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Carol Stevens had trouble coping following the birth of her daugther, Chloe.

Mother's Hope

Group helps moms get through postpartum distress

By Katherine Petersen

Sunnyvale resident Carol Stevens had a long and difficult pregnancy. After giving birth to Chloe on Oct. 10, 1996, she felt drained.

Surrounded by friends and family for the first two weeks of Chloe's life, Stevens, 36, had a lot of help caring for both herself and the baby.

But a week later, after her relatives had returned to their everyday lives, postpartum distress hit Stevens like a locomotive.

She worried about everything associated with Chloe--from changing diapers to sudden infant death syndrome. So many things sped through her mind at once that she couldn't accomplish anything.

"I couldn't sleep or eat at all," she said. "I would stand over Chloe's bassinet and couldn't do anything but have these racing, anxious thoughts about what I needed to do but couldn't. I felt like someone had kidnapped my brain."

Stevens got help from medication and a Cupertino-based support group for people with postpartum distress, a struggle suffered by about 15 percent of women who have babies.

The group was founded by Dr. Pec Indman, who specializes in counseling women from before pregnancy to after the birth.

Stevens has attended Indman's group every Monday night since the first meeting last February. "At first there was just me and one other woman, but the group has gotten bigger. Last week we had nine women," Stevens said.

Feeling much stronger now, Stevens wants to help others learn coping skills to get through postpartum distress. "I give my phone number to women so they can call me. It's really important not to isolate yourself," she said. "I'm much more balanced now, and I feel like I can give others hope."

Although Indman didn't suffer from postpartum distress herself, she recognized the need for support for women who do. She joined several national and international organizations to learn as much as she could.

Indman sent out fliers to the offices of OB-GYN doctors and pediatricians, but for a year or so, she never counseled more than one person at a time.

Indman charges $20 per session, and the group meets every Monday night in her Cupertino office.

Members of the group also meet with their babies for play dates on Fridays.

"We ask that the babies not come to our group meetings," Indman said. "This is the woman's time. This is a place to come and cry and not be ashamed. For some, it's the only time they have away from the baby at all."

Many women, like Shelley Ash of Cupertino, have the group to thank for their survival. Ash, who had seen Indman a couple times on an individual basis, had a hard time attending her first group meeting.

"I didn't want to go to a group meeting because I was too ashamed and too embarrassed," Ash said. She spent the first group session on the floor with a pillow and a diaper to wipe her eyes. She cried nearly the entire time and didn't say a word.

"After the meeting, I knew I wasn't alone," said Ash, who had isolated herself from many of her friends because she was ashamed that she couldn't cope. Some acquaintances told her to snap out of her funk and be happy with her beautiful baby.

"There were times when I just wanted to give Noah back," she said. "I couldn't function. I knew all the steps to changing a diaper, but doing it was a whole other thing."

For hours, Ash would curl up in a ball on the floor and cry, not knowing where to turn or if she would ever feel better.

With help from the group and carefully monitored antidepressants, Ash is back to being the person she was: bubbly, happy-go-lucky and independent, she said.

Eighty percent of new mothers suffer from postpartum blues for a period of two to three weeks, new mothers feeling weepy and overwhelmed.

But for Stevens and Ash, the blues turned into distress and lasted far longer than two to three weeks. Ash, whose baby was born in January, started to feel better in June, while Stevens saw signs of improvement last February.

"For some women, anxiety is a large component of postpartum distress," Indman said. "A lot of what-ifs race through their minds, and they can't sleep at all."

Hormonal changes, a history of depression in the family and thyroid conditions can all trigger postpartum distress, Indman said. Like clinical depression, postpartum distress is not something a woman can just snap out of, she added.

"The nature of the illness of depression is that you can't think positively," she said. "Antidepressants work fantastically well for many women."

Stevens and Ash learned three valuable lessons from their group: They're not alone, they're not to blame and they will get better, Indman said.

"It's neat to watch these women bond, hug and pass the Kleenex box," Indman said. "I don't feel that any other work in my life has been more important or more rewarding. To watch the moms come in, like [Stevens and Ash] came in--so in pain thinking they didn't want the baby. To go from there to enjoying the babies and delighting in their babies, to me this is the most wonderful thing in the world."

Indman, Stevens and Ash want to start a 24-hour "warm line" to support other women suffering from postpartum distress. Anyone who wants to participate in Indman's group or in getting the 800-number project under way by volunteering time, money or expertise should call Indman at 252-5552.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 24, 1997.
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