Sheinina West: Welcome to Mom Lounge TV. I am your host Sheinina West, and today our guest on the program is Dr. Victoria Hendrick. She is a famed Postpartum Depression doctor. You may have seen around Dr. Phil she is a author of two published books and a professor at UCLA. Welcome.
Victoria Hendrick: Thank you for having me.
Sheinina West: Today I would like to speak about the transition between women to motherhood and how being a mother you always face with sleep deformation, waking, and of course there is a hormonal imbalance. As I understand there is a peak in hormonal imbalance that happens from when a mother gives birth. And having a daughter myself, and the crying baby, and to me it's a no wonder a woman would feel depress and overwhelm emotionally.
I would like to ask you, how common depression is after pregnancy?
Victoria Hendrick: Depression after pregnancy is really very common, and it's way that you are addressing this in your program, because a lot of women need to know how common it is to dispel the myth, that motherhood is a time of happiness, and peace and that they should be in love with their baby right away and not that they are feeling depressed there is something wrong with them. A lot of women have that feeling of guilt, that there is something wrong with them because they are feeling depressed.
But the reality is, a good 15 to 25% of new mothers experience depression and not just mood changes but clinical depression, and the rate goes up even higher to 50 and even 75% among women you have had previous histories of clinical depression.
Sheinina West: When you go from being a women to having your child, and then becoming a mother suddenly what you engage with your friends are different. They no longer can relate to you if they are not mothers themselves. They end up really coming on to a new life of making new friend, and I think that in itself can be overwhelming, just feeling like your identity is lost. What you have established yourself, the feel is lost and now it's overwhelming not only you have to reestablish who you are as person with your child and then create this whole new community of mothers around you.
Victoria Hendrick: That's very true you do experience in the postpartum of -- tendency to become isolated from your previous life. In fact, there have been some people who describe postpartum depression as being a grieving process for your life of where the baby was born for that self, that pre-mom self.
Sheinina West: Right.
Victoria Hendrick: It's like that part of you has died and there is a new you as the mother.
Sheinina West: I understand, that there is a great difference between the baby blues and postpartum depression. Maybe you would mind clarifying with women or mothers the difference between the two.
Victoria Hendrick: Yeah, it's an important distinction. Baby blues are very common and most women have them to some extent. It's part of the hormonal shift that are happened in the first seven to ten days after the birth of the child, the traumatic hormonal shifts. And women feel moody, it feels very much like a PMScy type of feeling, where women will say they are not really feeling depress they just feel fragile. They cry for no reason, they get upset for no reason, and women who often say to me it feels biological to them.
But that should resolve by two weeks postpartum, if it hasn't then we get concerned that it might be going into postpartum depression which is more severe, and women are genuinely depressed all the time. The definition of postpartum depression is at least two weeks straight of being depressed.
Sheinina West: Is there a concern in postpartum depression that the children suffer?
Victoria Hendrick: Absolutely, in fact my original interest in this topic was because of the impact on children. The effect on children it is so traumatic that it's one of the reason, it's really important for women to address this, to recognize this and to get help.
Children of women who have been depressed are much more likely to have insecure attachment with the mother, as they get older they don't do as well in school. They are more likely to be aggressive. They suffer more problems with self esteem.
Sheinina West: What are the common symptoms of depression?
Victoria Hendrick: The common symptoms for depression in new mothers are actually a little different than they are for depression in general. But the most common symptoms are what we called anhedonia. It means a lack of interest in things. Women might have to liked to going out with her friends, or going to the movies, or watching something on TV, and none of those things are interesting to her anymore. Nothing brings her joy, not even her baby brings her joy.
Poor concentration, difficult in sleeping even when the baby is sleeping, they can't sleep, changes in appetite they can go either way whether eating less or they are hungry all the time. When it gets really bad, there can be thoughts that they just want to die. And one of the concerns for me is the psychiatrist is when a women, a new mother is experiencing a thought to suicide, it's doubly alarming because we worry not only about the mother, but mothers who commit suicide often take the child with them.
Sheinina West: That's absolutely frightening. Do you find that women face any sort of insecurity of really opening themselves up and being honest that they are depressed and being looked at differently?
Victoria Hendrick: There is a lot of shame, of women feeling there is something wrong with them as mothers that they are feeling depressed, they have this beautiful baby, and yet they are feeling depressed and they not excited about it.
Sheinina West: You are a mother as well. You have two sons, and I would like to ask you, if you don't mind, if you have experienced depression?
Victoria Hendrick: I did experience some depression after the birth of my first son. I have two boys, and the first two months I thought, oh, everything is going so smoothly, and I am loving this and I thought I am out of the woods. By the time I got to about five months postpartum though, I began to really feel depressed, and not only depressed but I have an obsessional quality, that everything have to be very perfect and neat. And that's actually one of the things you do see with a postpartum depression is an obsessional quality to these depressions. Where no one can help, can touch the baby or hold the baby except the mom. The mom is always worrying about the baby's hygiene and the house isn't clean enough and there is that very distinct quality to postpartum depression of having these, like obsessive compulsive qualities. So it reminded me when I had this experience that there is a second peak of postpartum depression.
The first is in the first four to six weeks after the baby is born but there is another peak in the risk of depression about five to six months postpartum when women start to feel just really burnt out.
Sheinina West: Right. Well, I understand that I do have have the same. How is the the postpartum depression treated?
Victoria Hendrick: There are number of ways for treating postpartum depression for milder forms of depressions. The best is to be in a support group with other mothers. I am a strong believer that being in a group with other women and seeing how common the experience is, is incredibly therapeutic, because women start realizing that there is nothing odd or abnormal about them. That they are really part of a large number of women, who experience the same thing.
Just in times when depression gets really severe which luckily is not the majority of the time. But you never know there are occasions when women will get into a really severe depression. It's important to know that anti-depressant medications can be really helpful. A lot of mothers ask me is it okay to breastfeed if they are taking an antidepressant. There are so much data now on the safety of certain antidepressant, that it's no longer a reason to deprive a baby of the breastfeeding because that's the best thing for the baby, and the mom can still get the treatment which ultimately is also the best thing for the baby to h
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