AIBU to think that feeling "a bit teary" after giving birth should not be labelled PND?

[valkilly]

With reference to this article about Una from the Saturdays, who gave birth 9 weeks ago, "admitting" that she suffered (note the use of past tense) from PND...

I know that its important to highlight the reality of women's feelings post birth and the fact that many suffer from PND, but I don't think that the Day 4 post birth "blues" should be called Post Natal Depression, as it's not helpful to those who genuinely suffer from PND. Surely it's just going to trivialise PND and further any myths around depression where people think you can just "pull yourself together"?

I am not disputing that Una from the Saturdays felt down about not being able to breast feed (and the reasons why she felt that way are a whole other discussion!) but the article headline is very misleading and unhelpful IMO.

So AIBU to think this way or is any media reference to PND helpful in raising awareness?

YANBU because of the little story header mentioning PND...but then again, she made it perfectly clear it was 'baby blues'.

Two nasty comments on that story though underneath.

The article seems to be mixing up the baby blues (feeling tearful and overwhelmed when the baby is a few days old/hormones are adjusting/milk is coming in etc.) with PND. Which isn't very helpful in terms of making people aware of PND and it's effects.

YADNBU

This infuriates me. It is not, in anyway, helpful to call baby blues PND. It underplays the seriousness of PND and the impact it can have. It does not help a mum who has PND to read about someone who apparently suffered from it for a few days.

They did the same with J Lo. No, she did not have PND from the sounds of it, she had baby blues.

I swear there needs to be a proper awareness exercise of PND. MNHQ?

Yes I agree Worra. In fairness, it doesn't seem like Una herself referred to it as PND so it's prob just a case of the headline being added by some lazy uninformed journalist.

Do you think people know that after a couple of weeks you just produce milk when the baby is suckling?

(ok might be more than a couple of weeks, don't roast me, it's been a while!)

YANBU. I remember filling in the questionnaire from my (lovely) HV which is a rough assessment of PND. However, my HV said to me that she didn't think I was suffering from PND but was stressed and sad about the difficult birth I'd had, and the problems with establishing bfeeding. She encouraged me to go to the post-birth counselling at the hospital, and to get some help with the bfeeding, both of which were a fabulous help to me. But I would not want my experiences to be called PND, as it was nothing like that bad.

I didn't beastfeed and it was the best decision I've ever made in my life, it didn't make me sad, it was a huge relief to be honest.

I cried in hospital more than once, for reasons not to do with having my DD, because the doctors kept me in for a week to observe me, and not do anything at all, and because it was so hot and for that week i did not get a minuite of sleep.

How do you pronounce her DD's name? Aofie? is it Irish for Sophie?

Drives me mad. It's like when people throw up once a day and say they've got hyperemisis. Or when children aren't geniuses and the parents say they have special needs.

rhondajean I think that's about right. I only leaked a lot for a couple of days, after that nothing that breastpads wouldn't sort out. In fact I think women who don't breastfeed tend to leak more than women who do.

It's pronounced eefa. I think it's Irish for Evie but I'm not sure.

Kate it's Aoife, pronounced Ee-fa. It's not Irish for anything AFAIK, it's just a standalone Irish name. Irish people had names of their own in the Irish language before English became the main language. They do not all have a direct English translation :)

It means radiant, apparently. I suppose the closest English language equivalent would be Ava. But it's not a direct translation.

By the way, I don't blame you for not wanting to beastfeed

Rhonda - that's not true, I have a nearly 5mo here and still leak loads. I had been bf DD for nearly a year before I stopped leaking. It's all in the normal range.

beastfeed

They should rebrand it as that, it's actually pretty accurate. :)

I understand and speak many languages, but Irish really confuses me, I honestly thought it was o-phie, like Sophie without an S. Its a nice name though, now i know what it actually is.

my mac auto corrects everything, i don't know how to turn it off, its driving me mad. Beastfeeding is what it should be called. Labour - pah, nothing, breastfeeding oh my god. No to that thank you.

