New mothers rarely admit to the full extent of their stress level or to the difficult emotions they live with. After all, women with new babies are supposed to feel blissful, loving and grateful for the miracle of new life in their care, right?
Many women are scared to be seen as a “bad” or “crazy” mom. Without a guideline to tell what’s normal and what’s not, they fear their babies will be taken away and never ask for the help they need.
The “baby blues” are experienced by most women during the first two weeks after giving birth. Hormone levels go through huge fluctuations before settling down and normalizing. During this time, new moms often have a hard time concentrating, and find themselves to be more forgetful than usual, anxious, tired, tearful, irritable and moody. The good news is that the “baby blues” tend to resolve without any external intervention.
But what if the symptoms are more severe and last longer? What if depression, hopelessness, feelings of vulnerability and inadequacy as a wife and mother, lack of interest in the baby or oneself, low level of daily functioning or severe mood swings are part of the mix? Surely this is crazy, right? Wrong. These symptoms are common in the 10% – 17% of women who experience postpartum depression.
What if the level of intensity is ramped up? What if a new mom has unreasonable fears, panic attacks, obsessions about cleanliness and germs, or visions of something bad happening to the baby and not being able to do anything about it? This may indicate postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder, a bit more severe than postpartum depression, but still in the postpartum mood disorder continuum, and still sane.
What about the women who get sensationalized on the news, the ones who think their babies are from the devil? We’ve all heard stories about new mothers who think they were told to hurt themselves or their babies. Can these women be sane?
This is the most severe end of the postpartum mood disorder spectrum, and where the break in sanity occurs. Fortunately, only 1 or 2 out of every thousand postpartum women will go through this disorder. Women with postpartum psychosis experience dangerious delusions, often in conjunction with visual and auditory hallucinations. They require immediate hospitalization in order to receive the necessary medical attention, and are not safe to care for their babies until the disorder is properly treated.
Here’s a helpful way to assess the situation: If a new mother has the presence of mind to be concerned about her thoughts and emotions, if she is worried about the well being of herself and her child, she is quite likely sane. All the symptoms you’ve just read about are absolutely treatable. Let’s remove the stigma from postpartum mood disorders and encourage new moms to be honest about their experiences. Help is available now.
