We Saved You a Seat

Maternal Health with Salena King-Coughlin (06) - Wrap Up and Updates

Welcome to the sixth and final release of my conversation with Salena King-Coughlin. As an educator and researcher, Salena digs into the numbers of Oklahoma families who are tied to maternal morbidity. She shares ideas and additional ways to plan or advocate when you truly feel like you have exhausted all advocacy avenues. 

I am so grateful to Salena for sharing her story and experience. She is a wife, educator, infant mental health specialist, Oklahoman, and mom who wants to better her community and state for those giving birth!  

I know we are both hopeful that by Salena sharing her experience it will provide awareness, education, and conversation to the topic of maternal morbidity and mortality, as well as support for others who have experienced similar birth trauma and postpartum complications. 

We don’t have all the answers, but I know we should all feel comfortable becoming part of the conversation and solution to help keep mothers and babies safe throughout pregnancy, delivery, and the postpartum period. 

On behalf of Salena and myself I want to say thank you for listening to the hard conversation describing what Salena and her family walked through. 

 

Every mom matters; every life matters!

Maternal Health with Salena King-Coughlin (05) - Postpartum Care Part Two

Part five of Salena’s story continues to focus on her postpartum journey of advocacy, CT scans, readmission, and survival.

Thank you for listening to one story that represents many more. It’s not easy to walk back through the trauma of what happened, and we are incredibly grateful that Salena could share her story with us, and you felt brave enough to listen.

This is part five of six of my conversation with Salena. Thank you for joining us and helping us provide a little context to maternal morbidity and mortality. 

Maternal Health with Salena King-Coughlin (04) - Postpartum Care Part One

Welcome to part four of my conversation with Salena King-Coughlin. In today’s episode, we begin our discussion on the postpartum experience and care Salena had.

Salena has walked us through her pregnancy, delivery, NICU, and now we begin hearing about what it was like for her in the period of postpartum, or what has been termed, "the 4th trimester". 

Thank you for allowing us to break down a long conversation into smaller, digestible episodes, each shedding a new light on different aspects of maternal morbidity and mortality.

Maternal Health with Salena King-Coughlin (03) - NICU

Welcome back for part three with Salena King-Coughlin. If you haven't had the opportunity to listen to parts one and two, we hope you'll go back and listen to catch up on how we got here.  Salena's daughter, Sophia, landed in NICU, and this episode walks us through the emotional stress of this experience from someone who understands and studies infant mental health and attachment.  

 

We are so thankful for Salena sharing her story and helping so many others understand how heavy this is to carry as a parent.

Maternal Health with Salena King-Coughlin (02) - Delivery Chaos

We continue our conversation with Salena King-Coughlin as she shares details about her delivery and some of the chaos that ensues. She shares ways she advocated for herself and her baby, as well as some moments that are hard for many to comprehend.  

Maternal Health with Salena King-Coughlin (01) - Pregnancy and Delivery

Salena King-Coughlin is mom to Sophia and wife to Tyler. She has her PhD, Infant Mental Health Endorsement, is a Certified Family Life Educator, and at the time of our recording was pursuing her graduate certificate in public health. Her journey through pregnancy, delivery, NICU, and recovery is the focus of this series tied to Maternal Morbidity and Mortality.  

 

Thank you, Salena, for sharing your experience and helping others learn how to advocate for themselves or the mothers and babies in their lives.

Exception to the Rule with Meske Owens, Part Three

Today we’re diving into an issue which is important to Meske and affects thousands of Oklahoma families, though it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves: early developmental screenings.

Meske provided We Saved You A Seat with lots of statistics:

• 65% of Oklahoma children between 9 and 35 months old are not receiving developmental screenings.
• Early intervention from birth costs ≈ $37,000 per child. Delayed intervention starting at age 6 costs ≈ $53,000. ➝ $16,000 more per child when we wait.
• In a 2016 Quality of Care report, OHCA shared that only 16.4% of children received a developmental screening during their first three years of life.
• The same 2016 report also noted that 56.5% of children aged three to six covered by SoonerCare received recommended well-child visits, compared to 72.2% nationally. https://www.okhca.org/about.aspx?id=22619
• Every $1 spent on early screening and intervention yields up to $17 in societal savings. (Healthcare, special ed, justice system)

When kids are identified early for developmental delays or challenges, it can change the entire trajectory of their lives. They can get the support, resources, and interventions that help them thrive at home, at school, and in their communities. When screenings don’t happen — or happen too late — children and families are left struggling, and often the cost to both the family and the state is much greater down the road.

This conversation is especially important right now, because an interim study on developmental screenings is scheduled at the Oklahoma State Capitol on October 2nd from 9:00 to 11:30 AM in Room 5S2. 

This study was introduced by Representative Ellen Pogemiller and it grew from a constituent’s story — Meske and her boys’ journey through the system. Meske knows firsthand why early screenings matter, and today she’s here to share how her family’s experience is shaping policy conversations at the state level.

