Episode 7 - The Unspoken Struggle: A Candid Conversation about Postpartum Depression with Katelyn Moreno-Miller

Depression, much like the weather, can be unpredictable and devastating. But unlike the weather, we often choose not to discuss it openly, especially when it comes to postpartum depression. This installment of All Our Little Messes is about shining light on this often neglected issue. Our guest, Katelyn, a respected parent educator and brave mother, opens up about her personal experiences with postpartum and clinical depression to help us understand the importance of breaking the silence. 

Postpartum depression is a rising tide, surging in alarming rates among new mothers. Yet, it is poorly reported and handled, leaving many women feeling isolated. Unfortunately, the pandemic has only fueled this crisis. On this episode, we scratch beneath the surface of the societal stigmas and lack of support that contribute to this mental health concern. We also delve into the contrast between postpartum care in the United States and countries like South Korea. 

We scrutinize the shortfalls of western medicine and its treatment for mental health issues, particularly the worrying trend of prescribing addictive medications to expectant mothers. The food industry's impact on mental health and the long-lasting effects of a mother's mental health on her child are also put under the microscope. However, it's not all gloom and doom. We explore practical ways to seek support for postpartum and clinical depression, emphasizing the need for home visits, counseling, proper nutrition, and adequate sleep. Ultimately, this episode is about creating awareness, offering solutions, and spreading the message that no one is alone in their struggle with depression.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello and welcome to All Our Little Messes, a podcast focused on healing through intentional conversations about parenting, relationships, religion and more. I am your host, veronica Winrod, and I'm so happy to have you here listening in on my thoughts today. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to All Our Little Messes. This is episode number seven, I believe, and today we're going to be talking about the rates of postpartum and clinical depression in women and why they are such a big problem and why the numbers seem to be on the rise. And to kind of help with that discussion, today I have someone who has had personal experience with that and has seen a lot of that kind of thing in the community Caitlin, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yeah, thanks for having me. Yes, my name is Caitlin. I am a mother to a six-year-old, I am a parent educator in the community and my background is in education. I have an associate's in early childhood education and I have a bachelor's in elementary education and my job is a parent educator, with parents as teachers. Yes, yeah, so it's been a really great ride to educate in a different way than I originally thought for elementary. So I have a ton of experience with mental health because I struggled with it and it's been definitely interesting to see how the other generations have reacted in my family alone to my mental health struggles. So, yeah, and I've been through it, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Yeah, and did you have like so when you first realized that you were having mental health problems? Was this something that was related to birth, like a postpartum thing, or was it just situational, like an environmental thing?

Speaker 2: 2:30

You know, I think it's been situational, mostly After having my son. I definitely think I struggled, but I think it wasn't postpartum depression. It was more that I was in such a horrible relationship at the time in a marriage that I was stuck in and I found out that I was being cheated on.

Speaker 2: 2:57

I think it was probably six months into our marriage and I had a little baby, and so our relationship was fresh and having a baby was fresh, and I also was 22 years old, so I was fairly young and I didn't have support that I think a new mother should have.

Speaker 1: 3:20

So, yes, it was situational and it gets better when I'm out of that situation, but at the same time it's still like underlying Right, right, yeah, yeah, and did you have a hard time like talking to people about it and actually, like you know, not only allowing yourself to face that you have, might have depression problems, but was it also something that you guys, that you had to have, that you had problems with with the people around you?

Speaker 2: 3:47

Yeah. So my mom has always been super great for me to talk to because she struggles with depression and anxiety. But when I, when it's come to talking to say my grandma about it, that was rough because she's like, you know, just pull up your bootstraps and like, do like.

Speaker 2: 4:09

We had five kids and she had like foster kids. Oh my goodness, she was doing all of the things. No, I was never depressed. No, I never felt down. No, I always had it. I had. She was super mom. She was super mom, yeah and I. I don't think that was true because I know her history and I know what she's gone through, and so that generational gap is.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Well, and like also, the super mom thing to me is I feel like we can say 90% of the time is a facade, like it's a fake it until you make it, because you can't let people know that you're failing and so you have to put on the face and you have to pretend that you have it all together. And that kind of just like feeds right back into this whole stigma surrounding postpartum depression and clinical depression and women. And why it's so under reported is because women have to have it all together at all points, like we cannot fail, we're not allowed to fail.

