Laura Gavin: Finding pathways through post-natal depression

29 June 2025:  Around 15% of all mothers experience post-natal depression. Laura Gavin joins counsellor Mick Andrews and psychologist co-host Dr Isabelle Miclette after a period of darkness and despair after the birth of her daughter and how she made her way out the other side.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks Ed B
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
This is the Nutters Club, thanks to New Zealand air
on News Talks edblad.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Good evening and welcome to the Nutterers Club, the show
that talks about our mental health every Sunday night. My
name is mc Andrews and I'll be your host through
to one am. And if you haven't listened to The
Nutters Club before, it's a little bit of a different
radio show. We won't be talking about what's going on
in the world, thank goodness, but the show is a

(01:01):
little bit more interested in what's going on in your
world and in our guests world, and dear, I say,
our inner worlds, because no matter who you are, sometimes
life gets a little bit wobbly. And it's my opinion
that we don't talk about the wobbly times enough and
talking about them can actually make them a little bit

(01:22):
less wobbly. So here we are on the Nutters Club.
It's what we do. We talk about them and speaking
about speaking of things we don't talk about enough. Tonight's
topic is definitely one of those, and dare I say
I think us men probably need to brush up on
our understanding of this one. But before we get into that,
I'd like to welcome someone into our Auckland studio for

(01:44):
the very first time. Those of you who listen to
The Nutterers Club on the regular will know that Kyle McDonald,
psychotherapist extraordinaire, is usually on the show. Kyle is away somewhere.
I don't know where, but I am very excited to
welcome psychologists doctor isabel mclett onto the show. Isabelle, it's
great to have you here.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Thank you, son, honors to be here now.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Isabelle is a clinical psychology just and founder of Charcoal
Leadership Group. And Isabelle, you're from one of my favorite
cities in the world, Montreal. What a fantastic place.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I spent one of the most fun weeks of my
life in Montreal. It was amazing. What do you do
you miss it?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I miss I missed the people and yeah, there is
a good vibe in Montreal. But this is my home now,
I've been here for more than twenty years.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah. Nice full Kiwi. What would you say top top
two things you do miss about Montreal?

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Probably my mum and my siblings.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Right, well, the people you can't meet the people. I
thought you might go for the lovely French food.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
But yeah, in the jazz festivals.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I was there for the Montreal Film Festival. Oh yeah,
And I actually had one of the more embarrassing moments
in my life at the at Montreal. I was going
to the film festival and I was there for the
opening gala, and I was I was there as a filmmaker,
and I bought a shirt for the occasion. But being
a Kiwi mail, I'd bought a like a flannel plaid
flannel shirt and I stepped onto the red carpet wearing it.

(03:14):
It was a trendy one, like a nice one. I
stepped onto the red carpet and the organizer of the
film festival walked up to me, saw my shirt and
a look of disgust fell on her face and she goes,
where are your sheep? And I was like, where are
my sheep? She's like, yes, you are farmer now you
seem to have misplaced your sheep and one of the

(03:34):
grounds to swallow me up. But this is not about me, Isabelle.
It says on your website that you have a reputation
as someone who cuts to the chase. Is that true?
I imagine so right, I look forward to our hearing
a bit of Is that just code for blunt?

Speaker 3 (03:49):
I think it's code for realist. Then seeing the world
and pink all the time, everything is wonderful and magical.
I think it's about being realistic.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
You don't avoid the truth. That's right, it's good, that's good.
That's what you want on a psychologist.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
I guess ye, what is different? But that's what I
would want.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
To nice, nice, Well. Tonight, we're talking about postnatal depression.
And I was surprised to read this week that about
fifteen percent of all mothers experience postnatal depression. That's around
one and seven. That's a lot. Yes, And here with
us in the studio to talk about her experience with

(04:32):
postnatal depression is my friend Laura. Hey, Laura, I have
a friend on the show.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
Lovely to see you, especially at this hour. This isn't
a normal hour of my time zone, being a mum
of young children, and you.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
You kind of still work on the kind of American
time clock, don't you.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
I do. I work for an American company. So tomorrow
is there Sunday. So luckily I'm not doing a five
am meeting tomorrow. I just have a workday, so might
have a cheeky sleep in until six o'clock.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think, I think doing the show here to one am,
you deserve a cheeky what what o'clock?

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Six o'clock a nice sleep in. But I mean, you
don't know what I know when I got it now,
really isn't it? It's not to me?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
So now, just for the listeners, I know Laura because
she married my good mate Steve. Hi Steve. If you're
listening Steve's well, he'll listen online. I can say what
I like about him, then you can, you can. I
was flating with Steve and I clearly remember him going
to Raglan by himself for the week to find himself.

(05:34):
But he found something better, didn't.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
He absolutely himself. He found a fabulous pizza in the
what's the name of it? It's in Ragland. It's this
beautiful hostel that's there anyway.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
The soul Scape.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Thank Youscape was on the Tipcape, so actually yeah, for
Steve's first love was to find pizza at the Soulscape cafe.
I also happened to be there and we shared this
pizza together, So I'm not sure what came first, me
or the pizza. Regardless, I think I'm still speaking pretty
highly of both.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he brought a for
the pizza too, didn't he.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Possibly, Yes, it was that good, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
Shout out to Soulscape and the Beautiful Cafe.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
So, Laura and Steve have two beautiful children who I've
had the pleasure of hanging out was And even though
you guys clearly get a whole lot of joy out
of your kids, I know that their births and the
period that followed their births was a bumpy ride for you,
to say the least. But before we get to that,
I'd love us all to kind of just get to

(06:36):
know you a little bit better. So tell me a
bit about where you're from, your upbringing, you know what
makes you tick.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
Absolutely what starts here in New Zealand. I was born
in Rhoda, Roua. We lived here until I was six,
and I'm an only child, so it was just me, mom, dad,
and at the age of six, we were really brave
and we sort of led some of the forefront into
expat life in the Middle East and so wow, we
packed up everything that we owned. And this was in

(07:05):
nineteen ninety one, so this is pre Internet. How my
mother managed these logistics is beyond me, but anyway, she
managed an international move to the Middle East in nineteen
ninety one for the three of us. My dad was
an oil and gas and so we shifted over there.
We were always in search of the next best job
for Dad. That was sort of the theme of our
next gosh eleven years really, and so from the ages

(07:29):
of six to fifteen, I moved around the Middle East.
I was in a new school every year, so I
was every year I was the new kid. I had
to try and fit in, make friends, sort of figure
out the environment and how I was going to mold
myself to stand out the least amount as possible. That

(07:51):
was always sort of the theme of my growing up
and I like to think that that has now translated
into a wide variety of adaptability, especially in different crowds
and with different groups. So there were While there were
certainly times that are incredibly tough growing up and being
very very far away from all of our family who's
based here in New Zealand, there were certainly benefits to

(08:12):
that style of upbringing as well.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Did you have siblings?

Speaker 4 (08:16):
No?

Speaker 5 (08:16):
Just me? Just me?

Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah. So my parents and I were very close growing up,
and they will get to this part of the story,
but they currently live in the States, so while we're
physically far away, you know, we still chat all the
time and I have a very close relationship with my parents,
which I'm really thankful for.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
And what kind of impact does it have on a
kid moving around so much and being in a country
that you don't speak the language, you know, what was
that like for you?

