We look up to doctors. We care about what they think. We seek their advice. We follow their direction. When they say something hurtful, it can really strike at the heart of how we feel about ourselves. You'd think that in this day and age medical professionals would know how to handle women who have perinatal mood and anxiety disorders with care, but the truth is that many don't. I hear from moms all the time who are told awful, ignorant or destructive things.
I've written about this in the past. About the nurse who told the mom who had PPD and needed to see her doctor to just take a hot bath. The people who tell moms who are 4 months postpartum that the baby is too old for her to have PPD. The medical practices that completely blow the entire process of caring for a mother who is suffering. It makes me want to hunt these people down and box their ears.
With increasing frequency, postpartum women who have taken antidepressants during pregnancy have shared – usually in tears – that while in the hospital for their labor and delivery hospitalization, a health care provider at the hospital said something judgmental about their being on an antidepressant. For example, one woman said that a nurse told her, “I can’t believe you took that during pregnancy.” Or, “Don’t you know how risky that is?!” Or “How could you do that to your baby?” This is often in the context of women using other medications in parallel for non-psychiatric indications, of which less may be known about the reproductive safety profile, but are not addressed by the health care provider.
She goes on to write about how to deal with uninformed comments about PPD from doctors and nurses, offering great advice that I think you'll want to see. Hope you'll check it out!
