Birthing Beautiful Babies

Birthing Beautiful Babies is a 7-week intervention for pregnant Black women that focuses on reducing stress and anxiety by using culturally-infused sister circles and cognitive behavioral techniques for pregnant Black women.

Sister circles are support groups that build upon existing friendships, fictive kin networks, and the sense of community found among African Americans females. Sister circles appear to offer many of the components Black women desire in an anxiety intervention.

Other cultural components we have infused within our study include using local doulas as study facilitators and addressing relevant stressors such as negative media images of Black women, self-esteem, racism, colorism, hair care, and pregnancy-related health concerns.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques incorporated into our study include a psychoeducation of panic attacks, visualization exercises to decrease anxious thoughts and relax the body, and a stress story narrative, which encourages women to write about their first anxious experience.

Study data include psychosocial measures of worry, pregnancy-anxiety, and distress and biomeasures of blood pressure, height, weight, and cortisol.

Sister Circle Covenant:

I see your beauty

I sense your power

And I support your prerogative to sing your own song