Black mothers are 79% more likely than their white and Hispanic peers to experience postpartum readmission and 12-27% more likely to experiencesevere maternal morbidity during that readmission. Black mothers are three times more likely to die in childbirth than their white and Hispanic peers. She Matters is confident that our culturally competent certification program will improve these statistics and health outcomes for Black mothers.
Good Afternoon! She Matters is launching the ONLY digital health platform that offers a culturally competent certification tailored to the specific nuances and challenges faced by Black women patients. Given the maternal mortality crisis in the country we are focused on improving health outcomes for Black mothers. The objective of the training is to improve the relationship between provider and patient as well as improve postpartum maternal mortality outcomes by increasing the six-week postpartum return visit for Black mothers while also reducing the number of emergency readmissions for Black mothers during their postpartum period. We are looking for doulas, licensed clinical social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists who are interested in being part of the inaugural group of professionals to complete the She Matters Cultural Competence Certification. She Matters is making huge strides to make a change, we are establishing partnerships with hospitals and other organizations to bring QUALITY healthcare to Black moms everywhere. Learn more about our curriculum here. If you are interested, please complete the form below. Registration closes on Wednesday August 31, 2022. Training will begin Monday, November 7, 2022.Please note that payment is required to complete your registration, otherwise you’ll be placed on our waiting list. The payment link is included in the registration form.We are offering an introductory pricing of $1,000 versus our standard pricing of $1,800 per provider. REGISTER HERE.
Black patients are the most likely to have their wishes ignored even after declining a procedure. Compared with white patients, they are 89% more likely to have nonconsented procedures during perinatal care and 87% more likely to have them during vaginal births. – L.A. Times
Here’s some additional information to make your decision easier. Our training is eligible for CME (Continuing Medical Education) credits Becoming certified allows you to expand your client/patient population No other training requires you to spend time with Black women patients No other training requires you to prepare an implementation presentation on how to incorporate Cultural Competence into your practice When you refer a colleague you get six months of our directory listing for free For more about our curriculum, click here. Training begins November 7, 2022. Share this email with a friend or colleague. REGISTER HERE Remember payment is required to reserve your spot. We offer payment plans via Klarna and Affirm. Your introductory pricing is ONLY $1,000.00. Simply click the ‘Submit Payment’ link that’s included in the last question on the registration form or click the payment link supplied below. If you’ve already completed the Google form, no need to do it again, just submit your payment and you’ll be all set.
PAY HERE Thank you for your continued support. This work requires a movement to effect change; come along!
With Love, Jade Kearney CEO/Co-Founder, She Matters
I have a friend currently going through IVF after experiencing many miscarriages over the years with no explanation. She is my age, 40 and I thought her blog might be interesting and/or helpful to some of my followers so here is the link below. She also has a Go Fund Me set up I have shared below, that I donate to every once in a while, when I can afford to if anyone else wants to donate.
I had someone contact me to see if I would put information on my site about possible injuries caused by some parents giving their premature babies Enfamil or Similac formula. I was a little hesitant to honestly because I have no solid evidence to support these certain formulas caused the injury, nor do I have personal experience with it or know anyone who has. When I try to research, I only find it on law firm sites trying to make money off the lawsuits. However, if there is any possibility it is true, I thought that if I was a parent to a premature baby, I would probably be cautious and use another formula, if possible, to be safe, so I figured I would at least do a post on the subject. However, they don’t seem to be saying any formula is okay, only breast milk even if it is donated, yet they seem to be only suing the two largest formula companies. I also wanted to ask if anyone has had a personal experience they would like to share. I would love for you to comment, or if you prefer to stay confidential feel free to private message me and I can post something for you without using your name if you would like.
As a mom who did no breastfeed due to anxiety, I don’t want to do anything to discourage formula use as I had a great experience with Enfamil particularly, but my daughter was not premature (actually technically 3 weeks is early and she was 3 and half weeks early, but she was 8 and a half pounds and lungs fully developed and all so I honestly think that they had my due date wrong and it is a guess within about 4 weeks usually, but that is another subject for another time). Also, I have read it is often even more challenging for many premature babies to breastfeed due to health issues they often have so some rely on formula.
