In Their Own Words: 10 Famous Women Who Suffered Postpartum Depression and How They Got Better
Heather Armstrong bravely chronicled her struggle with PPD as it was happening to her. (Image: Dooce.com)
About 13 percent of women who give birth develop postpartum depression, a serious, long-lasting condition that’s more than just “baby blues.” Half of those women develop severe postpartum depression.
Postpartum depression affects a mother’s relationship with her baby, other children in the family, her husband, studies have even shown it can affect the baby’s behavior.
The good news? More women are coming forward to publicly talk about their struggles with PPD. Their bravery and openness goes a long way in removing the stigma that many women experience – specifically that they should feel guilty about their feelings and they are somehow failing at motherhood.
Exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and other stressors take their toll. Postpartum depression can happen to anyone, including new dads!
Below you’ll find ten famous women who suffered from postpartum depression. They talk about their experience and explain what finally helped them recover. A common thread you’ll notice is that many of these women thought postpartum depression meant you spent all day crying. Not necessarily. Depression is a subtle, sneaky sucker. Particularly if you’ve never experienced it before. You feel feel horrible. Then you feel horrible for feeling horrible all the time and think there’s something wrong with you or you just don’t have the motherhood instinct and you don’t realize it isn’t your fault. As Marie Osmond says, “That’s the sad part about depression, is it really takes away all your logic, your rationale.”
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Courteney Cox
What it felt like: "I went through a really hard time – not right after the baby, but when (Coco) turned 6 months...I couldn't sleep. My heart was racing. And I got really depressed." Cox has also said she felt suicidal and wanted to kill herself by "driving her car off a cliff".
How She Got Better: "I went to the doctor and found out my hormones had been pummeled." Taking the steroid hormone progesterone helped Cox. She also got support from close friends including Brooke Shields, who famously suffered and conquered her own bouts with postpartum depression."
Source: TheFrisky
Image: FabJaunty.com. -
Heather Armstrong
What it was like: "I stood in front of the medicine cabinet in the kitchen trying to figure out whether or not I had the nerve to take an entire bottle of Risperdal. I thought about suicide every day during those months. I thought about how I would do it; perhaps I would hang myself with the dog’s leash, or maybe I’d grab every single pill we had in the medicine cabinet and drown them with a couple of shots of tequila. I wanted to do something, anything to stop the pain."
How She Got Better: Heather checked herself into the hospital and a doctor she describes as her savior put her on large doses of three different medications — doses too large for a patient to take without round the clock monitoring. “He gave me enough drugs to kill a large rhinoceros,” she said, “and it allowed me to sit still for the first time in seven months.” That night she slept all night, for the first time since Leta had been born.
Source: NYTimes
Image: Dooce.com -
Gwyneth Paltrow
What it was like: "I felt like a zombie. I couldn't access my heart. I couldn't access my emotions. I couldn't connect...It was terrible, it was the exact opposite of what had happened when Apple was born. With her, I was on cloud nine. I couldn't believe it wasn't the same. I just thought it meant I was a terrible mother and a terrible person."
How she got better: "About four months into it, Chris came to me and said, 'Something's wrong. Something's wrong'. I kept saying, 'No, no, I'm fine.' But Chris identified it, and that sort of burst the bubble. I thought postpartum depression meant you were sobbing every single day and incapable of looking after a child. But there are different shades of it and depths of it, which is why I think it's so important for women to talk about it. It was a trying time. I felt like a failure."
Source: PEOPLE
Image: ChinaDaily.com -
Brooke Shields
What it was like: "I was not really aware that I had it [postpartum depression]. It was devastating to my whole family. I had gone through numerous attempts to have a baby and when I did finally have this perfect, beautiful, healthy baby and it all but destroyed me. I couldn’t hold the baby, I couldn’t do anything for the baby, I couldn’t look at the baby. Every time I got near her, even the smell of the diapers of the baby. I would… My knees would get weak. I would… I just cried all day long and I thought I’d made the worst mistake of my life. And nobody around me had ever seen me falter to that extent. I’ve always been the workhorse, the one you’d go to, just power through things. It all but flattened me."
How she got better: "I learned what was going on inside my body and what was going on inside my brain...I learned I wasn't doing anything wrong to feel that way. That it was actually out of my control...If I had been diagnosed with any other disease, I would have run to get help. I would have worn it like a badge ... I didn't at first – but finally I did fight. I survived."
Source: CelebrityBabyScoop
Image: PEOPLE -
Marie Osmond
What it felt like: "The hardest aspect of PPD or depression is the guilt that comes with it. I had always been a perfectionist, and I felt that I was failing at motherhood. I half joked that the hospital should be sued for negligence for allowing me to take the baby home when I was so incapable."
How she got better: "...When I saw that I wasn't functioning anymore for the people who I loved the most, which were my family, my children, I said -- it was the first time I really would admit to myself. That's the sad part about depression, is it really takes away all your logic, your rationale. It hits you absolutely at the lowest place. As I said, I'm really not thinking straight. For me to be thinking these things, I know they're not right, but, boy, do they feel right."
Source: FoxNews.com
Image: Strengthen the Family -
Bryce Dallas Howard
What it was like: "It is strange for me to recall what I was like at that time. I seemed to be suffering emotional amnesia. I couldn’t genuinely cry, or laugh, or be moved by anything. For the sake of those around me, including my son, I pretended, but when I began showering again in the second week, I let loose in the privacy of the bathroom, water flowing over me as I heaved uncontrollable sobs...I felt I was failing at breast-feeding. My house was a mess. I believed I was a terrible dog owner. I was certain I was an awful actress; I dreaded a film I was scheduled to shoot only a few weeks after the birth because I could barely focus enough to read the script. And worst of all, I definitely felt I was a rotten mother--not a bad one, a rotten one. Because the truth was, every time I looked at my son, I wanted to disappear."
