Renée Ann Cramer is our guest on episode 45 of the Fourth Trimester Podcast. She wrote “Pregnant With The Stars: Watching And Wanting The Celebrity Baby Bump” as part of her research into the culture around pregnancy and celebrity. She shares personal stories about her experience as a mother, as well as her fascinating perspective on how celebrity image plays into the psyche of modern parents.
Mental Health
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Helping Yourself Means Helping Your Baby
Parents can have a hard time doing something for themselves, but will do anything for their child. When new moms and dads take care of themselves, they are increasing the capacity they have to take care of their baby. Here’s what you can do for yourself in order to give your infant a better experience.
Mental Health
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How Activity And Mindfulness Contribute To Mental Health
Dr Stephanie Stewart is a psychologist and therapist who has developed her own brand of travel therapy, mostly by taking patients on epic surf retreats around the world. She tells us how being present and putting ourselves in new situations can help uncover new insights into our own personal development journey.
Mental Health
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The True Story About Postpartum Psychosis
Shortly after the birth of my daughter, I spent 10 days locked in the psych ward of the hospital after my postpartum depression and psychosis made me suicidal. In my altered psychotic state, I thought my house was bugged and the police were coming to arrest me for a crime for which I was wrongly accused. I thought the only way out of my crisis was to kill myself, so I told my mom and husband that I was going to go jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mental Health , Postpartum Support
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Pinpoint Where You Are on the Spectrum of Mental Health
This is our second and brief interview with Jane Honikman, a founding member of the Postpartum Education for Parents resource (www.sbpep.org) as well as Postpartum Support International (postpartum.net) that includes a telephone support line and partner with Dr Shoshana Bennett in Postpartum Action Institute.
Jane gives us an overview and outline for finding ourselves on the spectrum of mental health. Listen to the episode to find out how to identify different parts of the continuum and better understand where you yourself might fall on that spectrum.
She talks about her time studying with Dr. James Hamilton who was interested in maternal mental health at a time when it might have seemed as if no one cared or understood, much like today in many women’s experience!
Mental Health
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Why Women Are Slipping Through The Cracks
The number one complication of pregnancy is a form of postpartum depression or anxiety. Despite how common it is for women to experience a degree of anxiety or depression associated during pregnancy or post-natally, there are still cases where women aren’t receiving the care they need.
To help crack the issue wide open, Maureen Fura and her co-producer Jennifer Silliman created a documentary film entitled, The Dark Side Of The Full Moon.
Mental Health , Recovery
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Postpartum Recovery Plan
Jane Honikman gave her first baby up for adoption because she felt pressure to “do things in order”. She later finished college, married the father and had additional babies with the same man who is now her husband. Jane described her experience of giving up her first baby as a trauma. Compounding that trauma was the feeling that her second baby, another girl, was severely jaundiced as a kind of karmic punishment for what she’d done with her first baby. The experience triggered tremendous grief and guilt. Jane was not able to recover from her traumas until decades later through therapy. She waited until she was in her fifties to get the help she needed, having felt waves of anxiety and depression throughout her life. Jane encourages women to seek out the help they need as soon as they are able, and not to postpone healing. In our latest episode, we share an outline to help address postpartum anxiety and depression issues. This is relevant for EVERYONE, not just people who are “depressed”.
Mental Health
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Become The Best Version Of Yourself
In a word, Ann Jonas is resilient. She incorporates her own sense of spirituality into her coaching work, having experienced the sudden loss of her parents (her father killed her mother and died himself shortly thereafter in jail) and subsequently experienced the loss of her partner when her daughter was only two years old. One of Ann’s takeaways from her journey thus far is that “life happens for you, not to you.” She uses the metaphor of a car as the way we can look at life. There’s a huge front windshield so we can look ahead and look around us. Listen to Ann share how to become the best version of yourself on Episode 24 of the Fourth Trimester Podcast.