My advice is that if a doctor you trust advises you it is okay, they are probably more trustworthy than lawyers on the subject, but do you own research if this concerns you. Not that the parents claiming this are not trustworthy but if I lost a baby or they were injured badly and someone was providing a possible reason and solution to stop it from happening to others I would be so open to that, it might be easy to take advantage of me and convince me something or someone was at fault even if they were not. Even before you become a parent, it is so hard to make these decisions and all you can do is what you personally think is best for you and your baby with the information provided to you based on your own personal experience.
So yesterday, I finally rented the movie A Mouthful of Air on Amazon. It is a movie about a woman who gets postpartum depression. There will be major spoilers in this if you have not already seen it and there are so many triggers in this. If you are easily triggered by discussion of suicide or suicide attempts, please do not read ahead. I am trying to be more understanding of people’s triggers, but I personally like to be triggered so I can face things head on. Many don’t understand it, but it is often part of how I heal. I already had seen and heard spoilers before I watched this movie, but they were much needed to emotionally prepare me to watch it personally. I was told before watching that the character takes her own life, and when I saw that the movie was rated R, I expected some graphic scenes I did not want to watch, but that was not the case. I am honestly not sure why it is rated R. I guess you cannot even openly discuss suicide without it being rated that, but why? I think it should be PG-13 personally.
There is a warning at the beginning that if you have a history of depression and anxiety this may be hard to watch and there are tons of warnings elsewhere warning many they may not want to watch. I do have that history, and it was hard to watch, but I am still glad I did. I personally am far enough in the healing process I thought I could handle it and I could. Not only did I handle it, despite the sad ending, relating to the character still comforted me in ways, that feeling again of not being alone, but it also brought so many emotions back for me again. I cried during the movie, and I cried for a little bit after the movie had even gone off. I know I am making a truly hard sell on watching this, right? But hear me out. I often feel that those close to me probably think I dwell on the worst time in my life, but that is not the case. I will never stop talking about it because it would have helped me if others had talked about, if others had warned me, that is it. I am happy now, my life is great, and I am thankful that my story ended with my daughter reading a book about how I conquered it instead of the book the daughter in the movie got. I also hope that one day my story, or at least one more like it, will become a big movie to show people the happy ending you can have, but I do also think it is important to see the possible unhappy endings too.
I am going to try to possibly get rawer in this post than ever before, which those of you know me know that is pretty raw, and I will try to turn this into a podcast soon for those of you who prefer it to blogs. I did not have a happy ending because I was braver or stronger or a better person than the woman in this movie. I also did not have one because I had more support than her, she actually had more than I did because no one around me knew what was going on because I was even better at the character at hiding it for a very long time, but even once I no longer did, most did not seem to understand and seemed angry at me instead. Even though I had never been the person it was all about, it was always about everyone else, I think for once I wanted it to be about me, I needed love and help and attention and I was treated the same as people who act like that their entire life, even though I had never acted like that before. I thought it was my turn, but instead I eventually learned to set boundaries and take better care of myself.
I never tried to take my own life. I prayed to go to sleep and not wake up, that way it would not be my fault, and no one would be mad at me, but I could still have peace and the pain could go away. I had thoughts about if an 18-wheeler swerved into my lane and hit me I would not care when driving alone and the thought of driving into a wall or off a bridge sometimes crossed my mind for a moment, but I am not sure if I could have ever actually acted on it. People are often called cowards for committing suicide, but I honestly think being a coward saved me. Recently watching the Yellowstone Prequal 1883 with my husband, a character who lost her husband and 7 children to death ends her life with a gun to her head after her last remaining child dies. While burying the character, Sam Elliott’s character mentions how brave she had to be to do that, and Tim McGraw’s character disagrees at first, but Sam Elliott continues to basically say that it took guts. I knew what he meant. We don’t want to say that because it feels like we are encouraging suicide, but that is not what he meant nor is it what I mean. The thought of cutting myself or shooting myself or doing anything else painful to myself just never truly crossed my mind and never has. However, if there had been a pill in front of me that I could have taken and known it would have happened quick, I might have done it. I had heard of people taking a lot of pills but often that did not work and resulted in them waking up in the hospital upset they were still alive and now everyone was mad at them, and they were in physical pain as well.
