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The post Feeding and the Mental Health of New Mothers first appeared on Mothers Helpers.

To listen to the FULL episode, click here

Thanks to Aethel for the theme song to our podcast “Fog and Fire” – to listen to the full song, you can find Aethel on Spotify

The post The Pressures and Expectations of Motherhood first appeared on Mothers Helpers.

Guest Blogger:  Amy Taylor

After a complex first pregnancy I was anxious that number two would be the same. Much joy but some trepidation when the doctor called to say I was pregnant. I lost that baby. I held my fetus in my hand and weeped. On my very next cycle I was expecting again but this time the anxiety gripped me every day. Each time I went to the loo, I’d check my undies . I found myself sitting on the loo far more often than I needed to just as an excuse to check. My first midwife visit I was a nervous wreck. My midwife was kind, understanding and supportive. She assured me that past complications were not necessarily an indication of future complications, but I would be well looked after anyway. I was well looked after but every extra scan and every appointment brought with it fresh anxiety. I was very run down and struggling with constant, painful Braxton Hicks contractions which really fed into my fears of losing the baby. I guess I suffered antenatal anxiety throughout my pregnancy but it wasn’t diagnosed. I think the medical team knew I was anxious but also knew I had some good reasons to worry. Anyway baby was born normally at 38 weeks and I went home the very next day.

Day three the baby blues hit in a big way. I threw a pie dish in my poor mother in laws direction for daring to ask me if there were tomatoes in the stew. As the days wore on I started to realise that things were not getting any better. I worried heaps, didn’t sleep even when baby did. I’d lie awake next to her listening to every noisy breath. When my husband went to work I’d lie and watch tv in my sweat pants. I’d never worn sweat pants before this baby. I knew things weren’t right and I decided I could fix it by returning to my much loved job..

So I put my three month old in care and went back to work. I bought a scooter and rode to daycare to breast feed. I pumped and pumped. For a couple of weeks things felt better but then the deadlines started piling up. There weren’t enough hours in the day. I was exhausted. Oh and the guilt, the guilt was insane. I was an awful mother and a worse employee. Pressure from work kept building, I needed to be working far more hours, there weren’t enough hours in the day. Baby had bad reflux and was refusing the breast. I felt so inadequate, I couldn’t even feed my baby. Then there were the dark thoughts. They would pop into my head unannounced, so hard to shake. What I really struggled to do was ask for help. I should have asked so many times. Like the time I cried for three days straight after my three year old was naughty at ballet or numerous doctor and plunket visits where I pretended everything was ok. It was driving home after one of these appointments when I almost drove the car off the road that I realised this wasn’t something I could solve myself. Thankfully the baby had fallen asleep. I got home, phoned plunket line, who were amazing and then called the neighbour so I wasn’t alone. That evening when my husband got home I finally asked for help. The next day he took me to the doctor and I was admitted to hospital. It’s four months later and I can honestly say I’m heaps better. Mothers Helpers were instrumental in getting me the funded home help, which along with the drugs and quitting my job are the things that have aided most in my recovery. I now have a little time for me and I’m getting out of my sweat pants and back into the world!

The post Climbing Out of the Darkness (and the sweatpants!) first appeared on Mothers Helpers.

Guest Blogger:  Rebecca Allen

Just this last weekend my husband compassionately said to me “I wish you got to enjoy Harvey the way I did when he was little”. My reply was a heartfelt “so do I”.

For me, being new to motherhood was a time full of anxiety, fear, paranoia, isolation and depression.

Pre-children, I was a woman of the world! I had travelled extensively, really lived my life, and had moved back to New Zealand when I met my now husband. Within two years I had my own Hairdressing Salon, we got married and bought our first home. I was a party girl, always keen to drink wine and have fun, that was me, it was a blast! Dying to become a mother since ‘forever’, I was EXSTATIC when I fell pregnant.

By the time I was 15 weeks pregnant I was struggling to keep my head in the game. I had come undone when I immediately stopped drinking alcohol and smoking when I found out I was pregnant. I had taken my coping mechanisms away, and I had nothing to replace them with. Oh, well, I ate, I ate a lot. I gained 35kgs in that pregnancy, which in itself created feelings of uselessness. How pathetic of me to let myself gain so much! I berated myself continuously day in and day out, it was damaging to my heart.

I had a full-blown breakdown and was taken under the wings of Maternal Mental Health and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I knew I was depressed, but Bipolar?! My history with addictions and impulsive behaviour spoke a very clear story, the problem was that I was pregnant and couldn’t be treated with medication for it. I was given an antidepressant that took the edge off, and I joined a group of other women experiencing similar issues. We did different types of therapy together and individually, it was a real turning point in my life; sober and keen to help myself as much as I could.

