Support from Family and Friends
When participants spoke about adapting to life with a newborn while also coping with mental health issues, they described a range of different support needs and how they went about reaching out for help. Those who went through this during the COVID pandemic said it made things even harder. Women talked about how difficult it was to manage their own mental health needs while also caring for their baby. In the section below, you can see how they sought help, from whom they received support, and how this support was provided. Many felt uncomfortable asking for help for different reasons; some didn’t realize that what they were experiencing was different from the more common baby blues, while others didn’t want to burden others, and the issue of stigma around mental health problems was present in many of their stories. Yet some mothers described how they felt they were able to manage their own mental health and their baby’s care. Several participants needed to learn to overcome their fears to how to reach out for help or accept help that was offered. The kinds of support people needed varied and included help with baby care, and guidance about how to get professional help. Overall, the women we talked to did appreciate the support they received and found it helpful during times that were tough. However, some struggled to find the right help or felt the support didn’t meet their needs.
Needing Help and Finding It
Several women described how their family and friends were there for them, offering support with both the baby and their mental health issues. But others found it hard to recognize that they needed help or to ask for it. Krysta, for example, said “I wish that I knew how much support I needed and that I had more support”. And when we asked what people wish they had known from the start, Candace said “I wish I would have accepted more help and wouldn’t have been so stubborn.” Sara explained why it was hard for her to reach out for help: “C’est parce que c’est aussi moi qui ne m’aide pas là, je suis quelqu’un de très, très indépendante, puis … Quand les gens m’offrent de l’aide, je refuse presque toujours. Puis je veux toujours y arriver par moi-même.” [It’s also because I’m not helping myself either — I’m someone who is very, very independent, and… when people offer me help, I almost always refuse. I always want to figure it out on my own.] Translation from the original French.
Josée-Anne felt so anxious that she couldn't be alone and needed constant support from her husband and family.
Transcript
Quand mon chum travaillait c’était impossible que je sois toute seule. Donner le bain aux filles le soir, c’était rendu j’en shakais. Je n’étais pas capable d’être toute seule avec mes deux enfants. Je suis souvent tellement nerveuse, tellement stressée, peur de faire une crise de panique puis de ne […]
Looking back, Michelle1 now realizes that she should have accepted more help.
Transcript
I’d also suggest if you have someone that has a newborn, go there, take care of that newborn for a day, two days and just see what it actually is like ’cause it was such a shock fundamentally for me. The days were very, very long and I didn’t expect […]
Another important reason that people did not reach out for help was because it was hard for them to talk about their mental health issues with others. As Zoe put it “I don’t go around advertising, and maybe that feeds the taboo and the stigma that we don’t talk about it, but you get a sense of, I don’t think anyone could relate around me in my immediate circle of friends, besides my best friend.” Similarly, Hope said “ .. some people would share their experiences, but … you know, you have to realize that PPD [postpartum depression] is not the norm, it’s not the majority of the population that have PPD.” In addition, several people shared that not being able to manage on their own made them feel like failures, that they were weak, or like they were a bad mother for needing help.
Leah shared her struggle with mental health only after she was feeling better.
Transcript
Interviewer: Yeah. And did you also discuss it with your family and friends? Or was it more something you kept –? Just between me and my husband, I would say, yeah. Interviewer: And was there a reason – did you feel a need to do so? Maybe not. Well, I […]
Few people knew how much Krysta was suffering because she chose not to share everything she was going through.
Transcript
Very few people to this day know how much I suffer. My family does not know. I do have two good friends that I was able to confide in but I don’t think they even really know the extent of how severely I was suffering. Well, it is hard to […]
Receiving help made Karmin feel weak, and she didn't always accept the help that was offered.
Transcript
I felt like part of it was maybe like a social media influence. But – yeah, like I had – sometimes I had the offer of help, but I didn’t always want to receive the help because I felt that receiving that help made me, like, weak I guess. And […]
Needing help from her mother and mother-in-law made Kalli feel like a failure.
Transcript
Because, like, after I had my second son, and this was actually something that – and I remembered after we finished the interview. I was like, I didn’t really talk about my about my second son about what my experiences were like that with. Because the mental health was just […]
Josée-Anne didn't want to place all the burden of care on her family as she knew she needed even more support than they could provide.
Transcript
Euh… Bien en fait, oui, c’est sûr que ma famille ont été là, mais encore là, ça devient lourd pour eux, de tout le temps nous voir comme ça, à terre, je pense que oui, ils sont là, mais à un moment donné, je pense qu’ils ne peuvent pas aller […]
Unfortunately, some people didn’t reach out for help because they thought their mental health struggles were just due to things like the ‘baby blues’ or being exhausted from lack of sleep. The stigma they felt around mental health also made it harder for them to ask for support. As a result, some ended up in such a critical state that they needed urgent help. This led to some women seeking emergency care (go to seeking help and getting diagnoses to read more) or needing immediate support from family and friends.
After not eating and drinking for several days, Sara finally called her friend for help.
