Quote of the Day 1-28-11
What did raise the rate of psychiatric problems? Babies. Within a year after first-time mothers gave birth, seven per 1,000 women were treated for mental-health issues, in comparison to four per 1,000 before baby.
~Bonnie Rochman, TIME Magazine, January 28

Having a baby is stressful; I can believe that some women would need to be treated for mental health issues after having one, especially with stuff like post-partum depression. But do I believe this is responsible for an overall rise in the number of women seeking help for mental health issues? Heck no. Ooooh, babies moved it from four in a thousand to seven in a thousand! Let’s blame it all on the little guys! Seriously, three more women in a thousand is not some kind of enormous increase. It sounds pretty predictable to me.
I agree. A first baby changes the whole dynamic of a couple’s relationship, emotionally and financially. I admire women who admit that they need some assistance and are willing to seek professional help in order to deal with their new lifestyle. It can make the transition from being a couple to a family with kids easier on everyone.
What I don’t agree with is saying that these women have psychiatric PROBLEMS. Sure, there are struggles and stress, but that’s pretty normal, and labeling new moms like this could make them feel even worse, and make them view parenting in a more negative light.
I’ve often wondered, too, how a post-abortive mother who has not yet received healing deals with the first child she delivers alive, and the stresses of those first few months when even the most prepared and supported moms can feel overwhelmed. What I’m not saying is all post-partum depression stems from prior abortions. It’s more complex than that, but I am wondering if that history is taken into account in these numbers? I’m guessing not. Given multiple stories I’ve heard where even trained counselors minimize or dismiss a post-abortive mother’s “focus” on the abortion(s), I don’t see these numbers as anything useful or significant missing that key piece of information.
The WHOLE dynamic of a couple’s relationship? Okay, that’s freaking me out and making me never want to have a baby. O_O
Having a baby for the first time is huge. HUGE. You don’t truly know what to expect, and that first year, much of your life is spent up half the night with your child. When you don’t get proper sleep, you cry a lot, you forget things, you feel inadequate (sometimes you feel like that, anyway, because you realize you don’t know what you’re doing), and your hormones are readjusting to 9 months of having been in flux. Add to that some unrealistic, rosy expectations of a perfect baby, and poof! Stress. :D
If you don’t have a supportive partner, or if you’re a single mom having to tackle things like this alone, you’re going to struggle. It’s just that simple. I had an incredibly supportive husband, and I was able to stay home from work most days, and when I did work, i was able to take my baby with me to work, and still the stress of being a new mom was really difficult. I remember crying a lot when my baby was crying. :D A new baby changes the dynamic of every relationship in your life. Period. Would I have traded it for the world, though? No way.
The cause of the mental health issues isn’t likely to be “babies,” per se. It’s the life change that accompanies it, often with no support. We need to support women after they bring those babies home from the hospital. It’s crucial.
I wouldn’t say the “whole dynamic.” My relationship with my husband became stronger after we had kids. :)
We need to support women after they bring those babies home from the hospital. It’s crucial. Agreed, Kel. I sometimes think the death culture also keeps women from reaching out or speaking up about what they are going through, since a “well, you could have always aborted him/her” attitude is more prevalent than you’d like to think. I actually had that said to me about my older daughter (I’m a single mom).
I don’t think that it would necessarily be a bad change, Marauder! I was young and completely alone when I brought my daughter home from the hospital. I think that having someone with me to learn and share with would have been wonderful. Experiencing a new baby together, even with all the stress, could make a relationship stronger. I think that going through any life-changing event with another person creates a special bond with that person that you will share the rest of your life.
Got to keep abortion consequence free!!! Any study that indicates some kind of consequence must be discredited and a new study must refute the a one!!! I can totally see PP executives and the rest discussing how to best refute a study. Whatever!!
Some things just makes sense.
Smoking -lung cancer
Sun-skin cancer
No Fiber – Colon cancer
Alcohol-Kidney cancer
Abortion- Breast Cancer (Breasts are some of the first tissues that change by hormones when pregnant.)
