Join us today on Twitter as we get nitty and gritty with the signs & symptoms of Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorders. Have questions about just what goes on inside a PMAD? Catch up with us at 1pm ET and 830pm ET on Twitter using the hashtag #PPDChat. See you then!
Hey, y’all!!!
Perinatal Mood Disorders are a lonely road to travel. We have all been there and we have all heard other mothers say the following phrase:
“I felt so alone.”
Thing is, we are not alone. So.NOT.ALONE.
With this approach in mind, I am expanding #PPDChat to include guests in addition to the regular supportive chats. So, in addition to using #PPDChat for support throughout the week, community members will be able to chat with experts, survivors, and advocates.
Guests so far have included but are not limited to:
Karen Kleiman, founder of Postpartum Stress Center
Claire, founder of Life With a Baby
Cristi Comes of Motherhood Unadorned & AFSP of Washington
Text4Baby and Board Member Colleen Craft
and many other knowledgeable and compassionate folks dedicated to supporting women and families as they navigate the perinatal period. It’s been a blast chatting with them and sharing additional insight and knowledge.
Are you an expert, an advocate, survivor, or representative of an organization supporting families through Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorders? Know someone who would be a perfect fit?
Talk to me about chatting with #PPDChat. We are a volunteer run peer-based support chat, talking every Monday at 1pm and 8:30pm ET via Twitter. Read more about #PPDChat guidelines here. Typical guests join us in the evening but if day is better for you, we can accommodate your schedule. If you’re new to Twitter, we have a quick start guide and are willing to work with you to get you up to speed.
How to throw your hat in the ring:
Email me at mypostpartumvoice(@)gmail.com with #PPDChat Guest Request as your subject line and we’ll get the details ironed out.
Looking forward to this new chapter of #PPDChat with you!
On Monday, we’ll be talking about a very important aspect of Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorders with Claire of @lifewithababy. Claire is the Executive Director of Healthy Start, Healthy Future and Founder of the Life With A Baby program. Life With A Baby is a three-tiered peer support system for parents. It offers local, community-based social events to build relationships, online support, and multi-lingual parenting programs. Claire founded Life With A Baby after her own struggles with social isolation and depression. Life With A Baby serves over 5000 members across the province of Ontario. Claire is involved in innovative initiatives and partnerships focused on peer support, parenting, newcomer supports, parent engagement, and financial literacy. She is passionate about supporting parents, developing collaborations, reducing social isolation, and building healthy and strong parent-child relationships. Claire was nominated for the 2013 Citizen of Character award in York Region.
Our discussion will focus around the concept that if you struggle with a Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorder, you don’t love your baby. We know that’s not true. Many of us love our children more than we are capable of expressing. Sure, we may be exasperated with them, with the issues we face as a result of our PMAD, but simply having a PMAD is not indicative of not loving your child. It can take time to bond, time to get to what other mothers seem to have so easily, but it doesn’t make us less of a woman or less of a mother. It also doesn’t mean that we aren’t in love with our child simply because we aren’t expressing it how we are “supposed” to according to society.
Join Claire and myself as we talk about this very important aspect of PMAD’s and attempt to remove some of the stigma around the assumption that mothers with a PMAD don’t love their children. (Because we do!)
Also, if you’re in Claire’s neck of the woods, check out their pledge – they’re working to reduce isolation. If you’re able to host just one peer event, sign the pledge. End the isolation of new mothers and help decrease episodes of Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorders.
We will be chatting at 1pm ET about the same topic but Claire won’t be joining us until 8:30pm ET. Look forward to seeing you there!!!
I am THRILLED to be announcing the upcoming guest for #PPDChat!!!
Karen Kleiman is an expert in the field and is also the person who inspired me to start this blog so any time I get to collaborate with her, I get very excited. Read more about Karen’s great work here.
On Monday, August 12, 2013, Karen will be joining us for a discussion about Scary/Intrusive Thoughts. This topic is often at the top of the search terms which lead people to my blog. In fact, I recently made a graphic of all the search terms which led people to my blog relating to this very topic. There were quite a few variations as you can see for yourself:
Also, my top post for the past week was “Do the Thoughts Ever Go Away?“
No one really has definitive answers as the thoughts fade, but even as a parent, we all struggle with the “what if’s” of the challenge in raising our kids and keeping them safe.
Join Karen and I as we navigate this important topic on Monday, August 12, 2013 at 8:30pm ET. We look forward to seeing you there!
I’m thrilled to announce that Text4Baby will be joining us for chat on Monday, July 22, 2013 at 8:30pm. This is Text4Baby’s third year in operation. They provide an invaluable experience for both expectant and new mothers via a free information program that sends texts directly to your phone. Read more about them here.
Dr. Colleen Kraft, M.D., will be joining us as the medical expert on Monday. Dr. Kraft is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and Pediatric Residency Program Director at Virginia Tech Carilion. Dr. Kraft is a community pediatrician with the Carilion Pediatric Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia.
Dr. Kraft attended Virginia Tech as an undergraduate, and completed her M.D. and pediatric residency at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Dr. Kraft currently serves on the Text4Baby expert panel, the National Center for Medical Home Initiatives Project Advisory Committee and the Early Brain and Child Development work-group at the American Academy of Pediatrics. She has three children who are now young adults.
You can follow Dr. Kraft on Twitter by clicking here.
The folks from Text4Baby will also be available to offer information about their services to our community members.
The topic for Monday, as stated in the announcement above, is “Perinatal Mood Disorders & Early Brain Development”. As we know, mental health issues during pregnancy and the postpartum period do affect the development of our infants. It’s not a topic we discuss often because it can be triggering and induce feelings of guilt. The key to this issue is to remember that we are not at fault – and that access to proper care and therapy for both mother and child is of the utmost importance if we are to change the outlook for all involved.
I hope you will join us for a very important discussion about this important (and often under-discussed) topic.