If you care about giving kids the best start in life, here’s one simple action you can take whether you are able to show your support in person or not- contact your legislator and ask them to attend the October 2nd interim study. The more lawmakers hear these stories and see the data, the better chance we have of building a system that works for families across Oklahoma. 

We encourage people to be there for this interim study or watch online-if you're a parent on this journey, an educator, therapist or someone who just wants to learn more, there is something for all of us to learn.

Exception to the Rule with Meske Owens, Part Two

If there is a resource out there, there's a good chance Meske has found it. Meske has been trained in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), Partners in Policymaking (PIP), Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), Circle of Security and so many others.

In this episode, Meske provides us with a glimpse into her experience with SoonerStart, Early Head Start, the struggle of trying to navigate public transportation, and highlights so many other wonderful resources Oklahoman's have access to, but doesn't always know where to find them or who to ask.

This episode truly mentions and speaks briefly on some of the resources Meske has utilized or knows about and we have provided links to all of them below, should you want to know more.

TBRI:  https://child.tcu.edu/about-us/tbri/#sthash.sO4iWECF.dpbs

 

Lilyfield: Lilyfield

 

Empower OKC:  EmpowerOKC

 

Circle of Security:  Circle of Security International 

 

Sunbeam Family Services:  Homepage | Sunbeam

 

SoonerStart:  SoonerStart

 

Making Sense of your Worth: Making Sense of Your Worth - Halo Project

Exception to the Rule with Meske Owens, Part One

Meet Meske!! 

Meske will provide a voice from the mom, advocate, and survivor perspective at an interim study designed to highlight the need to improve access to developmental screenings to Oklahoma's youngest children, and we want you to know her and understand the why behind her passion. 

This is episode one of three, where you get to meet Meske and learn about Meske as a mom, advocate, incredible human and friend! 

 

Note From Meske:

"I’m not an expert in any formal sense. I don’t have a degree or credentials. Life circumstances interrupted every graduation I ever worked toward. What I do have is knowledge, experience, and perspective — a life lived in very diverse circles, literally and figuratively on both sides of the tracks.

My childhood wasn’t bad, but it was heavy. I had access to social circles some people only dream about, but life took me in a different direction. Mental health struggles, relationships, finances, global events — they all influenced my path. And while I’ve made my share of mistakes, most of the time it felt like life kept handing me situations I couldn’t control.

That’s how I came to my personal tagline: “I’m usually the exception to the rule. The medical mystery. I don’t fit in anyone’s box. The only kind of luck I have is bad luck — so I’m not a betting person.”

But over time, I began to realize my life had a bigger purpose. These experiences — the good, the bad, the unfair, the painful — weren’t meaningless. They were shaping me into someone who could see people differently, connect more deeply, and speak honestly about what most people avoid.

Still, things got worse before they got better. An important person in my childhood used to tell me to have “faith the size of a mustard seed,” so I started carrying one with me. But faith didn’t erase the pain. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, it just lets them scab over. I realized I had grown comfortable in chaos because it was familiar.

There were lessons along the way — sometimes only in the form of cliché sayings that became lifelines. And then came the next chapters: marriage, military service, two kids, deployment, divorce, relocation, three more kids, building a business, domestic violence, housing instability, PTSD, developmental disabilities, and trauma stacked on trauma. That’s where I found myself three years ago.

Since then, life has still been full of ups and downs. Healing doesn’t stop life from happening. Kids still need love, bills still come due, people still take advantage when you let them. But the difference is that I finally began prioritizing myself, setting boundaries, and holding on to integrity and accountability. That’s when the people I needed started finding me.

Along this journey, I’ve been trained in TBRI (Trust-Based Relational Intervention), Partners in Policymaking, PCIT (Parent-Child Interaction Therapy), and Circle of Security. I’ve worked on early screenings and even contributed to an interim study. Those experiences gave me language for what I had already lived — and tools to help my kids and others “from hard places” not just survive, but start to heal.

That’s the lens I bring to this conversation: lived experience, layered with training and advocacy, all rooted in a belief that stories — even the messy ones — can change systems and change lives."

Kidney Stones, Sepsis, and Maternal Health Outcomes

Darrian Williams, a mom to two precious girls, shares with us her chaotic experience tied to giving birth to her first daughter.  

The State Maternal Health Innovation (MHI) Program is one of many complementary investments made to improve maternal health across the nation. Oklahoma’s State MHI Program has partnered with the Oklahoma Family Network to help improve maternal health by providing OFN an opportunity to share family stories of those touched personally by critical health outcomes during pregnancy or soon after giving birth. 

The power of educating others with personal experiences can and will improve future maternal health outcomes for our community, and we thank Darrian for sharing pieces of her journey.

If you or someone you know has experienced health complications or illness that occurred during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period, and you are ready to share your story for the purpose of awareness and education, OFN would love to connect with you.