"But until we do, suicide will continue to be a leading cause of postpartum depression." I think should be the leading cause of postpartum death, not depression?
Oh my. I've never seen this articulated so clearly! Thank you for laying out what is really the most logical explanation, cutting through the crap we've been told for so long. My PPD got worse with each childbirth - I'll never forget laying next to my sleeping partner after giving up finishing my PhD and moving across the country for his job, with a toddler and newborn. Laying there bawling at who knows what hour of the morning, after getting up for at least the third time already, crying because I knew I'd be hearing a crying baby within an hour, crying harder because I was crying instead of sleeping. I told him the next day that I'd keep doing what I had to do to take care of the children, but there was absolutely going to be a cost for it someday. After #3, I remember seeing him walk out the door all shiny and dressed for work, while I sat crumpled on the floor staring at three children and weeping. He punished me for a year for putting off having #4 because I needed to recover. When we went before the judge years later for temporary custody orders for the divorce, he tried to get full custody because of my "mental breakdown at the end of graduate school." Thankfully the judge saw right through that nonsense.
I had to leave my PPD/PPA support group on Facebook because literally every day, some poor new mom would be in there asking how to get better while saying her husband/bf calls her fat, refuses to do any feedings, refuses to get up with the baby, and participates in his leisurely hobbies when he wants to. A few women will tell her she's depressed because her partner sucks and then she jumps to his defense saying what an amazing dad he is and how he's financially providing for their family and she's so damn blessed to be able to stay home 24/7 with a colicky baby, care for other kids, wash mountains of laundry, cook, and clean. Unfortunately, some women are so brainwashed by patriarchy that they feel their value is based on being with a man, no matter how shitty, even if he's killing her mental health.
My ex had everyone, including my family and MYSELF at one point believing I had PPD. My best friend who was an OB/GYN nurse had to snap me back to reality and assured me that I did not. It was his excuse for my reaction to his bs and the neglect I was suffering. It was his incompetence and continued abuse. When you suddenly have a literal child to care for you don’t have time or patience for the man baby you once did. I was starting to see the light, my attention was on baby and he was no longer the main character in his false reality. My boundaries, lack of patience and plain apathy towards his usual manipulation and means for attention were such a blow to his ego that he tried flipping the script on me. When playing the victim didn’t work he began shaming me for the state of the house, my hygiene, and finally my parenting. He knew I was raised in a family that saw those things as moral defects as so many of us are. Another attempt to make me feel inferior and unworthy of his love.
After a DV incident which led to his arrest he frantically tried to convince the police that I had PPD and I was being hysterical by making a false report. Regardless of the evidence, several eye witnesses and the 911 operator hearing his maniacal ramblings, the police still questioned me thoroughly, inquired about medication i was prescribed for something completely different and for a moment he almost had them convinced as well!! After his arrest and removal from our lives my symptoms of “PPD” magically went away as well!! Unfortunately they’re replaced with trauma, emotional deregulation and being stuck in survival mode. All of which had nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with his years of abuse. I will also never forget the ease in which the term “postpartum depression” spoken from a man’s mouth to six male police officers nearly caused me to be sent to a psychiatric hospital for crisis intervention. I’ll never forget how he used it to turn people who had known me my entire life, my closest family members against me because it seemed like the more logical explanation at the time. I still don’t trust them either.
How many other women like myself have bought into that when it wasn’t true? How many lives have been unnecessarily destroyed?
When a mother clearly states she is exhausted, feeling isolated and doesn’t know how she is going to cope doing it all alone than those are the reasons right there. I would never dismiss PPD yet I don’t know why it is always the first suggestion, usually from other woman! You need sleep, support and another human to pick up the slack. Namely the other human who is snoring next to you while you’re doing all the nighttime feedings and managing a baby with reflux!
