Beyond the Baby Blues
By Catherine Knox, Benison O’Reilly and Seana Smith
RRP: AUD $34.95
Exisle Publishing, http://www.exislepublishing.com.au
When I started tiny & little, I imagined an online home filled with information and inspiration for parents with babies, toddlers and young children. I wanted it to be light and focus on the beautiful aspects of parenting, but also acknowledge that being a parent is not always easy. Because it’s not. Sometimes it’s terribly difficult, in fact.
As a parent, there will be days when you wish someone would come in and take care of the little ones for a while so you can tend to your own needs. There will be moments when you want to cry with exhaustion or vent frustration over the challenges of parenting.
Having bad days is perfectly normal and every parent should feel that it’s okay to express those feelings out loud. Parenthood is not all sunshine and flowers; sometimes the skies are grey and the blossoms need some tender care. What is important is knowing when a parent isn’t just having a bad day, but instead needs help. When feeling down is more than that and when it’s Perinatal Anxiety and Depression.
It’s estimated that one in five parents will suffer from Perinatal Anxiety and Depression (“PAD”), which occurs during pregnancy and after childbirth. When you think about that statistic and your friends and family, it adds up to a lot of potential sufferers quickly.
I had 12 ladies in my mothers group for my firstborn – that’s two people. I have six sisters-in-law, there’s another. Include their husbands and partners as men suffer PAD too and there are six people who could be affected after a few seconds of consideration. The numbers add up very quickly indeed.
With so many parents suffering PAD, it’s surprising that it isn’t spoken of more widely and openly. That it feels like there is a stigma attached to it. That we don’t talk about it during pregnancy as much as we discuss the developmental growth of our baby and our birth plan. Or as often as we take photos of the growing belly. That it isn’t accepted by sufferers readily, with some hiding symptoms and resisting treatment in the hope that they will feel better with time alone.
Beyond the Baby Blues is a PAD handbook and I think it’s a must-read for parents, even if you think you won’t personally suffer perinatal anxiety and depression. It feels like there’s no rhyme or reason to who suffers PAD, so I would think of it as an important ‘just in case’ read for your own mental health.
With that statistic of one in five, chances are if you don’t suffer personally, you’ll know someone who does. Therein lies one of the biggest benefits of this book. It’s not written solely for the sufferers of PAD as a guide to recognise the symptoms in themselves and seek treatment. The information provided to guide parents who want to get help and don’t know where to start is invaluable, but this book offers much more. It covers different treatments and recovery and shares real life experiences of sufferers which will inspire others to seek the help they need.
More than that, it is a handbook for those who want to support others who are suffering PAD. Quotes from sufferers about their experiences with family and friends are a fantastic guide and offer an insight into the world of a PAD sufferer. A number of my friends suffered from PND and openly spoke about it and while I did the best I could at the time, I wish this book had been out then to read and help more.
I enjoyed reading a parenting book that focused on the wellbeing and mental health of parents during what is a tremendous change in their lives. There is a lot of information in this book, and by the time I finished reading it there was page after page marked that I wanted to go back to.
Many have their favourite books that they would suggest to friends and family and, for me, Beyond the Baby Blues is the new addition to the list of books I would recommend.
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