Continuing the theme of Maternal Mental Health this week, Kristina talks with Zelandia who shares her birth and aftercare struggles in a health care system in the midst of a Covid crisis. Zelandia talks about her traumatic birth experience and struggles with breastfeeding and the impact this had on her mental health. This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. To listen to the FULL episode click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06DVm4_r-nw Thanks to Aethel for the theme song to our … [Read more...] about Post Natal Struggles in a Covid World
Mums' PND Stories
The Pressures and Expectations of Motherhood
In part one of this two-part episode, singer/songwriter Aethel AKA Jasmine Brett (of podcast theme song “Fog and Fire”) speaks to show host Kristina Grace about the pressures and expectations of motherhood and postnatal depression. To listen to the FULL episode, click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mBH7Cixx5g&t=5s Thanks to Aethel for the theme song to our podcast “Fog and Fire” – to listen to the full song, you can find Aethel on Spotify Follow Mothers … [Read more...] about The Pressures and Expectations of Motherhood
Climbing Out of the Darkness (and the sweatpants!)
Guest Blogger: Amy Taylor After a complex first pregnancy I was anxious that number two would be the same. Much joy but some trepidation when the doctor called to say I was pregnant. I lost that baby. I held my fetus in my hand and weeped. On my very next cycle I was expecting again but this time the anxiety gripped me every day. Each time I went to the loo, I’d check my undies . I found myself sitting on the loo far more often than I needed to just as an excuse to check. My first midwife … [Read more...] about Climbing Out of the Darkness (and the sweatpants!)
When I Look Back
Guest Blogger: Rebecca Allen Just this last weekend my husband compassionately said to me “I wish you got to enjoy Harvey the way I did when he was little”. My reply was a heartfelt “so do I”. For me, being new to motherhood was a time full of anxiety, fear, paranoia, isolation and depression. Pre-children, I was a woman of the world! I had travelled extensively, really lived my life, and had moved back to New Zealand when I met my now husband. Within two years I had my own … [Read more...] about When I Look Back
A Different Kind of Depression
Guest Blogger: Annonymous For me, it began two hours after I saw two distinctive lines on a pregnancy test and left slowly but surely in the months after my little boy entered the world. Antenatal depression is experiencing depression and anxiety during pregnancy. It doesn’t have as much publicity surrounding it as postnatal depression but a 2015 study by Growing Up New Zealand discovered that one in eight New Zealand women suffer from depression symptoms while … [Read more...] about A Different Kind of Depression
From One Mum to Another
by Mothers Helpers Founder Kristina Paterson It took me 18 months to go and get some help for the way that I was feeling. 9 of those months I was anxious throughout my pregnancy but the midwife didn't pick up on it. In the first week after my baby was born, I had a new midwife, and she said to me that if I was still crying by day 7 (hours of crying every day), then I'd have to go and see the doctor as I may have postnatal depression. So I forced myself to stop crying. I … [Read more...] about From One Mum to Another