It just astonishes me that in the 1800’s and early 1900’s “Insanity by overexertion” was an actual diagnosis given to many women admitted to insane asylums. “Insanity by childbirth” was the diagnosis given for what we now probably know as PPD, PPA and PPP. While we wouldn’t admit someone for overexertion today, we rarely fail to see it as a probable diagnosis at all! She is a woman, she has recently given birth and she is acting in ways which are unusual to her partner and herself so it most likely is PPD? How is it we take one step forward and two steps back when it comes to anything having to do with the equality of women and women’s health? Oh yes… I forgot: men are still making the majority of final decisions on our behalf.
I had a feeling that there was something off about the way people approach PPD. I think alot of it may have to do with being stuck in a bad or unhealthy relationship. Or, may be a woman who really doesn't love her husband? And then, here you have a baby. And you've lost your freedom, and you've lost yourself. Perhaps you never had a self to begin with, and now you're stuck in a bad marriage.
I think that if women are in a truly healthy, happy relationship, and are in a good place to be having kids, then PPD probably wouldn't be so bad.
There is some speculation that some of it is chemical. There are cases of women who were healthy and happy prior to the birth of their babies, and then, something in them just changed. They have supportive husbands. There was that tragic, recent story of the woman outside of Boston, Lindsay Clancy, who was a happy, healthy wife and mom and nurse. For some reason, she ended up on psych meds, and all kinds of the wrong ones. She went into Post Partum Psychosis and killed her children.
It's sad, that anytime someone mentions PPD, people automatically just throw pills at the problem. And alot of people think that poorly managed meds were what caused this.
There is also speculation that the quick drop in progesterone levels causes the depression as well. Progesterone is the hormone that sustains pregnancy, and it decreases after the delivery. There is a new treatment for this, giving a few big doses of progesterone to a post gravida will help ease that and help her adjust.
Just some thoughts.
And also, some women, when they have a baby, their life completely changes. Even with a supportive spouse. Maybe they've left a FT job, and are choosing to stay home FT. And now, all of the structure and social connections that they had at their jobs, is just gone. And all you have is you and your baby. It's like you develop separation anxiety, from your job, from your own life. Their is no structure, you just have to get attuned to the baby. And I think that could cause depression.
"But until we do, suicide will continue to be a leading cause of postpartum depression." I think should be the leading cause of postpartum death, not depression?
Oh my. I've never seen this articulated so clearly! Thank you for laying out what is really the most logical explanation, cutting through the crap we've been told for so long. My PPD got worse with each childbirth - I'll never forget laying next to my sleeping partner after giving up finishing my PhD and moving across the country for his job, with a toddler and newborn. Laying there bawling at who knows what hour of the morning, after getting up for at least the third time already, crying because I knew I'd be hearing a crying baby within an hour, crying harder because I was crying instead of sleeping. I told him the next day that I'd keep doing what I had to do to take care of the children, but there was absolutely going to be a cost for it someday. After #3, I remember seeing him walk out the door all shiny and dressed for work, while I sat crumpled on the floor staring at three children and weeping. He punished me for a year for putting off having #4 because I needed to recover. When we went before the judge years later for temporary custody orders for the divorce, he tried to get full custody because of my "mental breakdown at the end of graduate school." Thankfully the judge saw right through that nonsense.
I suffered terrible PND with my one and only child.
This was 17 years ago and your article as just given me the clarity I longed for 17 years ago X
I had to leave my PPD/PPA support group on Facebook because literally every day, some poor new mom would be in there asking how to get better while saying her husband/bf calls her fat, refuses to do any feedings, refuses to get up with the baby, and participates in his leisurely hobbies when he wants to. A few women will tell her she's depressed because her partner sucks and then she jumps to his defense saying what an amazing dad he is and how he's financially providing for their family and she's so damn blessed to be able to stay home 24/7 with a colicky baby, care for other kids, wash mountains of laundry, cook, and clean. Unfortunately, some women are so brainwashed by patriarchy that they feel their value is based on being with a man, no matter how shitty, even if he's killing her mental health.
