Trigger Warning When you spend your entire career caring for pregnant patients and newborns, there is this expectation, both of yourself and from others, that the transition to motherhood will be easy. I knew what to expect, from a medical perspective, from pregnancy through delivery. I had cared for hundreds of families for almost a

We Are 1 in 5

Trigger Warning: postpartum psychosis, hallucinations, infanticide Mothers suffering from postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder (PPOCD) will be terrified of their disturbing thoughts, while those with postpartum psychosis (PPP) won’t. Oversimplifications like these can be found in articles and TikToks as though they are verses of perinatal gospel. More concerningly, they can even be heard at perinatal mental

Por: Geraldine Kuphal, LMFT, PMH-C La llegada de un bebé transforma la vida de las mamás de una manera profunda, y aunque la alegría de ser madre es inmensa, también surgen una serie de preocupaciones que pueden despertar ansiedad. Como psicóloga clínica especializada en salud mental perinatal, me encuentro con muchas mamás que se preguntan:

By Sharon Berger, IBCLC, RN When we’re breastfeeding, there’s a surge of oxytocin in our bloodstream, and it’s the high level of this chemical that helps to heighten our love and connection with our baby. But what happens when someone has the opposite experience during breastfeeding? Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER) is a condition that

by By Julia Alzoubaidi, Ph.D, Brooke Laufer, Psy.D., Hajara Kutty, and Karen Wachenheim Tragedies involving mothers and their children are both gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. It goes against human nature for a mother to take the lives of her children and herself, yet such tragedies continue to happen. What is most unfortunate, however, is that in