Vanessa Aja-Sigmon Ministers to New Moms

10-01-2021

“If being a new mom feels like it’s hard, that’s because it is,” Vanessa Aja-Sigmon tells new moms who arrive at one of her support group sessions. For the past ten years, Aja-Sigmon, M.Div.’05, has been helping new mothers navigate the journey from an identity that’s fading to a new one that hasn’t quite settled in. “It’s called matrescense,” Aja-Sigmon explains. “It’s a stage like adolescence. There’s an awkwardness... shifts are taking place in every facet of your life. A greater strength and confidence will emerge, but for a time, there’s a big transition.”

As a certified lactation counselor and childbirth/newborn care educator, Aja-Sigmon offers feeding, labor preparation and newborn care classes to expectant families, and educational and emotional support groups for new mothers. She finds her work to be as much a call as it is a vocation. “My theological education shows up in my work in many ways,” Aja-Sigmon begins. “Many aspects of what I learned about pastoral care counseling are directly useful: validating, normalizing, being accepting and non-judgmental, listening deeply, asking open-ended questions, being a sounding board, avoiding platitudes and helping parents focus on the big picture.”

Childcare is healthcare

In her work, Aja-Sigmon has had a look at some of the inequities in the nation’s healthcare system and sees a need for national support for new mothers and families. “We need universal healthcare, comprehensive paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare, better coverage for postpartum and mental health support,” she stresses. “In large part, the current system makes childbirth education available to only those who can afford it.”

Added to that concern, Aja-Sigmon states, is the need to improve outcomes for Black, indigenous, people of color, BIPOC, who are the most likely to die and suffer from morbidities in labor and the postpartum period than any other group. “Childbirth educators have been working to reckon with this reality,” she says. “One way to lessen implicit bias, exclusion and racism in our healthcare system is to increase the number of BIPOC healthcare providers and educators. We’re looking at ways to make education and training affordable and accessible to BIPOC individuals. We also have to make sure transgendered and LGBTQ individuals are heard as we design new models for child and maternal care.”

But efforts to support new mothers go beyond the national level, emphasizes Aja-Sigmon. She sees communities playing a larger role. “We abandon new mothers at a time when they are at risk to experience mood disorders, like postpartum depression and anxiety,” she says. “These are more common than we think. Everyone’s attention shifts to the baby, but we forget there’s a symbiotic relationship there. New moms need healthy food that they didn’t cook, coffee, humor, and lowered expectations that they must continue to live a high-functioning life while learning to adjust to a new identity with added responsibilities.”

McCormick family ties

Interest in serving new mothers and expectant families began with Aja-Sigmon’s own pregnancies and the birth of her two sons who are now 16 and 13. “It was my own transition to parenthood that got me hooked,” she remembers. “My learning of feminist ethics and theories undergirded the importance of maternal health and working with women and children.”

Aja-Sigmon met her husband, David Aja-Sigmon, M.Div.’03, in college and they served in Guatemala as Young Adult Volunteers of the Presbyterian Church (USA). David enrolled at McCormick in 2001, and during Thanksgiving break of that year, he and Vanessa Aja married.

Soon other members of the Aja and Sigmon families followed. David’s brother, Phillip, M.Div.’10, is an alum as well as Phillip’s wife, Casey Thornburgh-Sigmon, M.Div.’10. Vanessa Aja-Sigmon’s father, Antonio Aja, received his doctor of ministry degree from McCormick in 2013 and is an adjunct professor for McCormick’s doctor of ministry program.

Currently enrolled at SUNY Downstate College of Nursing, Aja-Sigmon is earning an accelerated bachelor’s degree in nursing. She hopes to serve a wider population of new mothers and families. “My background will inform my work as a registered nurse,” Aja-Sigmon says, “and it will allow me to work with additional agencies that support new mothers and families from all backgrounds.”

Helping new mothers become more self-assured in their new role is one of the greatest benefits of her work, notes Aja-Sigmon. “Over the time that moms are in a support group, it’s rewarding to see them allow for more grace,” she says. “They are relieved to know that there is more than one valid way to raise an infant. New moms are extremely isolated and receive a lot of pressure to ‘do everything right’ — whatever that means. It’s a shift for them to be reminded that they are allowed to take time to work through their own issues, to grow as individuals and model being a good person. That’s part of caring for our children, too.”

Vanessa Aja-Sigmon with son, Lucas; husband, David Aja-Sigmon, M.Div’03; son, Jesse; and the family dog, Chachi.

“My theological education shows up in my work in many ways. Many aspects of what I learned about pastoral care counseling are directly useful: validating, normalizing, being accepting and non-judgmental, listening deeply, asking open-ended questions, being a sounding board, avoiding platitudes and helping parents focus on the big picture.”

Vanessa Aja-Sigmon