3 ways to prepare for postpartum depression

You’ve got a crib ready, and a car seat. Maybe even painted a room or two. You’ve taken classes, you have talked to friends, your mom, your mother-in-law.

You have a good idea of what kind of physical needs that the baby will have. You’ve got diapers, wipes, and baby blankets. You have a plan to feed them.

You also know that your own body will need some TLC afterwards. Even if the birth goes just like you want it to, there are physical side effects to birthing a human. A c-section is a major surgery, and vaginal delivery is also a trauma to the body. Even an epidural or an IV can create situations later on that you will have to deal with.

You know this and the providers you are working with know it too. So you have been told to rest, and not lift anything heavier than your baby for a few weeks. And, maybe you’ve lined up a meal train, or prepared extra meals for the freezer so you’ll be able to feed yourself and your family. You’ll (hopefully) have help with laundry. You’ve cleared the calendar of any big trips.

What’s missing from many people’s pre-birth preparation, however:

How are you going to get ready for possible anxiety?
What are you doing to prepare for the possible mood swings?
Do you have a plan for the baby blues, and what happens if they don’t go away?

Did you know that postpartum depression (a broad term that can mean a variety of things, from negative thoughts to out of control emotions) is the most common complication that a woman can experience following childbirth? (https://www.marchofdimes.org/pregnancy/postpartum-depression.aspx)

THIS MEANS THAT MORE WOMEN WILL EXPERIENCE DEPRESSION AND MOOD ISSUES FOLLOWING BIRTH THAN ANY OF THE OTHER SCARY THINGS THEY TELL YOU ABOUT HAVING A BABY.

You’ve prepared for lots of other things. So, let’s take some time and prepare for the most likely complication.

In this post, I’m going to be talking about three ways to get ready for your emotional state following birth, and give you three strategies that you can start using now that will:

decrease the likelihood of becoming depressed, and
make your depression (or anxiety) easier to deal with if it does come.

Postpartum Depression can be about feeling isolated

One of the things that happens when you have a baby is that many people will tell you how happy and excited they are for you. These people may reach out to you by text, or social media, and they may expect you to return their communications.

It might be a flood that can go on for several days, or weeks. Especially as you start to get out more, and see people for the first time since giving birth, you will experience new waves of “congratulations!”, attention, and looks of awe at your baby. Then they move on with their day, possibly with a well-intentioned, “Let me know if you need anything!”

What people are less likely to do is to ask you, directly, as the new mom (or dad) how you are doing, and how you are feeling following the birth.

You may get some people who are genuinely interested in your experience. And with those people you may share more of the hard things that you experienced.

There may even be tears, as you continue to process your birth.

What is more likely to happen is that you will feel the pressure to match the “Congratulations!” vibe that people are giving.

You may not want to share the hard things that are going on, because saying them out loud might shatter the “happy” that is happening in all the people around you.

In order to get around this pervasive social pressure, you need to prepare ahead of time by lining up people to check in on you, to ask those direct questions.

These people need to be ready and willing to listen to you and ask how you are really feeling, and won’t be put off if you start to talk about how you are worried that you don’t love your baby, or that you think something is wrong with it.

Be choosey. Take time and really figure out the right people for this task.

Have a frank and honest conversation with them, and if you don’t get a feeling that they can handle the possible deep dark shit of your postpartum mind, keep looking.

At this point in this post, you may be saying to yourself, “That won’t happen to me, I don’t have anything deep or dark, and I don’t appreciate this guy swearing, either.”

That’s fine! I would ask you to consider this, before you go:
No one asks a new mom to help move furniture. That would be crazy.

It is equally inappropriate to expect new moms to be happy following birth, or 100% confident in their new role as primary caregiver.

Don’t expect yourself to be able to do this postpartum thing alone. Create a support system, before you need it, even if “deep, dark, and scary” don’t usually happen to you.

Find professional postpartum therapy, just in case

My next point is similar to the first. I want to talk about what it would be like to level up your support from your immediate network of friends and family.

To do that, I’m going to return to this idea of a new mom moving furniture.