I was the type of woman who wanted a home birth and to breastfeed for 2yrs (yep, I was her). Well, my baby’s head never engaged fully, even after my waters broke, so my midwife told me I was going to have to go to hospital. The devastation was real. I was unfortunate to end up with a three-day labour ending with an emergency c-section. I haemorrhaged badly and had a blood transfusion. My body was madly trying to get me better rather than make milk for my baby, which of course was another blow. I pumped and pumped and pumped. DESPERATE to breastfeed like I always had imagined I would. My feelings of ‘not good enough’ grew by the day.

We stayed in hospital for a week where we were given the news that our baby possibly had something wrong with the bones in his head. I don’t remember thinking much of this at the time because they let us go home.

We hired a super-duper breast pump, and I continued to pump, 8 times per day. I was running on nothing. Not feeling good enough, not enjoying this BEAUTIFUL baby I had grown inside me. I became phobic of public spaces because of germs, and phobic of people for the fear that they could see how useless I was at being a mother. And of course, they did see it, because they kept shoving advice at me, like I had no idea of what I was doing (I believed this).

By the 8 weeks mark I had built my breastmilk up enough to solely feed my baby, no more formula top ups, a MASSIVE feat in my eyes. Unfortunately, my mood started to take a dive, and within another month and a half I was so depressed I thought they would take my baby off me.

One day he lay in the middle of our bed smiling at me and I just didn’t have the energy to smile back at him. I decided he deserved so much better than this and I called my keyworker at Maternal Mental Health. She was there within an hour and so was my husband. The support was wrapped snug around me. I was given a full review of my meds and told I really needed to be treated for Bipolar to get better, which meant stopping breastfeeding because the medication passes through the breastmilk. It cut me in two. I grieved. That may sound dramatic, but I had always seen myself breastfeeding my children.

We had a Psychiatric nurse come into our home for a month to look after both me and my baby. This was instead of putting me in a psych hospital. I am SO grateful to this day for this service because it made a HUGE difference to our little family. I slept for a good 10 days then started finding my feet again as a new Mum with her guidance.

It wasn’t long after this we discovered our precious baby boy had indeed been born with a condition called Craniosynostosis. All of the bones in his head had fused together around birth, and they’re not meant to fuse until the child is approx. 2yrs old, this explained his difficult birth. We were told he was going to need major Cranial Facial Surgery. It was a tough time to say the least and I chose to deal with it by taking up drinking and smoking again. I sat with an undercurrent of disgust in myself and did what I could.

Time moved on, as it does, and when our son was two I fell pregnant with our daughter. As much as I was happy to be pregnant again, I was relieved that my drinking days were over. Again, I stopped it all, and that was where I left it! This was 8 years ago. I have received so much support from different mental health teams in Auckland, Hamilton and Thames. I am not gripped with addiction, I have many healthy coping skills that help keep me a happy well lady. For me to stay well I keep my physical health on top, I exercise 5 days per week, I eat well, I nurture my relationships with family and friends, I practice mindfulness, I use Emotional Freedom Technique to release emotions, I journal, and I take medication. I get a bit wobbly if one or more of these things in my wellness recipe have been neglected.

I am now the proud Mumma of Harvey who is 10 and Lily who is 8. I have the worlds most supportive and understanding husband and wonderful girlfriends who are there always. When I see a new Mum struggling my heart hurts and wants to emit loving energy all around her. It is such a damn hard job and if she is suffering in any way shape or form of mental distress she needs support. One of the BEST things I ever did for myself was make that call, putting my hand up and saying I need help. I accepted every single bit of help that was offered and that’s what I put my wellness down to today.

If you’re a Mumma reading this and if you need help, please ask for it, please.

With Love

Rebecca Allen

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The post When I Look Back first appeared on Mothers Helpers.

It took me 18 months to go and get some help for the way that I was feeling.  9 of those months I was anxious throughout my pregnancy but the midwife didn’t pick up on it.  In the first week after my baby was born, I had a new midwife, and she said to me that if I was still crying by day 7 (hours of crying every day), then I’d have to go and see the doctor as I may have postnatal depression.  So I forced myself to stop crying.  I didn’t want to have postnatal depression.  And I didn’t want to have postnatal depression for the next 9 months that I avoided seeking help.  I did go and see a counsellor, but it had little impact on me.  I knew that if I went to the doctor, he would diagnose me and offer me medication that I didn’t want to take.  This inability to be rational and problem-solve clearly as well as denial of the full extent of the problem is very common for mothers who experience antenatal or postnatal depression.  It’s even harder if this is your first baby and you have nothing to compare your experience to.  I left it till things were really, really bad before I got help.  By that time my energy was so low that I could barely manage to get myself off the couch, I had to summon all of it just to attend to my baby’s needs, the entire 12 hours or more of caring for my baby on my own while my husband was at work overwhelmed me.

