Keisha Tower always considered herself an independent, outgoing woman. She didn't expect that to change upon giving birth to her daughter, Raelynn, in 2014.
But within weeks she felt withdrawn, scared and nervous. She stayed inside, overwhelmed by emotion and exhausted by caring for a colicky baby who screamed for hours no matter how much Tower tried to soothe her.
"After I had Raelynn, I can honestly say it was ne of the lowest points in my life," she tells. This reality, which so many moms live with in silence, didn't match Tower's postpartum expectations: "You’re not supposed to feel like that."
She received treatment for postpartum depression, the same mental health condition that actresses Hayden Panettiere and Drew Barrymore both recently said they experienced as new mothers. Earlier this month, Panettiere voluntarily checked into a center for comprehensive treatment.
The news brought postpartum depression into the headlines, but barely hinted at the complicated, surprising emotions new mothers feel, and how serious mental illness isn't just limited to depression. While they may joke about missing showers and living in sweatpants, many moms aren't sure how to talk about imperfect feelings — or whether to say anything at all.
Some women, like Keisha Tower, are turning to the Internet with their own stories and embracing this messier version of motherhood. Through their candor, they are fighting the stigma of maternal mental illness and proving that no single story looks like the next.Dr. Carly Snyder, who specializes in reproductive psychiatry in New York City, says motherhood isn't a purely joyous transformation for a lot of new moms; one in seven women experience significant depression, anxiety, repetitive thoughts, panic, or post traumatic stress during pregnancy or following the birth of a child.
Eighty percent of women experience mood swings and weepiness in the days following birth, but those "baby blues" recede on their own within two weeks. A serious mood disorder, however, can emerge anytime during pregnancy and the first 12 postpartum months. It typically does not improve without treatment.
Snyder's patients often worry their dark thoughts make them bad mothers, and occasionally fear they've gone mad. "I reinforce the fact that, as a society,we revere motherhood, but that doesn’t mean a mother has to be perfect," she says.
Many women don't feel vulnerable to perinatal mood disorders, but the risk factors are near universal. They include financial and marital stress; a major recent life event like job loss; complications in pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding; a family history of mental illness; and inadequate support in caring for a baby.
Yet, many expectant mothers — even those who never develop mental illness — are unprepared for feelings like anxiety, hyper-vigilance and doubt that cloud what others tell them should be the happiest days of their lives.
Nor do they hear about intrusive thoughts. These involuntary flashes might force a mother to imagine her newborn falling out of a window or never waking up from a nap. In some cases, she might envision harming her baby. While these thoughts are common and never a sign that a mother is about to hurt her child, says Snyder, women are frequently — and understandably — terrified of talking about them.
Tower, 27, experienced her own desperate moments when Raelynn cried relentlessly, a hallmark of colic. Tower suddenly understood why some parents lose control and shake their children, but that wasn't a welcome insight. Even worse, she previously had a miscarriage and felt guilty that she wasn't enjoying her daughter.
"There is pressure to be happy," she says. "If you have a healthy pregnancy and nothing is wrong, [the expectation is that] you shouldn’t be feeling these emotions, that you just need to learn to deal with it better."
Tower, who lives in Louisville, saw friends with "perfect, happy, healthy, sleeping, wonderful, non-colic babies" and never felt more alone.
"I just felt like no one knew what I was going through," she says. "It was like no one close to me understood, so I just built up a wall."
At six months postpartum she started The Kentucky Momma, a blog where she holds little back. She talks about the anxiety she experienced during her pregnancy with Raelynn and her ongoing treatment for postpartum depression.
In many ways, Tower feels healed. She's become a devotee of cross-fit exercise classes and taken up craft projects again. But she's recently started trying to have a second child. Sometimes the thought of giving Raelynn a sibling leaves her feeling simultaneously happy, sad and anxious.
Samantha Angoletta, a senior content manager for the website Scary Mommy, regularly commissions essays with this mix of angst and optimism.
The site, which draws 15 million unique readers every month, was founded several years ago on a single principle: "Parenting doesn’t have to be perfect."
Its pieces on the triumphs and challenges of motherhood include several on maternal mood disorders with bravely honest headlines like, "Why didn't anyone tell me about the darkness?", "I wanted to throw my baby out the window", and "Postpartum depression and the myth of Superwoman".
Angoletta says celebrity stories help draw attention to postpartum depression, but that the grueling work of battling stigma is done by women who increasingly feel more comfortable sharing not only their feelings or diagnosis, but also how they sought treatment and restored some sense of normalcy to their lives.
"It is so different for everyone; we can’t just tell one story,"Angoletta says.
That is what motivated A'Driane Nieves, an African-American writer and artist, to blog about maternal mental illness.
When Nieves, 32, first experienced postpartum depression following the birth of her second son, in 2010, she had to convince more than one doctor that her intrusive thoughts, constant crying and severe anxiety were serious and real. At the time, she was in a "rocky" relationship and attended school full-time.
"I don’t really think this is postpartum depression," she recalls one provider saying. "I think this is a normal response to everything you’re dealing with. I don’t know any woman in your position who wouldn’t be experiencing this."
Research has shown that women of color receive different levels of care for postpartum depression compared to white women, and Nieves believes bias might explain why her symptoms were attributed to her circumstances and not her mental health.
She remembers unsuccessfully searching online for stories about black women who experienced maternal mental illness. No one in her family or church talked about it either.
"I wanted other women who might sit down and type something into Google to find me," she says. "I just wanted them to see someone who looked like them."
Nieves blogged at Postpartum Progress for more than a year and became a volunteer for the nonprofit organization. She now runs a private support group on Facebook for women of color living with mental health conditions.
Nieves, who was a single mother when her first son was born, is candid about her complex relationship with motherhood.
"Motherhood, for me initially, was never about being this warm, nurturing fulfilled woman," she says. "That was not my experience or expectation."
Now married and a mother to three boys, Nieves says that treatment for postpartum depression helped her flourish. She's also rejected the idea that a mother must ignore her complicated, imperfect emotions in order to succeed at being the parent her children need.
"I think I’m at a place in my life where I’ve grown so much as a person...that I feel like I'm thriving in [motherhood]," she says. "I fully believe that if you don’t think about yourself, there’s no way in the world you can do what’s best for your kid."
Courtesy: Mashable
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