Any health care provider will tell you that regardless of how the baby came into the world, the best thing for a new mom is to stay in bed and rest.

One term that you can search for is “rooming in,” the idea that the new mom and baby need to chill out and be waited on, hand and foot. They are both recovering from a major physiological event, and could hurt their recovery if they overexert themselves.

You will be seen several times in the hours and days following the birth by people checking up on your physical recovery, and to see that the baby is also peeing, pooping, and growing like they should.

If you were to develop some kind of infection or had trouble nursing, the person checking up on you would (hopefully, let’s postpone a conversation about the general state of postpartum care in the United States for another time, but only say for now that it is lacking) have a set of procedures they would implement, and professionals they would contact to address your difficulties (again, hopefully).

Make sure (before the blessed birthing event) that when they are checking your blood pressure and asking you about how much water you are drinking that they are also asking you about your mood. And your thoughts. And scary dreams you might be having. And any kinds of disturbing images that are popping into your mind without you wanting them to be there.

The unfortunate thing is that you not feel comfortable telling them if you are having any of those thoughts or experiences, which is why I want you to find someone ahead of time that you will be comfortable talking to.

It might be odd to think about this, and hard to put yourself into the mindset of finding a mental health professional before you might need one.

It’s going to be a heck of a lot easier to do it now, instead of realizing later that you do need one, but the baby is crying and you’ve got a huge pile of laundry to get through and in any spare baby-free moment you have, you desperately need to close your eyes and sleep.

There are some ways that you can do this before you give birth that are pretty painless.

Start by asking whoever is going to deliver your baby and check up on you afterward who they would use if they had a patient start to show signs of postpartum depression or anxiety. They may have a name or two. Call those people, and have a conversation.

If your provider does not have any names, start looking around. Ask for recommendations from friends. Talk to your health insurance company to see if they have any postpartum specialists in network. Call those people, and have a conversation.

The goal here is to have someone in your back pocket. Just knowing that you have that level of support in the wings can actually go a long way in avoiding postpartum depression in the first place.

POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION coping skills YOU CAN PREP BEFOREHAND

“Social isolation and lack of support are big risk factors for developing postpartum depression”

To review, so far we have talked about building a network of support, (made up of friends, family and professionals), around you before you give birth, so that you know who to go to if things get difficult.

Social isolation and lack of support are big risk factors for developing postpartum depression, but by taking some steps and having some conversations beforehand, you can build in the resources you need to help yourself, and also know where to get more help if things intensify.

The last thing I want to leave you with is a different tactic, and I’m going to give you a specific example of how that tactic could get used.

One of the things that depression and anxiety does is to put thoughts into your head that you don’t want to be there, and did not ask for.

They can range from things like, “I’m not good enough to do this,” or “I don’t know if I actually love this baby,” to racing thoughts forcing you to obsess over all the ways a baby can hurt themselves (or your could accidentally hurt them) in your own house.

One way to address this would be to find the opposite of the negative thoughts you are having in your head, and write them down on a piece of paper or card, then bringing that card out when you are noticing that thought happening again.

For example, if you notice that you are starting to think that you are not capable of taking care of your baby, you can whip out the card that says the opposite, something like, “I’m a great mother and I am more than able to meet the needs of my tiny milk monster, and have help to support me while I do.”

But, knowing now (as you do, my careful reader), that reaching for those cards is going to be very hard when you are actually feeling depressed, here is an extra level of preparation you could do:

Once you make those cards, give them to your partner.

Actually, writing them with your partner would be a great idea. It will be a worthwhile experience for you to both sit down and talk about your current and possible future insecurities, and then find the opposite competing and much more helpful thought to match them.

Postpartum depression and anxiety can become your reality in a real and debilitating ways. If you can prepare ahead of time, you can minimize this impact.

Your partner and network of friends and providers will be a much better judge of when you need to get a little help than you will.

It is not weakness or some kind of defect that could trigger these difficulties. It is something big that has happened to you.

Let birth be a big scary exciting change in your life, and arm yourself ahead of time with all the help you could ever need. You will pass through it. Let others help you do it well.