How she got better: "Little by little I got better. As it happened, the independent film I shot chronicled a woman falling deeper and deeper into her own insane delusions. The experience was serendipitous, just the material I needed to work on to help me to reconnect to my true feelings. Also, because I was working twelve to eighteen hours per day and shooting mostly at night, I had to rely on those around me to help care for Theo. In those weeks, a critical shift occurred...A friend invited me to a “pow-wow” of mothers (in a tepee nonetheless); there we talked about the trials and tribulations of motherhood. The woman next to me coined the phrase “post partum denial,” and hearing her story helped me to understand my own....A woman suggested I read Brooke Shields “Down Came the Rain.” Her book was a revelation."
Source: GOOP
Image: PEOPLE -
Amanda Peet
What it felt like: The 36-year-old actress tells PEOPLE that the feelings of euphoria she enjoyed while pregnant "all came crashing down the second [Frankie] was born;" expecting to feel "fulfilled," Amanda says she instead felt "sleep-deprived beyond belief" and ambivalent about motherhood.
How She Got Better: "I want to be honest about it because I think there’s still so much shame when you have mixed feelings about being a mom instead of feeling this sort of ‘bliss'...I think a lot of people still really struggle with that, but it’s hard to find other people who are willing to talk about it….”
Source: PEOPLE
Image: Twitter -
Carnie Wilson
What it felt like: "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. What if you drop her or hurt her? She's totally dependent on you and it's scary."
How she got better: Wilson recovered gradually, with the help of some hypnosis tapes given to her by her therapist. "He takes me to a hypnotic state and repeats life-affirming words that help me have the confidence that all will be all right with my child," she says. Lola also ended up being a lifesaver. "Part of what helped was that I got into a routine with the baby," she says. "I love breast-feeding her. She latches on and looks into my eyes and it's the most wonderful feeling."
Source: PEOPLE
Image: TheMomsClub.com -
Kendra Wilkinson
What it was like: "I didn’t know I was going to get that depressed. I would always hear about postpartum but I never really believed it was true...There were times I couldn’t handle what I was going through. I snapped a couple times, I screamed -- but I never put my baby in danger. Whenever he would take a nap, I would take it all out and cry...You can’t really control what you feel inside after you have a baby...It got pretty bad, [but] not to the point where I would harm my family...[Motherhood is] a big change in life and it happened overnight.”
How she got better: “At the time I was doing whatever I could for the baby, but I lost myself and it was really frustrating..It needs to be talked about." Wilkinson credits talking about it and exercise with helping her get back on track
Source: Huffington Post
Image: Zimbio.com -
Lisa Rinna
What it was like: "I had visions of knives and guns. I made Harry (husband Harry Hamlin) hide all the sharp knives and take the gun out of the house because I had visions of killing everybody. Now how horrific is that?"
How she got better: "People don't talk about this. It's very, very scary and vulnerable... I found help and got through it."
Source: FoxNews
Image: Zimbio.com
If you think you might be suffering from postpartum depression get help by clicking here! You are not alone.
I find it frustrating that Heather Armstrong is the only person who straight out says she got medical help. Not every case of PPD will just fade away with a little exercise, some time, and maybe a sub-therapeutic dose of antidepressant. It’s not something you can just walk off. Even harder is that a lot of OBs and midwives aren’t well-versed in how to treat PPD, what you can take and still breastfeed (something that was super important to me). I was lucky enough to be treated by a psychiatrist who worked exclusively with PPD; everything I took would have been off the table per my OB (which was basically anything except zoloft). Instead, she was willing to research everything with me, to check through LactMed, and to offer bloodwork to triple check if I was still concerned about peak plasma levels. There is no shame in getting help, regardless of whether it’s medical help or not.
But not everyone needs medication or intense therapy to get out of PPD. It affects everyone differently, so of course these actresses all had different things that helped them. There’s a lot more at work that determines how and when a woman gets out of PPD. Some of us need only medication, some need only therapy, some only need something from within themselves, and some of us need the whole enchilada. Some of even turn out to have an entirely different mental disorder altogether! So what I find disappointing is the lack of ability to see that PPD affects different women in different ways, and they have different ways of dealing with it.
Perinatal Mood Disorders are very common, but that doesn’t make them normal. It is helpful when celebrities speak out about PPD because it reinforces the fact that no amount of money, support, childcare help, etc. can completely prevent or cure PPD. Treatment (of which there are many different viable options) is typically necessary, but PPD and related disorders are 100% treatable and recovery is possible for everyone with good care and support. Many of us blog about and provide peer support for women- seek us out through networks like Postpartum Support International and Postpartum Progress.
i think that talking about the differences between ppd and postpartum psychosis is very important. obsessive thoughts about guns and knives sounds to me like it could be closer to psychosis. i’m glad that ppd has so much visibility these days and so many celebrities willing to talk about their experiences, but someone needs to bring up ppp so that spouses and loved ones are aware of its seriousness and what they can do to help.
I agree with Samantha. Why is Heather Armstrong the only survivor here who REALLY was open about how meds helped her get better? Why doesnt Brooke mention it in her piece? Not being open about options (including drugs, talk therapy, accupuncture, exercise, etc.) to get through PPD and related disorders reinforces the myth that it’s just “baby blues” and that women should just suck it up and it’ll go away.