Postpartum Depression

Postpartum depression

Why don't sleepless nights, constant screaming, changing diapers and those unpleasant sensations during breastfeeding bring me joy? What am I doing wrong? If I don't love my child, does that mean I'm a bad mother? Many women feel something similar in the first months of their baby’s life. If you tell them that these are typical manifestations of postpartum depression, they will be very surprised. Indeed, in our society there is an idea of ​​depression as an extremely serious condition. Many believe that this is the lot of the poor and weak - a sort of pale, emaciated creature who is so tired of washing diapers that she no longer wants to love her own child, who brought her to this. Modern prosperous mothers, surrounded by amazing household appliances, using diapers, giving birth in ultra-modern clinics with excellent care, sometimes do not even suspect that outwardly it may look completely different, and that no one is immune from this condition.

For some reason, this issue is bashfully hushed up by modern obstetrics. And if you turn to psychotherapists who, as a rule, deal with extreme manifestations of this condition, you will hear descriptions that are, indeed, quite rare. At the same time, increased anxiety, tearfulness, restless behavior, lack of appetite, the desire to break out of four walls, insomnia, as well as the opposite manifestations - lethargy, increased drowsiness, rapid weight gain - occur in every second woman after childbirth. Many of them don’t even realize that these are all warning signs that, if others behave incorrectly, can lead to real tragedy.

Where does this come from?

The fact is that the entire reproductive system of a woman is closely connected with the work of the endocrine system. Problems and disturbances in both one and the other systems immediately affect the emotional state of a woman - an example is the famous PMS or menopausal disorders. Pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding - all this significantly affects both systems and greatly affects the mood and emotional state of any woman.

After childbirth, the female body experiences significant changes. After all, an organ of the endocrine system, the placenta, which maintained not only the baby’s hormones at the required level, but also regulated the hormonal balance of the mother, left the female body. During childbirth, the amount of hormones produced is so much higher than their usual average level that after this the body, as it were, takes revenge and rests. The transition period, the time for restoration of all functions and stabilization of the new state - lactation, lasts 6 weeks. During all these 6 weeks, any normal woman is emotionally unstable and vulnerable. Her psyche is in a state of very unstable equilibrium, which is sometimes called postpartum neurosis, or, more romantically, postpartum blues.

What should help?

The first step towards such treatment is natural childbirth. If childbirth proceeds without intervention, the mother’s body releases a large amount of the hormone oxytocin, which speeds up labor on the one hand and promotes the process of forgetting on the other.

The second point that can complicate the further psycho-emotional state of a woman is the incorrectly spent first hours after childbirth. The female body is waiting for a very specific stimulus - to touch a living warm lump, and then apply it to the breast. These first moments of connection are so important and cause such a surge of hormones, and with them emotions, that even women who were planning to leave their child in the maternity hospital could no longer refuse it if they had the opportunity to fully experience this moment of the first fusion.

The third point, the importance of which is underestimated by many women, is assistance in stabilizing lactation. The same pituitary hormones, communication and love hormones - prolactin and oxytocin - are involved in the process of milk formation. Timely and frequent latching of the baby to the breast leads not only to good production