When I finally went to the GP, I of course was offered medication, which I accepted.  And I felt better within a few weeks.  I didn’t know at the time that medication was not a miracle cure – that within 12 months, the medication would stop working simply because I had not made any changes to my life.  I didn’t know that recovery from depression required an holistic approach.  I didn’t know because nobody told me and there was nothing out there that helped me to understand recovery from depression more fully or to help me make those changes.

The consequences of depression that was not diagnosed and not treated for such a long time was devastating for me.  I developed chronic (life-long) depression.  Most of the time I am well, but it means that I have to take medication and commit to holistically caring for myself in order that I stay well.  Antenatal and Postnatal Depression was definitely a contributing cause of my marriage breaking down and subsequent separation.  Tragically, it is likely to be a contributing factor of my 6 year old son’s development of an anxiety disorder – the impact of which we are still wrestling with on a daily basis.  I can almost bear my own suffering in this whole story, but watching my son suffer is really unbearable.  Every family has their challenges, but the challenges I have faced are preventable, and I want to prevent this suffering from happening to you and your family.

I don’t write this to frighten you.  The last thing I want to do is cause you more anxiety.  I write this because I want so much for you to get help for your depression and anxiety.  It is crucial not only to your own wellbeing, but to the wellbeing of your family.  Please go to the GP.  Please consider treatment.  Please find out more about how you can recover holistically from antenatal/postnatal depression and anxiety.  Mothers Helpers runs courses throughout Auckland and an online course that is available to anyone in the country.  These courses have proven to help the majority of mothers to recover from PND, and all of them their condition has improved.

The post From One Mum to Another first appeared on Mothers Helpers.

It would be fair to say that for some mothers who have developed perinatal depression/anxiety, the “temperament” that researchers speak of that make some mothers more prone to developing it than others is not only that we’re naturally a sensitive soul, but we can also place high unrealistic expectations on ourselves – setting ourselves up to fail and becoming disappointed with ourselves time and time again.   Whether you are recovering from your first episode of perinatal depression or you are challenged with the ongoing management of chronic depression, dealing with those unrealistic expectations is vital to our wellbeing.

As a person who now manages chronic depression (quite likely as a result of delayed diagnosis and treatment of my antenatal and postnatal depression), I certainly have these characteristics as part of my temperament and learning to deal with those high expectations is something that will be a life-long challenge for me.

In those days, dealing with a newborn baby – I expected that I would bond and absolutely fall in-love with my baby… I was blindsided (and later grieved the loss) by my traumatic birth and the hospital’s negligence by significantly delaying the opportunity for me to hold my baby post-birth, the breastfeeding problems I experienced and how I was at high risk of developing postnatal depression.  I expected that I would be able to breastfeed well.  I expected that I would find things a lot easier than I did.  I expected that I would be able to cope with everything, despite a strained (and failing) marriage and insufficient support and my mother going into hospital for chemo the same year my baby was born and my marriage dissolving.  I didn’t know where to go for help, but I also expected that I should be able to manage this all on my own without help and I felt that I was failing because I wasn’t coping and it was hard to admit it.

These days, I am well and high-functioning and very often I forget that lurking in the background is a mental illness that I will have for the rest of my life.  I still don’t want to have it.  I would still like to ignore it and pretend it didn’t exist.  I still have these high expectations of myself to achieve this or to meet demands as if I do not have a mental illness that I have to be mindful of.  And then the old “black dog” lingers on the edge of my yard (ironically I have an actual black dog but she’s rather nice and cuddly and has a habit of licking me rather than biting me although she is a puppy and still chews a lot of my son’s toys which is really annoying.)

It’s not about being a victim and letting depression define you – living under the banner of “I can’t” – it’s about being realistic and above all, it’s about being kind to ourselves.  I have chronic depression.  The unrealistic expectations I have of myself to be super-human is ridiculous.

If you want help for the stress or depression/anxiety you are experiencing, please fill in this online form

~ Kristina Paterson (Founder of Mothers Helpers)

The post High Expectations and Depression first appeared on Mothers Helpers.

