Having all those truths be present.
Are there ways we can improve the system so other parents don’t have to struggle like you did?
Mariel: I saw it modeled by my OB the second time around – this constant checking in, right? How are you doing? Integrating [the mental and the physical]. It was so nice. Knowing that it’s all part of this transition, this journey of pregnancy and parenthood.
And I remember they gave us something about postpartum, maybe in the birthing class. But it was almost, like, mechanical. If we were to talk about this as so real, and [informing people] you could go through this at any point. And bringing family along, understanding what it could look like, what it could feel like. That would be so helpful, so that people don’t feel like, I did something wrong and now I’m feeling a certain way.
David: One thing that I wish I had was, like, a group of partners, right? Because it's really hard to go through this. I don’t think there was ever anyone that took me aside and said, Hey, you know there’s this resource you can go to and talk with people about how you can support your partner. I think that was a big frustration of mine, just feeling helpless. So if there's more intentionality around, like, We're gonna talk about what postpartum is, but also talk about how as a partner you can support someone who's going through it.
Mariel: Because of all the brokenness of our systems, we focus on the mom. How do we center the mother and the baby, but also recognize that partners and families are probably also experiencing this? Because there's a ripple effect, right? Taking the experience of the partners or the families is so important.
Resources: Mariel and David would like to highlight resources from The Family Van, which focuses on serving families in Nubian Square, East Boston, and Dorchester with an emphasis on mental health and referral and assistance to care.