I watched the first season of 13 Reasons Why before they cut the graphic details of the suicide scene. I honestly never knew how people slit their wrists until seeing it portrayed in that show. I honestly thought people must just cut the bottom of their wrist and it is a spot that just bleeds so much you would die quick, but no she went all the way up one arm and then the other and died a lot slower than I thought. My arms hurt watching and not only did I not want to do that, but I had even less of a desire than ever before to ever think about doing anything like that to myself. In the movie, those around the main character were not aware of her condition at first until she tried to take her own life once and failed in doing so. When she is later explaining to her doctor and her husband why she did what she did, I did relate to that part though. She said that any time she was alone with her child she would constantly worry something was going to happen to him. If she got distracted at all while giving him a bath he might drown, something might fall on him, he might fall and hit something, etc. She thought he would be better off with someone else and someone else was on the way over to visit and she did it then because she knew that person would take care of the baby.
In another part of the movie, the main character can hardly hold a conversation with other adults because she is constantly watching her son and worrying about him even when around tons of other people. I was the same way. I worried if I looked away for a moment someone might take her, or everyone else might not be paying attention and she might run off or hurt herself or tons of other horrible scenarios and it would be my fault because I am her mother, and it is my job to protect her. My worst fear was something happening to her and the burden of constantly trying to stop or prevent that was too much to bear making me at times want to run away or wish I’d never had a child or making me wish for death for relief. In one line of the movie, I believe it is when she leaves behind a children’s book that she wrote to explain to her daughter why she did what she did, but how much she loved her, she says, “She knew the beauty she was leaving behind, yet her pain was so bad, death was her only option.” She discusses how the little girl, and her mommy were best friends, but the mommy got sick and could not get better. The mom had been on medication, but when she found out she was pregnant again when her first child was still a year old and not even out of diapers, she was afraid to take her medication because she thought it might hurt the baby and prevent her from breastfeeding and bonding with her child.
I have been in a lot of online support groups and often women have more children before they have even healed from postpartum depression. They also often refuse to take medicine despite the advice of their doctors and/or family and friends for the same reasons. This happened in the movie. So, despite having support from others, despite knowing medicine helped, she chose not take medicine but even that decision was not rooted in selfishness, it was out of concern for her child. Her OBGYN told her once in the movie that he now asked women how they were doing emotionally not just physically when they came in for appointments. When I say the movie brought back emotions, anger was one of them in moments like that one, like why was this not already a thing? But mixed with that anger was hope, that what she went through, despite the sad ending, did change people, people around her did grow from the experience and learned, but that is possible even with a happy ending I can say, speaking from experience.
I lost a fellow author and friend to suicide a little while back. This friend had already tried once and actually used that experience to blog and write books like me and try to help others. However, like in the movie, he had been through such bad childhood trauma he still could not overcome it and the second time he attempted, he did not fail. I don’t know that we can always prevent it. We want to and we often blame the person and/or ourselves, but I think our number one focus personally should be trying to prevent these traumas from happening in the first place, so people do not have to overcome them, and I do feel that overall, that is happening in so many ways. I think everyone has some trauma and some can overcome it, and some cannot, but it is not as simple as being a better person or being stronger or having more support. Support often can and does help and I still strongly encourage it, but when I say I have some childhood trauma it comes from many things, but I also still feel like I had a pretty good childhood overall. Also, when I went through what I did, my mom and stepdad did not understand at first, but like every other time in my life, they tried their best to be there for me and my daughter. We all made mistakes along the way, but we learned from them, and we learned from each other.
My friend who died by suicide was molested as a child by a neighbor and I don’t think much if anything was ever done to the person who did it. Yes, we have all been through trauma, but I had not been through as much trauma as he had been. You just never know who has been through worse and what people’s limits are. A person can only take so much. Despite the sad ending for my friend, he still impacted many lives before he passed, including my own. He helped me in being brave enough to share my story and he helped me become more confident in being my true self. Even in those unhappy endings, you can still find some good.