Speaker 4 (08:42):
Yeah, certainly an experience. I mean many times where I
felt like I stuck out like a bit of a
sore thumb. Growing up, I just had this white blonde hair,
and because we're in the Middle East and we were
on the real forefront of expat life there, I think

(09:02):
I was just a bit of an anomaly and would
often would be in the supermarket and people would just
come up to me and touch my hair or it
was a bit of an invasion of personal space, I
think a because we while we dressed very respectfully, we
weren't in the traditional Middle Eastern dress, but also just
something that people hadn't really sort of seen before in
real life, but perhaps on TV or in movies. And

(09:25):
obviously as I grew up within the Middle East, that
all sort of started to fall away because expats were
just sort of flooding into the oil and gas life
in the Middle East.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
But I did it interesting that that the fact that
you stood out so much, It sounds like that made
you want to fit in even more.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
Absolutely, yeah, And however I went every year, I would
vacillate between a British school system or an American school system.
So school was probably quite a safe place for me
because you knew what the routine was going to be.
Everything felt familiar, You had teachers who cared about you,
and friends. So school was always a bit of a

(10:02):
haven for me. In all of those moves. When we
would move in the summer and school was out, I
sort of had a few months to fell and that
was books and reading, So I would just immerse myself
in books as a kid growing up, and I.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Guess you didn't have, you know, the siblings to play
with like a lot of people would have.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
Hed No, no, yeah, it was a lonely, lonely childhood
in those summers in between, But yeah, I kept myself busy,
and yeah, just appreciated the opportunities that came with it,
the travel. We visited amazing places, places that we never
would have had a chance to do if we were
here in New Zealand permanently. So I'm really really grateful

(10:40):
for that.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Thanks for that, Laura. Well, if you've just tuned in,
we are here on the Nutters Club and we're talking
tonight about post natal depression. And Laura has just been
sharing about the start of her life in the Middle
East and she'll go on to tell us about her
experience with post natal pression. We've got to go to
a break for now. We'll be back here on the
Nuts Club in a couple of minutes. See you soon.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
This is the Nutters Club, thanks to New Zealand on
their on news dog z'b.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Welcome back to the Nutt's Club. My name is Macandrew's.
I am filling in for the young Hamlish Williams tonight.
Don't what he's up to, but he's not here. What
a slacker. We are here with psychologist doctor Isabelle mclett.
Hello Isabelle, you're still with us? Yes, sownful asleep, good good,
and we're talking all about postnatal depression tonight, and if
you were with us before the break, you would have

(11:23):
heard Laura, my friend Laura, talking about the start of
her life. She born in New Zealand, moved to the
move to the Middle East as a kid, only child,
and the more she stuck out, the more she wanted
to fit in. And it sounded quite unsettling, moving schools
every few months. So how long we were in the
Middle East for and what where did you go next? Laura?

Speaker 4 (11:46):
We were there from ages six to fifteen, and then
when I was fifteen, we actually won a Green Cad
in the Green Card lottery, which is a program that
the States used to run. They now call it the
Diversity Visa Program. So it's had a bit of a rebrand,
not as catchy. Yeah, under some recent presidencies, it's had
a bit of a rebrand. So we won a Green Cad,
or rather my father did. We all shifted over to

(12:08):
the States together. We picked out of a hat between
Houston and Seattle.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
So you hadn't lived there before, No, No.

Speaker 4 (12:14):
This was yeah, I'm learning things your territory. Yeah, we
were off on a new adventure, as my mum would say,
And we picked out of a hat between Houston and Seattle,
because that's where the oil and gas jobs were, which
my father the industry my father was in. And out
of the hat came Houston, and so off we went.
We had three months to pack up our lives and
move all the way and that was where I had

(12:37):
my first emission into American high school, American culture. You know,
this whole new sort of world in place that was
very different from the Middle East and growing up there.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
You look at me like, I've got a question. I
just want to hear more of your story. Yes, so, yeah,
Middle East. So at what point, like, at that point,
where do you feel like you're from?

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Yeah? Very stateless, I suppose is the term that you
would use and later on in my story or hear
about coming back to New Zealand and finally feeling like
I had a home. Because this whole time, I would
move all the time, and I would go to different schools.
I would adopt the accent of the school that I

(13:18):
was at. So when I moved to America, my dad said,
I went to school the first day and I came
home with an American accent because I was like, Okay,
this is where we are. Now I'm going to be
a Texan. I'm going to me you know, whatever it
takes to sort of fit into this American life. My
parents slightly did the same. My mother bought a minivan.
I was an only child, and she bought a minivan

(13:38):
or her only child because it was her American dream.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
And my dad did She shouted out several names when
she picked you up from school.

Speaker 4 (13:45):
Yeah, cover her tracks. My dad bought a Mustang convertible
because that was his American dream. So anyway, we were
just really living.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
So what was teenage life like for you in high school?
How did that treat you?

Speaker 4 (13:59):
I actually I love this conversation in New Zealand because
people ask if it's like the movies and the peak
or you are, Well, what's the question. What's the setting
in a school that you would think about in from
an American pop colch perspective. The lockers and the cafeteria.
Oh okay, yeah, so the lockers the big deal. Yeah, Oh,

(14:20):
the pompoms, Oh to be a cheerleader, oh man dream
my dream yep. So yeah, the cafeteria. So I think
this was quite a quintessential part of that American school upbringing,
and it was very clearly defined. There were tables right
you knew who was sitting at which table and where,
and you knew what the politics were. And granted I

(14:42):
was in a school. There were four thousand students in
my school. It took twenty minutes to walk from one
end of the school to the other because it was
over a mile long.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Soxas.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
Everything is bigger in Texas, and everything was bigger in Katie, Texas,
which is where it was yep. And so that was
an exercise again of fitting in. And so in a
school of four thousand, it's very easy to get lost.
You can fly under the radar. I did well in
my classes. I participated in sports, and I just floated

(15:14):
between friend groups, ensuring I survived, maybe not thrived in
high school. But I survived and I did well and
it was okay, yeah, and then I went off to UNI.
That was the next stop on my train. I think
that was a bit of a reckoning for me. This
was I grew up in a household that was very

(15:38):
controlling in terms of quality of output, and so everything
needed to be an a In all of my classes,
there was no option other than to excel. And now
I was sort of thrust out into UNI, and I
was on my own and I had these I knew
that in the back of my mind the same expectations
were there, but I didn't have the skills in order

(16:00):
to like bolster myself towards those outcomes. So that was
a real learning experience.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
So you kids, and then when a green card lottery
end up in the States, go to UNI, how do
you end up? How do you end up in New Zealand.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
From there, I spent my young professional life in Houston
working I became a teacher, had a fabulous few years
working for a chattischol there, which was also a transformative
part of my life. It was just amazing teaching children
and just being immersed in the daily lives. We were
with them all day, every day. And then I got

(16:40):
married at age twenty five when I was in the States.
Texas has a culture of getting married quite young. A
lot of girls will aim to be engaged leaving from Uni.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I play recalled, this is not the marriage to my
friend Steve, this is.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
Correct, this is a former marriage. So yeah, I got
married young, not really fully knowing myself and who I was.
And after about three years that marriage fell apart. And
that was definitely my first experience with what I would
call circumstantial depression. It totally totally upended my life. Of course,

(17:20):
it does, you know, any form of divorce or heartbreak
or breakup, just everything feels completely at a loss. And
that was the first time that I realized that none
of my coping mechanisms that I normally use in my
life were working anymore. And it was the first time
that I had to reach out for help medically in
order to help support myself to get through that period.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Of my life. We are talking tonight on Another's Club
about postnatal depression and Laura is going to share with
us her experience of postnatal depression after the birth of
her two children. And she's just mentioned her first experience
of depression in general, or what she would call circumstantial
depression after a divorce, and I'm curious to know what

(18:07):
the like for her and how she moved through that period.
And I'll ask you that exact question after the break.
You're on the Nutters Club.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
This is the Nutters Club thanks to New Zealand on
air on News dog.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Z'b Welcome back to the Nuther's Club tonight. We're talking
about postnatal depression, and my friend Laura is doing an
amazing job of stepping us through her life story to
a point. And the point before the ads we left
off was you unfortunately had the unenviewable experience of a
divorce and you ended up feeling depressed after that what

(18:44):
we've called either situational or circumstantial depression. Tell me what
was that like?

