Looking back at her life, Angie could see that she typified the perfect candidate for postpartum depression. In the months prior to becoming pregnant, and she had been promoted in her job, but her boss had also taken leave and she was expected to take on a large part of his workload.
In addition, her parents were having marital problems. When she was three months pregnant she received a hysterical phone call from her mother demanding that she come immediately to the family home as her father was threatening to leave and had also hidden his heart medication tablets in an attempt to frighten Angie’s mother.
Although the marriage survived, the turmoil between her parents smoldered on, erupting every month or so into a full-scale argument. One month before the birth of her child, Angie’s mother was admitted to hospital with chest pains. Although she had not had a heart attack, the doctor described the pain as being due to stress. At this time, Angie’s father refused to visit her mother in hospital, thus causing further distress in the family.
When her parents came to visit her on the day of her son’s birth, Angie’s parents had clearly had an argument and were not speaking to each other. Thus the atmosphere in the hospital room where Angie held her tiny baby for the first time was not a happy one.
On the day that Angie brought her son home she burst into tears within minutes of entering the home. Neither she nor her husband could work out what the problem was. So she dismissed it and carried on.
Within four weeks the symptoms of postpartum depression were apparent, but as this was their first child neither Angie nor her husband realized that there was something terribly wrong. Angie became exhausted from the chronic lack of sleep, she started crying uncontrollably for no reason, she became increasingly anxious and began having panic attacks in large shopping centers. Due to the increasing stress caused by the postpartum depression, her milk supply lessened. This caused even further problems as her hungry son screamed for food that Angie could not supply.
In the next article we will look at how Angie dealt with and recovered from her postpartum depression.
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