Crisis Nursery program helps moms with perinatal woes

Mykayla Thomas came into the world with an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, survived on feeding tubes for several days and spent almost a week in neonatal intensive care.

Her mom had to wait two long days before she could hold her newborn.

Little wonder those days were stressful for April Browder, then an 18-year-old single mom. Too worried to eat or sleep, she lost her pregnancy weight – and then some – within a few weeks.

"It was very scary," says Browder, now 21.

As the birth of her second child, Clayton, approached last fall, Browder sought help from the Crisis Nursery of Champaign County. Family specialist Cherylanda Trice told her about a new program for moms at risk of perinatal depression.

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