Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jun
4
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…Pregnancy Hormones Will Even You Out.”
“Oh, no, that can’t happen. Pregnancy hormones will even you out.” -OB to a woman with a history of depression when she expressed concern about postpartum mood disorders.
There are 23 comments to this post.
I wouldn’t have said it with such certainty. I am boarderline bi-polar. I stopped taking medication a long time ago and have worked on controlling my moods myself. Before I got pregnant, I tended to live on an emotional roller coaster. Just as high as my mood got, it became equally as low and could change incredibly fast. When I got pregnant, I mellowed out so much. My sister, however, (who has been clinically depressed)was miserable during pregnancy and made everyone else miserable. During her second pregnancy, I was going through my first. Everyone has agreed that I am the one who should be bare-foot and pregnant and my sister is not allowed to get pregnant ever again.
PPD was a concern of mine though. I had asked about it and was told that being bi-polar doesn’t put me at any greater risk of winding up with PPD, but that since it was a concern of mine I should keep an eye on it. If I started showing any signs that I should get help immediately. I did, and nothing happened. I’ve been fairly mellowed out ever since I got pregnant about 2.5 years ago.
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Kat Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 6:56 am (Quote)
That’s excellent you have experienced such dramatic improvement Robyn.
I suppose it would depend on the underlying cause of… mood disorder? Is that the proper term? If not please pardon my mental blank.
If someone had a mood disorder that was caused by or aggravated by low levels of the hormones that flow freely during pregnancy, they would feel better.
If someone else was struggling due to completely unrelated areas of physical or mental health, a pregnancy could definitely make them feel worse, and the hormone crash afterward could send them right up to the edge, if not off the map altogether.
In any case, there is no way to predict how any one individual will respond to the experience of pregnancy and birth, and dismissing their valid concerns only makes it harder to talk about anything troubling that comes up.
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Robyn Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 7:02 am (Quote)
Oh, I agree. I don’t think her concerns should have been dismissed like that. They most definitely should have been addressed. If it had been me I would have tried to put her fears at ease by saying something along the lines of “Its possible that the pregnancy hormones will even you out.” and then follow that up with the same advice that I got. Give her information about how to identify a problem, tell her to have her partner on the lookout for symptoms, and to get help immediately if either of them noticed something.
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Becky Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 1:43 pm (Quote)
Robyn,
We should totally talk sometime, my experience was EXACTLY the same. EXACTLY EXACTLY.
I was told the opposite by my then-shrink; that Bi-Polar put me at increased risk of PPD and even psychosis. Didn’t happen, though. 
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Wonderkarin Reply:
June 5th, 2010 at 4:24 pm (Quote)
Same experience here, so far my pregnancy has mellowed out my mood disorder, but I had a great team behind me.
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There is an awesome book called Pregnancy Blues that talks about the under-diagnosing and under-reporting of depression in pregnant and postpartum women. This OB needs to read it.
The midwife who caught my daughter reminded me to keep taking my antidepressant postpartum just in case because, yes, pre-existing mood disorders DO put one at risk for postpartum depression.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Jun 4, 2010 @ 7:45 am (Quote)
Wishful thinking, Doc. Everybody who knows me agrees that pregnancy makes me mean, moody, labile, and just plain whacked. (Oh, and I get premenstrual dysphoria and I’ve had PPD, so I know pregnancy didn’t “even me out.”)
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I think my issue with this comment is that now that Doc has said this.. Mom might not give credence to her feelings. She may feel that she can’t go to this doctor for help or that what she’s feeling isn’t “normal.” I am prone to depression (never diagnosed, just something I have noticed) and I was also nervous that I would end up with PPD. Those little verbal quizzes they give you at 6ish weeks pp are a total crock too.
If you’re pregnant, I hope that you ignore this doctor’s comment. If you’ve given birth already, I hope you didn’t have to deal with this doctor after.
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Jane Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 10:55 am (Quote)
I should submit this as its own comment, but when I went to a psychiatrist, at my OB’s encouragement, for PPD, I told him that I had recurring thoughts of putting my baby in the oven.
And he replied, “Those are egodystonic thoughts. That’s perfectly normal.”
My son is 13 now. I had four babies after that. To this day, I still don’t want the kids near the oven when I open it. I had to deal with two years of PPD entirely on my own because of that man, since I honestly thought it was “perfectly normal.”
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CCindy Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 12:22 pm (Quote)
Wow, that doctor needs to learn the diffence between common and normal. PTSD is a common reaction to tramatic stress, but it doesn’t mean it is a good idea to write it off as normal, ignore it or let it go untreated.
One little word changed the tone of the entire conversation. The OP quote for example. If he said “Pregnancy Hormones MIGHT even you out” or “have been known to even certain woman out” but we will have to watch you. Well that is a different conversation isn’t it. Perfectly normal indeed! Poor Jane!
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 4:35 pm (Quote)
Good point. The first time I carried a baby to term, I had a miserable first trimester, but after that, the estrogen kicked in and it was like I was on Mother Nature’s Prozac. (I’ve found from experience with birth control pills that estrogen seems to modulate my raging mood swings and hormones, but a dominance of progesterone makes me worse, and it doesn’t take much progesterone to sweep me over the edge. I must be naturally progesterone-dominant or something. Which might also partly explain my chronic migraines.)
