Postpartum Depression Quotes

Again, women who experienced childhood trauma are 80 percent more likely to experience painful endometriosis.[4] They’re much more likely to develop premenstrual dysphoric disorder. More likely to develop fibroids.[5] It may affect fertility.[6] They’re at greater risk for postpartum depression[7] and depression in menopause.[8]

Our relationship maps are implicit, etched into the emotional brain and not reversible simply by understanding how they were created. You may realize that your fear of intimacy has something to do with your mother’s postpartum depression or with the fact that she herself was molested as a child, but that alone is unlikely to open you to happy, trusting engagement with others.

Postpartum depression makes you suddenly feel like a stranger to yourself, but knowing the clinical facts are the first step toward wellness.

Many psychologists whom I spoke with think the erosion of the extended family is a root cause for the high rates of postpartum depression in the U.S., as well as the rising epidemic of anxiety and depression among children and teenagers. Moms, dads, and kids are simply lonely.

I'll remind you of that someday , Maura says. "when you're married to a man who once looked into your eyes and promised to forsake all others. I'll remind of that after you've just had his baby and you have postpartum depression and feel as fat as cow and you are pumping milk into a plastic containers in the middle of the night while he's running around with some twenty-two-years old named Lissette. I'll remind you of that. Maura to Jess.

There is hope in knowing this about postpartum depression: You are not the only one to experience this confining, crazy making inner chaos within yourself.

Being a new mother is supposed to be the happiest time of your life, but postpartum depression and anxiety strip that away for a time, but trust that it will not last forever.

I admit I am an unnatural thing for not loving my child. But I hardly know my child. How can anyone love a thing that reveals nothing of itself. . . except for its unending screams?

It only takes one person to recognize the beautiful quality in another, buried beneath the burden of life, and soon it rises to the surface and becomes recognizable to the soul it belongs to.

Apparently, as long as I continue to feed my children, there’s nothing wrong with me. A functional mom is one who can change a diaper and remember bedtimes. I’m not falling apart, so I’m fine.

In 1970, when Dr. Edgar Berman said women’s hormones during menstruation and menopause could have a detrimental influence on women’s decision making, feminists were outraged. He was soon served up as the quintessential example of medical male chauvinism.12 But by the 1980s, some feminists were saying that PMS was the reason a woman who deliberately killed a man should go free. In England, the PMS defense freed Christine English after she confessed to killing her boyfriend by deliberately ramming him into a utility pole with her car; and, after killing a coworker, Sandie Smith was put on probation—with one condition: she must report monthly for injections of progesterone to control symptoms of PMS.13 By the 1990s, the PMS defense paved the way for other hormonal defenses. Sheryl Lynn Massip could place her 6-month-old son under a car, run over him repeatedly, and then, uncertain he was dead, do it again, then claim postpartum depression and be given outpatient medical help.14 No feminist protested. In the 1970s, then, feminists

Two years later, my daughter, Alice, was born. I was inconsolable for the first two weeks. “Postpartum depression,” my husband explained to friends. But it wasn’t new-mom blues. It was old-mom blues. Holding my newborn daughter, I got it. I got the love that guts you, the sense of responsibility that narrows the world to a pair of needy eyes. At thirty-nine, I understood my mother’s love for me for the first time.

Postpartum depression,” my husband explained to friends. But it wasn’t new-mom blues. It was old-mom blues. Holding my newborn daughter, I got it. I got the love that guts you, the sense of responsibility that narrows the world to a pair of needy eyes. At thirty-nine, I understood my mother’s love for me for the first time.

Fifteen years ago, before we met, Daniela was a comer to Chicago's art scene. She had a studio in Bucktown, showed her work in half-dozen galleries, and had just lined up her first solo exhibition in New York. Then came life. Me. Charlie. A bout of crippling postpartum depression. Derailment. Now she teaches private art lessons to middle-grade students.

كان عليّ أن أعيش هذا الاكتئاب لكي أجمع شظايا نفسي من جديد.

