Meet Dr. Tracy Shevell founder of Blue Moon Perinatal
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Meet a mom we all need to know, Tracy Shevell. I recently chatted and fell in love with Tracy, aka Dr. Shevell, after learning her story and how she helps educate moms during their high risk pregnancies. She is nothing less than amazing and I knew I had to share, not only to help her get the word out her new business, Blue Moon Perinatal, but also to help all the mothers in need of her expertise. Knowledge is power.
Tracy is a High Risk OBGYN, trained at Mount Sinai and Columbia. After doing her OBGYN residency, she chose to pursue fellowship because she never wanted to have to turn over her patients when things got complicated. After training, she moved out to the burbs and took on an attending position at Stamford Hospital, where she stayed for 16 years.
There, she worked with patients of all demographics… and loved her work!! Tracy invested a tremendous amount of time and energy in not just the physical well being of her patients, but their emotional well being as well, as that was so critical to the entire process. Often given the high risk nature of the situations, there was a huge need for attention to psychosocial aspects of care, and Tracy used all her knowledge to figured out lots of extra ways to get people what they needed. She even delivered many of her friends’ children and cared for so many friends of friends over the years. She wanted every single one of her patients to feel that she cared for them the way she did the people closest to her.
During those early years, Tracy spent a lot time in the NICU—academically, the neonatologists were colleagues who were often involved in complex planning for her in uterine patients, and they also were the ones who shared updates with her when she sat with the parents she had just cared for. Tracy is also the mom of two high risk pregnancy NICU graduates, so she know how it feels to be a NICU parent firsthand.
Over the last 10 years, the medical environment began to shift dramatically. Large hospital entities began to become the norm; enveloping smaller hospitals into parts of a bigger package started to become standard. Insurance companies began to have more power. OBGYNs began to experience changes in their salaries where “RVUs” or essentially units of work started form bigger parts of total incomes, and so volume of patients became more critical. Groups began to merge as well as physician burnout rose; the days of the solo practitioner waned, and having the chance to know the doctor delivering your baby well became increasingly challenging. At the same time, awareness started to finally be drawn to the crisis that is the state maternal mental health in an often fractured mental health care system.
It seemed the perfect storm. Less time, more emotional toll for everyone, enhanced pre pregnancy and pregnancy testing, the pandemic, screening mandates for mood disorders in pregnancy with difficulty handling the answers to the questions that were asked—the system began to feel increasingly broken. Tracy started to feel that she just wasn’t doing enough anymore for the patients not only that she was seeing, but especially for the ones she was not—the friends of friends, the sisters, the cousins, the women themselves—who she would gladly triage a phone call from on her own who were lost or scared or didn't understand what was going on.
The pandemic and an unexpected surgery forced Tracy to leave her position and then she took a long, hard look at what the landscape looked like. She thought about another position at another hospital—but again, she felt the system needed to be directly addressed with knowledge from the inside out. Patients needed to be empowered to get the information they needed, to feel supported when they were scared, to stop using Google, to have help finding a therapist—and none of this was happening on a large scale. She had spoken with so many amazing providers over the years—in holistic medicine, integrative medicine, therapeutic communities—that she had resources to help patients build a tool box. And she spoke the language—she could be way more effective than Google using over 20 years of outcomes to guide my explanations and support.
And so the idea of Blue Moon Perinatal was born. She realized what women needed was an educator and an advocate- part doctor, part therapist, part friend, part coach—to help guide them through their struggles wherever they were—trying to conceive, struggling through IVF or miscarriage, pregnant with a preexisting medical or psychological issue, after a diagnosis of preterm labor, preeclampsia, a scary ultrasound diagnosis, or with postpartum depression or anxiety. Bringing awareness to the need for these services, she feels, can truly begin to address what’s missing.
Blue Moon Perinatal offers women the opportunity to bring their struggles to her. One session, two, through a chunk of time due to a diagnosis or to have an advocate along the entire journey through the end of the 4th trimester—She can be here for you. Tracy sees clients on a virtual platform that can be booked through her website. Sessions are typically an hour, but for clients who want to enlist her for more than a session or two, she can break up the time as needed so you understand she’s always there for you. Dr. Shevell will typically be able to accommodate a session within 24-48 hours. She truly believes that this new model eventually will prove to large conglomerations to be a patient satisfier and help OBGYN providers provide more streamlined care, as their patients will have knowledge and understand what they need to ask and why. She wants to bring her services to as many moms feeling lost, overwhelmed, scared or just disempowered in this system as possible. Because she offers a new service, the word needs to get out!! She wants to be found by women for women. And she’s here… to translate, educate, make plans and provide support, and help you figure out what you need to feel strong!! Please join us in spreading the word and learn more here.