Abortion- you choose to end the beginning life of your child and you say there are NO consequences??????
So pregnancy brings mental health issues and so does miscarriage, but abortion NOOOOOO impossible!
Whatever. Keep deluding yourselves poor-choicers.
“The WHOLE dynamic of a couple’s relationship? Okay, that’s freaking me out and making me never want to have a baby. O_O”
.
Gee, going off to college, getting married, changes the whole dynamic of the parent/child relationship. Better stay home with mum and dad.
I think a lot of people are scared to make big changes because of the resulting effects it will have on their current relationships and lifestyle, hippie. What better way to overcome that fear than discussions with others about their experiences, both good and bad? Responding with sarcasm and snark isn’t helpful.
It’s not the BABIES themselves causing this. They are innocent. It’s hormones, and lifestyle change. everything combined. I know this ALL too well times 3. and each time it got worse. My 3rd child is almost 2 now, and I believe I am still just “winding down” and getting out of that altered mental state. Everyone has their own situations to deal with and yes, having a child and adding to the mix is an added stressor. But don’t blame the poor innocents themselves.
Responding with sarcasm and snark isn’t helpful.
Seriously. This is the part where you say, “Don’t worry, Marauder, it’s a big change and a lot of work but it’ll bring you closer together” or something like that. I thank God for my boyfriend every day and the thought of the ENTIRE DYNAMIC of our relationship changing is frankly pretty terrifying because we’re so happy together.
Going to college didn’t change the entire dynamic of my relationship with my parents by a long shot, so I’ll take some solace in that, anyway.
I’ve been with my partner for years, but we’re not married. There are a lot of reasons for this, but a big one is that our relationship is so great as it is, so why change it?
I had suffered from Post-Partum depression after I had my daughter. She was seven weeks premature, and my mother had just died a few months before. Talk about stressful! But with God’s help I got through it. Having her was not “scary” to me, because I’ve had a lifetime of experience with babies. That helped, because I had really no one who could help me with her. She was so tiny, my husband never even changed a diaper…LOL!
I’m a mother with a mental illness (rapid cycling bipolar) I was diasgnosed BEFORE I had children. Having a baby young and being thrown into the ‘big girl’ world did trigger many menic and depressive episodes, however I believe that most woman who are treated for a mental illness after giving birth have already had a history of mental illness BEFORE the birth and didn’t know about it or didn’t know how to seek the right treatment. I think of myself as an alcoholic of the mind, alcoholic’s usually have triggers that make them feel as if they want to drink, my brain also has triggers such as stress that will trigger me to feel manic or depressed. There are signs that I can clearly see, now that I’m in recovery of bipolar illness, before I’m about to have an episode.
There are many hotlines for anyone to call into, those crisis lines have been a wonderful ‘phone’ to cry into when I’ve needed them. Also check out http://www.nami.org for anything on mental illness.
For a lot of women, new motherhood brings with it unrealistic societal pressures to be the ‘perfect’ parent or supermom. I know that I have been hard on myself at times and it made me depressed and I felt like a failure. Hormonal changes would also play a big role, but like a lot of women have mentioned, that changes and eventually you feel like yourself again. I have been pretty lucky. My depression goes away for awhile during pregnancy and the first 6 months postpartum due to the hormonal changes. I have new baby euphoria for awhile.
Marauder: My husband and I have always had a fabulous relationship, but after children, it has become so much deeper and even more fulfilling. As we have shed layers of selfishness through learning to care for each child, we also had less selfishness towards each other. Our relationship is more mature, but also more lighthearted because we spend so much time being silly and playing games with the kiddos. Our children have only enhanced who we are individually and as a couple. I would say that the ‘dynamics’ of our relationship haven’t really changed at all- more that we got rid of some of the childish behavior and grew in a lot of good and fun ways.