Gosh sorry Kate, I didn't mean to sound like I was lecturing you.

The pronunciation of Irish letter combinations is unlike many other languages so it can be very tricky for non-Irish speakers to understand.

I speak a few languages too, and as you can probably tell, one of my main bugbears is people looking for a direct translation into English, so apologies if I sounded snappy.

(and I am with you on the breast/beast feeding but always feel like I can't admit that)

It's all celeb rubbish. They have to have a traumatic birth and or PND to sell their story & make it more dramatic! Just as Amanda Holden supposedly almost died & then was on BGT 7 days later! My daughter is 7 days old & I blubbed on days 4 & 6 just because I am overwhelmed by love for her and want her to stay this tiny forever! I'm not depressed its just hormones & normal.

Looks like they've changed the title to 'baby blues'

Oh yes, celebs either have traumatic births and PND or a homebirth with whale music and feeling and looking radiant straight afterwards, never a happy medium.

i don't get why she couldn't BF because she was going to be on stage a bit.

they don't feed all the time and mine don't leak. and she could always wear breast pads.

but yes, she didn't have PND, just baby blues.
not the same thing

nickel you can't possibly dance with big, milk filled boobs you know!

Seems like an excuse to me tbh - if you want to breastfeed then just do it, dance routines or not. If you don't want to then don't, that's fine but don't feel you have to have an excuse.

I saw her on TV on Sunday, didn't know she'd had a baby until they mentioned her and certainly didn't realise until today that she was born just 9 weeks ago. I'd assumed her DD was several months old, looking at her trim figure compared to my 4w post partum saggy jelly body!

YANBU but it has to be said that MN is part of the problem. Any poster who expresses any negative feelings at all about motherhood is asked if she has PND and told to see her GP.

This makes me for two reasons - firstly it trivialises PND. Of course PND can involve negative feelings about motherhood but it is so much more and some women with PND don't feel negative about motherhood at all.

Secondly it medicalises women who want to express the downsides of motherhood. Instead of letting them express the downsides as well as the benefits, it tells them that only someone who is mentally ill would feel negative about having a baby. Makes me and - women should be allowed to express how hard motherhood can be without being told there is something wrong with them. And people with PND should have the severity of their condition acknowledged, not confused with normal unhappiness or frustration.

YADNBU. But, it does alarm me that some posters think that anything short of full blown breakdown isn't PND. Mental health is, in respect of anything other than psychosis, a spectrum. I struggled far more after the births of DC 1 and 3 than after DC2. By 'struggling' I mean suicidal thoughts, irrational fears that someone was going to grab my baby from my pram and throw her in the river or off the mezzanine at the supermarket, I also developed OCD after DC1 was born that I have never truly recovered from. I still have days when I wake up feeling awful, barely able to move, feeling like I have a lead weight in the pit of my stomach but it usually gets better after a couple of days or so. I don't thinkI have PND as I definitely have more good days than bad and I can see that it is a combination ofmy hormones and stress but I wouldn't dismiss it as baby blues either. You can have mild PND. Just as you can have mild degrees of any other type of mental illness (short of psychosis)

YANBU baby blues is baby blues, PND is something else altogether. They are NOT the same thing at all.

lameuf I totally agree that PND is a spectrum. But people post on MN with comments like "I normally love spending time with my kids but today they're driving me round the bend" and get asked if they've got PND. Drives me mad for the reasons given above.

Fliss - now I know you're making that up
I do dancing with my big milk-filled jugs (arf). Costumes look better too

exactly - almost like she was apologizing to the nation for not BF.

Sorry, only coming back to this now. Glad I wasn't the only one thinking the same way, and it seems they changed the headline on the article since this morning anyway.

I feel a bit sorry for her tbh. As a first time mum, I wouldn't have known anything much about BF and if someone had said to me about your boobs leaking, I would have been a bit paranoid about this happening to me in public. She obviously didn't know enough about BF to be able to give it a go. That's sad if she really did want to.