Kristina Dulaney is a maternal mental health advocate and postpartum psychosis survivor.  Her story is a great depiction of what it means to live with postpartum psychosis.  She talks about her risk factors and the symptoms she experienced. She did get treatment at a general inpatient psychiatric unit but unfortunately she had an unpleasant experience. Kristina shares the things she wishes she had access too during the interview and the #1 thing that she believes all women need to recover.

Lindsay is a the author of “Just Be”, a motivational speaker, birth psychology and maternity health specialist, doula, a truma yoga instructor and a board member of the non profit organization called Always With Me. Through the loss of her son Joseph, she has gone on to help other women dealing with trauma.  In the episode, we talk about the steps you can take whether you're dealing with a traumatic event, or a traumatic loss in your life.

Hannah Parker is a Board Certified Integrative Nutrition coach who struggled with autoimmune systems for much of her life. Through a build up of toxins, she experience a variety of symptoms.  For some a symptom that manifests is depression.  That's why I had her come on the show today to share with us some quick tips on reducing the toxic burden in our bodies.

Brooke Christian & Jen Schwartz from Motherhood Understood talked about their struggles with depression and anxiety and the all-consuming loneliness involved. Although it was a rough part of their lives, they learned and grew from the experience. Without this dark time in their lives, their new business Motherhood Understood, would not be here today creating an honest and raw community for other PPD moms to go to, to feel relief.

Onf of the producers (Lindsay Gerszt) of the Netflix documentary "When The Bough Breaks" did our first guest interview.  I love what Lindsay said "Medication will stabilize you, but won't make you happy." There's more to healing your postpartum depression than meds & therapy. Find out all the interventions she tried along her journey... the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Moms aren't always getting the answers they need postpartum. They know something is off but medical communities can't keep all the terms straight. In the final episode of our maternal mental health series, we will continue the conversation of what it means to have postpartum OCD, psychosis, and panic disorder.

There's so much confusion in the medical community with PTSD so it's no wonder that us moms don't even realize that it can happen to them. A huge misconception we have in our society is that PTSD can only happen to soldiers. Other examples could be a traumatic injury, a car accident, etc.

Some people can even be in denial because in retrospect, the incident causing the PTSD wasn't "as bad" as a major car wreck. Yet they meet the requirements. We all respond to situations differently, so whether or not you've rated the incident a certain way, what matters most is how it affected you personally.

I felt the need to talk about this on the podcast because of the confusion. If you're dealing with PTSD, it's important to get the diagnosis so you know how to move forward, but also for your family to understand and support you in your healing journey.

Diagnosiing postpartum anxiety is hard because it's one of the symptoms of depression. It seems a lot of medical professionals use postpartum depression as an umbrella term. It wasn't until recently that it's viewed as 2 separate things. Anxiety in fact has a whole separate list of symptoms. But as a society, postpartum depression is mostly used. In this episode, we're going to sort through the weeds and explain what it means to have postpartum anxiety.

There's a lot more to postpartum depression that what fits in this episode. Afterall, we're doing a whole podcast on this topic.  But here is a general idea of what it's about and it's here to empower you. Figure out what parts you can relate to and either talk to your healthcare provider about anything that resonates with you or even do some further research on your own to know what's going on with your body postpartum.