Each pregnancy after that, though – eek. My second time around, I was mopey and anxious and miserable, and people got on my nerves more than usual. Third time around, and not only did my sensory hypersensitivities get worse, so did my natural tendency to rapid-cycling moods and depression, and I’m one of those people that gets angry when depressed rather than sad, so I was a royal pain to live with. And this time – hmm. I could put my husband on here to comment, but he will probably neither confirm nor deny my describing myself as being so moody that if I were to have a Dungeons and Dragons alignment right now, it would be Chaotic Neutral. The sensory hypersensitivities are pretty wicked, too.
So anyway, yes. The estrogen of the second and third trimesters MIGHT mellow out a depressive or bipolar type, because estrogen CAN have a calming effect. However, there is a big difference between “might” and “should/will.”
Oh, and Jane – he thought haunting ideations of putting your baby in the oven were normal?!? What is it with doctors who are convinced that being female, with PMS or pregnancy or postpartum status, means it’s normal to be emotionally/mentally unstable? Good grief. How paternalistic.
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Cmat Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 1:07 pm (Quote)
*hugs* Sorry you went through that simply because a doctor didn’t feel like doing anything other than going through the motions.
I think the appropriate comment for the doctor with the OP would be “Sometimes pregnancy hormones can even things out, but we’ll take it a day at a time and I will help you keep a close eye on things.”
Gee.. Imagine that, a considerate and caring response.
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Kit Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 3:57 pm (Quote)
Jane, that sucks.
A friend of mine got bad PPD and finally realized it was time for help when she was sitting in her appartment and realized that the most logical thing in the world was to go to the roof and drop her son onto the concrete. So instead she called her husband and told him to come home now.
2 weeks in the hospital and a script for anti-depresants apparently did wonders, but she says she’s still guilty over it.
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Jane Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 5:43 pm (Quote)
What sucked was that it was so hard to reach out to get help at all, and then to be blown off like that, I was left feeling that the OBs didn’t care about me because they treated me like crap, the hospital didn’t care about me because they blamed me for their mistreatment of me, the pediatrician didn’t care about me because I was a lousy mother, and my baby hated me because I was a bad mom. (He was a high need baby and cried all the time.)
Then this idiot told me there was nothing wrong with me and basically that I should shut up and go home, and after three sessions he told me not to come back, and that was it. I didn’t have anything left to find more help, so I just slogged through the next year or two.
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This happened to me! I was able to stop taking my anti-depression medication(chemical depression, thought I’d never be able to come off meds). I wish the OB this person had wasn’t so sure because I know it is really at 30 30 30 split. I mean your choices are nothing, better or worse. But it does happen!
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brige had this to say,
Jun 4, 2010 @ 11:02 am (Quote)
Crazy… I hate people devaluing the emotions and mental state of pg and pp mommies… My favorit emotion comment came from my mother “had I known having a baby would make you so much less of a bitch, I would have made you have a kid in highschool” gah… Funny kinda… But rude… I felt more balanced after my daughter was born… But I don’t know if that was because I was just living in this surreal state or if I finally found someone who loved me and needed me unconditionally (well atleast until she’s a teenager) :-p… I find myself often saying why or how can I be upset… I have her… She makes everything right in my world… It took a good 6-12 months for me to really put into words how I felt but when I did I was surprised…
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Cmat Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 1:10 pm (Quote)
It makes it so difficult to stay angry sometimes too. Even when my son does things that upset me, its like “How can I stay upset??” They’re just so cute and like you said, everything is unconditional for them and it rubs off.
I hate people devaluing emotions in any situation. My father did that to me when I spoke up and said I might need help when I was depressed during college, losing tons of weight, pulling away from everyone. He brushed it off (and now regrets it). Its never okay, but I think it kind of puts a cherry on top when its done to a pg or pp mom because there’s so much going on that we don’t always have total control over.
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brige had this to say,
Jun 4, 2010 @ 11:11 am (Quote)
I forgot to mention this… But everytime I look at her I recall in vivid detail the perfect birth experience… It was everything we had hoped for and more (which was not what we were expecting at all I thought it was going to miserable horrible and painful)… So I feel super fortunate because I couldn’t imagine having to look at my child and remember a horrible experience… :/ ok sorry for rambling and interjecting my story but…
One of my biggest pet peeves is drs not listening to our worries… An ounce of prevention right… We want that open dialogue and it makes it impossible to get the care we need
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What bothers me about this comment is the “oh, that can’t happen” piece.
One of the most painful memories I have of my struggle through ppd was a friend who came over to visit and, after looking at my beautiful son, said, “I don’t think post-partum depression is real. How can anyone who has this be depressed?”
And I stood there, sweaty, leaky, exhausted, and depressed and felt like an even worse mother than I had before.
When she left, I just sobbed because I thought something must be terribly wrong with me to not be delightfully happy at what I had been given.
PPD isn’t rational; it’s a terrible, demoralizing, terrifying state of mind, but it is very real and it can really happen. To ever tell a woman otherwise has the very real potential of making the depression that much worse.
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HOORAY!!! Postpartum depression has been cured! OH HOORAY!!!
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