There’s a lot of coverage this week of a new study that suggests that postpartum depression could last longer than previously believed. Here’s an excerpt from the Huffington Posts’s article about it, and there’s a link below to the full story. If you recognize yourself or someone you love in this article, and if you’re in the greater Cleveland area, remember: we are here.
A study published in the BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, suggests that mothers have a higher chance of experiencing depressive symptoms four years after giving birth than in the first 12 months after their child is born.
I’m not surprised. I certainly found myself collapsing into tears considerably more when my children were 4 than when they were babies. During one particularly tough period, I wrote an intensity-driven post called “The F-ing Fours,” with images of my child’s (normal, age-appropriate) aggression freshly in my mind.
The study used data from questionnaires completed by 1,507 women attending public hospitals in Melbourne, Australia. They answered questions at 3, 6, 12, 18 months and four years postpartum. Almost one in three of those women reported depressive symptoms during the first four years after giving birth — the prevalence of those symptoms being its highest of 14.5% when their children were 4 years old.
This leads me to wonder why. Why are many women feeling sadder when their child hits preschool years?