Prenatal Mental Health Check-In

So it's December....which means shorter hours of sunshine, cloudy days, snow and cold (at least here in Ontario).

Mental health in general during the winter is a challenge thing. The environmental factors that impact mental health are at a massive low in the winter months; when the days are dreary, we feel that in our bodies and minds.

Now is a great time to check in with your mental health status during pregnancy before the stress of the holidays hit.

How are you feeling?

Be honest here. Let down your guard and be honest. It's ok to say that you're not enjoying every moment of pregnancy. It's ok they be absolutely euphoric about pregnancy and you upcoming birth.

No matter how you are feeling.....

it. is. ok.

Take a few minutes to find your breath today. If you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, anticipating a stressful holiday season. Or if you're quickly approaching birth and time seems to be flying by you.

After you've found you breath and have felt your heart slow, start planning out some self care activities to carry you through the most stressful time of year. Pregnancy itself is stressful, add in the holidays and family dynamics, potential for judgement and it's easy to see how your mental health can become compromised and difficult to manage.

However you are feeling, today and in the coming weeks, it is ok.

Acknowledge it and find your breath. Find a way to slow the pace of your heart. Check in with yourself every so often throughout your pregnancy, especially during the winter, and be honest.

xoxo
Shannon

Understanding Postpartum Depression

Postpartum depression is one of those things that that feels like it can only happen to someone else, until it happens to you.

Imagine yourself being caught in a rainstorm. All of a sudden, that skies part and the sun is shining and for a brief moment, it looks as though the worst is over.

Then it starts raining again, only this time it's coming sideways and so hard that it causes you to lose your balance and you fall....but never seem to stop falling.

The sun shines again, soon followed by the rain, a little thunder, maybe some hail and a great deal of wind.

Rinse
Repeat

Postpartum depression is a vicious cycle of feeling like things are great, then feeling like your entire world is crumbling and you aren't sure why. You don't recognize yourself. You doubt yourself. You wonder if your children would be better off with someone else.

There are moments of hope and moments of despair. Moments of happy and moments of sad.

All of these moments, packed into a hormonally charged postpartum transition that can take years to navigate.

Until it happens, it feels like a far fetched idea that has a huge stigma of being wrong or bad. Until it happens, it seems like that thing that can't possibly happen to you because you've got your shit together.

Until it happens.

And it happens. And you fall. And you don't know how you're ever going to get up.

But you do.

And the sun shines and there comes a day where you feel like that storm is never going to come again because you're just not going to let it.

Postpartum depression is scary and it's real. It presents itself in so many different forms from panic attacks to anxiety, from paranoia to rage. From isolation to extreme euphoria and even psychosis.

If you're feeling that things just aren't quite right and you can't recognize yourself or you feel that storm keeps coming, there is help. Lean on your supports and know that there people out there that want to see you dominate and be an incredible parent.

It doesn't define you and it doesn't own you.

That storm will end and the sun will shine.

xoxo
Shannon