‘She Matters is currently looking for doulas, licensed clinical social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists to DONATE up to five hours to support Black mamas during the first 40 days of their postpartum period. She Matters is making huge strides to make change, we are establishing partnerships with hospitals and other organizations to bring QUALITY postpartum care to Black moms everywhere. We are selecting 25 therapists et al. to be part of our pilot program that will soon be adopted by a hospital network. Our volunteers will receive FREE access to our cultural competence certification and access to our network of over 7,500 Black moms ready for therapy and coaching. If you are interested, please complete the form below. We look forward to hearing from you! Thank you for your support. Happy Holidays to you and your families! Best,Jade KearneyCEO/Co-Founder, She Matters”
She Matters is a digital health platform designed to support postpartum Black mothers experiencing anxiety and depression through community, culturally relevant resources and culturally competent therapists. We also train mental health professionals as well as healthcare organizations on how to become better resources to Black moms.
The final weeks of pregnancy are full of conflicting emotions and emotional turmoil. Maybe you’re calling your mom every day for advice, or trying to spend a lot of time with your partner while it’s still just the two of you. You’re excited, you’re exhausted, you can’t wait for this pregnancy to be over. But you’re nervous too, unsure what to expect. The one certainty is that your life is going to be irrevocably altered.
You’re Going To Be Different:
As big a change as your body has gone through, your personality has changed as well. While you were growing a little person, you were growing into a mother, yourself. Your brain has changed, along with your center of gravity. You’re going to question assumptions you held before you had children. Your opinions may change, sometimes radically, once you’re a mother. Before I had kids, I rarely locked my door. I was trusting, and thankfully, no one ever took advantage of that. Once I had a child, it was as if my sense of danger turned on. Someone flipped a switch, and the world looked different, more random and dangerous, full of terrible drivers and rude people, and toxins and slippery surfaces and other things that can hurt your baby.
You’re Going to Get Powers:
Maternal instinct is real. When my first child was born, I questioned whether I had any at all. I loved my baby, but I didn’t feel warm and fuzzy and bonded when I breastfed him. I felt icky and uncomfortable and a little bit resentful of the tiny stranger at my breast. I questioned whether I was up to the challenge of being his mom. But I vividly remember the day that I got my answer. I was feeding my son little bits of chopped up sausages in his high chair. He began choking. Instantly, I whipped him out of the high chair, turned him upside down, swept the bits from his mouth, and he was fine. It wasn’t in the books, it wasn’t any way recommended to handle a choking child. But I did it instinctively, without thought, and it worked.
As I sat there shaking afterward, the adrenaline coursing through my body, it hit me like a tidal wave: I knew what to do. When called upon, I had what it took to keep my tiny human alive. It was humbling, and awe-inspiring to me.
When their children are in danger, mothers have lifted cars and successfully fought off wild animals to protect them. You might think you’re the most nonviolent person in the world, but once you’re a mother, you’re going to find that you do have it in you to hurt someone, if that someone is a threat to your child. There is no one more dangerous than a mother protecting her offspring. You’re going to grow eyes in the back of your head, and develop a sixth sense for when your kid is in trouble.
You’re Going To Be Tired:
Prepare to lose sleep for the rest of your life. Okay, I’m kidding, it’s more like for the first six months, and then again, for some months around the terrible twos. And then again, later when they start driving, until they’re around twenty-five. My own mother assures me I’ll start losing sleep again once mine have their own kids. The point is, kids make us worry, and they take a great deal of energy.
Take these last few weeks of pregnancy to nap as much as possible, and once the baby comes, sleep whenever he does. The housework will still be there when you both wake up. If you can afford it, consider hiring a cleaning service. If you have pets, consider a dog walking service. Take help when it’s offered, and ask for it when it’s needed. Give yourself time to rest, and when the baby is awake, play with the baby. No one ever lay on their deathbed wishing they’d done more housework. The moments with your baby go by so fast, and you’ll never get them back again. Spend as much time as you can together, making memories.
