GynoFiles

Women can be stressed and tired without being depressed after having a baby, but baby blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis are three diagnoses that may need serious attention from your health care provider. And now a NYT article notes that these feeling actually begin in pregnancy, not just post partum . And not just for women who have had poor outcomes in pregnancy such as miscarriage or stillbirth. Oddly the current formal categories of psychiatric diagnosis do not recognize postpartum depression as being anything other than depression. The "baby blues" usually begins right after delivery, may be the worst in the first days at home with baby, and are often described as feeling a bit on edge, irritable or sad, and essentially go away without treatment. Postpartum depression is significant, you worry too much about the baby, have trouble concentrating and enjoying motherhood and may even get so difficult moms with this much depression think of killing th...

Everyone knows that new moms are jittery, tired, they loose weight (it's just the baby fat??), they can be a bit snappy, and down right anxious, and it's 'normal'. But not every new mom has those symptoms to the same extent and for some new moms they have a condition called PPT. But those signs according to a recent report and updating a report that was originally reported in the J of Clinical Endocrinology in 2002 could be due to a post partum flare of thyroiditis (PPT) , or a condition of abnormal thyroid hormone production that only occurs in the first weeks to months after a birth. It was reported by Dr. Alex Stagnaro-Green and they also discovered that antibodies to thyroid perooxidase in early pregnancy can predict who is most likely to get this disease, and that those with Type 1 diabetes were more likely to have the thyroid conditions as well. Even other thyroid diseases such as Graves disease  are more likely to flare post partum. It's not likely to be...

Placental passage is a minor transition in the birth moments compared to many of the other feats. But the Hormonal transition begins at that moment and the "Fourth Trimester" has dramatic impact on the mind and mood of new moms. The serious issue of postpartum depression has been discussed and studied fairly extensively since coming to light with several important medical case studies. We know that "baby blues" shouldn't be ignored as a normal state but at least evaluated. Better breast feeding advice, family support is to resume physical activity rather than the "confinement" of yore has all been a help to the healthy approach to the Forth Trimester. No actual medication is approved for the treatment of actual postpartum depression. Nutrition can dramatically impact our neurochemistry. Studying it is another matter. New trials in the use of  omega-3 fatty acids, and it's possible women are just not getting enough, not even with the new prenatal v...