And believe me- a baby is worth the risk! :)
I’m a mother with a mental illness (rapid cycling bipolar) I was diasgnosed BEFORE I had children
@Krystal: Thanks for sharing. I have been living with Bipolar Disorder II all my life; I was diagnosed when I was 21. The media always portrays people in the manic phase, and act as if it’s fun and cute but in this form of the illness, you are more depressed than manic, and it’s hellish. I read that psychiatrists are the most pro-abortion doctors, and many advocated legalizing it for the “mental health of the mother.” Well, I can say that my children SAVED my life. I remember being so depressed that I wanted to truly, really, really die. The only thing that saved me was that I loved my two children so very much and couldn’t bear to leave them.
if it wasn’t for them, I literally wouldn’t be here.
phillymiss,
I can relate. Before I had children, I remember lying in bed all day when I was depressed. I didn’t have anything I HAD to do. I could just wallow in my depression and I would sink deeper and deeper. I still have times (especially in the winter) when I wake up and just want to lay in bed, but I can’t. I have to get up. ALthough I still may feel awful, I usually get over the episodes faster because I don’t just give in to it. My kids force me to fight it. They are the best form of therapy for me, and cheaper.
Oh, honestly. We’ve long-established the risks of postpartum depression. What blows my mind is how we can know this and then have people try to negate the reality of PAS when your body’s hormonal state is relatively the same minus the endorphines released by (a) having a baby and (b) breastfeeding.
What is this writer’s point? A tiny segment of women who gave birth sought mental health care – what does that come out to, a half to one percent? So, you should kill your baby because there’s a half percent chance you’ll be depressed after he’s born?
Then I love the comments after the article, where one oxy moron says a guy can’t comment on the issue because he can’t comprehend because he can’t get pregnant? What kind of old feminist dinosaur dropping is that?! Look, none of us are getting any younger, but could the poor choicers please, please, for the love of Pete, get some new rhetoric?
Recently I had a pretty severe episode of depression, but I worked through it. The bipolar mind is a doozy sometimes!
I go through more mixed episodes throughout the year rather than manic or depressive.
But my point about this quote of the day is that people who feel ‘funny’ in their minds have a hard time seeking the much needed help they both need and deserve. New mothers have a lot of things going on in their life, let alone their brain/body. If you notice someone who just doesn’t seem theirselves lately, please by all means BUTT YOURSELF IN THEIR LIVES. I can speak for myself when I say that one phone call or one visitor who drops by can make a world of a difference. The issues that someone with a mental illness is having may seem minute to you but their a crisis in their world, please help those in need if you can.
Klynn73, I agree. How many of these women were post-abortive? Carla and I just discussed this yesterday. I watched a friend feel enormous guilt for a previous abortion after having a baby.
For me I never felt stressed when my son was a baby. I wanted my mom and mother-in-law to stay away and let me be a mommy because it felt very natural to me. He was a perfect baby, starting sleeping through the night at 2 weeks, ate well, grew well, pooped well… a perfect baby. When he hit toddlerhood THATS when I started to feel STRESS. He is 4 now. And he stresses me out a LOT of the time. That being said I do not think I have the right to kill him for stressing me out and I still would not trade him for all the money in the world.
Seriously, three more women in a thousand is not some kind of enormous increase.
Another way of looking at it would be that prevalence increased by 75%, close to double, etc. That’s one of the frustrating things about statistics–how they’re presented affects greatly how they’re received.
I agree with others, though, that likely part of the increase is due to stress and hormones affecting pre-existing, undiagnosed conditions. Mental illness is stigmatized pretty heavily, and a lot of people who need help won’t look for it because it makes them seem/feel weak, even if they already know/suspect something is wrong. Having a child likely aggravates these conditions until they can’t be ignored.
Ak Krystal: Be careful with that sort of advice. Certainly, people suffering from mental illnesses need social support. But there’s also the problem some people have of providing unsolicited advice on how to ‘fix’ things. Be there for the person–absolutely. Help them find professional help if they’re willing to go that route. Just don’t start telling them what you think they should be doing, as that can cause more harm.