Speaker 4 (18:52):
That was a period of despair, I think, and loss
of hope, which is it's very hard to move forward
and take next steps when you are in the depths
of despair. I physically probably lost and I'm going to

(19:14):
speak in American terms, yeah, so we'll translated to kilos,
but I probably lost about twenty pounds in a very
short period of time because physically I wasn't taking care
of myself, and mentally I could mask all day, I
could go to work and I could be my usual self,
and I would just get in the car at the

(19:35):
end of the day and I was just in tears
for the next twelve hours until I had to show
back up at work again. And I was very lucky
I had a lot of support around me during that time,
and also reached out to my GP for support as well.
And so that was the first time that I engaged
in taking a medication to help me rebalance. And she

(19:59):
used the best analogy and it still sticks with me today.
She said, you're trying to operate in a room with
all the lights off, and you keep running into a table.
And she said, with the lights off, you can't tell
that it's a table, and you just keep running into
it and running into it and running into it, and
you're never going to be able to get around it.
And she said, let's just take an opportunity to turn
the lights on. You can see I'm running into a table,

(20:23):
and then we can do some problem solving around it.
But until we had those lights on, I wasn't able
to engage in any of the problem solving to take
the next steps. And so I've really kept that analogy
with me since then.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Sounds like you were using medication not as kind of
a silver bullet, but as something to give you a
little bit of traction so that you could do some
of the other work. Wow, that's great. We do want
to get to the kind of postnatal depression part of
your life. I'm not hurrying through what was obviously a
really dark time but I do know enough of your
story to know that you went from there and you

(20:58):
got through that period and you were visiting New Zealand
when you met my mate Steve, and then well we
kind of COVID was a mix, there wasn't it a
bit more than a bit? And your bloody stole Steve
away from my flat you know, otherways hold against you.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
Of course he was your best flat mate. Yeah he was.
We weren't telling anything, yeah, true, Heidi was pretty good. No,
she can't be listening.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Oh no, it's late. And so you get married to Steve.
You're only allowed a certain amount of people at your
wedding because it's COVID.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
How many Well it was the first weekend you could
have more than ten people at a restaurant. So we
had a whopping sixteen people at a wedding. And to
be honest, I wouldn't do it any other way. I
thought it was I thought it was fair.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
If you did it another way, you'd have me there.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Sorry, come on, yes, what did you so? I'm curious
to know you've worked with kids in the past, you're
getting married, how are you feeling about the idea of
having kids at this point in your life.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
Man, I was desperate to be a mother. This was
absolutely I had always known that I wanted to have children,
and obviously loved teaching. That was fabulous. I taught twelve
and thirteen year olds, which can for some people be
quite a tricky age. But I just really loved my kids.
I loved building relationships with them. I thought they were

(22:18):
fabulous and this next step of our lives. Steve and
I were very aligned when we got married that we
wanted to have kids. That was on the cads for us.
It did take us a little bit of time to
get pregnant with our first, which I think is a struggle.
Again not many people talk about until you're in it,
but that it's almost like this pre weighing on you. You've

(22:39):
been doing a lot of emotional work and physical work
before you even get to the pregnancy point. And yeah,
it can feel like a really long and lonely period
when you're in that. But we were really lucky and
ended up pregnant with our first in October of twenty twenty,
Labor Day weekend twenty twenty, we found out we were
pregnant with our.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
First, and I'm guessing you're ecstatic to be pregnant.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
Oh, absolutely overwhelmed, overjoyed, nervous and scared about what the
future would hold that thrilled.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
And they call it obviously we're here to to post
natal depression. But I'm curious to know was there any
point in the actual pregnancy that you started feeling that
low mood?

Speaker 4 (23:20):
There wasn't for me. Actually, I've long dealt with anxiety,
and I think that was peaking for me, But I
wasn't experiencing any periods of depression. One thing I've learned
a lot about hormones and pregnancy, and when you become pregnant,
your progesterone rises significantly, and that's one of the first

(23:41):
markers that you might be pregnant and holding onto a
pregnancy is that your progesterone has risen and you can
sort of measure that over time, and it stays really
high throughout your pregnancy. And I actually attribute high progesterone
for me personally and how my chemicals all work together
as being a real benefit for me mentally.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, Okay, Well, I'm dying to ask you, you know
what it was like after your first kid was born
and for you to step us through through what that
period of postnatal depression was like. But I don't want
to ask that and then throw straight to an ad break,
So let's go to an our break now and I'll
ask you that question after this here on the Nutters Club.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
This is the Nutters Club thanks to New Zealand on
air on newstalg ZB.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Welcome back to the Nutterers Club tonight. We're talking about
postnatal depression, something that fifteen around fifteen percent of all
mother's experience, which I was surprised to read this week.
And Laura is about to tell us about her first
experience of postnatal depression. But she has used a word
in her last description that I must admit I'm not

(24:47):
entirely clear on as far as what it does. Progesterone,
female hormone. I understand, Doctor Isabelle mcclat you're with us,
What what does that do?

Speaker 4 (24:58):
Well?

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Progesteron is a is a sex hormone that is involved
in the menstrual cycle pregnancy, and it belongs to a
group of hormones called the progestant the progestogens. And what
we know with birth is that not only progesterone, but

(25:19):
also estrogen and thyroid hormones drop significantly, so it's literally
like a waterfall.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
It's at birth. Are they quite high before birth?

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yes, So that's what Laura was explaining really well, is
that progesterone during pregnancy is very high and then suddenly
it disappears from your body. And Laura, you were talking
briefly about a medication in the States that would.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
That's right, Yeah, I mentioned in the break about medication.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
Yeah, so in the States now that I believe. So
this is my truth that I'm holding to hear, which
I need to do some more research on. But the
FDA in the States has approved a postpatum depression pell
or it's something that they've branded it as, which is
essentially a forty day supplement of progesterone for women who

(26:11):
either pre diagnosed with being sort of tendent to have
postpartum depression or might be experiencing those systems those symptoms
significantly close to being post birth. And it was something
I explored as I entered my second pregnancy with my son,
but it wasn't able to find an equivalent here in
New Zealand. My Natural Health and I did some pretty

(26:31):
good sort of research into it, but we couldn't find
an equivalent here. So it's interesting that other countries are
taking this knowledge now and applying that to being able
to help women who experience this.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
So yeah, I guess before we get into the kind
of detail of treatment, I'm primarily really curious to ask
about what you know. You're really excited to have kids,
You've been waiting ages. It wasn't easy to get your
first kid. You give birth, step us through the days
and weeks that follow.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
The birth itself was quite long and arduous and physically upending.
I think that was sort of part one of my
post birth story is that I couldn't I could hardly
walk for probably the first two weeks. Just there was

(27:26):
some medical interventions that had to happen, and so I
sort of lost autonomy of my body. I think it's
sort of a little bit of what that felt like,
which is something that personally is really important to me.
I'm formerly an athlete, have always engaged in, you know,
physical activity of some kinds, whether that's sports, and so
the first thing that was stripped from me was physical autonomy.

