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pegkerrI have been following the news about the tiff between Brooke Shields and Tom Cruise over the treatment of postpartum depression with a great deal of interest. Shields had an op-ed published in the New York Times on this today here.
It's fascinating to take a look at the comments on Shields' book (Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression) over on Amazon. It's as if the book is a sort of Rorschach test about Americans' attitudes concerning celebrity, motherhood, choosing parenthood, fertility treatments, mental illness and "authenticity."
I don't think I have ever seen a single movie that Brooke Shields is in, and I have never read her book. But I suffered--quite desperately--through postpartum depression with both my girls. My memories of that time are hazy, but I think it was worse with Delia, both because the burden on me was greater since I already had another child at that point, and because Delia's birth was just so much harder on my body. My god, during my pregnacy, I got hives all over my body, I got sick with a nasty case of bronchitis that I didn't kick for months, I had an internal infection, and I was forced to walk with a cane from the fifth month on.
Like Shields, I distrusted the idea of taking drugs for my mental health. I was a psychology major in college, and yet I had absorbed much of this culture's (and, to be honest, my family of origin's) assumptions about mental health. Just adopt a positive attitude. Think happy thoughts and it will all go away. You have nothing to be sad about. If you are sad, it's because your Christian faith is weak. You're imagining things. If you just try hard enough, you'll feel better. Not quite Cruise's attitude (which seems to be additionally mixed up with his bizarre religion) but close enough. And as a result of these internalized attitudes, I suffered longer than I needed to, which meant my family suffered, too.
Listen, as I said, I don't know Shields or her book, but I have learned this from the whole experience: PPD is real. It is hellish. It won't go away just by wishing it away. It isn't any indication about your readiness/worthiness to be a mother. Drugs can really really help. Sometimes the ones who love you have to force you to get help, because you can get into such an awful state that you can't even reach out for the help yourself.
And it can be an enormous relief to learn that you are not the only woman who has been through this. Many woman commenting on Shield's book have said how grateful they are to read this book and to learn they are not alone. On the other hand, one commenter clucked because he read an article a month after Shields' baby was born, where she said how happy she was, and now it turns out that she had PPD and was miserable, so how could she lie like that? And I say: consider both the attitudes of people like Cruise, and the people who sneer at Shields for daring to admit she was unhappy after having a badly wanted child, and think about it: we put so much pressure on mothers in this culture to be happy and be grateful for this new baby (despite the fact that mothers get so little support, either practical, emotional or financial in American culture today); do you wonder at the fact that she hid the truth? Shields had the kind of life most American women can only dream of, and PPD was powerful enough to make her almost kill herself. And what about all the other women out there who are suffering, who don't have the kinds of resources the admittedly rich and successful Shields did?
Oh, and one other thing I know: Tom Cruise may look pretty good up on the movie screen, but he's full of--well, something unspeakable--on the subject of PPD. As Shields puts it tartly, "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression."
Better stick to discussing movies, Tom. At least there you know a little better chance of knowing what the hell it is you're talking about.
It's fascinating to take a look at the comments on Shields' book (Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression) over on Amazon. It's as if the book is a sort of Rorschach test about Americans' attitudes concerning celebrity, motherhood, choosing parenthood, fertility treatments, mental illness and "authenticity."
I don't think I have ever seen a single movie that Brooke Shields is in, and I have never read her book. But I suffered--quite desperately--through postpartum depression with both my girls. My memories of that time are hazy, but I think it was worse with Delia, both because the burden on me was greater since I already had another child at that point, and because Delia's birth was just so much harder on my body. My god, during my pregnacy, I got hives all over my body, I got sick with a nasty case of bronchitis that I didn't kick for months, I had an internal infection, and I was forced to walk with a cane from the fifth month on.
Like Shields, I distrusted the idea of taking drugs for my mental health. I was a psychology major in college, and yet I had absorbed much of this culture's (and, to be honest, my family of origin's) assumptions about mental health. Just adopt a positive attitude. Think happy thoughts and it will all go away. You have nothing to be sad about. If you are sad, it's because your Christian faith is weak. You're imagining things. If you just try hard enough, you'll feel better. Not quite Cruise's attitude (which seems to be additionally mixed up with his bizarre religion) but close enough. And as a result of these internalized attitudes, I suffered longer than I needed to, which meant my family suffered, too.
Listen, as I said, I don't know Shields or her book, but I have learned this from the whole experience: PPD is real. It is hellish. It won't go away just by wishing it away. It isn't any indication about your readiness/worthiness to be a mother. Drugs can really really help. Sometimes the ones who love you have to force you to get help, because you can get into such an awful state that you can't even reach out for the help yourself.
And it can be an enormous relief to learn that you are not the only woman who has been through this. Many woman commenting on Shield's book have said how grateful they are to read this book and to learn they are not alone. On the other hand, one commenter clucked because he read an article a month after Shields' baby was born, where she said how happy she was, and now it turns out that she had PPD and was miserable, so how could she lie like that? And I say: consider both the attitudes of people like Cruise, and the people who sneer at Shields for daring to admit she was unhappy after having a badly wanted child, and think about it: we put so much pressure on mothers in this culture to be happy and be grateful for this new baby (despite the fact that mothers get so little support, either practical, emotional or financial in American culture today); do you wonder at the fact that she hid the truth? Shields had the kind of life most American women can only dream of, and PPD was powerful enough to make her almost kill herself. And what about all the other women out there who are suffering, who don't have the kinds of resources the admittedly rich and successful Shields did?
Oh, and one other thing I know: Tom Cruise may look pretty good up on the movie screen, but he's full of--well, something unspeakable--on the subject of PPD. As Shields puts it tartly, "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression."
Better stick to discussing movies, Tom. At least there you know a little better chance of knowing what the hell it is you're talking about.
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Date: 2005-07-01 07:12 pm (UTC)And I can vouch that in that instance, at least, meds made a huge difference. It was frighteningly easy to see how the person in question could have ended up living on the street otherwise, with nothing the rest of us could do about it.