A Mother's Nightmare
Two brave women share details of their heartbreaking battle with postpartum depression.
Katherine Stone remembers the moment as if it were yesterday— the moment that postpartum depression turned her once normal world upside down. While burping her infant son, a sudden, disturbing thought entered her head, “What if I smothered him with this cloth?”
Soon, similar intrusive thoughts began to plague her constantly in the form of equally horrifying scenarios such as “What if I drop him down the stairs?” or “What if I drown him in the bathtub?”
“Even as I was having all these thoughts, there was still a rational part of me that was saying, ‘What the heck is going on here?’” says Stone. “I have a fabulous life, a wonderful husband and no history of mental illness, so why is this happening to me?”
Devastated and scared, Stone convinced herself that she had lost her mind, and was simply unfit to be a mother. For weeks she told no one, including her husband, what she was going through. She became obsessed with caring for her baby, constantly washing bottles, folding clothes and rearranging supplies, all in an attempt to alleviate the constant, nagging guilt that was slowly consuming her. She became so obsessed that she barely ate or slept and cried constantly, all the while reassuring herself that it had to be her hormones. Stone was so certain that her son would never love her that she made it a point never to be left alone with him.
Not once did it cross her mind that what was happening to her was postpartum depression.
“In childbirth class and even at the hospital after I gave birth, they just sort of glossed over the whole issue of postpartum depression, Stone says, “kind of like, ‘oh, don’t worry, it’s rare, so there’s no way you’ll get it.’”
Fortunately, Stone knew this was not something that would just go away on its own and she sought the help of a therapist who immediately diagnosed her with postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder, a form of postpartum depression.
“I just remember the shame I felt as I told her about the thoughts I’d been having,” Stone says. “I was sure she would call the police and I’d be locked up and never see my family again. “When she gave me her diagnosis, I remember breathing a sigh of relief, because even though there was still something wrong with me, at least it was something recognizable that I could put a name to.”
Today, postpartum depression has become a name that many people recognize, occurring in one out of eight women who give birth. Not to be confused with “baby blues,” which are temporary feelings of being overwhelmed or unprepared about motherhood, postpartum depression is a mental disorder that can be brought on by both biological as well as social factors during and after giving birth. Although labor brings on a rapid shift in hormones, causing most women to experience at least some form of anxiety or sadness temporarily, postpartum depression brings forth much stronger feelings, such as disconnect from your child, invasive, disturbing thoughts and, in some cases, thoughts of suicide that occur for weeks or even months at a time.
Some risk factors for postpartum depression include a history of mental illness, lack of a good social support system and traumatic or stressful events before or during the pregnancy, such as difficulty conceiving or complications with the child during and after birth.
Susan Dowd Stone, president of Postpartum Support International, says she feels there are many vulnerabilities during birth that can and have contributed to postpartum depression (PPD).
“I think most women have this picture in their head that everything will go exactly according to plan, and unfortunately many times, this is just not the case,” says Susan. “Your regular physician may not be there for some reason. The umbilical cord could wrap around the baby’s neck or they could have a weak heartbeat. You could lose a lot of blood or the baby could be breeched and require a C-section; you just never know. Just because giving birth is a natural process, it doesn’t mean it still can’t be traumatic for a woman to go through.”
Molly Padulo, who has also suffered from PPD and is now the executive director of Baby Blues Connection, knows all too well just how traumatizing it can be.
“From the minute I gave birth, I wanted to be mothered,” she says. “I wanted someone to take me in their arms and hold me and tell me I was going to get through this, and when no one did, anxiety began to set in. I felt completely panicked at the thought that I had a child and was completely unprepared for the future.”
About 12 hours after giving birth to her son, Padulo’s anxiety began to worsen, and soon after, the gruesome images began.
“All of a sudden I became acutely aware of everything evil in the world,” she says. “It got so bad that I couldn’t even look at my son without feeling this incredible grief about how I was going to protect him from everything and anything the world could possibly throw at me. Every day, I’d have these awful images running through my head about all the terrible things that could possibly happen to a child, like getting hit by a car, sexual abuse— awful, awful things. At one point I was only getting between ten and 15 hours of sleep a week, but everyone just assumed I was fine, because I was still able to handle the day-to-day tasks like cooking and cleaning. In reality though, I was literally banging my head against the wall just to stop the voices and images running through my head.”
As time went on and her depression worsened, Padulo’s panic turned to irritability and rage, in the form of invasive thoughts.
“He would start to cry incessantly, and I would just think to myself, what if I just threw him out the window?” Padulo reveals. “Some nights his cries would grate right through me and I’d just lie in bed thinking, ‘I’m not going to you, I don’t even want to touch you.’ It got to the point where I felt so guilty that I would beg my husband to leave me, because I didn’t feel like I deserved him or my child.”
One of the biggest factors that Padulo believes contributed to her depression was the absence of a good support system.
“No one was there to say to me, ‘Hey, I’ll take the baby, why don’t you go take a nap, and relax?’ which in reality, was exactly what I needed. Instead, I felt judgment from every outlet I went to. People would say, ‘You have this beautiful, healthy baby and all you do is mope around all day, what’s wrong with you?’ which only made me feel like more of a monster.”
Dr. Alexis E. Menken, a clinical women’s psychologist, agrees that one of the best things a new mother can do for herself and her mental health is to develop her own “mommy network,” or social support system before even giving birth.
“Mothers should not try to go it alone,” says Menken. “Contrary to popular belief, it is not a good thing for a woman to be alone with her baby 24/7. Family and friends need to step in and give them a break, and not just so they can go wash dishes or do laundry, but so they can go do something that’s just for them, like take a hot bath or read a book— really relax. No woman should feel like they have to do it all— all of the time.”
Despite the fact that PPD is so prevalent in today’s society, there are still many people who either know very little about it or harbor extreme misconceptions about what it really is. According to Stone, one of the most common misconceptions is that postpartum depression is the same as postpartum psychosis.
“So many people don’t realize that postpartum psychosis is a completely separate illness, that in reality, only affects 0.1 percent of women,” says Stone. “They think it’s comparable to postpartum depression, when it is really an entirely different disease. Saying they’re the same would be like saying schizophrenia is the same as depression. This misconception is truly where a lot of the stigma of postpartum depression comes from, because as soon as a woman says she’s having feelings of disconnect from her child or she’s unhappy, people automatically think of Andrea Yates and assume it means she will hurt her baby, which is simply not the case.”
Jane Honikman, founder of Postpartum Support International (PSI), believes this is why postpartum support groups are so important for women to know about.
“I started PSI because I wanted women to have a place to go when they realized something wasn’t right, without being judged. In our society, we have created such a stigma around mental illness and at the same time we’ve built up these myths about how easy it is to be a parent, so that mothers think it must be something they’re doing wrong if everything isn’t going absolutely perfect and according to plan, which is complete nonsense. No matter how hard it is, there is no reason to be miserable, and if a mother is feeling anything less than wonderful about her child, then that is just not good enough. Every mother and her child deserve a chance to be happy”
Kara Giannecchini is an assistant editor.