(27:49):
And we spoke a little bit about this progester and
hormone that drops This is a very typical experience for women.
It's usually on about day three and you hear the
term baby blues, and that's literally I just cried for
twenty four hours. I wasn't sad, I wasn't happy. It
was just someone was kind to me. One of them
for midwives and at birthcare brought me a cup of

(28:10):
tea at two o'clock in the morning, and I just
sobbed because she was so kind to me. You know,
it's it's just this natural response and you can't help it.
And that's it does a lot of beautiful things as well.
Your progester and drops, your milk comes in, you're you know,
there's lots and lots of things that are happening in
post birth. So that was my immediate response. And I
want to just pause for a moment as I talk

(28:31):
about Anne in birthcare. One of the reasons that I'm
here and talking about this experience is because my hope
is that there's one mother listening or might be listening
to the recording of this later who might resonate with
some of this experience and find an opportunity to get help.
And one of those midwives at birthcare, I remember having

(28:53):
a cry to her, you know, two in the morning,
as you do. And she said, you know, I remember
thirty years ago sitting with my daughter and thinking I
was the only person in the world who was up
in the middle of the night and doing this. And
she said, I've worked here now for how many years?
And she goes The best part about this is that,
as isolating and lonely as it feels, it's a shared

(29:13):
experience across the world. Right There's mothers all across the
world who have this similar experience of having babies and
feeling quite out of control. So I just wanted to
pause there and share a little bit of my way
for why I'm here as well, and to fast forward
a little bit. I got to about six weeks post
birth with my daughter, my first, and realized pretty quickly

(29:37):
that things had spiraled out of control for me in
those six weeks. So we talked about physical autonomy going away. Physically,
I couldn't frountpack her. That's something that mothers typically do
with young babies. You'll see them walking around They've got
the baby in the front pack for a sleep or something.
I physically couldn't do that because of all of the
complications that I had. I had lost all control. A

(29:59):
child comes into your life and all of a sudden,
nothing that you do anymore is yours because everything is
for your child.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
And are you brut eating at this point.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
I am yep.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
And that was going.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
That was That was the only thing that went really
well for us, which was a really positive experience because
I know that a lot of mothers really really struggle
with feeding, with feeding kids. But as I started to
get to about the six week period, I think I
was on a bit of an adrenaline high with this experience,
and I crashed pretty had. I was dreaming of just

(30:39):
getting in a car and driving away. I felt hopeless,
I felt despair. One thing I haven't mentioned is that
we entered a lockdown in August of twenty twenty one,
and we couldn't go anywhere. We couldn't do anything. No
one could come to help, no one could come to
give a break, no one could right. We had sort

(31:02):
of lost all of these coping mechanisms. As a society,
we always talk about build the village right, and the
village got stripped away. All of my usual coping mechanisms
for anxiety and depression got stripped away, and yeah, it was.
I re entered what I had felt in a similar
part of my life. I spoke earlier about being in

(31:23):
a sense of depression after my divorce, and this felt
very similar. This felt like I had no hope. I
couldn't get to the next day, I couldn't get to
the next hour. I was just sort of subsisting and
trying to stay somewhat present in my life, but just
felt completely disconnected and disembodied from everyone around me.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
That word despair stands out for me out of the
words you're using.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
And it felt really lonely and isolating because you hear
an experience of birth and this real connection with your child,
and that wasn't something that I felt. While the feeding
was going well. Like I was successful with breastfeeding, I
didn't and feel these feelings that you were supposed to have.

(32:13):
And what I now know is that through that sort
of traumatic birth process is that typically in birth, you
get a hit of oxytocin, which is the love hormone
that comes through. But I think I really missed that,
and so a lot of mother's experience this really overwhelming
sense of love and connection, and I instead just had

(32:36):
this small human being in front of me that I
was supposed to take care of for twenty four hours
a day with no breaks, and I didn't really know
what else to do. It was very utilitarian and very transactional,
which was not the experience that you know many people
talk about.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Oh, I'm just thank you so much for sharing so vulnerably.
I've got at least three more questions to ask you.
But we do have to take a break and we'll
be back here in a couple of minutes. Here on
the Nutters' Club.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
This is the Nutters Club thanks to New Zealand on
air on Newstalks. It'd be.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Welcome back to Another's Club. Mc andrew's here filling in
for Hamish Williams, and Laura has just been telling us
about her first experience with postnatal depression and the dark
despair that it put her into. I'm curious, Laura, at
this point, when you're in that dark place, how's yourself talk?

Speaker 6 (33:30):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (33:31):
Good question. I'm trying to It's four years ago now
and I'm trying really hard to place myself back's.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
A party that doesn't want to remember.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
Or I've always been really open about this because I
am so passionate about helping other mothers. I think mostly
just helping other mothers feel like they have a sense
of belonging to something greater than themselves, because, as I've mentioned,
it can be a very isolating feeling. You know, who
knows who else is awake at one o'clock in the morning. Yeah,

(34:02):
we're here. If there's anyone who's currently awake at one
o'clock midnight hitting a baby, Paula, talk to us. But yeah,
I think the self talk that you asked about specifically,
I think there was a real sense of I wasn't

(34:22):
good enough to do this because I mentioned that I
was really missing that loving connection to my child, which
is something that I thought was just all going to
be rainbows and butterflies. We're gonna have this beautiful baby girl,
and we were so excited for her, and we were
so prepared for her, and so to be missing that felt,
to be honest, quite embarrassing. There was a lot of

(34:43):
shame around that, and it was very hard to express
that to my husband, Steve, because it made me feel
like I wasn't the wife that he had signed up for.
He had signed up for this nurturing mother, and I
felt like I was having to put on her for
sad to sort of make that true some somebody else.

(35:09):
Especially being in lockdown and it being just the two
of us, it was an incredibly intense period, and intense
period for any relationship, but bring a new baby in
and I mean, how can you get any more intense
than that?

Speaker 2 (35:19):
And how long did this dark place of despair last
for you?

