Pregnancy and Postnatal Depression

Pregnancy and postnatal depression are a serious concern.  Many women experience a brief episode of mood swings, tearfulness, anxiety and difficulty in sleeping in the first week after the birth of a baby. Some 50-80% of women have such an experience. This episode, known as the baby blues, is thought to be linked with the stresses associated with late pregnancy, labour and delivery, along with the rapid hormonal changes that accompany the birth.

Symptoms generally settle during the first week after birth and require no special treatment other than adequate rest and support.  Only when symptoms are severe or do not clear spontaneously within the first two weeks it is important to seek medical assessment to find out if another condition is present.

These celebrity mums shared their postpartum depression publically, despite a cultural stigma against discussing motherhood in less-than-glowing terms:

Marie Osmond

In her 2001 memoir Behind the Smile: My Journey Out of Postpartum Depression, Osmond detailed her battle with depression following the birth of her son Matthew, the youngest of her eight children.

Gwyneth Paltrow

After Paltrow gave birth to son Moses in 2006, she told Vogue U.K.: “At my lowest, I was a robot. I just didn’t feel anything. I had no maternal instincts for him—it was awful. I couldn’t connect, and still, when I look at pictures of him at three months old, I don’t remember that time.”

Carnie Wilson

A singer in the pop music group Wilson Phillips, Carnie Wilson suffered from postpartum depression following the birth of daughter Lola Sofia.

Wilson told People Magazine, “I cried all day over everything.”

“It’s a physical feeling. I don’t know how to describe it. You’re overwhelmed with love and joy, then sadness and fear. You’re so afraid you’re going to fail this baby,” she said. “What if you drop her or hurt her? She’s totally dependent on you and it’s scary.”

Hayden Panettiere

In September 2015, Nashville star revealed on Live! With Kelly and Michael that she’d suffered from postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Kaya Evdokia in December 2014. “It’s something that I can very much relate to, and it’s something that I know a lot of women experience,” she told the hosts. “When they tell you about postpartum depression, you think about, ‘Okay, I feel negative feelings towards my child, I want to injure my child, I want to hurt my child’—I’ve never ever had those feelings, and some women do.” Two weeks after her interview, the 26-year-old’s rep confirmed in a statement that she was “voluntarily seeking professional help at a treatment centre as she is currently battling postpartum depression.”