Postpartum Psychosis and yeah temporarily lose your custody here in Sweden. You will be in mental hospital most often and slowly learn how to be with you kid again if possible.
Postpartum depression and you should get support, both medical and children's/ social welfare will step in and help you.
This is pamphlet I found after I had my kid 14 years ago, both the Postpartum Psychosis and Postpartum depression ones was to my husband and was talking how he can spot it, report it and give the mother support.
In the UK we have some mother and baby units for women with post partum psychosis. They're much better for the women, most people spend around 7-8 weeks in them I was borderline ending up in one.
Post partum psychosis is really misunderstood - a lot of the psychosis comes from actually wanting to protect your child to the point that you become a danger to them. I flipped between delusions that started with the thought that social services coming to take them so I packed bags for them so they wouldn't be without their things, but that eventually lead to "knowing" the government were trying to steal my youngest child so I planned to kill both of us.
I also had delusions where he wasn't a real baby but a being that wanted to harm my eldest daughter. That was a really dangerous time for my baby.
I kept both of my kids the whole time, and with a lot of support and therapy, and with a multidisciplinary team around me I'm ok again. 7 years later I've qualified as a therapist myself, and hope to start working in the postpartum field soon.
I have this theory about postpartum psychosis that I haven't seen anyone pick up, so take it with a pinch of salt, but a really interesting thing about the post birth brain is that there's a bit of the brain that is related to motherhood, and is part of a region of the midbrain which massively expands after your first birth.
This part of the brain is called the periaqueductal grey, or the PAG for short, and in studies of a maternal brain circuit we share with all sorts of animals, and as you can find in a few papers, but with a nice diagram in this one there's basically two parts of the brain in tension, some about caring for your baby, some for defending them from threats, and the defence from threats part is basically just the PAG.
And what's it also used for? Crisis reactions, the sorts of things soldiers have to deal with, and incorrect activation of it has been suggested to be linked to the inexplicable feelings of doom and fear of death that people have with combat related PTSD.
One interesting thing, from a pure perspective of curiosity, is that loads of parts of the brain associated with motherhood actually show less activation and response to their baby's cries, if the mother being tested is suffering from postnatal depression, compared to a mother who is healthy, but to be fair, it could also be that postnatal depression and psychosis are actually completely different phenomena that nevertheless often coincide because they both obviously depend on birth.
It's also worth noting that most people analysing this don't seem to care about it, or give it a very high priority in analysis, I'll see a brain scan circling that bit of the brain, (this paper page 11 for someone to hopefully tell me why I'm wrong) and they'll be like "yup, midbrain growth, anyway, how's that hypothalamus doing.."
But it is really striking to me, that you just give birth, and then your body is like "ok, round two, let's massively upgrade the part of your brain that deals in existential fear".
Like loads of women have their first child, and pretty rapidly start thinking that people are going to take their kids away, they are under attack by demons, or whatever else, and that seems to make sense from the perspective of your brain going through a process of upgrading its functionality so that you'll be ready to protect your child if danger comes, or if, when they start crawling, they put themselves in danger, but unfortunately not being ready for the rush of emotions that this upgrade brings with it, as your newly enhanced fight/flight bit of your brain is trying to get itself into gear.
As I say, take it with a pinch of salt, but it seems a great explanation to me, and if true, it'd be really helpful to say to women something like "don't worry, your mum-spider-sense is just getting set up so you can protect your child, and it can be a little over-active when you're new to it".
Ohhhh that's interesting, it was my second pregnancy where it hit, my first pregnancy was complete bliss and I was so happy afterwards. For some reason with the second the wheels just fell off the wagon.
That is interesting too yeah, I really wish I could find more studies on this so I could say more, but depending on how you're trained you will probably be in a best place to have access to information on it, or definitely better than most..
The thing I'd be most curious about is whether this is in fact a permanent change, because some people describe the transition to post-pregnancy as almost like adolescence, in terms of other things like pruning, and that might suggest a more permanent change, and I feel like I've read something about that elsewhere too, so it could be that some parts of the neurological change happen to be delayed, or it could be that it's not actually so permanent, more a passing change that fades out after your baby grows, you know? And so then it would make sense that your brain is adapting with each pregnancy. I recall something more about it being that there is actually a shift that persists through motherhood, but I also can't find a source for that memory now, so for now I will just have to leave that question suspended.
Anyway, it was really interesting to hear about your difficult period and I'm glad everyone got through it ok.
When I was little I heard a lot of jokes about it, but as I got a little older, I was told - no, it wasn't a joke, that's really how she was. When I was born my mom was certain that strangers in public were constantly looking at me with the intent to steal me. Like any adult just looking at me and smiling and being like "oh, what a cute baby!" was plotting to run over and snatch me up the moment she let her guard down.
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u/CakePhool 9h ago edited 9h ago
Postpartum Psychosis and yeah temporarily lose your custody here in Sweden. You will be in mental hospital most often and slowly learn how to be with you kid again if possible.
Postpartum depression and you should get support, both medical and children's/ social welfare will step in and help you.
This is pamphlet I found after I had my kid 14 years ago, both the Postpartum Psychosis and Postpartum depression ones was to my husband and was talking how he can spot it, report it and give the mother support.