The Shared Decision Making Toolkit helps you name your preferences, make informed choices, and prepare for every phase–from prenatal to postpartum.
To attendants, companions, and community members alike, birth often stands as an ending and new beginning—the culmination of months of planning for the baby’s arrival. For the birthing person, however, the moment often stands as anything but. It is a liminal space that comes before a sacred beginning.
In the aftermath of the birthing experience, the fourth trimester unfolds quietly, where the relationship between the birthing parent and newborn wellbeing belies the physical disentanglement of the two. While the fourth trimester is often described in abstract or poetic terms, those living it benefit from concrete support that honors both vulnerability and strength. Healing during this period is nonlinear, and care must extend beyond physical recovery to encompass emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing.
Navigating this time is less about “bouncing back” and more about settling in, listening closely to the body, and building rhythms of care that are sustainable.
A profound psychological and physical passage, the fourth trimester encapsulates the three months following childbirth. But as we always say, postpartum is forever. As an organization committed to upholding maternal health, Mama Glow understands the cruciality of this time period in establishing maternal and infant wellbeing.
Too often, birthing people are bombarded with information and recommendations that are bereft of their unique circumstances, urgency without a sense of true choice, and reassurance without adequate space for questions. The Mama Glow & Aetna Shared-Decision Making Toolkit was created to disrupt these patterns by encouraging birthing people to play an active role in their personal journeys.
The Mama Glow & Aetna Shared Decision-Making Toolkit is designed to be a living resource, not a one-time checklist. During the fourth trimester, it can be used to help birthing people clarify their needs, communicate effectively with providers, and revisit decisions as circumstances evolve.
Key ways to engage with the toolkit include:
Enter your details to get instant access to our award-winning Shared Decision-Making Toolkit. Prepare for your pregnancy and childbirth journey, equip yourself with valuable resources and tools to make informed choices and ensure your pregnancy, labor and birth experience aligns with your desires and values.
Mental health challenges are among the most common—and least openly discussed—experiences of the fourth trimester. Conditions such as postpartum depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and trauma responses can emerge quietly, often alongside expectations to feel grateful or fulfilled. The toolkit acknowledges these realities and treats mental health as an essential component of postpartum care, not an afterthought.
Importantly, emotional distress does not always announce itself clearly. It may surface as irritability, numbness, intrusive worries, difficulty sleeping even when exhausted, or a sense of disconnection from oneself or others. The Mama Glow approach recognizes that these experiences exist on a spectrum and that support should be responsive, not reactive.
The toolkit offers strategies for addressing postpartum mental health challenges, including:
At its core, the shared decision-making framework affirms that postpartum mental health decisions are rarely simple. They are shaped by identity, lived experience, family dynamics, systemic barriers, and trust—or lack thereof—in healthcare systems. By slowing the process and centering the expertise of the postpartum individual, the toolkit restores agency during a time when many feel most disoriented.
The fourth trimester invites a slower, more intentional approach to care—one rooted in listening, patience, and presence. Postpartum recovery is not a return to what was, but an unfolding process that asks for rest without guilt, nourishment without urgency, and support without explanation. Grounding practices during this time help birthing people orient themselves amid physical healing and emotional change, creating space to recover, reflect, and respond to their needs with compassion.
Postpartum care and recovery is a time where resources and support are critical. In addition to providing valuable resources and information, the toolkit centers the lived experiences of the postpartum individual as a critical form of expertise on one’s bodily needs and how to use that information to make informed choices.
Mama Glow and Aetna have come together to advance maternal health and ensure that more families receive the support and resources they need to make informed decisions about their care.
As part of this collaboration, Mama Glow trained 250 Aetna Nurse Care Managers through a Doula Competency Training Program, building bridges between clinical care and community-based support. In addition, Mama Glow developed a Shared Decision-Making Toolkit to help expecting parents prepare for key conversations with their providers, better understand their options, and advocate for the birth experiences they want and deserve.
This toolkit is part of a shared commitment to honoring patient autonomy, deepening provider-patient communication, and closing gaps in maternal health through practical, culturally relevant tools and training.
Aetna, a CVS Health company, serves an estimated 36 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional, voluntary and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental and behavioral health plans, and medical management capabilities, Medicaid health care management services, workers’ compensation administrative services and health information technology products and services. Aetna’s customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. For more information, visit Aetna.com (e.g., clinical diagnoses, eligibility criteria, participation in a disease state management program).
Enter your details to get instant access to the Shared Decision-Making Toolkit.
