Perinatal Mental Health
Do you miss your old life? Are you feeling disconnected from your pregnancy or baby? Spaced out? Perhaps even like you’re watching someone else’s life? Maybe you’re experiencing an onset of anger of rage. Do you have racing or frightening thoughts about threats to your baby’s well-being? Are you experiencing exhaustion, but you’re unable to sleep? Therapy to support your mental health during pregnancy or postpartum can help you manage and improve these difficult symptoms. While your hard days may come and go, you do not need to wait for them to “pass,” you can take action now!
What is Perinatal Mental Health?
Pregnancy and postpartum come with an abundance of changes physically, emotionally, and relationally. Sometimes these changes aren’t as smooth or manageable as we had hoped or expected. Perinatal mood fluctuations are psychological and emotional changes that occur either pre or postnatally. Although mood fluctuations are expected in the first few weeks postpartum, when difficult symptoms persist, or worsen, you don’t need to wait it out. There is help available!
Perinatal mood disorders can impact parents (not just mothers!) any time during pregnancy or after birth. While symptoms are most prevalent in the first months postpartum, they can persist for years when left untreated. If you think your symptoms are rooted in your pregnancy or birth, it does not matter how long it has been. It is never too late to seek help!
What symptoms of perinatal mental health can therapy help with?
Therapy can help with symptoms of anxiety, sadness, rage, disconnection, panic, intrusive thoughts, overwhelm, fatigue, guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, hopelessness, frustration, and more.
What are the causes of Perinatal Mental Health Mood Disorders?
The onset of perinatal mood disorders can be impacted by life stress, traumatic experiences (especially birth and reproductive trauma), societal expectations, hormonal influence, and more.
How Can We Help You through Perinatal Mood Disorders?
When working through perinatal mood disorders, we work with clients to explore their symptom influences using the perinatal mood framework to better understand the contributing and perpetuating factors. We will provide psycho-education on tools to manage symptoms and establish healthier coping tools to help you work through those hard moments and minimize their frequency. We’ll explore your thought patterns, challenge inaccurate and unhelpful thoughts, and shift your perspective.
Different Types of Perinatal Mood Disorders
There are a wide variety of perinatal mood disorders or symptoms that may be impacting you. Below we’ve explained some of the most common:
Perinatal depression may include well-known symptoms such as sadness and emptiness, but it may also include lesser-known symptoms such as rage and disconnection.
Perinatal anxiety may include persistent distressing and intrusive thoughts, excessive worry, panic attacks, physical responses, and sleeplessness.
Perinatal OCD may include obsessive thoughts, fear of harming the baby, and repeated actions to reduce anxiety.
Postpartum psychosis includes severe symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and manic episodes.
Postpartum PTSD may include intrusive and distressing thoughts, flashbacks, or nightmares pertaining to the birth experience.
Birth trauma is in the eye of the beholder and relates to the birthing person’s perception of their childbirth experience.
What are some strategies to help a perinatal mood disorder?
Examine the Evidence. Treat your thoughts as hypotheses to be tested!
- What support do I have for this thought?
- What support do I have against this thought?
- What would a friend say about this thought?
- Is this thought helpful?
- Have similar thoughts rung true in the past?
Interrupt and Stop the Worry Loop
- Take note of an anxious thought
- Say STOP, out loud or in your mind
- Visualize a stop sign or a red light
- Settle your body with deep breaths
- Contain your worry by drawing or writing it out and “trapping” it in a journal, box, or drawer.
- Shift your focus to a self-soothing activity (E.g., listen to music, go for a walk, watch tv)
Frequently Asked Questions about Perinatal Mental Health
Because wanting a baby and enjoying every second of having a baby are very different things.
You can spend years hoping for this, love your baby like crazy, and still think, What have I done to my life?
You’re recovering physically. You’re barely sleeping. Your hormones are doing whatever they want. Your routine is gone. Everyone keeps asking how the baby is doing while you’re wondering when you last showered.
Sometimes new parenthood is beautiful.
Sometimes it’s really, really hard.
Often it’s both before breakfast.
YES.
Not just feeling a little annoyed. More like your partner asks one innocent question and suddenly the sound of them chewing feels personally offensive.