I want to kill you!!!’ said crazy mommy of newborn baby!

Love is the reason we grieve darling...and love is what will bring you back," Lindsay Gibson, Just Be

Paid parental leave is associated with fewer newborn and infant deaths, higher rates of breastfeeding, less postpartum depression, and a more active, hands-on role for new fathers. Mothers are much more likely to stay in the workforce and earn higher wages if they can take paid leave when they have a baby. And when men take leave, the redistribution of household labor and caretaking lasts after they return to work.

This is a cultural black hole. We do not take care of our women, especially our mothers. If a woman with a mood shift after birth actually admits to it, she finds herself under the catchall label postpartum depression. It is not always accurate. Some women weep. Some women rage. Some women go blank. Some women cannot shake anxiety. We are nuanced creatures. We don’t fit one category. Depression doesn’t always look like what we think depression looks like.

Everyone has had the experience of suddenly feeling intense physiological and psychological shifts internally at trading glances with another person; such shifts can be exquisitely pleasurable or unpleasant. How one person gazes at another can alter the other’s electrical brain patterns, as registered by EEGS, and may also cause physiological changes in the body. The newborn is highly susceptible to such influences, with a direct effect on the maturation of brain structures. The effects of maternal moods on the electrical circuitry of the infant’s brain were demonstrated by a study at the University of Washington, Seattle. Positive emotions are associated with increased electrical activity in the left hemisphere. It is known that depression in adults is associated with decreased electrical activity in the circuitry of the left hemisphere. With this in mind, the Seattle study compared the EEGS of two groups of infants: one group whose mothers had symptoms of postpartum depression, the other whose mothers did not. “During playful interactions with the mothers designed to elicit positive emotion,” the researchers reported, “infants of non-depressed mothers showed greater left than right frontal brain activation.” The infants of depressed mothers “failed to show differential hemispheric activation,” meaning that the left-side brain activity one would anticipate from positive, joyful infant-mother exchanges did not occur — despite the mothers’ best efforts. Significantly, these effects were noted only in the frontal areas of the brain, where the centers for the self-regulation of emotion are located. In addition to EEG changes, infants of depressed mothers exhibit decreased activity levels, gaze aversion, less positive emotion and greater irritability. Maternal depression is associated with diminished infant attention spans. Summarizing a number of British studies, Dale F. Hay, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, suggests “that the experience of the mother’s depression in the first months of life may disrupt naturally occurring social processes that entrain and regulate the infant’s developing capacities for attention.

Most of all, at the beginning of depressive episodes when everything is still internal, I have wished that my illness were not invisible; that depression manifested as a series of scars, or extra fingernails growing up my arms. I have envied, sickly, the people I have known who were anorexic or bulimic, for the way in which their illnesses have been legitimated and recognized, visible, while mine manifested only as a lack.

From this collection of evidence, Donath concludes that, while some women experience post-partum depression without this having any effect on their deep desire to be mothers or any compromising effect on their future happiness, among others, the birth of a child is a shock from which they cannot recover. Donath calls for wider recognition of this experience and that we allow women to be more open about what they are living through.

Paula Nicholson, a psychologist who has studied women's transition to motherhood, makes the case that it is taboo to mourn in the postpartum context, though motherhood can be many women's first experience of grief. Whereas death or divorce or other life changes usually involve a culturally and socially sanctioned period of mourning, Nicholson argues that mothers are not allowed to experience loss, and if they do, they are pathologized. 'So strong is the taboo,' she writes, 'that women themselves frequently fail to admit their sense of loss in a conscious way.' Motherhood, the ultimate "happy event", Nicholson declares, seems antithetical to loss. And yet Nicholson lists a whole host of losses inherent to having a child: loss of autonomy, identity, work, time, friends, relationship patterns, sexuality, health, comfort. Each woman may experience any one or several of these. Nicholson makes the somewhat radical claim that "some degree of postpartum depression should be considered the rule rather than the exception. It is also potentially a healthy, grieving reaction to loss.' Postpartum depression might be the only ritual American mothers have to express their grief.

