Postpartum depression is the norm, just go with it -and- Our stories are evidence

Thinking aloud with my keyboard

I was reading a thread on Facebook's Born Naturally group that was started by a woman who is concerned that her midwives are coaching her to prepare for postpartum depression (PPD):

"My family and midwife support team have been telling me/ preparing me for postpartum depression (due to history of depression, and current stress in the marriage). I also feel like I'm being set up for failure in a way. Is there a way to prepare for the *possibility* of ppd, while not assuming that I'll be a victim of it, which, in and of itself is already causing it? Any advice, thoughts?"-Anonymous 

My initial reaction was heartache for this woman, what a daunting place to be in. As I read the 60+ comments that were left, it appears she is not alone in being told that she is likely to experience PPD. In fact one woman wrote:

"PPD is just part of the process. Go with the thought that being depressed for a few weeks is the norm."

Watchoo talkin' about Willis?

Whoa! At first blush I was shocked, how does someone who owns/operates a yoga studio embrace a position like that (her studio name was in her profile picture - also note the pun). But after reading all the comments and thinking about the responses I've received from folks since starting the blog, yea, it's not hard to believe that PPD is just what you do after you have a baby.

How do we fix that?! We need to fix this.

I wish I had more information to share with this woman, with all women, about mitigating PPD in a natural, loving, and supportive way. Reserving prescription medications for those cases where food, love, and warmth can't get in, or maybe aren't available (several women suggested promptly starting medication - which is a good suggestion in some cases I'm sure).

Our Stories are Evidence

I would like to welcome you to think about your own postpartum experience, if you've had one, or you're gearing up for one, and consider your willingness to share your experience. I'm going to set up a section of the website I'm building that will make room for women and their families to share their stories. I want to hear some Postpartum Celebration stories, we've gotta know what works, something to back up the Grandmother Medicine! I also want to create space for women to share their struggle. In the past week I've been really moved by the notes and posts I've received from women with cautionary tales. This is important stuff, let's have a dialogue.

Sidenote for Science

I understand that a lot of folks dislike anecdotal evidence. Me, I love it! In fact, in 2011 I was on a panel with two of the world's foremost authorities on healthcare IT (Pattern Languages of Health - Tom Munnecke, Rick Marshall, and Alesha Adamson). I talked about the need to be able to wrap evidence based medicine around the stories we tell. Just because the Medical Model doesn't have a checkbox for binding bellies and meditation doesn't make it's worthless. Our stories are important!

On that note, here's something else exciting: Aetna's CEO Embraces Alternative Medicine (there's a 3m video of him speaking on this at the Forbes link above). For those that don't know, Aetna is the 3rd largest health insurer in the U.S.. This is a big deal.

Upcoming Topics

• How to Grow a Postpartum Care Team and When You've Gotta Prune It 
• How to Eat a Placenta or Placenta Encapsulation - coz you're frackin crazy if you think I'm going to eat that
• Buying Organic and Minimizing Waste or My Fascination With Homemade Tushie Wipes (I even have a crock pot for keeping them warm, I'm truly geeked out on this)

I welcome your thoughts and comments regarding things you'd like me to focus on. And would be delighted if you followed my blog.

Love,

.a

Bringing Traditional Chinese Medicine and My Grandmother's Medicine to the Mix

I've changed the name of the blog and added a description to include some of the other healing modalities I will use during my postpartum celebration. While the books I'm working from are Ayurvedic, I have leveraged Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Korean folk medicine all my life. You see, I am hapa - that is a Hawaiian term that means mixed, so you would say that I'm a hapa-Korean or hapa-hangook, the other half being white. My mother and grandmother brought their very old, pre-industrial Korea medicine to the U.S. with them, and as a child I was nurtured (I used to say tortured, right up until about 2 minutes ago) with various herbs, poultices, and animal based concoctions (I still shudder). I like to refer to this as "My Grandmother's Medicine." Sounds romantic. I started to explore TCM in my late teens since I had left home and no longer had access to grandmother's medicine and really didn't know how to translate it into something I could ask for. In the early 90's I would sit on a step ladder at Powell's City of Books and learn all kinds of things about TCM in a single afternoon. Which reminds me, I did the same thing with herbology and naturopathy - read texts at the book store I couldn't afford to buy. Thanks, Powells!

Summer Collier of Green Leaf Acupuncture is my acupuncture doctor and I was happy to be on her table again this afternoon. We chatted a bit about the new blog and what my goals were. As she tapped little needles into my body I realized that I needed to change the title of the blog to include the healing modalities that are my go-to litter kit. As we continued to talk about my motivations, Summer explained that in the TCM model, it is said that the first 30 days after a woman has a baby will indicate how her menopause goes. During this time, a window opens that allows us to heal and/or neglect our bodies, and those actions will carry with us through our lives. It is possible to go back in after the window has closed, but it is very, very difficult. This thinking is, of course, aligned with the 42 days for 42 years idea (see blog post #1: The Challenge of Being Cared For).