Speaker 4 (35:27):
I'd say the minimum the first year of her life,
however long. Yeah, there are still things that I deal
with now. Just the other week, Steve and I were
out for dinner and he mentioned something that just triggered
that little bit inside of me, and I was just
in tears. I mean, it's still sort of has this

(35:49):
little dark shroud over me.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
I feel like when you remember that time, yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
Yeah, when I specifically go back there.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
However, at six weeks was the first time that I
reached out for help. And so one thing I really
want to make sure that we talk about as about
is how people can get help. So for me, what
they looked like was I went to Rosy's Sorry the
six week point, I reached out to my nature path
and she put me onto Saint John's Wart, which is
a sort of natural anxiety and depression. Maybe you can

(36:21):
speak to us a little bit more about what that does,
but it certainly takes time for that to ramp up
within your system, and wasn't enough for me in that moment.
So fast forward to twelve weeks. We're at my daughter's
very first appointment, and even though it's in lockdown times,
we go to the doctor's office for her immunizations, and
I think the nurse in that room knew immediately that

(36:45):
things were not well. I was, probably, if not in tears,
on the edge of tears, because that was pretty much
my state of existence at this point. And I filled
out the form, so there's a questionnaire that you fill
out that asks a certain series of questions to diagnose
or show the markers for depression. And I sort of

(37:06):
got whisked straight off to the GP to have a chat,
and she was very kind and thoughtful and listened to
me and gave me a lot of time and a
lot of consideration, which I'm really thankful for. And so
I was prescribed as a telegram, which is a common
medications antidpression common ssry, that's right, and so I started

(37:27):
my course of that. I also started working with a
counselor as well, who was recommended and provided to me
through the public health system, which I was really grateful for.
But there might be some other ways that you'd also
like to talk us about about how people can get
help if they're experiencing symptoms like this.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
I mean, look, you did amazingly well in actually filling
out that questionnaire, that screening test for symptoms of depression,
and good on the people who followed up and brought
you to the GP. I mean, the GP is often
a very good start for everyone of any kind of

(38:07):
RURW or any any setting. The GP is a bit
of the of the gateway to other services. I mean,
in the mental health system, there is a mental health
service for it's called the Maternal Mental Health Service. There's also,

(38:27):
of course a range of counselors and psychologists that operate privately.
There's also a lot of lines, you know, that people
have access to New Zealand. I mean it's quite amazing,
to be honest, the amount of help lines that we have.
And you know, just a text in the middle of
the night when you are breastfeeding or awake or crying

(38:51):
or or not, and you know, suddenly you text one seven,
three seven, and you get someone who calls you back
and you can talk to someone twenty four to seven.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
And it's great that we do have those helplines there.
We will be mentioning them a couple more times throughout
the show. Definitely, I'm curious to ask you you we've
got psychologist doctor Isabel mclett here in the studio. Why
do so many women get depressed after birth? What's going
on there?

Speaker 3 (39:18):
I mean, you know, Laura touched on the biological or
the hormone side of things. There are other biological factors,
such as the vulnerability in terms of genetic predisposition, but generally,
generally it is a cluster of you know, bio psycho

(39:40):
and social factors or the environment, the any kind of
personality traits that can be triggered. You mentioned a little
bit kind of It is so fascinating to hear your story, Lauren,
you know, trying to fit in and then suddenly trying
to to having these expectations about being the best mother

(40:02):
and or a great mother, and suddenly the shame and
the long and I would guess possibly guilt very very common.

Speaker 6 (40:17):
With birth.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
So I don't know if that answered your question.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
So part of it is just how incredibly stressful it
is on both the body and the mind and the
emotions to be giving birth. And of course I will
never never know what that's like. What about the kind
of physiological side of things, hormones, how much of a
role does that play well.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
You know, I mean women who have given birth will
know that you stop sleeping when you give birth basically.
I mean, unless you have much support at home. Every
baby's different. I mean in my case, I didn't sleep
for eighteen months, I think. But so if you combine

(40:58):
sleep deprivation, if you breastfeed, there is a depletion process
that happens through there because you've ripped of your nutrients
and so the basic you know, intake and sleep and
rest is kind of not happening. As you describe, Laura,
you had the mercy of that little creature that you

(41:22):
look after for twenty four hours a day. So self
care things like you know, what we do to look
after ourselves, like have a bath, go to the movies,
have a bit. Everything stops for most people. So it's
a huge change, as you mentioned, make huge huge change.

(41:44):
So yes, there's the biology, but there's the environment and
the stress.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah right, Oh, thank you for that, and thank you
for your story so far, Laura. But I'm really curious
to know from you the listeners. I'm curious to know
whether you have had an experience with postnatal depression or
someone you love has had an experience with postnatal depression,
and maybe you're experienceperience might be something that other people

(42:09):
would get something out of hearing. We'd really love to
talk to you tonight. Like Laura said, it's a bound
to be some mums up there, maybe trying to breastfeed
as we speak. And if you want to talk to Laura,
I want to talk to doctor Isabelle, or just want
to tell us about your experience, we'd really love to
talk to you. Give us a call on eight hundred
eighty ten eighty or text nine two nine two.

Speaker 5 (42:32):
We will be.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Back after news, sport and weather. Here on Another's Club.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Then the story good, don't need to see.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
This is the Nutters Club, thanks to New Zealand on
air on News Talk z'd.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Be welcome back to Another's Club. My name is MacAndrews.
I am filling in for Hamish Williams Big Boots to
fill and tonight we're talking about post natal depression, and
I have dragged, actually not dragged. She's quite willingly my
friend Laura to come here and talk to us about
her experience of post depression, and she's been doing an
amazing job of telling us about that. She started with

(43:12):
a bit of her life story. Born in New Zealand,
spent a lot of her childhood in the Middle East,
standing out like a sore thum thumb whilst trying to
fit in as best she could. And then her dad
won a green what they called at the time the
green card lottery, and she was off to Houston, Texas,
where she did some more trying to fit in and

(43:33):
did university in Texas, along with the stereotypical cafeteria scenes
that we've all seen in the movies. She married young
at twenty four and unfortunately after three years got divorced
and found herself experiencing depression for the first time, a
really kind of dark and sad time where she kind

(43:54):
of doubted well everything and I think, in her words,
felt disembodied. But she got through that and she was
once visiting New Zealand and she met my flatmate Steve,
who was in Raglan to go and find himself found
her instead, and long story short, they got married in COVID,

(44:14):
well at the start of COVID, there were only allowed
sixteen people at their wedding. They started a family that
had a lovely baby girl, and six weeks after the
birth of that baby girl, something happened that Laura wasn't
counting on or expecting and certainly didn't want. She was

(44:34):
thrown into what she described as a period of dark
despair and she really didn't know where it came from,
and she was crying and just didn't Yeah, she said,
it up ended her. And twelve weeks after the birth
of her daughter, she was at the doctor for some immunizations,

(44:58):
and probably a nurse that had seen many mums looking
in a similar state thought she knew what was going
on raised the alarm and and Laura was able to
face the fact that what she was experiencing was in
fact personatal depression. I'm glad you made it out of

(45:18):
that season of darkness, Laura. How did you do that?

Speaker 4 (45:23):
I think it was an exercise of lots of coping mechanisms.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
And we seem to be having a problem with your
mic I have turned it on here. We are having
technical issues ladies and gentlemen. I think while we're having
those technical issues, we do actually have a caller on
the line. Why do we go to Katherine? Katherine good?

(45:53):
What is now morning to you?

Speaker 7 (45:55):
This morning? How aren't you hi?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah, I'm well, how are you good?

Speaker 7 (46:00):
I am obviously heard just the last end of the
conversation of the lady you have with you this evening.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Laura, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 7 (46:10):
It literally brought tears to my eyes.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
I was touching, wasn't It's.