You Want to Take Care of the Details
With so much overwhelm in the final weeks, a lot of details will slip through the cracks. When the time comes to head to the hospital, you will feel a mix of exhilaration and terror. A lot will be going through your head, and the last thing you want to worry about is whether you’re wearing shoes or if you have a cord to power your phone. That’s why it’s always recommended that you put together a hospital bag in the weeks leading up your due date. Pack whatever you anticipate needing. Hair ties, a robe, a labor and delivery gown, socks, slippers, lip balm, moisturizer, device chargers, headphones, clothes for the baby. Any creature comforts you can think of. Then be sure to pack up copies of your driver’s license and your insurance card. Gather it all up, and put it in a bag that you can leave by the front door, right next to your comfy shoes. It might not feel like much, but having control here can almost feel like an accomplishment.
It goes without saying that your life is about to change. You’re going to have baby-proofed cabinets, corners, and light sockets. You’re going to wind up reading food labels and second-guessing all your decisions. That’s normal. But you’re embarking on the greatest adventure of your entire life. You’re getting ready to meet the most important person you’ll ever know, and you’re going to love them more than you ever thought was possible.
For regular insight into parenting, motherhood and more, check out Just Buy Her a Dress blog and podcast today!
I wanted to share a part of my book so those who have not read it yet can understand why the book, and the chapter this part is from are called Just Buy Her A Dress and She’ll Be Fine…
“From the time a woman is pregnant, her life changes forever. When people hear that, they think of the fact that you have a tiny person living inside you. You bond with that person, which forever changes your life for the better. But suddenly, you are not just one person anymore. You can’t even walk around in public without some stranger thinking they have the right to touch you without asking because you have a baby inside you, and it fascinates them. They believe they should have a say in how you should give birth and the right to tell you how to raise this child that hasn’t been born yet, even though they don’t know you. This doesn’t stop once the baby is born. People think they can walk up in public and touch your baby without asking, and that you should listen to them about everything: how the child’s hair should be, what clothes they should wear, what they should eat, what you should be doing to prepare them for school. If they aren’t potty-trained fast enough or don’t seem smart enough for their age or tall enough or skinny enough or don’t act well enough in their opinion, you are going to hear about that, too. I now realize everyone is excited and trying to help, but when you have just become a new parent, all this input can overwhelm you and make you feel like a failure. When you learn you can’t please everyone, you can quit trying and do your best.
Another thing that can be overwhelming: People don’t only tell you what they think you should do when it comes to the baby. Because you are now the baby’s mother, they have opinions about what you should do with your life. This is especially true when you are pregnant. When I was pregnant, I didn’t get depressed. I was one of those happy pregnant women that other pregnant women hate. I felt very bonded with Aubrie. I talked to her all the time and couldn’t wait to meet her. However, I now see that some things started then that did affect me over time—especially the feeling that I could never be good enough as a mother, a woman, or a wife. I never did anything I thought could be dangerous for my child when I was pregnant, but that does not stop people from telling you how much rest you should be getting, what you should be eating, etc. You already feel these concerns have little to do with you and everything to do with the baby. After the baby is born, it starts to feel like the only reason anyone is concerned with you is so you can care for the baby. Being a mother is a very important role in life, but what about your other roles as wife, daughter, sister, friend, employee, or simply a human being?
Some people, especially women who have been through this before, understand and try to think of the woman. They give her attention when she is pregnant and when the baby is first born. I have heard someone make the statement before that they bought someone a new dress so she would not get postpartum depression. If only it were that simple. It is a nice gesture, but it would be even nicer if everyone was aware of this happening and tried to give mother and baby both the attention they need, knowing it benefited both mother and child. This would not require gifts or constant attention, just showing a legitimate concern for the person and making sure they feel loved too. It is easy to love that little baby so much that you forget to give the mother the attention and love she still needs. After having the baby, the mother typically gets less medical attention and fewer checkups than the baby. She is expected to continue her everyday duties and care for a newborn while recovering…. People always think the husband should step up, notice if something is wrong with the wife, and help her. Often, he does, but other times he is as affected as she is. Approximately half of men whose wives get postpartum depression will get depressed, too. Your husband is your partner, and what affects you affects him. If you experienced deaths in your family and a layoff, your partner did, too. They have a new baby, too. They are also working and not getting any sleep. They also miss the time you two used to have together, and their life is completely changed as well.”