Speaker 2: 5:07

Yeah, absolutely yeah. I've definitely seen that, especially in parents that I work with they. They don't have that support, they don't have that person to talk to and they also think it's normal. Oh, this is just, you know, normal what I'm going through and postpartum depression is not normal. No, it shouldn't be just lived with. It should be talked about and discussed with different ways that can help them.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely agree, and I feel like because because it's such a huge problem and the fact that it's not talked about like you can definitely see where there's it was so funny when I was actually researching this because I became curious one day over how big of a problem depression and postpartum depression has become in women. So I just started researching it and doing, you know, just research on numbers and stuff, and they were astronomical Like I was shocked. I had no idea it was this by, because when people talk about postpartum depression, they talk about it like it's something very, very few women face. But the reality is so like the average number I could find was one in seven women experience postpartum depression after birth. That's huge, yeah, that's huge, and the fact too. And then, like it, I also found articles that were saying that over 50% of postpartum depression cases aren't actually even reported, so that there's a very good chance that that number is even higher. Yeah, we're talking like one in three or one in four women possibly. It's insane.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Yeah, and it's not as talked about. We don't know the signs, you know, and I know I'm not even sure what the treatments are. I mean, obviously you can get depression type medicine and I'm a firm believer in counseling but other than that, like, what can you do, especially for those really hard cases of postpartum depression that I've heard about? That's, the kind of extreme that I've heard about is like they don't want to be with their baby and the lack of attachment. Right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:34

No, and that's yeah, that's definitely the ones that you know, that you hear about, make news, but I don't know Like I've. Just the fact that they've also gone up so quickly just in the past 10 years is also like very concerning. I feel like too like what's causing these numbers to go up so quickly and so high.

Speaker 2: 8:01

Yeah, yeah, I mean what has happened in the last 10 years that is causing this depression, not just in our generation, because generationally yes, our generation basically, like millennials and younger, are more depressed than ever, and we've had fewer wars, I suppose, than the boomers generation. But at the same time, we have the internet now, so that's one thing I can think of, yes, yeah, so I mean internet is.

Speaker 1: 8:42

I mean just the basic thing of you know, going on Instagram or Facebook and just scrolling and then you start like falling into that pit of comparing yourself to others and then like, oh my goodness, why haven't I accomplished this with my life? Why am I not like this person? And then it just like, yeah, it throws you into this. So, yeah, I definitely agree, the internet has not been good.

Speaker 2: 9:01

then, in that case, yeah, yeah, I mean, we have all the knowledge at our fingertips with the internet, and yet what we choose to do, what a lot of people choose to do, is put each other down, and even with mom influencers right, we have the mom influencers who've got it all together and they have all of their kids dressed matching. Are they talking about mental health? No, I don't.

Speaker 1: 9:29

No no, because they've got it together, they're super mom, yeah, and they're just like beating back into that hole. It's easy and I've totally got this and I don't need any help, and yeah, but you know the numbers. The numbers say something different, as entirely it's. I mean, they say that 10 to 20 percent of new mothers will experience some type of depression. And we're not just talking about, you know, hormone, like postpartum depression, here. We're talking about actual clinical depression and that's 10 to 20 percent of new mothers are going to experience some kind of clinical depression during the first two years. Yeah, and that's that's. That's insane and it really does boil down to like the lack of support and the lack of resources that there are for a Mothers because, like you said earlier, like people don't actually know what Causes and what the cure is for this kind of thing. Yeah and so, and there's not enough, I feel like there's not enough resources that are actually looking into this and so the problem is just compounding and getting worse.

Speaker 2: 10:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it definitely is, and you know I mean women are having to work in this economy. You need, yes, incomes just to survive, so that's a huge thing. That's been happening is that you know everything is so much more expensive. You can't live on just your husband or your partner's Right income, not to mention single mothers, which I am and I struggle with, and so I I know that situation more intimately Right.

Speaker 1: 11:18

Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely agree, and it was so. When I was. When I was doing the research for this, I came across this Report that was released by blue cross, blue shield, and they found a nearly 30% increase in postpartum depression rates in Between 2014 and 2018 so it was roughly about four, four and a half years and they did a study across 1.8 million pregnancies and they found a in those four years. They found a nearly 30% increase in postpartum depression in just those four years, versus the previous four years, and I I don't know what happened in 2014 to 2018 because, like when I started thinking about it, I was like I don't, we didn't have anything major beyond, like an election. There was nothing.

Speaker 2: 12:15

Right, I mean definitely, when you compare it to like 2020 new moms, oh, my gosh Seriously lacked that support actually.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Depression. The rates and depression actually, now that you bring that up, the rates and depression during the COVID pandemic in new moms actually went up From previous years. It went up 15 to 40.7 percent compared to previous years. And that is that I can understand, because COVID was just. Covid was horrible.

Speaker 1: 12:47

I mean you had to be a mom, you had to be a wife, you had to be an employee and then they closed down the school so you had to be a school teacher. Then you had moms giving birth in very isolated circumstances because nobody was allowed to be in the hospital with them and then, like I mean, giving birth in a hospital can sometimes be a very clinical experience already, and then you throw COVID restrictions on top of that and it's just, yeah, it can be turned into a very, very traumatizing birth experience for anyone which, yeah, a lot like often will Cycle into postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety because of that. So, but 15 to 40 percent, like that's, that's insane, that's insane, yeah, and I mean the numbers were already up over previous years and they're they're increasing, they're increasing, they're increasing as we go on like the numbers are not falling.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Yeah, it's an epidemic. I mean there's some things going on and we're not looking at it In the right way that we should be. We're not giving support like in other countries. I love that they do this, for example, in Korea I believe it is North Korea they do a postpartum North Korea or South Korea? Oh, I don't know. I'll have to look it up. I think North Korea is very nice.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Yeah, I think you're right, Okay, kim.

Speaker 2: 14:15

Jong-un. They have a. Yeah, it's got to be South Korea. Yeah, they have Postpartum Dula. I think it's a Korean postpartum care. They Korea has more than 400 postpartum centers around the country where moms and babies go for one to two weeks after their hospitals to stay to receive additional care and help, and Usually this is a government program.

Speaker 1: 14:52

Right.

Speaker 2: 14:54

I mean why? Why isn't America doing this?

Speaker 1: 14:57

Why isn't society, culture, why aren't people doing this? See, and that's my thing is like everybody talks about you know, why isn't the government doing this? I'm like we shouldn't get to a point where the government is forcing the issue because the issue has gotten so bad. Like we shouldn't get to that point. Like society needs to be structured around around motherhood and the family, and Because if we aren't, then we're going to have situations like this yeah, like they need to value motherhood and like the work and the sacrifice that we put in and they don't. Yeah, yeah, so like if the government has to step in, that's a problem, that's a big problem, because they shouldn't have to, but yeah, I don't. That's. That's very interesting, and you know it's correct. Korea is not the only country that has stuff like that either.

Speaker 2: 15:54

Yeah, I'm sure there's other countries. I just happen to see a lot of ticktocks lately about this postpartum culture that they have and I think it's it's super awesome and I know here in America we have postpartum doulas that do that. It's just not a government program and it's not, it's not talked about.

Speaker 1: 16:14

It's kind of like well, and then, like the attitude around just having a doula period is kind of Hippie-ish, almost like if you have a doula, you're kind of considered one of those weird hippies, which is really unfortunate, because if people really understood what a doula was, they would want every mother to have one At their birth.

Speaker 2: 16:39

And my mother was a doula and so she helped me through my birth and it was incredible. It was, she was so great. And you can even have doulas for grief and loss. Yeah, when you lose lose your baby, they'll help you, hold the baby and take pictures. Yeah, doulas are Incredible in all forms, and it's not just for natural births. No, she helped me through my epidural, which I didn't want but I ended up having to get, because that's what happens when you're in labor for 52 hours.

Speaker 1: 17:14

Oh, my goodness, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. You know I cringe when I think about my eight and a half hours, 52 hours, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 17:25

No, a lot of it wasn't active labor, but regardless I was like in pain, my water had broken. So my water continued to break, you know, slowly, through that, those hours, uh-huh, and she, she was like you know what your uterus is tired, you are exhausted, you cannot push out this baby on your own, you can't have it in the water like you wanted. And, and you know, she supported me through that, um, through that transition, because it was very hard for me. I wanted to stick to my birth plan, so I always recommend doulas for everybody.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Yeah, do it, do it like. Yeah, I feel like if everybody got a doula or at least had someone who was Even just taking a birthing class like if your partner takes a birthing class so that they go into that hospital room or they go into that birth center knowing what to expect and knowing what kind of support they're going to be expected to provide, like that would be huge.

Speaker 2: 18:26

Yeah, I mean it shows a lower c-section rate, less anxiety, decreased vacuum assisted deliveries and possibly lower induction rates. I mean that's what, yeah, even birthing class outcomes show. So that's incredible. I mean that alone is yeah. You know, like I said, knowledge is power. Yeah, yeah. And to be your own advocate and to have maybe your partner or your doula help you have an advocate, because sometimes, when you're in pain, you can't talk.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Actually, that was my experience with my first was I I went into this with this glorified idea of how I was going to give birth and you know, everything was going to 100% go according to plan. Nothing was going to go off-track, I was just gonna go in there. So first thing that happened was he, his head kind of shifted right onto my sciatica and I couldn't walk for two days. So I was just like, okay, you're getting evicted. So I was induced and that was like my first step off of my, my plan. But I was like you know, that's okay, we can get induced, I can still do this naturally.

Speaker 1: 19:42

Um, they broke my water and it was 45 minutes after that, after I started cussing up the nurses, that my husband was just like Okay, honey, honey, honey. So he was like trying to like help me breathe through them. But like I, you know the pitocin and the breaking the water and everything was just like very intense and coming on very fast. And he was actually the one who's like okay, babe, I know this is not what you wanted, but seriously, you can't keep doing this. Like I had like 15 second breaks between contractions. It was horrible. He's like you, you need to get an epidural just, and I kept saying no, no, I don't want one, and he, kind of like, put his foot down in a way which I am eternally grateful for, by the way, I just want to put that out there just very grateful that he was just like babe, no.

Speaker 2: 20:34

Yeah, well, he probably knew you more than you could know yourself in that moment.

Speaker 1: 20:39

I was like in this haze I couldn't even think. Like, when you're in that zone of trying to just make it through the contraction and trying to breathe through it, like you can't, it's hard to think straight. So, yeah, ended up getting I get it, getting the epidural and, yeah, like my entire body relaxed, I was actually able to. I mean, I could still feel the contractions because they gave me what was called a walking epidural. Oh, okay, yeah, so I was able to like still feel them, so that when it was a you know, it was time to push, I could still feel when it was time to push. So it kind of just took the edge off. But it was enough to where, like, my body relaxed and like labor actually progressed and I wasn't Custing up the nurses anymore. So, yeah, that's always the plus.

Speaker 1: 21:22

Yeah, but no, and like I hadn't I mean I had had experience with, with birth before then so I kind of I knew what to expect. Ish, you can never really know 100% how but to expect without having done it yourself. But like, looking, looking back, like I definitely the fact that I isolated myself so much and Just experienced so much anxiety surrounding the baby and His growth and was he eating enough? Was he pooping enough? Was he peeing enough? Is my, my supply? Enough is there and like it was it was down to. I wonder what the fat percentage is in my breast milk. Kind of thing I was obsessing I was obsessing about everything.

Speaker 1: 22:12

And so looking back and I'm like, huh, I was definitely experiencing some like Anxiety, depression, stuff. There was something going on there that was not a normal reaction to birth.

Speaker 2: 22:24

Yeah, definitely, but I remember that same thing. I would wake up it felt like every five minutes to check his breathing, because I was so scared of him Stopping breathing for some reason, even though we practiced safe sleep for the most part.

Speaker 1: 22:42

Well, and I think a big part of that too, as I was in the hospital, they, the nurses, were just on me all the time for having him in the bed all the time, and so, like I was constantly terrified of falling asleep with him after that Because I was worried that, you know, something might happen. And so, yeah, I was always waking up, checking to see if he was still breathing. Yeah, and it, yeah, it got better after about Six, seven months Is when, like, stuff started to finally die down. But I wasn't like a hundred percent until about a year old he started, he was more independent, he started weaning himself off and, like I, went back to work and Got a taste the outside world again.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Yeah, yeah definitely yeah, and I was isolated because of the bad relationship I was in he isolated me so I just had you know him who Wasn't really there, right, and I had my limited knowledge. I had and I think about I wish that I had had a parent educator, mm-hmm. Or there's the other program that's also nationwide called nurse family partnership. They work with first-time moms, low-income first-time moms, and I wish I had had one of those resources, because then I would have had somebody outside telling me how things are gonna look and they weigh the baby and they tell you if you're doing things right and but yeah, I had.

Speaker 2: 24:28

and then the other piece was I had his grandma Kind of telling me oh, you should put rice cereal in his bottle. Ah, I know, and that's been very controversial and In my work now with families They'll say, yeah, we've been adding rice cereal to the bottle and I was like wait, what does your doctor say about that? Yeah, the doctor says to do it. Oh dear, some cases, some cases right, they're saying to do it. So Specifically with acid reflux, I think is okay, more where they're saying to do it, but maybe I should start eating rice cereal.

Speaker 1: 25:03

I've had really horrible acid reflux over the past week.

Speaker 2: 25:06

Yeah, yeah. But you know, like so I was getting a lack of sleep. I Was isolated because of the situation I was in. I had had new baby, I had already had existing Depression on top of that and had been, you know, during pregnancy, was on the highest dose of Zoloft possible during pregnancy, oh my goodness. And so, you know, hormones crashing and having this kind of outside influence of His grandma hit her generational ties to it, I mean my mental health suffered. And then on top of that, where I was living was very snowy, not as much, you know, sun, and so I was lacking that vitamin D and it was just.

Speaker 2: 26:00

It was a rough time. And I look back and I wish I could have just given myself a hug back then and just said it's okay, you're going to make it through this, because for a while I didn't think I was going to. And you know, I thankfully I had somebody there, a very close friend, who reached out to me and checked on my mental health, but it was really only her who was able to do that with me.

Speaker 1: 26:27

Yeah, Well, and that's also really important. It's like, actually, you know, having people around, that one like know you well enough to understand that something's going on, something's wrong and you know checking on you and not being those people who are just like, oh, you just need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and you'll get through this, it'll be okay. Just fake it till you make it, which doesn't work. It doesn't make the problem go away. It's like using alcohol or any other kind of drug. It doesn't make the problem go away, it's still there.

Speaker 2: 27:02

Yeah, it's still there, and I once heard a really beautiful quote that said Trauma is what happens when we don't have a validating witness. Thankfully I had a validating witness in that, you know, my close friend was able to say I see you're going through something, you're struggling, you are not having a good time and therefore it didn't turn into a trauma. But in other cases where this is happening, where women are really struggling with postpartum depression worse than I had experienced situationally, you know it's a trauma, it's a you can have birth trauma and you can certainly have this sort of postpartum depression trauma that happens when there's not a validating witness.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Yeah, yeah, and well, and that's that's something I think that people need to focus on too is like understanding and acknowledging why a woman may be experiencing that, and so that's like you were very lucky there because you had that.

Speaker 1: 28:10

You had that person who was there in your life to acknowledge the reason why you were experiencing no mental health problems, and that's not something that a lot of women have the luxury of, I think, because I mean just just scrolling through like tick tock or Instagram Reels, youtube shorts, whatever.

Speaker 1: 28:30

There's so many. There's been this huge increase of influencers I've noticed lately, especially since COVID, talking about the mental load of motherhood and like how isolated they feel and like how full of anxiety and depression they are over carrying the mental load of motherhood because everything was, you know, they're, they're expected to carry everything and deal with everything, and on top of that, you have and I, I, I this part is like really, really hard, but like the lack of actual focused healthcare for women, even down to things like our reproductive health or, you know, our mental health especially, everything is just treated with a bandaid and they don't have even even in their healthcare providers. They don't have somebody there in their life who's actually willing to get down to the root of the problem and figure out why this is happening? They don't. They don't have that, they're just so. The bandages are on top of it and like.

Speaker 2: 29:42

And I think all of Western medicine. Really it is more of a symptomatic cure and I'm a firm believer in like. Our mental health needs to be talked about more and not just here's a depression med. Try this, see if it works helps. I'm a huge advocate for counseling and therapy and even my son is in therapy and he, he has anxiety, which you know I feel a little bit bad about because I have anxiety and did I give that to him and right, you know that's, that's part of it, but I had another point to it and it's lost. All that happens it does. The train is gone.

Speaker 1: 30:31

Once you get pregnant, your brain just kind of just leaves yeah, the baby is just yeah, on it's yeah. No, I mean, like, even when it comes to you know our health care system, western medicine, and how they they treat everything systematically. I had a friend of mine who had major health problems with her reproductive health and every solution to that problem was a bandaid and it was basically a wait until she has to go back into surgery to have it fixed because they didn't know what caused it and they weren't even bothering to look into what was causing it. They weren't willing to do any labs, they weren't willing to do any kind of testing. It was just like oh, you have this problem that's put you under for three or four hours, we'll get to the surgery, will get all that shaved out and send you home. Here's some pain meds.

Speaker 1: 31:38

And because of that, like her mental health struggled, like it suffered so much. Because of that, like she, she just went into this cycle, like I guess, I guess this is where I'm at now and I'm never going to be able to have kids. I'm never going to have, you know, a normal cycle. I'm never going to have I'm able to actually have a normal relationship with my body, like her thing was, my body in my mind hate me. Oh, and it's so sad because I hear that a lot. I actually hear that a lot my body in my mind hate me and, like I've had several friends who had you know different mental health and you know physical problems with, like reproductive health or whatever, and it's always this attitude of like my body hates me.

Speaker 2: 32:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's awful place to be, I think to experience like this kind of you know that missing link of this is supposed to be the skin I'm in this is I'm supposed to feel great. I don't like there's that disconnect with that. But yeah, all of Western medicine I think, does that symptomatically. And I've been to a nature path doctor which, of course, like our state, medicaid doesn't pay for. You have to pay out of pocket for. Oh my, I have a very sort of exclusive experience that if you're able to pay for it, you can. So I went one time to a nature path doctor to kind of figure out reproductive issues, what was going on, also weight issues, and he was like so tell me what's going on in the home, tell me about your mental health.

Speaker 2: 33:27

I mean, it was wild. What are you eating? How many vegetables per day? Why don't every doctor do that?

Speaker 1: 33:34

No, they just automatically prescribe something.

Speaker 2: 33:38

Yeah, yeah, instead of Zoloft. He was like, hey, I want you to really focus on your you know vegetable intake, your fruit intake and then making sure you're getting vitamin D. Like vitamin D was never a thing I realized that I was so deficient in. And then he did my labs and realize like I'm way under my vitamin D level that I should be having and hey, maybe life is really great actually, once I've got started getting the proper vitamin D. Like maybe love is real.

Speaker 1: 34:11

Now, actually it's funny is being that up because, like I've always had, I've always had iron problems and every time I go into a doctor they would want to do infusions. Yeah, and not not trying to figure out why I am so anemic, but just put me on an iron pill and they wanted to do infusions and that was it. Or I have I had experienced really, really terrible migraines with this pregnancy and instead of trying to figure out why I have terrible migraines, they just, you know, prescribed me this pill, which I found out later was an extremely addictive medication. Oh my gosh, I know, and so like. So they prescribed me this pill. I was supposed to take it only, it's like once every four hours or something like that, and so I only had to take like one a day.

Speaker 1: 35:05

And I had a friend over and she saw the bottle on the counter and she read the label. She's like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe they prescribed this to you. And I'm like what, why? And she's like, well, it's very addicting, like why are they prescribing this to pregnant women? And I was just like huh. So I brought it up to my midwife and she was like oh, it's really not that bad and you know, it's just kind of they over, kind of over blew it just to make people scared of it. But you're fine. And when I actually started doing research on it like couple medical journals and stuff online I did, it's a very, a very addictive substance and I was yeah, I was very shocked. So instead of trying to figure out why I was having you know migraines, they just, you know, prescribed this very addictive pain medication and sent me home.

Speaker 2: 35:56

Wow, may I ask what do you? What medication was it?

Speaker 1: 36:01

Oh, I don't even remember it's pencil and since I took it, it was a combination of acetaminophen, caffeine and something starts with a, b, maybe.

Speaker 2: 36:15

Okay, interesting.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Yeah, it was, I can't remember the name of it, but yeah, I was just kind of when she told me that, oh, it's not that bad. And then I did the research, I was like, oh my goodness, it is that bad. And it kind of put the whole They'll just throw a band-aid on it, on everything. Prescribed it to you while you were pregnant, while I was pregnant. That's wild, I know, and that's like that's the thing is like I don't.

Speaker 1: 36:42

So I've started researching everything that they've been telling me to take, and but it was such a contrast to because they've also told me to up up my magnesium intake. Yeah, instead of putting me on a laxative because it's not effective, all of these meds that they're having me take because of complications during my pregnancy, and I have a bunch of complications, and so one of the things I thought they were going to definitely prescribe was a laxative and it's, as they told me, my magnesium intake, and I was just like, oh well, that's new. Instead of giving me another pharmaceutical, you're telling me that here increase your vitamins and minerals and that's incredible Like we are all deficient in magnesium.

Speaker 1: 37:29

I love magnesium, and I've sometimes wondered if the mental health problems in the US, especially among women, is because of how much our diet has changed in the past couple of decades. Yeah, definitely, our food is so used to be at least it used to be so nutrient dense, and now, when people actually go and test it, I forgot what the percentage was. I'd have to look it up, but it's very low, which is why they sell all of these supplements and you have to take all of these vitamins on top of the food you're already eating. Yeah, and all the additives and preservatives and everything is also going to affect the equilibrium in our bodies as well, and so that's going to affect our brains and our mental health and our physical health and everything, because there's definitely a very fine, delicate balance in our bodies and if we start messing with that, with what we put into it, then yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:41

Everything is so processed, so full of salt and sugar, and I think too, when they advertise things, they're not being truthful. No, no. So, yeah, definitely, our food has changed and we are less self-sustainable and more relying on the quality of Walmart.

Speaker 2: 39:08

And if you're making enough money. Sure, you can shop at your local farmer's market, yeah, but we haven't even really gotten into the disparity of different races, different socioeconomic status. I mean that alone. If you want to look at statistics for postpartum depression for women of color, I mean it's higher. I had seen in an article on medical news today that postpartum depression, as you had said, affects one in, I think it was six women. Oh wow. But for women of color it was even more, and they can't even really tell you how much more. Because there's such a stigma around women of color and talking about mental health because of the different cultures and the different races, I mean, yeah, and me being partially a woman of color, I'm some Hispanic and some Jewish, and so there's kind of a mix. But beyond that, I mean for black women, indian, native American, even the tribal groups they're not talking about mental health and they're not able to access the same support that even we do. So that's pretty wild too. Yeah, yeah, no for sure.

Speaker 1: 40:49

Yeah, well, and then it goes beyond that too, because a lot of these social, like ethnic groups, they don't have the kind of financial resources that we do and so they're not able to access health care, even if they wanted to. Even if that stigma didn't exist, it would be very difficult because statistically these people are on a, they have lower income, that's just kind of a thing that happens for some reason. But yeah, they don't have access to actual legitimate health care. They don't have access to good food. Like you said, our options are Walmart and if we're lucky we can make it to like a Costco or something. But that's kind of our options and Walmart hasn't historically always had the best nutritionally balanced food.

Speaker 2: 41:44

Yeah, their quality. You can actually see it. I saw a picture the other day of two different beefs. The color from the Walmart beef was like this weird shade of pink that we've also seen, oh I saw that, yeah, and the color from the like farm raised beef.

Speaker 2: 42:05

That I don't think it was bought from a store. I think they had, like, bought this from a butcher. The color was so rich and the texture was so different, mm-hmm, oh, my goodness, that is the quality that we don't even know, and it's more than that too, because I was looking at the picture and it was the fat ratios.

Speaker 1: 42:25

Yes, I was looking at the fat ratios and I was like, oh my goodness, what are they feeding these cows? Yeah, I mean, that's a whole different topic. I used to be obsessed with the whole food industry.

Speaker 2: 42:41

Yeah, I could talk about it for days too. I mean, I'm crunchy.

Speaker 1: 42:47

So yeah, I call myself scrunchy. See, I am crunchy. I try to be as organic as possible, but I am definitely not above going to Mickey D's.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Yeah, and we call it cancer food and we don't go. But I enjoy my cancer food, caitlin. I know, I know I have my other stuff Like my guilty pleasure is Bath and Body Works scent, but I know that the soy disrupts my hormones and so I will put it in for like a little bit when a guest is coming over and then I'll pull it right back out. But that is my guilty pleasure, so I'm semi-crunchy. I guess you could say yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:28

I'm semi-crunchy. Well, because we do mostly gain meat. But then I buy our chickens from Costco and I'm pretty sure Costco gets their chicken from Tyson. So, yeah, definitely there you go. So I've offset my good gain meat with my good hormone-infused chicken breast.

Speaker 2: 43:54

Yep, yeah, pumped full of whatever they pump them full of, and they're nice and fat.

Speaker 1: 44:03

I had to start buying the chicken breast tenderloins because the regular chicken breast was so covered in like this, like when I defrost it was covered in like this slime and this yellow fat and like chunks of like cartilage. It was just, oh, it was so nasty and I was just like what have they done to our food? What have they done to our food? And like, what is it doing to my body? Yeah, and to my brain, yeah, like mm. Yeah, no, and that's that. You know, if our food change, if people started and I feel like they actually are starting to do that, they are starting to to take a stand, so to speak If people started actually paying attention to what they were putting into their bodies, I feel like the mental health crisis would at least slow down a little bit. Yeah, because I mean, I don't think we can 100% heal what we've done to our bodies, because it's it's and like what we've done to our minds, like it's on a cellular level at this point, like it's affecting everything.

Speaker 2: 45:10

But definitely, yeah, and you want to talk about mental health and so it's interesting. Yeah, he just came to visit.

Speaker 1: 45:23

Yeah, I always tell people like halfway through episodes. Sometimes I'll have my toddler come out and say hi, and it's like you know what. I'm not going to even bother editing this out. This is a family podcast, like you know. If you have a problem hearing my toddler ask for a hug or the dog panting, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 45:40

Yeah, yeah, this is what you're getting. Yes, yeah. So when, when a pregnant mom and I think this is what happened to me I experienced so much depression and anxiety during pregnancy, it actually changes on a cellular level that child's brain, and so what? How I've seen it play into action for my son is he now has anxiety.

Speaker 2: 46:07

As a six-year-old he was a crier and I think when you study the cortisol levels of a child who had a mother who had a lot of anxiety versus a child who had a mother who did not have anxiety, their baseline cortisol levels were heightened than the child who did not have that. Oh, they're going into the world with higher cortisol levels. So this is a generational thing. More mothers who are more anxious and more depressed leads into more children who are more anxious and more depressed, and on and on. That goes Wow, yeah, it's. It's scary to think about how much our bodies in pregnancy affect our babies, but it really does, and that's why they say when you're pregnant, I mean, try to be as stress-free as possible, as well as taking your, your prenatals, and and all of that healthy, nutritious eating yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:13

Yeah, wow, that's. I did not. I did not know that, I hadn't even really thought about that, actually like how, how it could do that. But that actually does make sense because there's like so much that passes between the mother and the baby in utero.

Speaker 2: 47:30

Yeah, and so because I had a heightened cortisol levels through most of my pregnancy I was constantly crying, I was constantly worried, I was constantly being berated and belittled from the person who was supposed to be loving me and supporting me, and also we moved a ton, so moving is a big stressor. Also, he came out as a crier and I struggled with breastfeeding and the crying in turn like flipped my anxiety on and so I had to wear like earplugs just to deal with him. And yeah, he just kind of got triggered a little bit easier than than another time, yeah, yeah, yeah, then most kids yeah, that cortisol piece is is huge.

Speaker 1: 48:23

Wow See, that just kind of goes to show, though, that like if we had better support for moms and like if there wasn't such a stigma surrounding mental health, especially in women, this wouldn't be such a big problem.

Speaker 2: 48:40

Yeah, agreed, I mean we need more support?

Speaker 1: 48:44

Yeah, we definitely do. So what would you suggest to people that are, like you know, looking to increase the support in their lives and looking to you know maybe help fix current mental health problems that they might have right now?

Speaker 2: 49:00

Definitely. So I would say, if you're a mother to children zero to five, look up parents' teachers. It's a nationwide program, a home visiting program. That's just a little plug. I fully believe in the outcomes of home visiting. So look up if it's in your area. That's number one. Support is a huge thing. So find somebody that you trust to talk to, whether that's a friend, a therapist, a family member. You need to start identifying who you can talk to and you know you need to have that trust built Right.

Speaker 2: 49:46

And I would also say getting sleep is super important. Oh, my goodness, enough sleep, definitely, for yourself, for your children. You know, take the magnesium, let it slowly drift you to sleep and go to bed. I mean, you know, but don't sleep too much. If you're depressed, how does that happen? So get up on time, have a good sleep schedule Right, and then you know, like we said, that nutrition piece is huge. So eating healthy foods will, you know, deal you with that nutritious piece. You know, are you getting enough protein? Are you snacking on like empty foods? And then you know, get out and get out and walk and enjoy nature. Don't push yourself to do anything crazy like exercise, but just to.

Speaker 1: 50:42

you know a gentle walk. Don't do like exercise. Don't ever do anything crazy like exercise. Yeah, I always tell people that if you see me running, you should be running too. Be worried Be worried, we scared people.

Speaker 2: 50:56

Yeah, yeah, but just even a gentle little exercise and just I would also say to anybody out there you're not alone, even though it feels like it, and you be gentle with yourself and take time for yourself.

Speaker 1: 51:12

Yeah, yeah, and counseling. I would also want to add counseling, like I had I. So I struggled. A couple of years ago I was really struggling with just it all kind of just fell all at once on top of me during. It was actually during COVID, coincidentally, so it was during COVID. I was working, my husband was was gone working. I had a almost two year old, I had just had a miscarriage. There was like all of these things that just like fell on top of me and I had a lot of trauma from a couple of years ago that I had gone through, that.

Speaker 1: 51:52

I had actually never really gone to counseling for, like, I'd started a couple appointments and the guy turned out to be crazy, a quack. So I quit and I was just like you know, therapy is stupid, I just need to get over myself and move on. Well, getting over myself and moving on ended in a panic attack underneath my, my work desk and so I I, my husband was just like babe, you need, you need help, like you need to talk to someone, you need to figure out what's going on, you need to work through this. So I actually I went to, I started going to therapy and it was all it was telehealth, it was all over the phone because, you know, during the middle COVID, there was no in person appointments or anything like that. But oh my gosh, like it helped so much and it could have just been the therapist, but I only, I was only in therapy for seven months, I think, and it was an absolute night and day difference and like, just how I approached life and how I looked at life and I mean I was I was so negative before and just you know, waiting for the other shoe to drop constantly, and just like I said negative, and like she was so helpful when it came to just giving me tools just to start my day on a positive note.

Speaker 1: 53:20

Just little things like what am I thankful for today? Waking up with that just positive note was just huge. So yeah, therapy is huge when it comes to mental health because, unlike a lot of people, like we've mentioned, we mentioned earlier in this podcast like older generations see therapy as a joke. Yeah, and I've experienced that in my own family like when I would mention going to therapy, it was always like, oh it's, you know you don't want to go to therapy because you know talking about it is just going to keep it at the forefront of your mind at all times. And you just need to. You need to bury it and get over it. It's like, but it's still there. Your problem is still there and you haven't faced it and you haven't fixed it.

Speaker 2: 54:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 54:05

So definitely, yeah, no, definitely I would. I would recommend going to therapy.

Speaker 2: 54:12

So yeah, and finding somebody that you trust. You know like you experience that with one therapist. It just wasn't, wasn't doing it and you have to have a good relationship with your therapist and and like what they're doing, but like what they're bringing to the table for you.

Speaker 1: 54:30

Yeah, and it's not always going to feel good to it. Like therapy is not going to be easy. It's not easy. It's definitely hard to like face those parts of yourself, but it's so worth it, even during the brief time much I mean I need to go back, but during the brief time I was in, like it is so worth it. So, yeah, I would definitely, I would recommend that. So, yeah, all right. Well, thank you very much for coming on, caitlin. This has been an amazing conversation. Yes, absolutely yeah, I hope to have you on again. This was actually really fun, yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:07

I was glad to talk more about mental health and I hope our your viewers can can glean something from it.

Speaker 1: 55:22

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of All Our Little Messes. Please let us know how much you enjoyed it below and add any questions you have about this episode. Also, don't forget to follow us on Patreon for amazing exclusive perks, including early access to podcast episodes and bonus episodes every month. We've also recently added a support group for all of our paid patrons. You could check us out on Facebook and Instagram for daily updates and insights that mirror podcast topics. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.