For many new mothers the period after the birth is filled with joy and happiness associated with the start of a new life – for both themselves as mothers and their child. For some women though, this joy is short-lived or clouded by experiencing depression.
Postnatal depression is common. The following factors are what contribute to its cause:
First, a nine month period of intense hormone activity has just ended in the climax of hormone secretion that occurs during the birth. These hormones are for most part ‘feel good’ hormones which result in extreme positivity in the system. This, combined with the added energy of a soul developing its body inside the mother, results in a significant raising of high vibration energy in the mother’s energy system which has the effect of cleansing a lot of low vibration energy (old emotions) out of the body-mind system. As these low vibration energies (old emotions) leave the system there is the period of postnatal processing of these emotions – what we call depression.
Secondly, the birth process is a traumatic experience for all of us. It’s interesting to ask: why do so few people remember their birth? It’s the equivalent stress on the human system of ten heart attacks and is an incredibly fear-charged experience; so we block it out through automatic repression. When a woman is herself approaching giving birth, the memories of her own traumatic birth process are triggered in the unconscious and start to come to the surface. This peaks during the birth itself, and then the rest of the negative emotions are processed over the next period of time – the postnatal period, hence postnatal depression.
Thirdly, bonding with her new child will trigger any unconscious pain still unhealed from bonding issues with her own mother. You see, when we are born we have a 30 minute window of opportunity within which we need to make and keep eye contact with our mother. This results in connection, bonding, feeling loved and nurtured, feeling safe – and on a physical level results in the activation of neural pathways in our system through which hormone ‘happy juices’ flow.
If our mother was knocked out by anaesthetics due to a painful birth or having a caesarean, or we were simply taken away to be washed and brought back later, we did not have the necessary eye contact during the first 30 minutes of our life. Many instances of depression can be simply traced back to this, or a version of it in the form of not connecting with our mother as we grew up. This memory of disconnection is triggered in mothers during the birth process and the emotional aspect is then processed in the postnatal period; hence postnatal depression.
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Just one of these factors is enough to cause postnatal depression. When two or all three are combined there is a powerful recipe for postnatal depression.
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For postnatal depression treatment in Sydney call 1300 500 881
Sydney NSW