Postpartum rage can show up as intense irritability, anger, snapping, yelling or feeling like you’re constantly about three seconds from losing it. Sleep deprivation, hormones, overstimulation, anxiety, depression and carrying a ridiculous amount of responsibility can all be part of the picture.
If you’re suddenly thinking, “Who IS this person?” every time you lose your patience, bring it up.
Because parts of your old life were GREAT.
You could leave the house with your phone and keys. Sleep for eight consecutive hours. Go out for dinner without discussing feeding schedules. Take a shower because you wanted one, not because someone finally agreed to hold the baby for 11 minutes.
Missing your old life doesn’t mean you’d trade your baby to get it back.
It just means becoming a parent changed approximately everything.
This one scares the heck out of people.
You might suddenly picture dropping the baby. Your brain shows you a horrible image of something happening in the bath. You repeatedly check whether they’re breathing. A completely unwanted thought pops into your head and you immediately think, “Why would I THINK that?”
Intrusive thoughts can happen in the postpartum period, particularly with anxiety and OCD. Having an unwanted thought is not the same thing as wanting to act on it.
But this is something worth talking about with a healthcare professional, especially if the thoughts are frequent, extremely distressing, affecting how you care for your baby, or feel like urges rather than unwanted thoughts.
First of all, “sleep when the baby sleeps” has caused enough harm.
Sometimes the baby is peacefully unconscious and your brain has decided this is an excellent opportunity to review:
Is she breathing?
What if she wakes up in 20 minutes?
Should I pump?
Did I sterilize that bottle?
What if something is wrong?
I NEED TO SLEEP RIGHT NOW.
Nothing helps sleep quite like aggressively demanding that you fall asleep immediately.
Postpartum anxiety can make it really difficult to switch off, even when you’re completely exhausted.
Bonding is not always:
Baby placed on chest → instant overwhelming love → orchestral music.
For some parents, it happens quickly. For others, you’re looking at this tiny stranger thinking, Hello. Apparently we live together now.
Birth trauma, depression, anxiety, feeding difficulties, a NICU stay, exhaustion or simply adjusting to becoming a parent can all affect how connected you feel.
Sometimes bonding builds through the incredibly ordinary stuff: feeding them, changing them, learning their weird little noises and slowly realizing you know exactly what they need.
Yep.
Your baby doesn’t hit six months and your mental health gets an automated email saying POSTPARTUM PERIOD COMPLETE.
Symptoms can start or continue months after birth. Sometimes the earliest months are pure survival mode and you don’t really notice how much you’re struggling until later.
So if your baby is older and you’re thinking, Shouldn’t I be fine by now?, the calendar isn’t the most useful part of that question.
Oh, where shall we begin?
You’re exhausted. Nobody has enough sleep. There’s suddenly 400% more housework. One person may be feeding the baby with their literal body. You’re both learning how to parent. Your sex life has changed. Your schedules are chaos.
Then your partner says:
“Just tell me what you need me to do.”
And somewhere deep inside you, a small volcano erupts.
Having a baby can expose every imbalance, communication problem and unspoken expectation in a relationship at approximately the least convenient time possible.
Absolutely.
They’re adjusting to a massive life change too.
Dads and non-birthing parents can experience depression, anxiety, overwhelm, irritability, relationship problems, sleep deprivation, fear about being a good parent and the pressure of suddenly being responsible for a tiny human.
And because everyone’s attention is understandably on the person who gave birth and the baby, they can fly completely under the radar.
Depending on the appointment and your situation, talk to us.
We also offer virtual therapy, which can be a lifesaver during the stage of life where leaving the house somehow requires 45 minutes, three bags and emergency backup clothing for someone who weighs 12 pounds.
Baby wakes up? Fine.
Baby needs feeding? Feed them.
You need to walk around while we talk? Go for it.
Therapy during the postpartum period has to work in a world where a baby is currently running the schedule.
Perinatal Mental Health on the Bounce Back Blog
Beyond Birth: The Lifelong Impact of Perinatal Mental Health
Transitions: The Parenting Edition
Are you ready to begin therapy with Rebound Total Health?