Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorder coverage on the Diane Rehm Show (NPR)

I want to share some important take-aways from the recent coverage of Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMAD) on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. If you want to listen to the show, click here, or you can read the main points below:

1) According to leading experts, baby blues last about 10 days. If your symptoms persist or become more severe, you are likely experiencing a PMAD. I wish I had known. I kept wishing away my symptoms and convincing myself they would pass.

2) Insomnia is a very common symptom of PMADs and is not normal for new mothers to experience. Chronic insomnia exacerbates anxious and depressive symptoms. My worst symptom of all.

3) Suicide is a leading cause of maternal death. Women are dying.

4) PMADs are the leading cause of childbirth - more common than postpartum hemorrhages yet doctors are not looking for risk factors or screening for PMADs after childbirth. My OB asked if I had experienced anxiety or depression in the past (a large risk factor) and when I answered yes, she said nothing...

5) Researchers are currently looking at a form of genetic testing to determine which women will be at risk for developing a PMAD. Specifically, researchers are looking at the role estrogen plays in at-risk women.

6) If a woman considers her birth experience to be traumatic (subjectively), she is at a higher risk for developing a PMAD. While by medical standards, I didn't have a traumatic birth, in my mind and still today, I believe I did. My epidural was mildly helpful for only half of the final stage of labor. I pushed for 3 hours and 20 minutes. Labor and delivery nurses told me the rule of thumb was to resort to c-section at 3 hours of pushing, simply because a woman no longer has the stamina to push any longer. They let me continue to push because my progress was "substantial." When I held my daughter for the first time all I remember is feeling angry and betrayed. I was in shock of what I had just endured and I couldn't shake the shock for a few days.

7) Placenta encapsulation - placentas are rich in nutrients but the verdict is still out on whether they can protect against PMADs.

Let's keep supporting and educating. This is every one's business.

Beauty in imperfection

When I lived in San Francisco my husband and I would frequent a small, local art gallery just a block from our apartment. It was one of our weekly activities usually stopping in before going out to dinner at one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants.

During one visit a piece caught my husband's eye. It was oil on canvas and I admit after studying it for some time I didn't feel drawn to it quite like my husband did. Soon after that visit he purchased it without me knowing, spending a little more than I probably would have agreed to. Most of his impulsive purchases I admittedly end up liking and in this case, this painting has grown to be my favorite thing hanging on my walls. It is a painting of a colt, slightly submerged in swampy water - a piece in a series of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

After hanging it in our apartment and looking closely at it from time to time, I began to be captured by something beyond the image in the painting. I saw the imperfections, or the so called flaws in the painting. I removed it from the wall and read the insert about the artist and her Flood Series. I learned the flaws were intentional. It was part of the "art". I looked even closer studying every brush stroke, the layered colors, the uneven frame. The imperfections spoke to me.

Part of the insert read:

"These paintings are intentionally imperfect; reconstructed over abandoned canvases, frames built from torn up floorboards. These paintings "rebuild themselves" as objects of beauty despite flaws - a crack in the wood, a nail head showing, a strand of hair caught in the paint."

I remember feeling so connected to the painting in that moment and still do.

I've struggled with perfectionism and the painful anxiety that comes from not feeling like I can control every aspect of my environment. I've fought hard and still do to fix the cracks in my life, to pick out the strands of hair that seemingly don't belong. My anxiety has become so severe at times that I've missed out on the beauty of just living - the raw, untouched, uncontrolled moments when life just happens.

Becoming a mother four months ago has truly tested by ability to let go of my need to control every outcome and be perfect. My baby is unpredictable, always changing, difficult, uncontrollable...but she is perfect.

I hope this blog will help me evolve, heal, and remember that there is beauty in imperfection.

This painting will forever remind me that some of the most beautiful things in life don't have to be perfect. Just let them be. Just accept them for what they are. Maybe then peace will come.