After your baby arrives
Postnatal emotional support, asked about directly
How you are actually travelling is part of a postnatal visit, not an afterthought at the door. A midwife will ask, and she will keep asking.
What this is
Postnatal emotional support, with time for the answer
The question gets asked a lot in the early weeks, usually by people who are halfway out the door. Most parents answer that they are fine, because it is the answer the question is shaped for. Postnatal emotional support from a midwife starts with asking properly and waiting for the real answer, because how you are going is part of every postnatal visit.
A midwife sitting in your lounge room with ninety minutes set aside gets a different answer. She has seen a great many new parents, she knows what the first weeks usually look like, and she is hard to shock.
What she offers is postnatal emotional support: perspective and a route onwards. She can tell you whether what you are describing is the ordinary shape of early parenthood, and she can help you get to the right person if it is not.
This is support, not treatment. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, ring Lifeline on 13 11 14 or 000 now.
Two weeks is the line worth remembering
The baby blues are very common in the first week. Pregnancy, Birth and Baby puts it at around four in every five people who give birth, usually three to five days after the birth, and says it generally passes on its own without treatment.
Ordinary in the first fortnight
- Mood swings and crying you cannot account for
- Feeling overwhelmed by things that would not normally touch you
- Trouble sleeping even when your baby is settled
- Not feeling an instant bond, which many parents never admit to
Worth raising with someone
- Symptoms carrying on past two weeks
- Feelings that get in the way of looking after yourself or your baby
- Anxiety that will not switch off, or thoughts that frighten you
- Anything that worries you, at any point, regardless of how long it has been
If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, that uncertainty is reason enough to mention it. You do not need to be sure it is more than the baby blues before you ask.
Partners are rarely asked how they are going
Perinatal mental health concerns reach both parents. PANDA estimates that up to one in five expecting or new mothers, and up to one in ten expecting or new fathers, experience perinatal anxiety or depression.
Partners are welcome to be in the room and to answer the question themselves. Postpartum support covers them as well, and PANDA's helpline is for them too.
She will tell you when it needs someone else
A midwife offering postnatal emotional support is not a psychologist and will not pretend to be. What she can do is notice, take it seriously, and make sure you leave the conversation knowing exactly who to contact and how. If it is the birth itself you keep going back over, a birth debrief is a separate conversation she can have with you.
Free help in Australia
You do not have to be in crisis to ring
- PANDA, free national perinatal mental health helpline, 1300 726 306, for parents and the people supporting them
- Gidget Foundation Australia, free perinatal mental health services for expectant and new parents
- Healthdirect, a registered nurse at any hour, 1800 022 222
- Lifeline on 13 11 14, and 000 in an emergency
Talk to someone
A visit covers you, not just your baby
Each midwife takes her own bookings, and how you are going is part of every postnatal visit.