A new study finds that postpartum anxiety is almost three times as common as postpartum depression. Because the focus is often on depressive symptoms, women with postpartum anxiety may not be getting the right assessment and ultimately treatment that they need.
Read the full article here.
The Her Stories Project is coming out with a new anthology, Mothering Through The Darkness: Women Open Up About the Postpartum Experience.
Washington Independent gives a review:
. . . 35 writers tell their stories of the joy and devastation after birth. They use their voices even when they are dismissed. The anthology is the coming-of-age motherhood tale not often told. These writers speak about the unspoken: depression, anxiety, regret, and rage.
The U.S. Preventive Task Forces changed guidelines from 'promoting' to 'supporting' breastfeeding is an effort to avoid women feeling pressure to breastfeed against their will. Women can end up feeling ashamed when they choose to stop breastfeeding or use formula.
"The reason the Task Force made this slight word change is to recognize the importance of a mother doing what she feels is best for her and her baby and not wanting to, for example, make mothers feel guilty or bad if they decide not to breastfeed," he said. "It's really a personal choice that needs to be made based on her own personal situation."
Click here for full article from MEDPAGE TODAY.
Researchers are using a new iphone app, PPD ACT, to recruit and collect DNA samples from women who have experienced postpartum depression.
See the full NYT article here to learn more about it.
HUFFPOST PARENTS --
A somewhat separate, but equally serious type of maternal depression has yet to garner the same type of attention. Depression during pregnancy, often called prenatal or antenatal depression, affects roughly 15 to 25 percent of expectant mothers, upending the neat cultural narrative that pregnancy is a time of excitement and joy for all women. So many mothers-to-be are left to navigate serious depressive symptoms almost entirely on their own.
The New York Times --
Women should be screened for depression during pregnancy and after giving birth, an influential government-appointed health panel said Tuesday, the first time it has recommended screening for maternal mental illness.
The recommendation, expected to galvanize many more health providers to provide screening, comes in the wake of new evidence that maternal mental illness is more common than previously thought; that many cases of what has been called postpartum depression actually start during pregnancy; and that left untreated, these mood disorders can be detrimental to the well-being of children.
Erica Andrews describes what postpartum feels like through a selfie. "Baby in sling. Skin to skin. Adult diapers. And a rosy glow."
She described the emotional changes felt in the moment:
"My body feels like it ran a marathon and my heart is wide open from yesterday's travels. Birth opens us like an earthquake opens the earth and I am still in the intimate, fragile throes of that opening. I feel raw. Emotional. Different. 23 hours ago I held life within and 24 hours ago I surged and transformed allowing life to flow through me, into my waiting hands. The emptiness in my womb brings a heavy feeling crashing into reality but then this new little life whimpers, searching for the breast with soft rooting, and I feel whole again."
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