Speaker 7 (46:17):
Natal is a disease of the mind where the average person,
and more so the perfectionist becomes out of control and
the foremones and a step deprivation and all of the
things become a cocktail of health. And it's just I
had a horrendous sort of story and start to it

(46:39):
which in the end, by the time my daughter was four,
I became a member of the Board for Post Natal
Depression Canterbury and I got to stand up in front
of a group of fed Autricians and Plunket nurses and
explain what went wrong and what could have helped, and
reading that out to them was really really heartbreaking. But

(47:02):
there is not quite enough. There's not quite enough understanding
out there that it really actually happened to the people
that you don't expect it to happen to.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
Interesting that you said the word perfectionist, because just before
we started the show, Catherine, Laura and I kind of
admitted that we were firmly in the perfectionist club. And
so you yourself have had an experience of personality depression?
Were we saying hugely?

Speaker 7 (47:34):
To be very honest with you, And I can say this,
it's the middle of the night. I walked out of
my house one day and left my daughter inside. My
mother lived about four minutes drive from me. I texted
her and I said, I'm gone, I'm out, I'm leaving,
and my daughter is inside. And what I was looking
for was a brick wall or a powerpole or something

(47:55):
who could take me out in my own vehicle, which
is insane, but I could. But I also had that
part of me going, I know that my mum's just
around the corner, and she's going to come and be
there for my child. But there's just a turning point
in your body that it's very hard to explain. The

(48:16):
second that happened, my mother went right, you're going to
doctor this afternoon, and.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
As you look back at it.

Speaker 7 (48:21):
Needed that.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Sorry Catherine, you gone, No.

Speaker 7 (48:24):
I needed that, and I'm glad I had that, But
I also had this. It's very hard to explain. It's
almost like a state of insanity when you've not sleept
and you've not everything is wrong, but you're also looking
yourself and at this day and age you go. Probably
my biggest thing to understand, which all mothers would write now,

(48:45):
was right, my grandmother had five or six children, she
had no dishwasher, she had no money, she had no
husband working for good. So what have I got to
complain about?

Speaker 4 (48:57):
Right?

Speaker 7 (48:58):
And that's probably the biggest thing that affected me is
I have nothing to complain about, So why on earth?
And I am I so unhappy? So I'll just dequine
that all these horrible feelings of God because I need
to shouldn't. And that's the mental health side.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
Yes, and think you cat from If I may jump in,
it's as well here. I think you just touched on
something really important that I think we need to highlight.
Is the is the judgment and so the fear of
the judgment of others, but also especially the self the
judgment and the critical attitude towards ourselves. So it's not

(49:39):
only you know, shame or guilt or towards others, but
it's that kind of judgment that overlays exactly like you said,
compared to your grandmother's or And actually, I'm inviting everyone
who listens to if they can do one thing is
to remove that layer of judgment on top of everything else,

(50:04):
on top of the low mode, the guilt, the feelings
of ruthlessness. If you can at least allow yourself to
be real with yourself without judgment, that's that's a really
important step.

Speaker 7 (50:22):
True is eleven year old eleven years old now, so
I don't know, it's way way past that period, but
we're there's a thing in your brain that tells you
you should just get over it. But actually, when you've
got that sleep deprivation, you know you can't breastfeed because
it's not worked out, and you're you're pumping forty five

(50:43):
minutes and bedding for forty five minutes the season for
forty bove minutes. It doesn't work that way. It's not
a sweet story for everybody. And when you look at
somebody's life and you think, well, you've got a good home,
or you've got a good husband. You've got great support
around you. That doesn't mean anything when it comes to
depression and the way that your brain is working. And
we should ever ever judge somebody for what they have

(51:06):
around them if they're not feeling good.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
M Well, thanks so much for your call. Catherine really experienced.
I really appreciate hearing about your experience, and you're so
good at describing it. It made me think Isabel. Catherine
mentioned that when she had postnatal depression, it was it
was crazy making she felt absolutely like insane. You know, like,

(51:32):
what kind of things do you expect to see from
someone experiencing postnatal depression?

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Well, postnatal depression in terms of diagnosis is very similar
to toss to general depression or major depressive episode. So
we're looking at persistent low mode that lasts for more
than two weeks. We're looking at feelings of guilt and worthlessness,

(52:01):
changes and appetite and sleeping patterns. I mean, with a newborn,
what can you do about that? And the difference with
what what it's called in the US postpartum but here
in New Zealand it's it's called mostly periinate all depression.
We're looking at well, sorry, I've lost my train of thought.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
So it is similar to ye, sorry, that's similar to depression.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
But the difference is that the onset of the symptoms,
if you want to take place during pregnancy or after birth,
most frequently during pregnancy.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
But it does act like depression. It's just that the
cause is different. Is that right? Exactly right?

Speaker 3 (52:51):
It's it's the same. Really, is that it's associated with
this this massive change in life?

Speaker 4 (52:59):
Right?

Speaker 6 (53:00):
Right?

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Oh, well, we probably should go to a break, but
we're here talking about personal depression, Laura's We have little
technical she will get back to Laura and ask her
about how she got through that first bout of postnatal depression.
But I'd really love to hear from you. What experience
have you had with postnatal depression? Or what experience has
a loved one of yours had and how did that

(53:22):
impact you. Maybe you want to talk to Laura about
her experience, and maybe you relate to her experience and
want to give her some encouragement there, So give us
a call, love to talk to you one hundred eighty
ten eighty, or you can text nine two nine two.
We'll be back after the break. Here on the Nutters Club.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
This is the Nutters Club thanks to New Zealand on
air on news Talk z'b.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Welcome back to the Nudds Club. Mic Andrew's here filling
in for Hamish Williams tonight. We're talking about postnatal depression.
My friend Laura has been doing an amazing job of
sharing very openly and vulnerably about her experience. And I'm
sure there's a lot of people out there listening who
have had some experience of postnatal depression, and there's a
lot of other people listening that might just benefit from

(54:08):
you sharing your experience. So we'd love to hear from you.
Do give us a call on eight hundred eighty ten eighty.
We've got Laura here who has first and experience. We've
got a bona fide psychologist, doctor Isabel mclette here in
the studio. So again the number, give us a call
one hundred eighty ten eighty or text nine two nine two.
Speaking of texts, we do have a text here from Cirie.

(54:29):
She said, good morning, Laura. I always find it weird
calling it morning at this time doesn't feel right at all,
but anyway, good morning, Laura. Thank you for sharing your
story with postnatal depression. It was very difficult for myself
suffering postnatal depression and raising my daughter on my own,
raising my daughter on my on my own. I'm sure

(54:51):
I'm on good medication now so I can cope with
the depression better, which reminds me we didn't quite get
a chance to hear from you, Laura, about what happened
after that dark time. How did you find yourself out
of What was your path out of that?

Speaker 4 (55:08):
Yeah, great question. I first went, as we spoke about earlier,
to the GP, right, So that was my first stage
of what we call a diagnosis and issuing of medication.