Lucille: I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I went off my post-partum medication. Michael: You were still taking that? You had Buster 32 years ago. Lucille: And that’s how long I’ve been depressed about him.

Most new moms, depressed or not, tend to be sensitive to criticism. So, when you add in PPD, new moms are often even more sensitive, which means you need to be particularly careful that you say only positive things to her. Praise her as often as you can, and keep criticism to yourself, even if you feel it’s justified.

At the risk of sounding extreme, let me give you an example from my own case files that sets the tone for this chapter. Kate had never been on an antidepressant and never suffered from depression, but she felt overwhelmed and frazzled after the birth of her first baby. At her six-week postpartum follow-up appointment, her obstetrician prescribed Zoloft. Within one week of starting it, she had written a suicide note and was planning to jump off of her fifteenth-floor Manhattan balcony. She said to me, “It just made sense at the time. And I felt really detached about it, like it was nothing.” Kate’s experience is not an outlier. She is among millions of women who are reflexively prescribed medication for symptoms of distress. She’s also among those who have serious side effects that may seem like part of the depression—not a result of the drugs. Rather

Claude was a sensitive soul; I couldn't say what I thought to him. My thoughts were spiky with barbs of ugliness. I recognized the darkness in them but could say nothing about it to any of my family members.

Claude can't understand but his attempts to comfort me are endearing as they are frustrating. He is too kind to be reprimanded. He could have scolded me; many husbands in his place would have. For some reason, this gentle dove of a man will do no such thing. Instead, he pulls me into a protective embrace.

For a woman, having a baby can open the floodgates of repressed or hidden emotions. That is often when mothers have a breakdown, as in postpartum depression, or come to me with feelings of depression or anxiety that may be delayed postpartum depression responses. Repression is a great thing if it holds, but like the proverbial can of worms, when the defenses that a person has used her whole life break down, all of the sadness and loss that is connected to feeling your mother was not there enough when you were little starts leaking out of the lockbox of the unconscious

All cultures know it’s hard being a new mom. That’s why many societies reward them with one hundred days of special family care at home, so they can be fed, bathed, and babied, too. But in our society, many parents have lost that communal or family safety net. Even worse, many new parents don’t even think they want or need it. They think it’s normal for new parents to just gut it out on their own. But nothing could be further from the truth! The nuclear family—two parents and some kids—is actually a huge experiment, just a century old. And it’s one of the most unintelligent and riskiest experiments in human history. Renowned pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton tells of visiting a small Japanese fishing village where the ancient tradition was to wait on new mothers hand and foot for thirty days. “The new mothers were even fed—bite by bite—and they called their own mothers Mommy!” Brazelton recounted that in this community postpartum depression didn’t exist. Of course, few of us live in a village like that—and you can’t conjure up nurturing relatives out of thin air. But you can call on a neighbor, nanny, or doula to help you out. Getting help is neither an extravagance nor a sign of failure. It’s the bare minimum you need … and deserve! So please don’t buy into the phony idea that you are supposed to do it all on your own; since the dawn of time few parents ever did.

It's not about WHO is right, it's about WHAT is right.

Postpartum depression and anxiety that 11-20% of women experience is not at all the same as the more commonly experienced 'baby blues' 80% of women experience for a few weeks.

Postpartum depression makes a woman feel like she is in the grip of something dreaded and dark, and it's scary. . . but she's likely ashamed to admit it because she can't explain it!

She acted like she had post-partum depression before she got pregnant, so you can imagine what she was like after. I just couldn’t believe how disappointed she seemed to have this tiny miracle, Louisa, in our lives all of a sudden. That’s why I initiated the divorce.