And I so love your last sentence. Nothing hurts more than having something that’s causing you emotional turmoil to be brushed off for being small.
I could have written your second paragraph Sydney. My baby is now all grown up but caused quite a bit of stress once he started walking (actually I don’t remember him walking but going right to running!) He was diagnosed ADHD and school and socializing was/is difficult for him. He has so many other gifts that the average person doesn’t have and taught me more than I ever taught him — especially that Patience is a virtue!
I was pressured to abort him and he is one of the main reasons I became strong enough to be vocal in opposing abortion and other abuses to women and children.
ninek,
“Poor choicers”. I like that!
Thanks, Hans, but I stole it from another commenter. At first I thought it was a typo but the second time I saw it, I said, don’t mind if I steal that… :>) !
Praxedes, when I was younger I never in my life imagined that people would pressure others to abort. But now, I’ve heard it with my own ears. My own mom told me never to come home pregnant. There was no abortion when and where I was a teen, so I just assumed she was trying to pressure me to stay a virgin. We heard rumors of abortion, but those ‘places’ seemed so far away, they may as well have been in another country.
I pray for grandparents to have soft and compassionate hearts for their new grandchildren. Instead of ‘Don’t come home pregnant’ I wish parents would say, “If you ever get pregnant, I hope you know you can come and talk to me, and we’ll find help to keep you both safe and healthy.”
Hi Ninek,
My parents kept a pretty tight reign (my mom especially) when I was growing up, knowing where I was and who I was with. It’s amazing how smart she has become now that I have teens!
When I became pregnant at 22 I did not want to let my parents down (I knew on some level my relationship with my fiance was not healthy) so I called my mom on the phone. Mom could tell I was upset and I made her guess what was wrong. She made guesses like, “you lost your job”, “you and fiance broke up”, “you got hurt”, etc. When I told her no, no, no and finally told her I was pregnant here reaction was, “Oh, I’m so happy. Having a baby is never a bad thing! I am so ready to be a Grandma!”
I am so thankful for Mom’s support during my pregnancy and the year or two afterwards because my fiance was pushing hard for abortion and his family was telling everyone how I trapped him.
I have told my own children what a gift they are and how I can’t wait for grandkids someday. I tell them that they may someday be that positive person for a scared pregnant friend who has little or no support.
wouldn’t THAT be wonderful, ninek. Unfortunately, there are grandparents like the ones I saw on ’20/20′ years ago. their 17 y/o daughter was almost 8 months pregnant. They were told she was too far along to get an abortion at that facility. They were SO determined to get her an abortion they took her to another one and shelled out (something like) $3,000. Her father said she had a ‘right’ to an abortion. The reporter asked him “what about the rights of the baby?” He said “Something like this has no rights”…. Can you imagine saying that about your own grandchild? But, sadly, it happens.
I would blame this on our cultural shift away from close knit extended families. In the past, people lived in the same neighborhood (or in the same house) with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It would be very common for these people to have babies to take care of, or at least have to share in the responsibility of caring for them.
In today’s world, however, we can barely keep the nuclear family together. With many people today, their very first experience in caring for a baby is when it’s their own baby. In addition, whereas in the past most people were busy constantly working so that they wouldn’t starve to death, our society is quite a bit different. Recreation and what I would call “unnecessary work” have exploded in our age, and people have a lot more free time to do with as they choose.
But when the baby is born, everything shifts dramatically. That free time you had evaporates into nothingness. All of a sudden you need to take care of a completely helpless and defenseless new life. I can see a baby being much, much more stressful in today’s world than it was even 50 years ago, and it’s because of how our society has changed.