Speaker 6 (55:19):
So I was.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
Prescribed an SSRI as a telegram. And the first thing
that does to me is it sort of numbs me out.
And I think that's quite a common experience when people
very first start taking medication such as this. But it
totally numbed me out, and probably for about a week

(55:42):
I was pretty flat. I wasn't in that deep dut
crying in despair place that I had been in the depression,
but definitely didn't quite feel like myself. And after about
a week I started to feel a few glimmers of
hope and could find a little bit of light or
find a little bit of joy, and that started to

(56:03):
accelerate over time, probably over a series of months, so
you know, we're not talking immediate effect necessarily, but as
I worked through so I was referred to maternal mental health.
I worked with a counselor who was lovely, and I
had an opportunity to speak with on a weekly basis.
So that was great just to have someone. It was
even just an hour for me, and it wasn't an

(56:24):
hour where I had to talk about baby things or
do baby things, or put a baby to sleep, or
feed a baby or change in hebby. It was just
an hour, yeah, to talk about how I was doing,
and it felt very luxurious to have that hour of time,
and I'm so thankful for that. I personally have a
few coping mechanisms that I like to use. When we

(56:49):
sort of spoke earlier that I'd been through a previous
spout of depression in my young adult life. And there
are a few things I know that have to be
true for me. One is sleep, and we've spoken about
with newborn, that's quite had to do, but I was
catching sleep where and when I could. The second thing
is making sure that I had some form of adequate
nutrition and hydration, and so that meant forcing myself, even

(57:11):
when I wasn't hungry, to make sure that I was
eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, that I always had a water
bottle with me. It sounds so basic, but these acts
of self care that are the lowest paths of Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, right ensuring that you have enough water
in your system, are so incredibly healing when you actually
take the steps to do them. The third one that's

(57:33):
huge for me is physical activity. We spoke earlier that
I had lost my physical autonomy through a really tough
birth with medical interventions, and couldn't really do much moving,
couldn't take my baby out for a walk, which is
something that I had sort of dreamt of being my experience.
You sort of picture this young mum with her prem

(57:54):
and her little baby and we're out at the cafe,
or we're out going for a walk, And that wasn't
true for my experience. But I had to find other
ways to get in some form of physical movement. So
those are some of my coping mechanisms that I used.
I also started to build a bit of a village
of mums who had kids. The same age as me,
And a program that I found incredibly helpful was Space,

(58:14):
which is provided through play Center here in New Zealand.
And we started when my daughter was only four weeks old,
so this is you know, you can start pretty early on.
And it was a space where we would go with
our babies and just talk about what was happening, what
was going on. Someone would make you a cup of tea,
and it was okay if your baby cried for the
whole time or they slept for the whole time, and

(58:35):
it was just a really welcoming and beautiful place. And
I'm so lucky that that original group of women I
met my Space group, we have families who still do
an annual trip together with all of our kids now,
even though our oldest all about four years old, So
for about four years we've been doing an annual trip together.
So building that village was also a really important part
of coping for me.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
So it sounds like for you, Laura, some of the
really key things were counseling, getting good sleep, eating while
having social connection, exercising. Doctor Isabel McLay, you've obviously worked
with clients before have experienced post natal depression. Certainly what
have you found in general helps people when they're experiencing depression,

(59:20):
What helps them find some traction and start to find
their way out of that.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
Look, everybody is different, so I'm glad you found some
things that you could identify for you what was helpful, Laura,
everybody is different. But I think as you described, the
basic things are very important. Support from family and partners

(59:49):
final really important. I mean, obviously I'm an advocate for
psychological therapy. I think that having an opportunity to talk, yes,
about other things than your baby, but also about your
intimate thoughts and your feelings and even if they might
feel inappropriate to your mother or to your partner, to

(01:00:13):
have someone neutral to talk to it. I think that
it's I've seen I've seen transformations within a short time
in therapy, just because allowing women suddenly were able to
remove that judgment on themselves and to see things as

(01:00:33):
they were. So Yeah, and of course medication, as it
was mentioned today, certainly has helped a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
So the therapy being able to kind of bring what's
kind of headden out to the open, maybe shine some
light on some of that shame or talk about the
expectation gap between this is the mother I thought i'd be,
This is my actual experience. Now medication can help, What
other kind of treatment methods are there or what other

(01:01:07):
things add to giving some momentum to that healing process?

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Well? As Laura mentioned, groups are very powerful. And I
know that when we don't feel at our best, the
lasting we feel like is to sit in a corn
in a circle and say hi, my name is Laura,
and I'm feeling depressed. But it's not necessarily like that.
And you know, through Plunket, through various organizations in New Zealand,

(01:01:34):
being able to be around other mothers is really normalizing
or older cares like grandmothers often can help. So yeah,
group is a very therapeutic and very effective way to
create change.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
As a professional, what's your perspective on what Laura has,
what Laura did to find her way out of that depression,
you know, the getting a bit of sleep, exercising, gun
of counseling, finding her village, eating, well, that seem like
the right things to be done.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
One hundred percent. I mean, it's it's it is the basis.
I mean, you can go to therapy as much as
you want, but if you're not eating enough, for you know, hydrating,
it's it is truly the basic approach and you did
extremely well or yeah, I'm glad you came to the
other side.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
We are here on anothers club talking about postnatal depression,
a topic that I must admit, as we entered into it,
I didn't know enough about. And I think there's a
lot of men in New Zealand that probably think, you know,
you wanted to be a mum, you got a baby,
why aren't you happy?

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
And so I think that's why it's important that we
talk about this. And I'm certainly getting enlightened as we do.
And I'm curious to know you you the listener, what
experience have you had with the post natal depression? What
experience of your far no members had give us a
call on eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. We've got
doctor Isabel mclette here in the studio and she'd loved

(01:03:07):
to talk to you as well. Or you can text
nine two nine and two or the number again ight
hundred eighty ten eighty will be back after the break
here on the Nutterers Club.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
This is the Nutters Club thanks to New Zealand Air
on News Talk z'b.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Welcome back to the Nutter's Club. We were chatting too
much there. We almost missed our queue, but that's a
good sign. We're talking tonight about post natal depression, and
actually one thing we were chatting about in the break
was and I felt a bit funny even suggesting to
bring it up, but it's not entirely something that only
women get. Is that what you were saying is a

(01:03:45):
bell that there is there is a depression that can
happen when men become parents as well.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Yes, absolutely, And you know we're talking here in heterosexual relationships.
As you mentioned earlier, Mick, one in seven women experience
perio antal depression and one in ten men in Australian
New Zealand, so it is quite for the partner. Did
you want to tell us a bit more about that

(01:04:11):
from your perspective, Laura.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
Yeah, I thought it would be good to share. If
you are a partner of someone and you suspect that
they might be experiencing post net or depression, what's your
role as the partner in that situation. I know when
we went into the birth of my second child, my son,
we sort of had this whole plan in place, and
Steve had very strict instructions that if Laura seems a

(01:04:35):
bit wobbly, this is what he needed to do. And
I felt really supported by that and knew that someone
sort of had my back at the end of the day,
and especially someone who was there in the day to
day with me. That was really helpful. So it might
be helpful from your perspective if you're a partner, what
kinds of things should you be on the lookout for
as sort of the non birthing partner in the relationship.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Yeah, I mean you mean in terms of being aware
of signs in your partner. But I guess I want
to raise awareness as well, as Mick mentioned to de
signs in yourself too, because we need to look after
ourselves first as parents and as partners, and that's something
that goes out of the window pretty quickly.

