Perinatal Mental Health

Up to 80% of postpartum moms experience the Baby Blues, which sets in around 3 days following delivery and lasts up to 2 weeks. Although moms might experience feelings of sadness and be tearful often, generally the overall feeling experienced is happiness.

About 1 in 7 women will experience Postpartum Depression (up to 1 in 5 experience PMAD’s or Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders). PPD can occur beyond 2 weeks where we expect you might experience the “Baby Blues”. Symptoms can begin any time during that first year (and even up to 3 years) following delivery. Continuing to struggle with feelings of depression, hopelessness, and concerns about your worth as a mom to your baby might indicate Postpartum Depression. Sometimes ongoing difficulties with attachment to your baby can be an indicator of PPD, but often people who are experiencing Postpartum Depression have strong, healthy attachments to their baby. Postpartum Depression is highly treatable through therapy and medication (where indicated), and it’s important for moms to know there is nothing they did to cause it, and it will end (though I know personally that black hole can feel like it will last forever).

Absolutely not! So many moms don’t feel close or attached to their baby after birth. I think we sometimes forget that despite growing a human for 10 months, we don’t really know this little stranger who just upended our lives. All this on top of the monumental physical and emotional stress placed on our body from labor and delivery. And that assumes all went well in the delivery room or OR. There’s a lot going on for moms! Attachment can come over time as you get to know your baby and spend time with them. Lots of skin to skin contact can help (even if it’s hard and you don’t want to at first). If you’re worried about a lack of attachment to your baby and don’t feel like you’re making progress in this area, a therapist can help you work through these complicated feelings. But, you’re still a good mom, and the connection will come.

Nope. Parenting is hard and often exhausting even with “easier” kids. It’s normal to want time for ourselves where we don’t have to be a mom and snack wench 24-7. If you’re feeling this way more often than not though, it might be helpful to talk things through with a therapist to get some support and address anything else, like possible depression or anxiety, that might be underlying those feelings.

This is one of the things I feel like most moms are surprised by. How much motherhood changes us down to the molecular level. We often feel lost in the sea of diaper changes, sleeplessness, and loss of freedom. It sometimes takes time to find our way back to the things we enjoyed before or even recognize ourselves in the mirror. We are moms but we are also people, and the things we were before, we still are today. Try to find one small thing that you enjoyed before or liked about yourself prior to baby and use that to put one foot in front of the other. (Hint: Sometimes we can’t even remember what life was like before baby, so take a look at those before pregnancy pictures for some inspiration).

First of all, social media lies. There wouldn’t be a need for so many perinatal therapists, or therapists in general, if everyone actually had it together. Parenting is tough, and the United States in particular operates from a place of isolation when in comes to motherhood. Most other countries and cultures believe in the concept of “it takes a village to raise a child” and often multiple generations of women are available to assist mom with the difficulties that come along with pregnancy, birth, and raising children. The thing is, we were never meant to do this thing alone. So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed or like you’re failing at parenting, you’re not. You, and most other parents, could really use some extra support.

We often hear alot about Postpartum Depression following the birth of a child, but there is another mental health struggle that is even more prevalant. Postpartum Anxiety. This can often be missed and conflated with the normal range of anxious feelings mothers experience following the birth of their child. It’s a whirlwind of new information, sleeplessness, and a steep learning curve when you bring a baby home. As with any new high stakes endeavor, most people experience some degree of anxiety. After all, it’s something that keeps both us and our baby out of unsafe situations. The problem comes when that anxiety gets turned up so high we’re not able to function or everything feels dangerous. Believe me, I slept on the floor of my son’s nursery at least once or twice during his first cold. Perhaps that was hypervigilent of me, but after that, I was able to right the ship and learn ways to better manage my anxiety about him. It can be hard to know when anxiety is creeping out of what we might expect (ex. Worry about leaving your baby with a new care provider the first week, giving solids the first time, making sure your house is baby proofed, etc.). But, if it’s all you can think about, if it’s keeping you awake at night, if you’re researching for hours on end (social media I’m looking at you), it might help to talk to a therapist to help you sort through what might be overactive anxiety vs. what we expect to see and learn ways to better manage those symptoms so you can better enjoy this time with your little one.

A lot of moms (myself included) experience intrusive thoughts that are unsettling or even scary following the birth of their child. Most of the time these thoughts seem to come from nowhere and shock us because we know we’d never purposely hurt our baby. However, if they are persistent and difficult to manage, meeting with a therapist and/or psychiatrist can be very helpful to learn tools to reduce/eliminate them. Remember, thoughts are NOT actions. In instances where these scary thoughts seem reasonable to mom or there might be reason to believe a mom might act on them, calling 911 or getting mom to the emergency room to get checked out is essential.