The estimates vary but it is estimated that 70 to 80 percent of women experience baby blues the first two weeks after having a baby. These go away on their own but another 10 to 20 percent develop postpartum mood disorders such as postpartum depression, postpartum OCD or postpartum anxiety. Approximately 10 percent of men do as well. These men and women could be your spouse, your child, your parent, your sibling or other family member, your employee, your boss, your coworker or your friend. Sometimes men or women develop more than one and how long they last can often depend on how quickly they get help. If you do not get help and continue to have more children, they can last for years and symptoms can worsen. Less than one percent of women develop postpartum psychosis which is what you normally see cases of on the news due to women harming themselves and/or their children. Even most women with this disorder do not harm their children. Usually the symptoms are more obvious, so it is caught earlier and they normally get help earlier. What this tells us is that most women get depressed if even for a short time after having a child, but most of them do not end up harming their child. The fear of people thinking they will harm their child is one big reason a lot of people do not get help sooner. They are scared to tell anyone and they feel ashamed for their thoughts, even if they cannot help it and do not act on them.
It is actually more common for the mother to harm herself. Suicide is the leading cause of death in new moms. Others suffer for years, never acting on any possible suicidal thoughts, but suffering in silence while it often starts to affect their entire life including their physical health, their marriage, their job, and their relationship with their children and everyone else around them. Some even abandon their children, but again this is rare. However, thinking it is a pretty common symptom. My daughter was planned, but I still thought I regretted having her at times and wanted to run away to the beach. I never acted on this, but even thinking it hurt my husband and also hurt someone else close to me. It hurt my husband for obvious reasons, but it hurt the other person because they had been told all of their childhood that their mother never wanted them or their siblings, so they were actually angry at me at first for saying it or even thinking it. Their mom truly did not ever want to get married or have kids and was forced out of their home as a teenager into marriage. They eventually saw that I did not truly feel that way and it was something I could not control thinking and did not want to feel. If anything, it eventually made us both more sympathetic to their own mother, whose mental health got worse with every child, and whose choices had never seemed to be her own as she was born in a different time. Her mother also never left, and could have, and she had some good moments as a mom, so where we judged her before, we now both tried to be more sympathetic.
Also, that person has always tried to be the opposite of their mother, always telling her children they were her biggest blessing and always wanting to be a servant to everyone. She is the opposite of her in so many ways and a good mother. However, she has sometimes shown that same resentment as her mother without ever even realizing it, because she has always taken care of others ahead of herself which always results in burnout, because everyone is human. This resulted in her daughter trying to do the same when she became a mom and quickly realizing she needed to take care of herself first, and she needed to teach her daughter to do the same if she was going to break this generational curse. My family and I knew nothing about postpartum mood disorders until I went through one myself, and it almost destroyed my marriage and I did not want to live anymore. After getting help and starting to educate others, older women in my family started to tell me they think they suffered from it too, but they did not realize what it was and just suffered in silence for years. We all now see so many generational curses that this caused or continued. I just want anyone going through this to know, you are not alone and you can get better. A lot of people do not want to talk about it because it is depressing, which is why my book has some humor in it and so do some of my blogs and posts on my pages. Learning to laugh about everything again was another step in healing for me. If mood disorders are not treated, the effects and aftermath can not only last years, the harm it does to individuals and families can last for generations to come.
Someone asked me recently if they should give my book to a pregnant woman or would it scare her? She apparently already had some anxiety about becoming a new mom which is why they were thinking about it giving it to her in the first place. I told them I think it would be a good thing to give it to them. I wrote it with some humor to lighten the subject and it has helpful information for any new or soon to be mom outside of just the postpartum mood disorder part. Then today, in a support group I am in to provide support, a discussion began about how people, including a lot of doctors, do not discuss postpartum depression with pregnant women because they do not want to scare them. I think this is a huge mistake of course. I understand the concern. The last thing you want to do is stress a pregnant woman out, especially if she is already stressed. You are worried about her health and the health of the baby, but yet they do not mind putting you through the same regarding other health conditions that affect a lot less mothers. Every woman is screened for gestational diabetes despite the amount who get it being much lower, but every woman is not screened for postpartum mood disorders. My doctors scared me as a new first time mom a couple of times while I was pregnant. We had to have extra ultrasounds to keep an eye on a possible kidney condition that turned out to be nothing. We also did extra ones to keep an eye on her large size, but she ended up coming on her own three and a half weeks earlier than they thought healthy and weighing eight and a half pounds. I am still glad we took these precautions even if it scared me a little and turned out to be nothing.
