BlogHer - If You Are A Mother, Know A Mother or Have A Mother, You Need To Know About Postpartum Mood Disorders - Comments

Postpartum depression and blogging for the mothers act

JCK — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:38:15 -0500

Just wanted to let you know that I have blogged on this today. I admire all of your work in getting this out there. I don't have personal experience with it, but support any act that would help the women suffering from this.

My link is: http://motherscribe.blogspot.com/2007/10/bloghersact-for-mothers.html

JCK

Body image issues and eating disorders during and post-pregnancy

5resolutions — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:24:34 -0500

Thanks for this wonderful post. We have been paying close attention to recent studies and news headlines showing that many pregnant women and new mothers are struggling with serious body image issues and disordered eating (which is often linked to depression). This is another mental health issue that is shrouded in secrecy and stigma--particularly because the "lose the baby weight" and "get your body back" messages are so normalized in our culture. We thought you might be interested in our roundup of some highlghts:
http://5resolutions.blogspot.com/2007/10/new-moms-depressed-and-unhappy-...

Thanks,
Claire & Magali
5 Resolutions to Transform the Fashion and Beauty Industries

IS that what it was?

MissMelx4 — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 14:36:58 -0500

I spent most of my 4th and last pregnancy suffering from depression. I remember thinking life would be better if I were to lose the baby. When she was born 6wks premature and spent the first 10 days of her life in the NICU I became even more depressed and fill with guilt. She was 2 mos old and 9/11 came, I didn't live anywhere near where it happened yet my life was upside down. I began having panic attacks and anxiety, I couldn't even go out by myself. I would get all ready with the kids and I couldn't put my foot over the threshold. I began losing my hair, gaining more weight...I was a mess. The Dr. said it was PPD but I don't think it was that simple. I had a bad reaction to medication so I created my own way back to better mental health...I decided to work on my body and lose weight. It gave me focus and I began to really talk about what I went thru. I never had the luxury of getting therapy...not a lot of women can because either they don't have the insurance OR they are the working poor and can't afford the copay to go as much as what is needed.

Its so important for women who have suffered to talk about it, its nothing to be ashamed of. I was soo ashamed wishing that I had lost the baby but I know now that it wasn't because I was a bad mother it was because I was struggling to breathe and live and I felt like I was getting sucked down deeper.

Thank you for the article...it made me feel better to put a name to what I new was something more than PPD.

~Melissa
Mom to Matt-13(ADHD), Jesse-11(Autistic), Gabriel-7(ADHD) and Emma-6
www.thruthicknthin.com

rage and ppd

wannabe hippie — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:20:22 -0500

After the birth of both my girls I suffered from amazing bouts of rage. I thought something must be wrong with me but never considered PPD since I wasn't sad: I was pissed off all the time. Luckily for me I gave birth the second time with a homebirth midwife and she was on top of it. Not so with the midwives at the birth center where I had my first. It amazes me how little the medical community really understands about the pp hormonal circus some of us have suffered.

Thanks for speaking up!

--
Elaine
mama to two girls gone wild, Lily (4) and Anya (2)
www.WannabeHippie.com
and
Mama Says Om

Katherine, I've marked my calendar for Oct. 24

Lisa Stone — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:44:47 -0500

...and blogged your intiative in our newsletter here: http://www.blogher.com/mothers-act-join-us-oct-24-save-womens-lives. I'm really excited to join with you and see how we can make sure this important bill to help save women's lives doesn't die in committee!

Following your lead...

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

i suffered from antenatal depression

laurie — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:27:45 -0500

during my pregnancies. I had never heard of it before it happened to me and it was a truly frightening experience. Thanks for including it on your list (and for writing so openly and beautifully about your experience).

laurie
www.notjustaboutcancer.blogspot.com

If You Are A Mother, Know A Mother or Have A Mother, You Need To Know About Postpartum Mood Disorders

katstone — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:55:16 -0500

How much do you know about postpartum mood disorders? In part because of the tragedy of Andrea Yates drowning her children, Brooke Shields writing a book about her experience, and Tom Cruise mouthing off to Matt Lauer, postpartum depression has gotten a lot more notice in the media these days. But there's much more to it than what you hear on TV or read in the gossip mags. And much of what you do hear -- surprise! -- is sensationalized and uninformed.

Hello fellow BlogHers! My name is Katherine Stone and I'm excited to join you as a guest editor on the topic of postpartum mood disorders. Despite increasing awareness, many women know very little about them, and many new mothers who fall ill do not understand what is happening to them. Even if they do, they're afraid to speak up because of the stigma of mental illness. What if someone takes their children away? What if people judge them as unfit mothers and terrible human beings? Would you speak up about up about mental illness while at the same time the people around you are making fun of Britney Spears and astronaut Lisa Nowak (labeled by the gleeful media as the "Astronut")? It would certainly make you think twice. And if you did decide to reach out for help, who could you trust and where should you go?

First, some facts. Approximately 500,000 women suffer from a postpartum mood disorder every year in the United States alone. Comparatively, each year approximately 240,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer. Postpartum depression (PPD) is only one in a spectrum of perinatal mood disorders. These include antenatal depression (depression during pregnancy), PPD, postpartum OCD/anxiety, postpartum psychosis and postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder. Each manifests itself slightly differently and may require different types of treatment for recovery (to learn more, go to Postpartum Support International). If you haven't been told about all of them -- and most women aren't -- then you might not know that you have one, or what to do about it.

I suffered postpartum OCD in 2001 after the birth of my first child, and since I'd never heard of it and my symptoms were different than PPD I didn't think I had a postpartum illness. I thought I'd just gone plain crazy. I hoped whatever it was would just go away. It didn't. I wasted many weeks in despair rather than speak up. I didn't want anything to be wrong with me, I didn't want to be labeled with a mental illness, and I certainly didn't want to take the "dreaded" psychiatric medication. When I finally did decide to ask for help, I found out that lots of doctors know as much about treating these illnesses as I did: zilch. In this day and age it is hard to imagine, but many healthcare providers are not trained on how to properly identify and treat postpartum mood disorders. Thousands of women continue to suffer even while in the care of a physician, and they don't realize they have other options. I know because of the hundreds of women I've spoken to across the country via my blog Postpartum Progress, the most widely-read blog in the U.S. on postpartum mood disorders.

Women MUST speak up, reach out for help, and be able to recover as soon as possible in the hands of competent physicians. These are devastating illnesses, robbing many of us of the joy of new motherhood and causing severe emotional distress. And they have a much wider impact than you may think. They often put a strain on the relationships between new mothers and their partners, and they can affect bonding with the baby as well. Many recent studies show that children of mothers with postpartum mood disorders who go untreated for long periods can be negatively impacted over the long term with behavioral problems. A study published in 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, for instance, found that children of mothers who have received treatment via medication for major depression or anxiety are less likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, disruptive and depressive disorders themselves, compared to the children of women who remain untreated.

Perhaps you're finding that you didn't know as much about this stuff as you thought. Perhaps you've felt you didn't need to learn much about it. But I hope you'll be willing to learn. Every other week, I'll be talking with you about these illnesses and connecting you with some of the very beautiful and amazing women who've gone through them, many of whom are BlogHers too. If you never need to use this information for yourself I say amen!, but perhaps one day you'll be able to help someone close to you -- a sister, a friend, a co-worker -- because you made an effort to learn and understand.