There are few experiences as universal to human existence as pregnancy and childbirth, and yet its most difficult parts — perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) — are still dealt with in the shadows, shrouded in stigma. The fact is 1 in 5 new and expecting birthing people will experience a PMAD, yet among those who do many are afraid to talk about it, some are not even aware they’re experiencing one, and others don’t know where to turn for help. The fact is, when someone suffers from a maternal mental health disorder it affects not only them, their babies, partners, and families - it impacts our communities.
In the Previa Alliance Podcast series, Sarah Parkhurst and Whitney Gay are giving air to a vastly untapped topic by creating a space for their guests — including survivors of PMADs and healthcare professionals in maternal mental health — to share their experiences and expertise openly. And in doing so, Sarah and Whitney make it easy to dig deep and get real about the facts of perinatal mental health, fostering discussions about the raw realities of motherhood. Not only will Previa Alliance Podcast listeners walk away from each episode with a sense of belonging, they’ll also be armed with evidence-based tools for healing, coping mechanisms, and the language to identify the signs and symptoms of PMADs — the necessary first steps in a path to treatment. The Previa Alliance Podcast series is intended for anyone considering pregnancy, currently pregnant, and postpartum as well as the families and communities who support them.
Sarah Parkhurst
Previa Alliance Podcast Co-host; Founder & CEO of Previa Alliance
A postpartum depression survivor and mom to two boys, Sarah is on a mission to destigmatize the experiences of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), and to educate the world on the complex reality of being a mom. Sarah has been working tirelessly to bring to light the experiences of women who have not only suffered a maternal mental health crisis but who have survived it and rebuilt their lives. By empowering women to share their own experiences, by sharing expert advice and trusted resources, and by advocating for health care providers and employers to provide support for these women and their families, Sarah believes as a society we can minimize the impact of the current maternal mental health crisis, while staving off future ones.
Whitney Gay
Previa Alliance Podcast Co-host; licensed clinician and therapist
For the past ten years, Whitney has been committed to helping women heal from the trauma of a postpartum mental health crisis as well as process the grief of a miscarriage or the loss of a baby. She believes that the power of compassion paired with developing critical coping skills helps moms to heal, rebuild, and eventually thrive. In the Previa Alliance Podcast series, Whitney not only shares her professional expertise, but also her own personal experiences of motherhood and recovery from grief.
Everyone Needs Me: The Reality of Sandwich Generation
•Previa Alliance Team•Season 1•Episode 231
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You're scheduling pediatrician appointments, packing lunches, answering school emails...and helping your parents navigate doctor's appointments, medications, and life's next chapter.
Welcome to the sandwich generation.
In this episode, Sarah and Whitney explore the emotional weight of caring for children while also supporting aging parents—and why so many moms feel like they're being pulled in every direction at once.
Together, they discuss:
What it means to be part of the sandwich generation
The invisible mental load of caring for multiple generations
Why it's okay to feel gratitude, grief, and exhaustion at the same time
How caregiving can impact your mental health, relationships, and identity
Practical ways to protect your well-being while caring for the people you love
If you've ever felt like everyone needs something from you—and there's nothing left for yourself—this conversation will remind you that you're not alone.
Hi guys, welcome back to Preview Lions Podcast. Oh, Whitney, our favorite mature mental therapist. Hey friends. Now let's talk sandwich generation because your girls been feeling it on all sides. All sides. And I was like, wait, is this something that like adulthood that you enter that no one again tells you about that you're just so you're in it? Until you're in it, and they're like, Yeah, it's a thing.
It's where you have reached that point of your life, you're self-functioning, you're doing your thing, you have children that could be from pregnancy, little babies to you know, teens, college, but then you have your parents or your um, say if it's your aunt and uncle or someone that you're now like their primary caregiver or assistant to. And even you could be like I was, where I have my grandparents in the next two. So I have three kind of generations, yeah. And that's been a conversation we've been having a lot, and it just in our personal lives of okay, how do we now balance uh fly football schedule, school stuff, work stuff? Um, okay, when is my parent having this surgery? Okay, wait, what happened? Okay, my grandfather was in and out of the hospital. This, you know, your brain has now gone so many ways. Right. And it doesn't have to just be physical caregiving, it can be emotional caregiving.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and I think what is so hard is every generation eventually becomes the sandwich generation.
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00
I don't think it's specific to millennials or even Gen Xers right now, but I think, you know, we grow up and we've got our parents taking care of us, and eventually we see them help take care of our grandparents. But I don't know about you, but in my mind, when that happened, I felt like my mom and dad were like in their 50s and I'm here at 40. I'm like, I have time for this. And I'm looking back, I do the math, and I'm like, no, my parents were in their mid 40s when all this started up. Like, oh my gosh, what do you mean? And then that reality check of, oh, my parents are 68 and 70. Granted, yeah, would they're in great health, all the things, but I'm also like, shoot, where are we gonna be in five years? Yeah, what does life hold for us? And again, we're juggling our kids, even if you have kids that are high school, college age that are mostly independent, you're still a parent, you're still checking on them, you're still making sure that they're doing okay.
You know, I I still call my mom for things, always, yeah. That's just what you do, and my grandparents are gone now. But there are times I'm like, you know what? I really wish I could call pop. He would know how to handle this. Yeah, yeah, you know, and then we're over here taking care of our kids, and then we might start to see things in our parents either maybe they're not as physically stable as they were, maybe they're tripping or falling a little bit more, maybe they're more forgetful. Maybe we're over there saying, Hey, did did you remember to do that follow-up with your doctor? Did you go to the pharmacy and get that prescription? Or I can remember in early 22, both my parents got COVID and it was a pretty bad bout, especially for my mom. So here I was, you know, taking care of my young kids, you know, two and five. But then I'm also all in my parents' business of okay, well, what is your O2 level? What are you doing? What medications are you taking? Facilitating them getting set up with the antibody treatment that was here in Birmingham. Like that was a caregiving experience because let me be real, my mom has asthma, and her getting that early strand of COVID was really tough on her. So I was very much like, no, I'm I am not your daughter, I'm your medical social worker right now.
SPEAKER_01
And I and you have to be, and you become that. Yeah, you become that, and you have to, especially those I feel like with medical experience who know how to navigate, who there is this, and people say this all the time. I'm like, listen, there's this imaginary like level of medical care that you have to get past to get get things done sometimes. And older generations are still so respectful and still so like non-pushy, and like, well, they said they'll call me back, and it's like, well, you know, it's we're gonna call it picking this up. Yeah, we're gonna call because we also know the level, I think in I think everywhere, except for Chick-fil-A personally, this level of customer service has gone down so much. Oh, it's awful. And people don't care about their jobs as much, and it's like, no, they're not gonna call you back. Um you have to be, but then you're doing stuff like that of being like, okay, can I make sure I block off time to make these appointments for them? To I need to know their medicines, I need to take them to the to the hand doctor, I need to do this. And then it's hard to be present at things with your kids when you're worried about your parents or you're worried about your grandparents. Oh, yeah, and vice versa. Yeah. Because then you feel like, okay, I'm not being there for somebody, or I'm gonna drop the ball for something, and there's almost so much capacity to have to give, and you have you're getting you feel grief because you see them getting older and you know what's coming, and it's sad, and you're kind of like the rug got pulled out from me, and I didn't realize we were here.
SPEAKER_00
Right. It's like you turn around and you're like, oh, wait a second, like, are we still in the good old days, or did those end somewhere along the way?
SPEAKER_01
So it's hard, and no one's talking about it because I think our generation of moms, we're we're slowly getting into it, but some people are the truly like bam, we're in it. Right. And we have so much more for us as moms on us than any generation has ever had.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, the expectations, and we've talked about this in other episodes, but the expectations that moms have, it's so unrealistic.
SPEAKER_01
And the ask and the digital, I think, you know, the way information comes at us so quickly and people can communicate with us so quickly, and the needs and the wants come towards us constantly, you feel like, okay, this is a lot.
And what do you tell moms who are going like, okay, yes, I'm in this, Whitney? How do I make this like what things would you suggest for the sandwich generation that would equip them? Because it's going to be a struggle.
