Integrare Wellness

Today is World Maternal Mental Health Day 🌎
🔵 Worldwide, 1 in 5 women experience a perinatal mental health disorder (PMHD) during pregnancy or postpartum.
🔵 Estimates are that 7 in 10 women downplay or hide their symptoms.
🔵 Perinatal mood disorders affect the entire family, and dads, partners, and non-birthing parents are also likely to experience a PMHD when the mother or birthing parent is also experiencing one.
🔵 It is estimated that 20-25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth, which increases the risk of experiencing a PMHD.

You are not alone. You are not to blame. With help, you WILL be well 💙 Get help now ⤵️
📱 Call or text the PSI HelpLine at 800-944-4773. You never need a diagnosis to ask for help.
💻 Visit Postpartum.net for free support programs and perinatal mental health resources.

"Ten years ago, pregnant with my first child, I joined all of the online postpartum and parenting communities. Day after day, I saw the same posts: Women sharing their exhaustion, their demoralization, their physical suffering from childbirth. They got up repeatedly with babies while husbands slept. They were so tired they couldn’t see or think straight. They hated their bodies. They were in pain. The solution was so very obvious. If their husbands would get up with the baby half the time, deign to clean the house, pretend to care about their partners’ birth experiences, then these poor women could finally get some rest and begin healing.

Almost no one ever suggested this. If you’ve ever been in one of these groups, you know already the response:

“Have you been screened for postpartum depression?”

Now I’m 42. I’m a nursing mother, so I’m still in those groups, but I’m also in groups for older mothers. The core problem remains the same: lazy men who don’t love their partners or tend to their needs. The manifestation is different.

Now women are angry at their partners. They don’t want to have s*x. They feel unfulfilled. They’re exhausted. They live with chronic pain. Their lives are the very predictable, obvious results of serving other people for years without a break. They need support. Instead, they’re now told that maybe it’s perimenopause."

https://zawn.substack.com/publish/post/192842262

I see this so often from moms in groups. All of the qualities that make us successful in the work world conspire to work against us with the massive adjustment of the postpartum period. The more you consider yourself to be a perfectionist or type A, the more challenging the chaos of the unpredictable newborn days can feel. credit