@Jayn, I’m not telling people to become their friends therapists and tell them what they need to be doing. I don’t like advice but there comes a time when someone’s actions/thinking can become harmful to themselves or others. At those times I think its agreeable to step in and talk with that person frankly. Not only do I live with a mental illness, I’m majoring in Mental Illness in Adults and I work on a 1-1 basis with adults who suffer from mental illness in all kinds of stages.
I see on a daily basis the up’s and downs, the isolation, etc. So stepping in can make a huge difference to those who regonize it.
Step in only if you feel there is a major problem.
Again, http://www.nami.org has many resources for those with mental illness and help for those who have friends/family members with mental illness.
@jayn, I just re-read my post, where do I say to give advice? I said ‘butt into their lives’, by this I mean be there for the person.
AK: It’s that wording, really, that’s an issue. “Butt in” can be fairly vague, and could easily be interpreted to mean telling people what they ‘should’ be doing. Our society has a hard time letting people make their own decisions, which is why that phrasing bothers me. Sometimes people do need a good, blunt talking to, but you also need to know how to back off and not push the issue. Which is a lot harder than it sounds, I know.
Another way of looking at it would be that prevalence increased by 75%, close to double, etc. That’s one of the frustrating things about statistics–how they’re presented affects greatly how they’re received.
I still don’t think it’s that significant or unpredictable of an increase. If I got one more cat, I could say that the number of cats in my house increased by fifty percent, but I’d still just have three cats.
I have what seems to be more or less permanent depression (though it’s much more controlled than it was in the past) and ADD, so my big worry about mental health and having a baby is what medications I’ll have to be off and for how long. The stress of having everyone constantly asking questions about how the pregnancy is going makes me tired just thinking about it; I’m not telling anyone outside of immediate family that I’m pregnant, period. Eventually they’ll figure it out and I’ll have spared myself a few months of people acting like it’s their business how I intend to give birth or how much weight I’ve gained or blah blah blah.
Well Jayn, in Alaska our suicide rate amoung all age and gender groups is the highest in the nation. Its my job to ‘butt in’ as I say, those with an illness normally don’t reach out for help and end up going deeper into their spiral of darkness often times in Alaska leading to suicide.
While you ay have a problem with the wording, however vague to you, I don’t see a problem at all. Knowing when to back off is a good thing but also knowing when to call because you fear for someone’s life or anothers person’s wellbeing is a good thing too.
In all my years of living with mental illness and helping others treat it I’ve never seen a situation where a friend or family member has butted in and the situation gotten worse.
My main concern is pushing people away instead of helping them. It’s something I deal with fairly often, unfortunately, as my husband’s family has some strained relationships. We generally wind up pulling back when there’s drama going on, because we don’t want to harm those relationships further, but it also means it’s difficult for us to offer help when we think it’s needed. Unsolicited advice (and no one’s actually asked for any) gets received rather badly around here.
I do want to thank you for the work you’re doing. Knowing that you’re out there, doing this sort of work, makes my day a little brighter.
Drama vs. a real crisis…..sometimes those lines can blur in different situations. I feel you on that subject as I too had to recently sht down my FB page due to in-law drama, nothing of a real crisis.
Sydney & Praxades,
I am so glad for you that you had an easy time in your postpartum stages. I would however caution against assuming that it is only the postabortive who experience depression during this time. I myself am NOT postabortive and my first son was so difficult and so overwhelming that I experienced something that bordered between depression and baby blues. I remember thinking about throwing my son at the wall. Horrific, I know. I love him so desperately and did the moment I knew I was pregnant, but the truth is that he was incredibly difficult and the thought was incredibly irrational. Something like, “If he just stopped screaming for a moment, I could fix everything”…. Of course, it makes no sense and I know that but in my sleep-deprived and addled postpartum brain, I didn’t make connections well. I remember crying and crying while trying to comfort him, feeling like such a failure and whispering that his crying was killing me, that I needed sleep so badly, and that I just wanted to make him happy why wouldn’t he be happy?