I remembered the syndrome, a thing I would describe as a “Mission Accomplished Fatigue,” a singular condition that often follows the successful completion of a protracted construction project. Officially undiagnosed, its common manifestations include depression, lassitude, and fatalism. Comparable to postpartum depression in its singularity of cause, the best evocation of its effect is suggested in the Jerry

It’s so difficult that mothers in some foraging cultures (as well as mothers of other allomothering species) will abandon their newborns if they perceive that they will not receive sufficient allomothering support. The prevalence of postpartum depression has much less to do with postnatal hormones (a common myth) than with how legitimately depressing it is to care for a baby without enough help.

Inadequate social support is a top risk factor for postpartum depression; it’s a bigger risk factor than poverty or having medical complications.

depression isn’t weakness. It’s a matter of brain chemistry. Postpartum depression is no different. Pregnancy and childbirth are immensely taxing on a woman’s body and it’s not at all uncommon for a new mother to develop depression

With no proof whatsoever, just somehow knowing as 1,000 percent fact - I come from a long line of women who stayed in bed all day. Or who dreamed about it when society forced them to a luncheon or crop event. I can see in the pictures of the women on either side of my parentage that their eyes were searing fuck this into the camera, both in the fun-wink and the yikes-Reaper ways. I've always had a little postpartum sheen to my style, a little matted tangle and stained Henley for your nerve. There is a constant low voice encouraging me to untie the raft and drift out to sea. To float through space braless, the day's only assignment pretzels, porn, and regret.

To be with another in this way means that for the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another’s world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside yourself and this can only be done by a person who is secure enough in himself that he knows he will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and can comfortably return to his own world when he wishes. Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being. (Rogers,

I spoke to this woman in the supermaket," Charlie barges in again, "and I said I was tired and finding it hard, and she said, 'Ah, you wouldn't change it thoug, would you?' and I had to of course say no. But I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say, 'Actually, Brenda, I would.' I want to go back sometimes. And I do, Noelle. I don't want to be Charlie of then." Charlie bursts into sobs.

No," she says. "No, I can't. How can I? I've started seeing someone." My heart stops. "A counselor," she adds, and it starts beating again, relieved. Of course. Of course she wouldn't have a bloody affair. "Once a week. I go during work time so Theo doesn't know." So that's where she's neem going, and probably why she wasn't in the shop, and where she was driving to the other day. "But he'll want me to go to the GP and I'm- I'm worried they'll put me on meds and the meds will numb me. I already feel so numb, Noelle. And I'm scared. Of being that mother who needs pills to get through what's supposed to be one of the best things that ever happened to her. I'm a shit mother.

If Dulac is right about the link between these urocortin neurons and postpartum depression, she hopes that her work can help identify drugs that could act as blockers to treat such disorders.

I made plans to eat my placenta to prevent postpartum depression and not waste any of that valuable, free nutrition (if you haven’t picked up on it by now, I’m extremely cheap).

But depression or postpartum psychosis or any kind of mental illness is a rabbit hole. It’s a whole other world down there. The decisions you make in that place don’t hold up in the real world. No one understands that.

I feel like I need to reiterate something: This isn't the story of a good wife and a bad husband. Was I easy to live with? Probably not. I craved time to myself. I thought I knew best what the children needed. I was stubborn. I disliked -- dislike -- confrontation, so I could be -- can be -- avoidant or passive-aggressive. If you hurt my feelings, I might have carried that pain quietly, but the quiet was loud. I had postpartum depression twice, and I miscarried twice, and I suffered, and that suffering was loud.

The differences between general depression and postpartum depression are, however, highlighted as such: 1.​Postpartum depression can be very abrupt. 2.​There is a newborn child who needs care, and so a woman and the people around her are concerned about caring for the child. 3.​Becoming a mother carries such significant meaning that when the experience does not go exactly the way that one expects it to go, it can be absolutely devastating.

But Harper was born so close to Ruby, and when she came into the world, I suffered terrible postpartum depression, making even the most basic tasks beyond keeping myself and my girls alive feel impossible. I’m still shocked we even had a tree or gifts that first year, since we all know Todd was never going to do anything.

