Gentle First Year: The Essential Guide to Mother and Baby Wellbeing in the First Twelve Months. Karen MacLeod Swan
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those mothers who reported a love-at-first-sight reaction will tell you that however powerful that thunderbolt, their love has grown infinitely deeper with the years. Initial ambivalence doesn’t signify lack of maternal feeling – or, as some fear, psychosis – but rather a hormonal flux.
During your pregnancy, practically everything that can be measured and evaluated is recorded – blood pressure, sugar levels, volume of amniotic waters, size of the baby’s tummy, the size of the fundus (your tummy!). And yet the catalyst for all this activity is the dramatic hormone change. During pregnancy, levels of the hormone oestrogen from the baby’s placenta are 300 times higher than normal, while progesterone and relaxin levels are 30 times higher. During birth your body is flooded with oxytocin from your own hypothalamus and pituitary gland. After giving birth, the oestrogen and progesterone ebb away to allow for the greater flow of prolactin from your pituitary gland. The rigours of pregnancy and birth are small beer compared to these rocking hormone changes, so it’s little wonder if you feel emotionally fragile.
Put frankly, it takes time to feel normal, and the immediate postnatal phase should come with a mental health warning! Fortunately, the mental and emotional aspect of birthing is becoming more understood. At antenatal classes, parents are told to expect the baby blues coming along with the milk, and any residual stigma or taboo surrounding postnatal depression has disappeared as we’ve learnt more about it. Postnatal depression does not mean a maternal vacuum – it’s just chemistry.
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT BABY BLUES?
Well, the first step is recognizing the symptoms and asking for help. In the first week after birth, extreme tiredness, apathy about the baby, loss of appetite, anxiety, insomnia, weepiness or desperation are all indicators of the baby blues and incredibly common. Fifty to eighty per cent of mothers experience one, or a range, of these emotions, so it’s more likely that you will too. The cause is straightforward: the milk let-down hormone, prolactin, is present in ever increasing levels during pregnancy but surges in greater quantities once the main placental hormones – oestrogen and progesterone – have mostly been excreted after the birth of the baby and the expulsion of the placenta. This means a massive drop of oestrogen and circulating progesterone as well. This is like a hormonal cold turkey for the body and it takes a couple of days to readjust. Medically, it has become common practice to treat postnatal depression with a natural form of progesterone in large doses. I have found that rose otto oil massage really helps too, mostly because it is highly oestrogenic and is a safe source of plant oestrogens.
tips for beating the baby blues
I ask mothers to look in the mirror every morning and say out loud to themselves: ‘I love my life’ several times, maybe even 30 times! This feels strange initially but after a few days the programming kicks in and you really will feel better about your life. For milder cases of depression, I also encourage my mothers to sing – yes, really. To begin with, they often have to force themselves, as singing – like smiling – is naturally joyous. But it’s a case of ‘fake it till you make it’. The joy that comes from this small gesture is deeply underestimated and irrepressible – and your baby will love it too.
Postnatal Depression
Postnatal depression isn’t quite so textbook as the baby blues. It can come on at any time up to a year after the baby is born. Many mothers feel more depressed at four to five months than in the first week, as the immediate post-birth euphoria is attributed to the endorphins that are released in great quantities during the birth process. Once the endorphin levels drop, the broken nights take their toll. Breastfeeding depletes the mother’s fragile energy reserves, and the days can easily settle into a tedious, unending schedule of nappy changes, naps and feeds. This routine can be particularly tough on career-minded mothers.
Postnatal depression (PND) affects 15 per cent of mothers, which is still statistically significant. Symptoms include those of the baby blues (see previous page), compounded with:
feelings of inadequacy
despondency
panic
guilt
mania
no desire to breastfeed
not caring about your appearance
exhaustion
headaches
chest pains
Serious cases of PND are called postpartum psychosis and are fortunately rare (only one to two per cent of mothers are affected). Symptoms include severe mood swings and in some cases suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming the baby. The mother may also experience hallucinations or confusion.
PND is an imbalance of the brain chemistry, but I always reassure my mothers that their hearts are still beating for their baby. An instant tonic, which can really elevate your mood, is an aromatherapy massage with rose otto essential oil. This contains many oestrogenic substances and is as therapeutic as it is luxurious. Rose otto works like a cerebral ‘upper’ to bridge the gap when hormone levels fluctuate, and it can have astounding results (see case history, Case History: Rose Otto Oil Massage and Postnatal Depression). Remember, communication can happen in many ways, and if conversation about your feelings is just too confrontational, allowing yourself to be massaged and touched will keep you connected to others and stop you withdrawing into yourself.
After the birth, fathers who have learnt creative healing techniques in pregnancy can use their skills and treat the mother to postnatal treatments. This will give the father a wonderful opportunity to maintain close physical contact with the mother when she needs physical and emotional comfort.
note
In all cases of post-birth blues, a good homeopath will help you find the appropriate remedies to help you work through your hormones and find your true emotions.
Case History: Rose Otto Oil Massage and Postnatal Depression
I remember very clearly a mother who was referred to me with clinical postnatal depression. She had stopped breastfeeding, had a very offhand attitude towards the baby, who was 10 days old, and her mother and husband had sought professional help when she had aggressively flung the baby onto the bed. The consulting psychiatrist wanted to hospitalize her when she was brought to me. I prescribed an aromatherapy massage with a massive dose of rose otto oil, much more than I would normally recommend. (Rose otto holds a higher concentration of the medicinal fractions of the rose oil.) She received a total body massage for a full hour, followed by some reflexology. I worked really intensively on relaxing her and making her feel cared for. The result was almost instant – even by the end of that first session, her demeanour changed and she seemed more interested in the baby, although she still wasn’t allowed to handle him.
I asked her to come back every other day, and by the third session she had improved so much that she resumed breastfeeding under supervision. Her husband had taken a month off work to deal with the domestic crisis but was able to return after just over a week. Her mother stayed with her during the day so that the new mother felt supported, which gave her an ability to cope. I advised her to carry on daily with the rose otto massage (although at lower dosages) – either as self-massage or administered by her husband – to keep her mood lifted. And it worked – she never needed to come back to me again.
rose otto oil self-massage
1 Blend ten drops of rose otto oil into 20ml of base oil such as extra virgin olive oil or sweet almond oil.
2 Firmly apply to the arms and legs in long downwards strokes. 3 Apply to the upper half of the torso in an upwards direction in small clockwise circles, draining the tissue fluids over the neck and upper chest into the triangular area above the collarbone. (For those of you who have followed the gentle birth method, this massage follows the creative healing lines of drainage described there.)
4 The abdominal area is massaged in an upwards direction and the waist swept from the periphery to the central areas.
5 Repeat daily. Do not wash off the oil for at least four hours.