You must understand that I know these things were wrong. I know these were not the ideal ways to handle the situation. And I wanted more than anything to make him happy and contented. You must also realize that at 24 I am the eldest of 9 surviving children, the youngest of whom is almost 2 years older than my firstborn. I helped to raise my siblings. I am experienced with babies.
Your stories are fantastic, and I can tell you happily that I never once truly thought it would be good to injure my son. I can also tell you that my younger son is now a year old and I had an incredibly joyful year devoid of the depression I experienced with his brother. I know that my story is shocking in ways and perhaps you will think less of me for it, but I simply want to express that we who experience periods of depression after having a baby are not all postabortive.
Maryrose, I have been in your shoes darling. Sometimes life isn’t daisy’s when everyone tells you it should be.
I’m glad your second child was smoother after giving birth, I struggled with major depression with all three of my children when they were infants. I still get depression (three boys I have now, the can get a bit rowdy and unruly at times) and stress, but there were times like last night when I was cuddling with all three of them in the living room was the moving ‘Up’ and giggling every 5 minutes I had nothing but joy in my heart.
The best part of my day is when one of my boys comes up out of the blue and tells me he loves me, these little tidbits of happiness keep me going. It keeps reminding my that I am a good mom!
Thank you for sharing a tidbit of your life with us Maryrose, I know for some doing such things can be hard. Ps, I sure do not think any less of you!! :)
Ak Krystal,
Thank you for that. Because of some comments made on another post, I got to reviewing information from the Casey Anthony case, so I was feeling rather horrible only moments ago. Not that my thoughts were ever so brutal, or that I ever wished them to fruition. There was, rather, an immediate recoil in my mind, always. But the idea of losing either of my boys is just terrifying.
Hormonally, I remind myself, it makes logical sense that we would experience a depression phase after giving birth. But there is such a build up and such excitement. I so very desperately wanted my Nathan. I was overjoyed to have him. I praise God every day for blessing my life with my two amazing boys! So to have had my first and then to have struggled so much was… well, not good. There were times when I would go from feeling useless and terrible as a mom to feeling bad about wallowing in my personal misery to feeling bad for the fact that when I should be rejoicing I was so miserable. Oh, there were always always those moments of peace and joy and gladness. There was always goodness, even in the worst of it. But the bad times affected me so heavily… and he cried so much!… that the first year of his life was certainly a struggle.
Anyway, I just really wanted to say thank you for your response. I needed it.
MaryRose,
Thanks for sharing. I was in an abusive marriage for years so I too have dealt with depression just not after the birth of my first baby. The abuse got worse over the years and so did the depression. My second baby was very colicky and much of that period was a blur due to lack of sleep. Sadly, my children saw way too much fighting.
The year before my divorce, I was so depressed, I could no longer cry or feel anything. Thank God I had some wonderful women who were concerned about me and helped me leave him.
My kids and I were looking at old pictures recently and they saw a picture from that year with the Christmas tree in the background. My daughter asked me what the deal was with the tree. I told her I was so depressed that I just let them decorate it. They were ages 8, 4 and 2 at the time so the decorations were all at the bottom of the tree.
A few years back, after fighting against harassment issues at work and a subsequent miscarriage, I became so depressed I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. It took about three months to come out of that one.
My mother had several miscarriages when I was growing up. I remember her spending alot of time in bed for about a year. My sister went through severe postpartum depression after her babies were born and she is one of the best mothers I know. My friend is currently going through a rough time with her little one as well. She has little support from her boyfriend, the baby has some health issues and doesn’t sleep well.
Sometimes I think all we can do is support each other and help each other out when we see someone having a tough time. We need to ask each other for help (and not feel guilty!) and offer help even if we’re not asked but recognize what we may have already gone through. Also, I am a big believer in prayer and I ask the saints and Mary to help us mothers hold it together.
Oh yeah, and I come here alot and read what Jill and all the other wonderful prolife women (and the guys too) think and contribute to our world. They keep me grounded and remind me how precious children are, even when times get tough.