A magnum of homemade soy sauce, seaweed, and dashida.

As another reminder to open the aperature of my musings, my mother arrived today with 50lbs of food. Yes, 50lbs of food. Granted 20lbs of it was a bag of rice, but I still think I may be underestimating the payload. I'm telling you, this woman doesn't kid. She brought turnips, cucumbers, bananas, apples (the fruit was for her, it is not a time for me to be eating fruit), homemade deng jung (fermented soybeans), ginger-lemon mash, fresh kimchi, sogogi and myulchi dashida (dried beef and anchovy stock), 2cups of peeled garlic, bundles of green onions, fish cakes, raw barley, 2 2ft tall packs of dried seaweed, I could just go on and on. Oh, but here's a noteworthy and awesome one - a full magnum of homemade soy sauce. I have explained to my mother (several times) that we are very particular about where our meat products come from, so she left 10lbs of bulgogi and chicken teriyaki at home for her husband and my youngest brother. We will go buy meat tomorrow and she will remake her epic proportions of these easy classic Korean dishes so that my husband can have something to eat too.

Side note: when my husband first read the Ayurvedic cook book, he put it down and looked at me and said, "I get it, and this is all good for you, I totally get it, babe, but what the hell am I going to eat?!" 

Much like TCM and Ayurveda my mother knows what is going to be drying, purifying, toning, and stimulating, though she doesn't use those words. She says things like, "This will help getting moistures from inside and cleaning out your woman parts."She is bringing me fresh mugwort for a postpartum steam bath of the girly bits.

And so, you see, there's a lot going on here. And I realize, we're just getting started.

The Exploration or The Challenge of Being Cared For

In the simplest terms, this exploration is a question of how I will allow other people (my husband, the grandmothers, a doula or two, and a few friends) to completely care for me for a minimum of 42 days after the birth of my baby. Really think about this for a moment. 42 days of having all my meals prepared fresh daily (no frozen casseroles, no leftovers), freshly prepared handmade teas, my body massaged and oiled, errands ran, house cleaned, music played for me, being read to, and when asked, I
will be left alone to meditate, pray or do whatever else strikes my fancy - all while taking care of a newborn and re-establishing family norms. You see, my family has decided to go into the perinatal phase with the guiding principle:

Mom takes care of the baby and everyone else takes care of mom.

Nourishing, delicious, healing, nurturing foods and teas
for me and baby's well being.

Ayurveda is a 5000 year old form of healing hailing from India. The modality is quite similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). If you've read Deepak Chopra's national bestseller Perfect Health, you got a sneak peak into Ayurveda. The Ayurvedic system has a saying regarding postpartum well being, "42 days for 42 years." The sentiment of this saying is that the 42 days following childbirth will influence the well-being of the mother for the next 42 years (I'll go into this more later). No, I don't have a source for that, and I don't believe there are any peer-reviewed papers that have addressed the 42 years part, but we do know a lot about how postpartum care effects the entire family - mom, significant other (SO), baby, work, and household. Do a Google search on "postpartum." What do you get? Link after link after link about postpartum depression and not "how awesome can postpartum be!" There's got to be a better way. By jove I think there may be!

As for why I chose the Ayurvedic approach, well, first of all it's an approach that I don't have to guess at. There are resources available that I have convenient, cost effective access to. Secondly, it largely resonates with my palate (nom nom nom). Most importantly, it makes intuitive and logical sense to me. The idea of taking time for myself in this way, at this time, feels essential and life affirming. I want to focus on my baby and be the strongest person I can be for our life together. I want to be the best I can for my husband, and yes, I do mean sexually amongst other things. If I leave holes in the foundation of my body and/or psyche, how does that serve anyone? Somewhere deep in me, I know, this is going to make a tremendous difference. And lastly, I believe my family deserves this, I deserve this.

Resources

The guide book and recipe book that I am using for this exploration come from the Sacred Window School for Maternal and Newborn Health. You can find them here for $12.

Rock on, mommy!

For consultation and loving guidance I have an amazing friend Andrea Shuman who co-owns Ahara Rasa Ayurvedic Center in Portland, Oregon. She taught me how to say "shatavari" properly.

At the time of this writing I am interviewing doulas. There are no practicing Ayurdoulas in the greater Portland metro area, and so I'm looking for a doula that is comfortable with the cooking and the body work. I'll have some posts later about who I selected, why, cost, and other things.

Y'know, the more I think about this, the more it starts to sound like a celebration!