SPEAKER_00
It is. I would say recognize you can't be all things to all people all the time. And so if you are more or less the caretaker or maybe organizer of your parents' medical stuff, if you can once a week block off maybe 10 minutes of a lunch period or 15, whatever it is that you need, or maybe do it twice a week if that's how demanding it is, and say, okay, this is what I need to do is call mom, call dad, call grandpa, whoever it is, and say, Hey, have you done all of your follow-ups that we've talked about? Or hey, I know you've got surgery scheduled in a week. Do you have everything at home that you need for that? You know, is dad gonna be able to drive you home from the hospital after, or do I need to be the one to do that? So, kind of, you know, my type A is really gonna thrive here, where we write down that list of, okay, well, what are the follow-ups that we need, whether it's primary care, surgery, medications, dental stuff, like whatever that case is, write that down and then make those follow-up phone calls, follow-up emails. And then on a different day, do the same thing for your kids. Of like, okay, like we just got my kids' softball schedules. So both my kids have decided to play fall softball, which is great and dandy, but it's a demand. So I got their schedules, and guess what? I took about 15 minutes out of my lunch break and I said, okay, I'm going to match the softball schedule with my work schedule. So I know days that I might have flexibility to tack on a later client, or absolutely not. We do not have that flexibility. That does not exist. I can't do that. You have to know your limitations so you don't overwhelm yourself. Do those things and then think about yourself. Have you made your six-month dentist appointment? Do you already have an appointment on the books with your PCP or your OBGYN for your annual follow-ups? Things of that nature, things that don't take a lot of time, but it's on that perpetual revolving to-do list that takes up that brain space, which is the invisible mental load that we talk about so frequently. Write that down. Take, you know, again, 10, 15 minutes out of a lunch break a couple of times a week, get all of that lined up. And guess what? Like, once you get your own stuff knocked out and on your books, you don't have to revisit it until that appointment pops up. Same thing for my kids with their softball schedules. I don't have to go and, you know, set that up again. It's done. It's there. Your parents, depending on, okay, well, did they follow up with their PCP? Call mom, text mom, whatever. Yeah, got it. You know, they're calling in my scripts to Walgreens or wherever. Great, fabulous, done. And that may be all you need to do. It may not be something that is a constant follow-up, but once you check it off, say, okay, we're done with that.
that. I think outsourcing what you can. Right. I think if it's grocery deliverance, or you saving that trip to the thing. I think putting your bills on auto pay during stressful times is huge. I think uh having if you don't have family that can be a village to help you with either generation, uh, babysitters learning, looking into finding a good babysitter.
SPEAKER_00
I'm all about if you know if you love your daycare teachers, ask them if they babysit outside of the daycare hours.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And ask around and being open and saying to, you know, that softball mom being like, hey, get to know her. If she might know somebody, or she may be like, hey, Whitney, I can take, I can bring her home on Thursdays if you get to that level of comfortability. That could help you if you knew, hey, Thursdays, that'd be great. I could really use that time to go do X. Um, and I'm a big, big component of you're going to have a lot of emotions that and mixed feelings. Talk to a therapist, get into therapy. You're like, great, when I'm gonna find that hour, it's going to be worth your hour.
SPEAKER_00
Well, and here's the thing: virtual is definitely something that we've all become accustomed to post-COVID. Also recognize you don't have to do it every single week. All you can manage is monthly, do that. Yeah, do that. If all you can do is 30 minutes twice a month separated, do that. Do that because you actually have to be there for yourself. And we talk about, you know, which ball am I gonna drop, what ball bounces, what ball breaks. If you forgot to set the chicken out for dinner tonight and it's still frozen as a rock in your freezer, that ball bounces. Yeah, you yeah, go get a pizza, go buy public scraps and chicken fingers, uh, whatever suits you, but it's okay. That's a ball that bounces.
I think it is. I think hopefully, if you're resonating this episode, you're not alone. We're all entering it or in or in it, and we'll navigate it together.
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01
All right, listeners, hang in there. We'll be back next week and we'll talk about something else we all need. That's right. Bye, guys.
Maternal mental health is as important as physical health. The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables, like anxiety, anger, and even apathy. Hosted by CEO, founder Sarah Parkers, and licensed clinical social worker Whitney Gay, each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges as well as access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.
