Paula often reads a really good blog on postpartum depression called “Postpartum Progress“. After requests from Paula and others,they started a short discussion on “Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage or Stillbirth”. The next day, they published another article on“What Is the Difference Between Grief & Depression After Pregnancy Loss?”
This is really great since people rarely talk about postpartum depression, miscarriage or stillbirth, and practically never talk about them together.
Here is the comments that I posted there, but I suggest reading the whole thing as I hope that there will be some posts by people far better at this that me.
“One of the toughest parts of dealing with the PPD after miscarriage was that there are some people who deal with and understand PPD and there are people who deal with and understand miscarriage, but there seem to be few people or resources to deal with the horrible combination of depression and grief that can come when you have both. To make it worse, some of the things that therapists worry about and try to stop in depression patients (like too much sleep) are normal ways of handling grief. There are a number of behaviors that have conflicting meanings or importance depending on if you view it as PPD, grief, or a combination of the two. It takes some real attention to treat them both.
Frankly, I place a lot of the blame for Paula being commited on a therapist who I don’t think really understood half of what was going on and I think often did more damage than good (I sat in on the sessions, so I have heard most of what was said, but that is a different story).
Luckily when Paula was commited, we looked for new ways to get help and found a wonderful social worker (thanks Lori-Ann Shultz@Foothills Hospital) who really did understand and was able to provide a huge amount of help.
All I can say to couples going through it is:
1) it will get better. It really will. Someday you will find a new “normal”. It won’t be as care-free as it was, but it won’t be as bad as it seems.
2) don’t be afraid to seek help. And if at first, you don’t succeed, don’t be afraid to keep looking. I can not imagine where we would be now if we had not kept trying different things until we met Lori-Ann.”
