Women's Health Beyond Pregnancy — The Clinic I Want to Build

I earned my nursing degree with two babies under five. During my bachelor's program, I worked full-time and went to school full-time. During my master's program, I worked full-time the first year, then part-time on weekends the second year, picking up shifts whenever we needed them and studying after my kids went to sleep.

Today, I'm a neurology nurse practitioner, seeing 20 to 40 patients a day. And every week, women tell me the same story: their labs came back "normal," they were told their symptoms were "just aging," and nobody connected the dots.

Hormones in one office. Metabolism in another. Skin, energy, and pain somewhere else—if they're addressed at all. Women's health has been treated like it begins and ends with pregnancy. This week, Washington announced a new Women's Health Division at the NIH and the first White House task force on women's health, focused on the whole lifespan, not just pregnancy. Whatever your politics, that framing is long overdue.

So here's what I'm building toward: a women's wellness practice under one roof, offering hormone health, weight management, peptides, tasteful Botox and fillers, and in-house skincare professionals. One team that listens first. One place where a woman doesn't have to shrink her symptoms to fit a 15-minute slot.

I'm not there yet. I'm building toward it the way I've built everything—one hard-earned step at a time. But I know exactly what it looks like because I know exactly who it's for. She's the woman I was: tired, dismissed, and still showing up.

— Rebecca Montejano, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC