On a personal note: Maternal mental health month

From the Studio

Reading time – 7 minutes

I started writing this as one of my monthly email newletters but then it just kept getting longer and felt like more of a blog post than an email so I figured hey, I guess this needs to go on the blog?

It’s not about sugar flowers, it’s all very personal, but also, part of running a small business means that my personal life and my business life are very enmeshed together.

I’ve been pretty passionate about mental health awareness and support over the last few years.

May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and more than awareness, I want this blog post to also be about support and community. Because when I became a mom, that postpartum period (and honestly the pregnancy too) was super lonely and I felt unmoored and unsupported.

Not that my family and friends didn’t love on me and support me in the best way that they could. Just that nobody really understood the breadth and depth of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs).

But now my sweet baby is four and instead of lying awake at night praying that I wasn’t too broken to be his mom, I lay awake at night listening to him come up with his own units of measurements (“what’s smaller than a crumb? a germ. what’s bigger than a crumb? a bigger crumb. a chocolate chip is bigger than a bigger crumb and a scoop of yogurt is bigger than a chocolate chip”) instead of falling asleep like he needs to be because it’s 9:30 already?!

Basically, I can say I survived the postpartum depression but sleep is still hard to come by.

And honestly I’ve struggled with my mental health (hey, there, anxiety) my entire life, I just didn’t hit rock bottom until that postpartum period.

And since this year’s #MMHWeek2025 theme is “storytelling saves lives,” I hope that sharing my story will encourage someone (maybe even you?!) to reach out for help before you hit rock bottom because that totally sucks.

My first Mother’s Day was two months postpartum and I had just quit Zoloft cold turkey (0/10 do not recommend — the OB office never called me back about refilling my prescription).

I can still hear my mom telling my aunt: “Kelsie is such an amazing mom, isn’t she?” 

And all my brain could say is “lies lies lies lies.” 

That postpartum period— filled with depression, anxiety, PTSD— was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through in life. 

  • My birth experience was incredibly disempowering, and I left the hospital feeling broken and afraid of my own body. How could I trust myself to be a mother if every decision I made was belittled and disparaged? (Turns out that’s called gaslighting.)
  • When I made an appointment to see the OB about my symptoms, they gave me a 30-day supply of Zoloft and handed me a list of therapists and psychiatrists to call– and they all had waitlists of 3+ months.
  • What about the hospital? They have resources right? Nah, they just wanted me to go to a support group at the hospital where the trauma happened.
  • And then I finally found a therapist on my own but when I saw her… she told me she’d never be able to pay her bills with me as a client because my experiences were “normal” and I “didn’t need therapy.” 👀
  • And that OB’s office? They never called me back for to get a refill.
  • The next doctor I saw told me I couldn’t take zoloft because I was breastfeeding– because he didn’t know shit and he didn’t care enough to listen.
  • I ended up quitting my full time job because the thought of being 45 minutes away from Theo everyday made my heart race and my head spin. 
  • But the thought of being at home with him every day made me spiral, too, because I was convinced I was a broken, terrible mother who couldn’t do anything right.

That was what life looked like in 2021.

This year on Mother’s Day, I found myself lacking serotonin again. Last month, I switched SSRIs in an attempt to stabilize my depression. 

But instead of finding stability,I found terrible side effects like dizziness and fatigue and rage.

Yikes.

Right now… I don’t feel like an amazing mother. 

But when my family said to me on Mother’s Day this year, “you’re doing a great job and you’re a great mom,” my brain didn’t accuse them of lying. I know that I’m trying my best, even if my best isn’t perfect. 

I believe my therapist calls that progress. 

This all feels really vulnerable and personal to share. I wish I could say I was totally out of the messy middle and fully planted in “survived and healed” land. But yeah, I am still working through things.

The newest antidepressant I’m trying is much better. It’s too soon to tell, but I’m not dizzy so that’s a win.

And when I got pregnant again with my daughter, I had a much stronger support system, including a therapist and a psychiatrist, but I also had a doula and a team of midwives with whom I was comfortable advocating. I knew a lot more about what my body needed and what safety felt like.

Having that support system, and the knowledge and experience to advocate for myself, made giving birth much less traumatic the second time (even though, on paper, it was kind of a wild story- considering it involved an ambulance ride, a tiny preterm baby, and giving birth at a hospital where no one knew me or my medical history lol). Basically, there was bread and roses, too.

My hope is that my experience can make perinatal mood and anxiety disorder (PMADs)— and mental health conditions in general— feel less lonely. 

1 in 5 mothers experience PMADs and 1 in 10 dads too. It does feel lonely– especially when you’re in the thick of it and your survival instincts are trained on your tiny and sweet but very loud baby 24/7– but feelings aren’t fact. Or so I’m told lol. But I’m not alone. And if this resonated with you, you’re not alone either.

Even without the complications of PPD, parenting is really really hard. Two things can be true: I love my kids in a way that feels too big for words, and I struggle daily to take care of myself.

I’m trying to be compassionate because I know I’m putting in so much work to be the best version of myself for my kids, and I also know that systemic injustices make parenting the hardest job in the world. We weren’t meant to do this parenting thing alone. I don’t think we were meant to do any of this alone

(She says while also acknowledging that sometimes the only way to calm my nerves and regulate the constant overstimulation is to spend as much time alone as possible – life is a such a paradox, amiright??)

So that’s pretty much been the biggest part of my life over the last month or two: trying to cope, take care of myself, rest, follow my passions, take care of my kids, navigate the complexities of modern-day parenting and mental load…

So thanks for taking the time to read some of my story. If you ever need any resources or just someone to vent to, please reach out.

And if you’d like some further reading (or listening to!) here are some blogs, podcasts, and websites to check out:

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