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Postpartum blues and depression
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman's which is written and set in 1892, the central figure is kept in a top floor bedroom where she is forced to "rest" for days on end.
Being oppressed and depressed, she finally goes mad. One theory is that the woman, who it is implied has recently given birth, is not crazy but suffering from very real postpartum depression or what is called postpartum blues today.
Women's feelings and emotions have been discounted for centuries. From Hippocrates to Freud, and his term, "hysteria", denoting only those emotions of a female with a hyster, a womb. Modern science has finally acknowledged that postpartum blues are real and in some cases quite devastating.
It seems there are three stages of post birthing depression, with postpartum blues-also called the "baby blues" or "maternity blues"-at the milder end. At the other end is what specialists define as puerperal psychosis. At this level the illness shows itself in hallucinations, delusions that the baby is a demon a saint or dying, and tendencies toward suicide or infanticide.
Was this what Medea was experiencing when she killed her children? Was this what Susan Smith was experiencing when she drowned her two boys in the back of the vehicle she sunk in John D. Long Lake?
Can fathers get a form of postpartum blues? If so, can we account for postpartum blues of one Garrett Wilson, who murdered his five-month old whom he had with one wife, after, evidently, murdering his two-month old years earlier, a baby whom he had had with a different wife.
Than again, the motives in this man go beyond any kind of temporary insanity to greed. But I ask the question to have us consider that postpartum blues are real, and are possibly the cause of many problems as well as the results of many non-birth related events.
I know educators who, though they love their classes and work very hard to give them their best, and who though they are relieved to get a break at semester's end, get a strange form of depression as if they have just given birth and are now feeling the void.
In any case or any extreme, the important thing is to make appointments for consultation with one who believe, believes in, and honors, as well as has solutions for postpartum blues.
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