My ex had everyone, including my family and MYSELF at one point believing I had PPD. My best friend who was an OB/GYN nurse had to snap me back to reality and assured me that I did not. It was his excuse for my reaction to his bs and the neglect I was suffering. It was his incompetence and continued abuse. When you suddenly have a literal child to care for you don’t have time or patience for the man baby you once did. I was starting to see the light, my attention was on baby and he was no longer the main character in his false reality. My boundaries, lack of patience and plain apathy towards his usual manipulation and means for attention were such a blow to his ego that he tried flipping the script on me. When playing the victim didn’t work he began shaming me for the state of the house, my hygiene, and finally my parenting. He knew I was raised in a family that saw those things as moral defects as so many of us are. Another attempt to make me feel inferior and unworthy of his love.
After a DV incident which led to his arrest he frantically tried to convince the police that I had PPD and I was being hysterical by making a false report. Regardless of the evidence, several eye witnesses and the 911 operator hearing his maniacal ramblings, the police still questioned me thoroughly, inquired about medication i was prescribed for something completely different and for a moment he almost had them convinced as well!! After his arrest and removal from our lives my symptoms of “PPD” magically went away as well!! Unfortunately they’re replaced with trauma, emotional deregulation and being stuck in survival mode. All of which had nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with his years of abuse. I will also never forget the ease in which the term “postpartum depression” spoken from a man’s mouth to six male police officers nearly caused me to be sent to a psychiatric hospital for crisis intervention. I’ll never forget how he used it to turn people who had known me my entire life, my closest family members against me because it seemed like the more logical explanation at the time. I still don’t trust them either.
How many other women like myself have bought into that when it wasn’t true? How many lives have been unnecessarily destroyed?
When a mother clearly states she is exhausted, feeling isolated and doesn’t know how she is going to cope doing it all alone than those are the reasons right there. I would never dismiss PPD yet I don’t know why it is always the first suggestion, usually from other woman! You need sleep, support and another human to pick up the slack. Namely the other human who is snoring next to you while you’re doing all the nighttime feedings and managing a baby with reflux!
It just astonishes me that in the 1800’s and early 1900’s “Insanity by overexertion” was an actual diagnosis given to many women admitted to insane asylums. “Insanity by childbirth” was the diagnosis given for what we now probably know as PPD, PPA and PPP. While we wouldn’t admit someone for overexertion today, we rarely fail to see it as a probable diagnosis at all! She is a woman, she has recently given birth and she is acting in ways which are unusual to her partner and herself so it most likely is PPD? How is it we take one step forward and two steps back when it comes to anything having to do with the equality of women and women’s health? Oh yes… I forgot: men are still making the majority of final decisions on our behalf.
I had a feeling that there was something off about the way people approach PPD. I think alot of it may have to do with being stuck in a bad or unhealthy relationship. Or, may be a woman who really doesn't love her husband? And then, here you have a baby. And you've lost your freedom, and you've lost yourself. Perhaps you never had a self to begin with, and now you're stuck in a bad marriage.
I think that if women are in a truly healthy, happy relationship, and are in a good place to be having kids, then PPD probably wouldn't be so bad.
There is some speculation that some of it is chemical. There are cases of women who were healthy and happy prior to the birth of their babies, and then, something in them just changed. They have supportive husbands. There was that tragic, recent story of the woman outside of Boston, Lindsay Clancy, who was a happy, healthy wife and mom and nurse. For some reason, she ended up on psych meds, and all kinds of the wrong ones. She went into Post Partum Psychosis and killed her children.
It's sad, that anytime someone mentions PPD, people automatically just throw pills at the problem. And alot of people think that poorly managed meds were what caused this.
There is also speculation that the quick drop in progesterone levels causes the depression as well. Progesterone is the hormone that sustains pregnancy, and it decreases after the delivery. There is a new treatment for this, giving a few big doses of progesterone to a post gravida will help ease that and help her adjust.
Just some thoughts.
And also, some women, when they have a baby, their life completely changes. Even with a supportive spouse. Maybe they've left a FT job, and are choosing to stay home FT. And now, all of the structure and social connections that they had at their jobs, is just gone. And all you have is you and your baby. It's like you develop separation anxiety, from your job, from your own life. Their is no structure, you just have to get attuned to the baby. And I think that could cause depression.