But two more pregnancies, a miscarriage, and a severe postpartum depression treated with antidepressants left me at my heaviest ever. And each time I gained another pound, the voice in my head got a little nastier: You’re worthless and lazy and stupid. You’re out of control. You’re the ugliest woman in the room, the neighborhood, the world.

I saw all my new mom friends go through a sadness other than postpartum depression: it is grieving the loss of your old self, of who you used to be.

Things in life can hurt us; circumstances we wouldn’t wish on anyone. They cause us to say with the Apostle Paul, “our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within” (2 Cor. 7:5). Within a community of shrieking circumstances survivors howl with rationality. A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more. (Matt. 2:18) Even the beauty of wonder like childbirth can originate words that can’t get out of bed, words such as “post-partum.” “Who is there of our race that is quite free from sorrows?” Charles asks us. “Search the whole earth through, and everywhere the thorn and thistle will be found.”2

Communities based on merit and passion are rare, and people who have been in them never forget them. And then there is the sheer exhilaration of performing greatly. Talent wants to exercise itself, needs to. People pay a price for their membership in Great Groups. Postpartum depression is often fierce, and the intensity of collaboration is a potent drug that may make everything else, including everything after, seem drab and ordinary. But no one who has participated in one of these adventures in creativity and community seems to have any real regrets. How much better to be with other worthy people, doing worthy things, than to labor alone (

But right now, I felt depressed. This must be what that postpartum shit was all about. I’d given birth to a masterpiece, and now I was bored.

I’m collapsed in a pile of shoes on my closet floor. Around and around me hangs my clothing, which is all I can see as I lean against the back wall of the closet. It can see straight up one of my skirts on a hanger over my head. It looks like a long, dark tunnel with the exit sealed off. It looks like my life right now.

I feel like I’m playing hide-and-seek from my own life, except that I just want to hide and never be found.

I was trained in my entertainment upbringing to smile constantly when I’m around other people and now it’s as natural to me as breathing.

My smile is like a two-way mirror. I can see out, but no one can see in. No one sees what is going on behind the mirror.

I became an expert at pushing my problems or needs out of my mind in order to deal with the day at hand and accomplish what needed to be done.

Kate had never been on an antidepressant and never suffered from depression, but she felt overwhelmed and frazzled after the birth of her first baby. At her six-week postpartum follow-up appointment, her obstetrician prescribed Zoloft. Within one week of starting it, she had written a suicide note and was planning to jump off of her fifteenth-floor Manhattan balcony. She said to me, “It just made sense at the time. And I felt really detached about it, like it was nothing.” Kate’s experience is not an outlier.

Though it is becoming an increasingly popular area of advocacy, the United States continues to top the list of nations that are disconnected from the basic concept of relieving a mother of overwork and giving her dancing hormones the time and space to regulate through rest and proper nutrition. It's a grin-and-bear-it moment (complete with dark circles and wan complexion). And, these days, with more and more women literally and energetically holding the home together as the primary breadwinner, and very often as the emotional center of the home as well, the postpartum period becomes a pressure cooker. The unconscious message beamed from all angles is, "Get back at it. You can't afford to rest." But it seems we can't afford not to. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that when deliberate physical care and support surround a new mother after birth, as well as rituals that acknowledge the magnitude of the event of birth, postpartum anxiety and its more serious expression, postpartum depression, are much less likely to get a foothold. Consider that the key causes of these disturbingly common, yet still highly underreported, syndromes include isolation, extreme fatigue, overwork, shame or trauma about birth and one's body, difficulties and worries about breastfeeding, and nutritional depletion, all of which suggests that when we let go of the old ways, we inadvertently helped create a perfect storm of factors for postpartum depression.

Mindfulness-based prenatal classes have also proven to be beneficial, leading to lower rates of opioid analgesia use during labor and new parents had fewer symptoms of postpartum depression.18

I have mild postpartum depression like lots of other new mothers. It doesn’t mean I harmed my baby. I want nothing more than to get her back.