In the article “The New Parent”, Dawn Gruen recognizes what is termed a “Postpartum Adjustment”. She writes: “With birth comes the transition to parenthood, often referred to as a developmental crisis for the parents. For them, the postpartum period is a time of emotional upheaval including rapid fluctuation and unpredictability of feelings. Everything is different and new, making it very difficult to know what is “normal”.”

Gruen identifies four areas of change that are challenging to both parents in terms of adjustment:

• Identity changes
• Feelings of loss (of your previous life/lifestyle)
• Time and energy changes
• The couple’s relationship changes

The area I want to address today is that of “identity.”

Becoming a mother for the very first time, creates in us a new identity as we take onboard this life-changing role. Quite aside from getting to know our baby and feeling comfortable and confident in having responsibility for this new little life, we are also psychologically coming to terms what we believe it means to be a “good mother”.

In my experience, there are two conflicts that occur. Perhaps it is the same for everyone? First, I have an internal ideal of what it means to be a “good mother”. My ideal may have been formed by a whole range of experiences of motherhood (usually key people in my life that have role-modelled motherhood to me) and how I’ve interpreted them. Internally I have processed my experiences and decided which ones I value and esteem to be like. Second, I have a range of health professionals, friends and family with their own set of ideals about what a “good mother” is and each of them (with good intentions) sharing those with us in the hope to guide us to be a better mother to our child. And let’s not forget the media and various other influences shaping our society’s culture by messages about what it means to be a mother.

The conflict occurs when my ideal (and values) and the guidance I’m receiving from others (based on their values) clashes with reality. The pressure I might place on myself or feel others are putting on me to live up to my (or their) ideals may cause me more harm than if I were to let it go.

Secondly, a conflict occurs when the guidance and advice I am receiving contradicts one another, causing confusion.

In speaking with mothers, the most common expectations and pressure they feel is regarding:

• breastfeeding vs. formula feeding
• keeping the house in order
• how “well” their baby was doing (eg. sleeping, feeding)
• parenting styles including “parentcare”
• staying at home vs. working

Here is what some mums are saying about expectations they had/pressure they felt:

“I had a lot of pressure put on me from my in-laws – they would try to go through [my husband] who would then ‘suggest’ different ways when I wanted to do it another way.

I had comments like ‘we won’t look after her until a bottle is involved’ (as I was breastfeeding) and when [my mother-in-law] would ring up the first thing she would ask every time is “is she sleeping through yet?” even when she was weeks old…!

…Apart from that no other pressure – [except] sometimes in coffee group when [my daughter] was not sleeping through and ALLLLL the other babies were…”

“I think my main expectations I put on myself – and most of them were very unrealistic! I had always intended on being a stay home mum and had the `ideal’ that I would be in my mind. As someone who had trained as a chef, my child was never going to have processed foods, but now some days I have to accept that the only thing she is going to eat is potato sticks. I love my coffee group and they never put pressure or expectations on me as such, but at the beginning I felt awkward going along as they all seemed to be handling every thing so well and my baby had reflux and colic and I had a nightmare starting breastfeeding. As soon as she got into full on cry at coffee group I would just leave.”

“One woman grabbed [my daughter] off me when she was a couple of weeks old and tried showing me how to burp her properly, for one this woman doesn’t have kids and two there wasn’t an issue with burping. Being told that she needs to be given a bottle by some, bf by others, she was too hot and I dressed her too warm, I should have had her in her own room from the beginning, it was all this crap that made me feel inadequate as a mother. I’m much stronger now and if I ever have another I will definitely tell people where to go if they tried that again.”

“I think the pressure was probably from me. Then me worrying how people perceived me and my not coping… I had expected it all to be easy and fall into place. I thought, because younger [daughter] was my 2nd child, it would be easy and all would be sweet as. Um, no! I was so wrong! 6 yrs is a huge gap and you don’t remember it all from first child with a 6 yr gap! Plus older child started being very badly behaved and new baby was very spilly. I did develop PND very severely. It is very different, having 1st child as a single mum and then having 2nd child with a partner and older child. So much more to contend with, so much more expected of you. It was a big shock to the system that things weren’t just easy peesy.”

“I think that I should be able to keep a clean house and have a good nutritious dinner on the table each night, this doesn’t happen all the time and I feel guilty about it. I think its because I’m not earning that I feel like I need to do something for [my husband] so I am “worthy” of being able to stay home while he has to work.”

“I think that my main problems were failing to meet my own expectations of myself as a mother… for one, I fully intended to go back to work full time when [my daughter] was 1, and then realised it wasn’t for me, took me a while to get over ‘abandoning my career’ even though I knew it was the right thing.”