The fact that I thought motherhood would be mainly butterflies and rainbows is part of why I got postpartum depression in the first place. No one did my any favors by withholding helpful true information. If anything, maybe it could have prevented it, or at least made it less severe, or I could have at least gotten help sooner. Most women will not get a postpartum mood disorder but a lot will. Most will get the baby blues for the first couple of weeks though, it is pretty normal, and most statistics I hear show up to 80 percent of new moms get these. If they do not know about those, they might feel guilty for not feeling joyful right away and that guilt could lead to them feeling blue for even longer. I think so much of what many new moms go through can be prevented and that is why I try to shout all that happened to me from the rooftops. Women and everyone around them should know all about postpartum mood disorders even before they get pregnant, it should be common knowledge. That is my hope for one day. Learning about them should not be scary, and if hearing about them does scare someone a lot, they probably already have some anxiety which is a risk factor for getting them, so they really need the information.
Pretending they do not exist does not make them go away. Talking about them actually takes away their power. So what happens when someone does not get help? They often suffer in silence for years, and yes it can last for years, especially if you have a child, do not get better, have another child and so on. Maybe it sometimes eventually goes away on it’s own, but I think it instead it just changes from a postpartum mood disorder to a regular mood disorder or back to a regular mood disorder if you had one before, like me without realizing. If you never got help though and never address it, I think it will affect you and your children in negative ways. It adds to generational trauma and this is a best case scenario. Worst case scenario is of course what you see on the news, a woman harming herself and/or her children. This is the reason a lot of women do not seek help. They worry someone will think they will hurt their children. That is rare, but still can happen without help, so help should be encouraged, not discouraged and a mom seeking help is a good mom. She should get the help she needs and if that requires a short time away from her kids, she should be reunited with them as quickly as possible once better.
It is more likely that a woman will harm herself and everything should be done to try and prevent this as well. Some other pretty bad things that can happen is postpartum mood disorders can destroy a marriage and break up a family. Sometimes maybe this was bound to happen anyways and that was just the breaking point, but it can even destroy the best of relationships. It can ruin other relationships as well with other family, friends and with your own children. So if having posters and pamphlets everywhere, even in the waiting room during your pre and post birth appointments, or keeping those regular appointments you have before birth, even after birth and being screened regularly and checked on even for the first couple of years can prevent all of that, why would we not do it? If this was a regular thing would it not make it less scary? If people knew more about it, if people knew what to do if they have some of the risk factors or symptoms is this again, not less scary?
There is a show on Tru TV, also available on Hulu and some other places of course, called Adam Ruins Everything. I love the show! It is a comedian who basically aims to debunk common misconceptions in society with facts and sources galore. So, you can guess when he did an episode called “Adam Ruins Having a Baby”, where he addressed things like having a baby over 35, formula vs break milk and postpartum depression, I was all ears, especially since it was nice to see these subjects dealt with using a little humor, the way I try to address them personally. I cannot find a free version of the episode online, but I have linked some free clips below, as well as the full episode for purchase if you do not already have free access elsewhere and want to watch. The episode had such an impact on me that I mentioned it in my book.
One thing mentioned that really resonated with me is that we know the average life expectancy was way lower not so long ago. This was mainly because of so many babies dying. Most people did not die at age 35, but the average age was drug down to 35 by so many babies and young people dying. Vaccines and other medical advances, including baby formula as mentioned in the show, eventually changed this, but it used to happen so often that parents often did not name the baby the first year in case they baby did not make it. Being a comedy show, at one point a woman is shown casually looking at her baby for the first time saying, “Nice to meet you number 4.” This part of the episode was in the postpartum depression section, because women often beat themselves up if they do not feel an instant bond with their child. The instant bond idea is a newer idea. While I do like that we are trying to bond with our children earlier, even in cases where we might or for sure will lose them to miscarriage, stillbirth or death in babyhood or childhood, as painful as it can be, this just proves that this idea that most mothers and their children always magically bond instantly has always been a myth.
Just Buy Her A Dress and She'll Be Fine 