You’ve had a baby!! A little one whom you’ve been waiting for for at least nine months. And yet…..the emotions you’d been anticipating—happiness, pride, deep love—don’t appear. Instead, you feel sad, depressed or anxious and guilty for having these feelings.
What happened? During the last trimester and the birth, your hormones surged and then plummeted back to their original levels. This imbalance, as well as the changes in your life due to your baby’s arrival can often play a role in the development of postpartum depression and anxiety.
Postpartum depression, additionally, is more persistent than the “baby blues” and the causes are usually deeper than hormonal and life style changes. Some of the signs of PPD/A are feelings of sadness that last from several days to several weeks or months, feeling withdrawn from friends and family, feeling tired most of the day, irritability, panic and anxiety.
Social stigmas can also contribute to PPD/A, in which your “happiness to mother” becomes stymied by guilt and self-loathing. Mothers need to allow themselves to recognize that taking care of themselves is key to healing and ultimately to bonding with their baby.
I can help you understand and work through these complicated feelings as well as assist in your adjustment to the new needs of motherhood. Mothers themselves need support and quite often the moms’ experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety didn’t have enough of it when they were babies. I can offer you ways to identify sources of your distress and work to create the kind of relationship that is ultimately happy and healthy for you and your baby.