COVID-19 is Making Postpartum Depression and Anxiety Worse

Postpartum mental health issues are fueled not only by the hormonal turmoil that women experience but also by the emotional and practical challenges of keeping a vulnerable new human alive while operating on very, very little sleep. Having a baby during a pandemic is harder. Even if everyone in the family is healthy, it’s harder. Even if the family’s financial situation has not been damaged by layoffs, it’s harder. It takes all of the challenges of parenting a newborn — the nerves, the stress, the at-times profound loneliness — and amplifies them.

Post-Adoption Depression: Side Effects of a Happy Event

Although it's not as well documented as postpartum depression, post-adoption depression syndrome (PADS) is not uncommon: In a 2012 study from Purdue University, between 18 and 26 percent of adoptive mothers (depending on the screening scale) reported depressive symptoms within the first year of bringing home a new baby or child. (Rates for the small number of adoptive fathers also surveyed were similar.)

Identifying a Traumatic Birth Experience

Every birthing is unique and for some women, their birth experience can be deeply troubling and even cause post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To an outsider, some births may seem very difficult and traumatic, while the mother may not have experienced it that way. The opposite can be true as well, some mother's may feel that their birth experience was traumatizing (for a variety of reasons) when it might be considered "normal" by medical professionals.

Worry Work and How It Affects Women

Worry work or carrying the emotional load... both terms describe a constant, thrumming, low-level anxiety over the health and well-being of your children, and according to researchers, women tend to do more of the worry work than men do. It’s an endless list of organizational tasks that runs through your head like ticker tape: we’re out of milk, when do we need to apply for preschool, is the baby outgrowing her onesies, can't forget to schedule that doctor's appointment, are the kid's lunches packed for tomorrow...

Do You Struggle With Change?

To some degree, we are all creatures of habit... we organize our lives in a predictable, well thought out pattern, we enjoy being comfortable, we like knowing what is coming next. But what happens when life throws you a curve ball, when the circumstances of our life sudden shift underneath our feet, when we are forced to change?

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