Beyond the Baby Blues

For the first few weeks after Alex arrived I felt great. She appeared to be an easier baby than Owen, I was more relaxed than the first time, and nursing started out pretty well.

But nursing went downhill pretty quickly, I started to really miss spending time with Owen, and for the first time in my life I experienced what was very likely depression.

But it was hard to tell... Was this normal 'baby blues' or was this something more?

Luckily I had friends who I could speak to who have been there. That helped.

I actually tried an anti-depressant but it caused me to have insomnia and that was making me worse than I was before, so I stopped. By that time I was feeling better, we had identified Alex's dairy intolerance, we had fixed her daytime sleep problems and I was through the worst of it.

Postpartum depression is one of those things we don't talk enough about, in my opinion.

13% of women suffer some form of postpartum depression, yet you don't hear about it until you are there - and that is if you are lucky. Many woman suffer alone.

I just read an article about some research that attempted to predict those women at risk of postpartum depression. Not surprisingly, they found the extent of social support for the mother, prior psychiatric problems in the family, and emotional changes during the birth to be risk factors.

They also found two 'protection factors': age (the older the woman the lower her chance of depression), and whether or not a woman has worked during pregnancy (which reduces the risk).

Hopefully further research will lead to a better understanding of why some women are affected and others are not, and more importantly what can be done to reduce its impact.