Yesterday I walked with an old high school friend I hadn’t talked to in a long time. This blog has been a great way to reconnect with people and hear more about their stories of pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing as we all reach the age when that’s become more common. One of the things…
Read MoreI’m doing something a little bit different today to call attention to a bill up for consideration in Massachusetts called “The New Moms and Infants Well-Being Act.” This bill ensures that women who face criminal charges as a result of actions they took while experiencing postpartum psychosis (and/or postpartum depression) receive evaluation and treatment from…
Read MoreMy husband was sick last week, so it was just me on Bailey duty. The first day was the roughest, with Bailey being in one of those moods where everything that’s not a toy is a toy, and everything that is a toy is completely uninteresting. So the next day, I was determined to make…
Read MoreToday, I walked with another friend from my old job, Janice. Janice was one of the first people who reached out to me after I gave birth to offer me emotional support and a space to talk about the realities of what I was going through, before I began traveling through a different reality entirely.…
Read MoreAs I walked by myself this week, I thought about my body. One of the reasons that walking has been so helpful is that it grounds me in my body. Reminds me that no matter how caught up I get in the workings of my mind, I have a physical presence as well. A presence…
Read MoreSometimes even I have a hard time following my own story. It’s complicated. So I’m going to try to provide some context to help make my stories a little bit clearer. One of the first questions I always get is “Wait, did you have postpartum bipolar or postpartum psychosis?” Even after talking to multiple health…
Read MoreToday, I walked with a coworker (and new neighbor!) of mine. [Insert platitudes about how I haven’t seen people from work except through a computer screen since March 2020 and I’ve missed them so much and it was so lovely!] In my job, I do research for an educational non-profit, which means I am fortunate…
Read MoreToday is the anniversary of the day I left the psych ward. It’s a big day that I’ve been waiting for for a long time. When I arrived home from the hospital last year, I felt relieved, but also guilty. And disconnected. Feeding schedules, outfits, the layout of our baby care materials around the house…
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Postpartum Psychosisterhood