Transcript
Mais j’ai arrêté de manger pendant plusieurs jours, parce que j’étais malade en plus. Parce que j’étais malade ma production de lait a baissé. Fait que là je me suis sentie coupable parce que ma production de lait baissait, parce que j’étais malade. En tout cas, t’sais je faisais des… […]
A crises team came to Genna's house to assess the situation, and her family supported her when she was on a 24-hour watch.
Transcript
So normal things that infants do like she rolled her eyes in the back of her head and projectile vomited and normal things that babies do but there was the flash and the thought in my mind that she was possessed by the devil and so that’s when things started […]
Who Provided Support
The support people received came from different sources depending on their personal situation. In many cases partners, parents or other close friends or family members played a key role in providing help.
Hope is thankful for having a supportive husband.
Written testimony
I’m thinking about three different women right now. One that I kind of ran into in the coffee shop and would meet up with her randomly without planning for a few weeks and I know all about her postpartum period and I actually never even disclosed mine, you know. And then another woman and so, there’s a lot of isolation out there, but I felt less isolated, because of my husband. I can’t stress the benefits of really working on your relationship to have it be good, because I mean our relationship has not always been good. We have definitely had periods where it’s done, you know, this close to walking away, but we always turn back towards each other and that pays off, so I’m glad that I have support. Yeah.
A friend of Julie recognized the red flags and helped to get the support she needed.
Written testimony
At this point my breastfeeding had stopped, so that was unfortunate. But it’s interesting because I’ve since been actually looking into it and I know that there’s a concept called relactation. Like, I could have naturally started breastfeeding my son again had, again, I think we had the supports in place. But I think everything sort of shifted in terms of figuring out, OK, how can we support my mental health and physical health in addition to keeping my son healthy? And healthy meant, I think, at that point doing formula. But yeah. My friend was the one to sort of, I think, raise alarm bells to – even though I knew alarm bells were going off but she really acknowledged that there were alarm bells and raised it more to my husband … who I think knew that we were overwhelmed but had no idea what to do. And so she really was the one to help us sort of figure out how do we push harder for me to have services?
Several people, lived far from family and friends or did not have close connections and they described feeling isolated. The isolation during the COVID19 pandemic made this even harder for many. While several participants tried different resources, not all of them were helpful for their needs. Fortunately, many participants found resources that worked well for them such as community programs, neighbours, doulas and social workers.
The church was not helpful for Mirian while going through her mental health problems as she was missing the mental support she needed.
Transcript
So, I think it had some positive and negative aspects because during the first postpartum I had some support from friends and we had support from friends also right after my mother-in-law passed away. So they were there. But also I think the fact that there’s – there was this […]
Leah was disappointed with the limited support she received from the military service when her husband was deployed.
Transcript
I mean, what luckily kind of saved me is I got – my family doctor gave me that medication, maybe three or four weeks into deployment. So early on in the deployment. And thank God because I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without medication. So that […]
Caroline received a lot of support from her neighbours and friends.
Transcript
Non, ils sont tous un peu éparpillés dans le Québec. (rire) Je n’ai pas de la famille proche, mais j’avais beaucoup de voisins, voisins, voisines, amis, j’ai eu beaucoup de soutien de leur part, puis mon conjoint ici m’a vraiment soutenu beaucoup. Il était… J’étais bien entourée quand même. Mais […]
How Help was Provided
The help people received varied, but commonly involved support with caring for the baby, giving parents a chance to rest, sleep or attend appointments, other supports for their new role as parents, and bringing food. While this help was greatly appreciated, it wasn’t always enough to address women’s specific mental health struggles. For example, Christine shared that despite having plenty of help she still couldn’t sleep: “… my family was around, and everyone tried trying to give me time to go and sleep and lay down. But even when I would lay down to sleep, I really didn’t fall asleep, I was just, my brain was just so anxious about everything.”
In the first six weeks Aurore's mom showed her how to become a new parent.
Transcript
Because my mom actually stayed with us, and so she was here for the first six weeks to help with just becoming a new parent, and adapting to him, and learning, and, you know, getting into some kind of routine with him, as much as there can be a routine […]
When Christine finally saw how worried her mom was about her, she realized that she was not okay.
Transcript
So, if I wasn’t pumping, I was laying down in bed. And my mom, I remember that day stayed all day when he was two weeks old. And I stayed in bed the entire day, I barely saw my son, I didn’t feel this drive to go and see how, […]
Other people, including family and friends, played a key role in helping women recognize their mental health struggles and in identifying and obtaining professional help. Many of these supporters had some connection to the health care system and worked hard to ensure access to the right support. Andrea’s father, for example, played a crucial role in finding the help she needed: “My father was worried and said ‘Alright, we need to find you a specialist immediately when we get back to the city,’ and he found somebody.”
Michelle2's sister played an important role in making sure she received the right help after being discharged.
Transcript
My mom just being here. Even if I was here and to her looking OK, it was so much – I felt so much better to just have that presence and to have that company. I just wasn’t alone. And then my sister was huge in pushing through the system. […]