What does breastfeeding have to do with postpartum mental health? Plenty. I explored the intersection of these topics recently on the All About Breastfeeding Podcast. Host Lori Isenstadt, a lactation consultant and breastfeeding expert, points out that breastfeeding mismanagement can pose unique hurdles for women with perinatal
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If summer is about the wide embrace of warmth and wandering at will, the school year keeps freedoms of its own. The first day reveals a brand-new stage where unseen possibilities begin to dance. It is a time to let go, fraught with questions and the promise
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My dad was cool. I didn’t see him that way when I was a kid. Once I became a parent myself, I came around to acknowledging he’d been a good parent. But it wasn’t until after he passed away that I glimpsed the cool guy he was
Read more →When it comes to new moms and mental health, much isn’t discussed, but should be. False perceptions, misinformation, and stigma bar us from the truth, which often provides solace in the sensitive first days of motherhood. What is talked about after a woman has a baby skews
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It’s been almost a decade since I became a mom. I picked Chicago as the birthplace of my first-born, Noah. It was my first gift to him. The city is packed with years of memories and firsts for me. Now he can say the same. Though we’ve
Read more →My first book, When Postpartum Packs a Punch: Fighting Back and Finding Joy, recently celebrated one year at market. A personal account of my encounter with postpartum depression, and revelatory of other parents’ journeys through perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, it’s gathered praise from the parents, experts,
Read more →I’ve had my dad for 44 years. Because my mom’s been gone for 29 of those years, that length of time has been important to me in unique ways. He’s not perfect. But he’s been present and available for my entire life. He’s had to be Dad
Read more →Ernest Hemingway wrote his so-called six true sentences while living in Paris in the 1920s, and dubbed them Paris 1922. His first wife, Hadley, lost the originals, but he later recreated them. Hemingway was a journalist before he wrote fiction. If you look closely, you can see
Read more →Losing a baby is a tragedy. Whether it’s during pregnancy, or from unexpected complications after the baby is born–the significant grief and pain need to be addressed. If not, they’ll likely resurface, wreaking havoc on our mental health. Definitions and statistics vary for pregnancy loss. The Mayo
Read more →Over the past few weeks I’ve watched friends stride through different rites of passage. Some sent their child to away-camp for the first time. Others released their youngest into the realm of college. I’ve not reached either pinnacle yet. But I recognize them to be fraught with
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