“I also expected to have so much time to have a wonderfully tidy house, be able to exercise every day, cook lovely meals for my family and play with my baby… Okay so maybe I was a tad naive, but I did struggle with the realisation that it just wasn’t/isn’t possible for me to have that perfect tidy house, to exercise every day (I’m too damn tired and sleep deprived) and that cooking is a right horrible experience when you have a tired toddler or crying baby to deal with too!”

“I think a big contributor to PND is the difference between expectations and reality. The expectations I faced [were] generated by me, read stuff about people being able [to] give their baby expressed milk and have a day off, saw Mums getting back into sport with a newborn etc – this didn’t happen for me and the disappointment was crushing.”

“I think also from the stuff I read i got the self expectation that to raise I well adjusted child I had to basically glue myself to her 24/7. Felt massive guilt when she went to her room for sleep so could get some too.”

“I didn’t want to be that mother that hands the baby over to their dad the moment he walked in the door so if I do do that always feel a little guilty about it.”

“Luckily neither my boyfriend or our families have put any pressure on me about anything, but again, if I’m having a bad day I automatically start thinking…’they must think I’m so lazy not being able to do all these things’.”

“First time round I expected and it was expected of me that I would breast feed my baby. The fact that I couldn’t, put me into such a funk. I was in so much physical and emotional pain that when [my daughter] cried for another feed I thought about putting a pillow over her face so I wouldn’t have to put her to the breast. However, because of the pressure I received from midwives, mum, and myself I could see no alternative to breastfeeding. Thankfully one midwife snapped me out of it by telling me it was ok to bottle feed.”

“There is a huge pressure to breastfeed and I feel this is sometimes dangerous for the mental health of new mums.”

“Breastfeeding was the biggest pressure I had to deal with. Knowing all the benefits of breastfeeding, but being in such agony that tears would be streaming down my face while feeding her. The relief when I finally decided to give up and formula feed is indescribable. But it really annoys me that on every tin of formula, and even the MoH pamphlet on formula feeding, there is a ‘breast is best’ warning … just in case I wasn’t already feeling guilty enough!”

“I had a thought now that I’m working a bit and considering putting the kids into childcare. I fully expected that I would be a stay-at-home-mum and would enjoy it and be happy that my kids didn’t have to go into care. But you know what? I love going to work and getting some time out from the kids, its amazing. I really don’t think I’m cut out to be a full-time stay-at-home-mum. I definitely feel guilty about this.”

With these internal and external expectations on mothers, it seems to me that mothers respond in one of three ways:

1. they hold tightly to those ideals and try to live up to them, causing enormous pressure on themselves which can in turn bring tension to the family (whether that’s through fatigue, stress or resentment) or at a cost to their own mental health
2. let go not of the ideals themselves but of their attempt to meet some of them so that they are living more realistically but not without guilt
3. challenging some of the ideals with their reality and embracing “what works for them” as a family

The questions raised are:

“What does it say about me if I ask for help… if I say I can’t cope… if I don’t do everything [on my checklist]?”

“Haven’t I failed my baby if I cannot breastfeed? Failed as a mother if I can’t comfort her or settle her into a routine?”

As a first-time mother, during my pregnancy I made sure that I did everything they told me to do, read everything I could and never ate anything that could ever possibly harm my baby. Prior to his arrival, I scrubbed every inch of the house and made sure every possible item was bought, items laid out in preparation for his coming home. Perhaps there is no coincidence that mothers second, third or fourth time round are far more relaxed during their pregnancy and preparations? Perhaps it’s because they have gone through a process with their first child where they have accepted that nothing is perfect and nothing is ideal or really goes according to plan. Perhaps it’s because they are familiar with the challenges they are likely to face and so their expectations and reality are not at odds? Perhaps they have learned that whatever challenge might arise, they will find the best solution that works for their family. This might involve talking to a range of people – professionals through to family and friends, but ultimately they will arrive at what works for them.

We have our ideals for a reason: we want the best for our baby and for our husband/partner. However, it is simply nottrue that a “good mother always puts herself last.” A good mother factors in her own needs as well as the rest of the family’s. If striving to meet the ideal for her baby/family means that she is carrying stress and guilt and a sense of failure and fatigue and resentment – and ultimately is at a cost of her own personal mental health – then that cost is too great. Not only because of what it does to her, but also what it does to her family.

Perhaps it is true that a “good mother cares for her family…. and also cares for herself.”

I’ll leave you with a quote I really liked from one mother:

“This time around I don’t care what anyone else says we’ll be doing what works for us, after all in the end that’s what I have had to do already and we have a beautiful happy girl, so I must be doing something right.”

The post Expectations on Mothers first appeared on Mothers Helpers.