Speaker 4 (01:05:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
So all the signs that we mentioned before, lowering and
mood reduction and activities that you would normally be engaging in, withdrawing,
withdrawing from social interactions, changes and appetite and sleep and
so these are signs that you can notice within you

(01:05:42):
in your partner. I guess it's important to also just
having again a realistic or an honest dialogue and say
how are you You know what's going on? How are
you feeling today? How are you feeling now? Because it
can change within an hour, right, So yeah, checking on

(01:06:03):
each other, checking in.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
M What other ways can can a partner or a
family member be the best support possible with a mother
with personal depression?

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
Well, the first thing that comes to mind to me
is listening. Listening, not telling, not teaching, not trying to
so actually hearing what the person may be experiencing, making
rule for it, and from there as happened to you.
You know, suggesting a medical approach as a first step

(01:06:39):
is often a good way.

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
And then.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
Practical help as well, you know, the meals and come,
I'll come and vacuum the house, and I'll take your
baby for a couple of hours. You can go as
new psychologist. Practical help is always helpful. Sometimes when we
feel down, we don't really want to talk about our
feelings all the time with people. There's a sense of
not wanting to be a burden or something like that.

(01:07:06):
So yeah, practice call and allowing the person to have
some breaks and some self care, anything else you would add.

Speaker 4 (01:07:17):
Laura, Now, I think the listening and we spoke earlier
about the judgment and stripping away that judgment, and so
I think opening the space for listening without advice, without
problem solving can really help further that cause of stripping
away the judgment. So I love that recommendation because I
think that at the end of the day, with your

(01:07:39):
partner and some people enter you know, new motherhood and
new parenthood with a partner, and some people enter that
single and so you've you know, like you've got to
approach this from your own situation. But I think if
you do have a partner in the situation, it's so
important to be on the same team at the end
of the day, because man, it can feel when you're

(01:08:00):
in the trenches at three o'clock in the morning and
the baby screaming, it's really hard to feel like you're
on the same team. But yeah, at the end of
the just taking that step back and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Do you I mean, this is an optional question, Laura,
but how did postnatal depression visiting your marriage affect it?

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
Yeah, to this day, there's certainly some shame that I
hold around that and that's something that I need to
work on because that's nothing that my husband projects upon me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Would you tell us more about that shame.

Speaker 4 (01:08:37):
I mentioned earlier, But sometimes I feel like going through
that experience and still holding tinges of that, where little
things will come up just every once in a while
that get me a bit wobbly again. I liked that
worthy ears at the beginning of our time today get
me a bit wobbly, make me feel like I wasn't
the partner, the wife, or the mother that he signed

(01:08:58):
up to. And that's totally my projection of the situation.
He's never said anything, but there's this underlying yes in it.
And I think probably before we started a family, we
both would have said, oh, and we'll have four kids
and we'll have all of these little people running around.

(01:09:19):
And we had our first and my world came crashing down,
and I remember she was six months old, and I
just I looked at him one day and I said,
I can't do this again, you know, like this this
is it, Like I can't go again. I can't go
through this again. And yeah, that was probably such a
place of disappointment for him because that our future that

(01:09:41):
we had talked about. I sort of crumbled with that statement.
We did end up having a second who is beautiful
enjoy us and I can't imagine life without him, and
he's so lovely. But yeah, I do think that my
experience of pregnancy and my experience of postpartum probably shifted

(01:10:03):
that future vision of our family. And I recognized that
that was a me thing, you know, that that rather
than being joined, that's you know, that's me limitation on
it on the future that we had originally dreamed of.
And we love our children, we love our family. We
feel very complete ass but I always heard that lingering
in the back of my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Hm hmm. I'm curious to ask you after the break
actually about how you approach the second berth and whether
you put some kind of extra tools in place. Just
before we go to the break though, Doctor Isabelle mclet,
I'm curious to know just does post a depression. We've
talked about ways you can work your way out of it,
but does it does it kind of pass by itself?

(01:10:43):
And also does it last for a common amount of
time for different women?

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Good question. I wish I could answer that with a
magic formula, but there isn't one. And generally, once the
low molde and reduction and activities and and everything has
lasted for more than two weeks. We are, you know,
in a in an episode of the depression, and there's

(01:11:10):
no timeline on that it can get worse, it can
get better. Most of the time, untreated, with nothing done
to it would tend to go worse and worse. And
that's one thing that we might want to think about
is that the early stages, the mild depression is often

(01:11:32):
the trickiest because it's the hardest to catch because we're
able to function, you know, where severe depression you can't
get out of bed, you don't want to shower. You know,
it's kind of obvious that it's not going well, right,
But if we could learn to if people could be
more educated, I guess if we could all be educated

(01:11:54):
on the early signs, it would be very useful to
notice that actually something's not quite right. I might check
with someone here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Yeah, so there's no there's no stencil, there's no way
it goes forever, and it can be short for some people,
longer for some people, and the way out of it
it can be different for other people as well. Yes,
well we do have to go to a break, but
we're here talking about postnatal depression. If you'd like to
join the conversation. We'd love you to join. Give us
a call one hundred eighty ten eighty. You might just
find what you've got to say is exactly what someone

(01:12:24):
else needs to hear. Or give us a text on
nine two ninety two. We'll be back soon here on
the Nutterers Club.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
This is the Nutters Club, thanks to New Zealand on
air on News talksz'd.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
Be welcome back to the Nutterers Club. Mick Andrew's here
filling in for Hamish Williams. Tonight we're talking about postnatal depression.
We'll be talking to my friend Laura about her experience
with postnatal depression and the dark hole she found herself
in after her first child, and how well reluctant is
putting it lightly. You were to have a second child,

(01:12:55):
but you did, We did, and I've met him. He's
awesome and he's lovely. But I'm curious to know as
you headed into that season, or as you are pregnant
with your second child, it must have been so acutely
aware of what could follow. Absolutely, I'm imagining quite scared
of it. Did How did you approach that birth that

(01:13:18):
time differently to the first or or how did you
try to guard yourself against another bout of postnatal depression?

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
Great questions. The first thing that I did was I
prepared myself much more for the post birth experience that
I now knew that I was going to have. Many
women attend an anti natal class as part of their pregnancy,
especially with their first that anti natal class is a
lovely opportunity where you get to really dive into the
birth right and it's really really focused on that, and

(01:13:49):
then they sort of give a little touch on the
fact that you're going to have a baby for the
next forever, for the rest of your life. So you know,
I really just wasn't prepared for the days and the
weeks that followed. So I, being a project manager by trade,
I set myself up a bit of a plan for
baby number two. So the first one was knowing where

(01:14:11):
I was giving birth, how I wanted to give birth,
really diving a little bit more into that experience because
my first go around hadn't been the best. The second
was preparing for afterwards. So I knew that between my
mother and Steve's mother, that I was going to have
someone in the house with me every day for the
first eight weeks, even though Steve had to go back

(01:14:33):
to work, you know, and he was there as much
as he could be. I knew that I needed to
have someone present with me. I had experienced, as part
of my first bout of postntal depression, some really dark thoughts.
I had suicidal ideation, and I knew that I didn't
want to put myself in a situation where I was
going to be alone before I had even sort of

(01:14:55):
stepped into that post netal time again with the second
So that was the first step of my plan. The
second was that Steve had really specific steps that he
was going to take if he saw me getting a
bit wobbly, which included reaching out to my GP, making
sure that my medication was on the right stand, and
made sure that I had access to the people that

(01:15:16):
I needed to talk to. So those were some of
the things that I put into place. Of course, all
of the basics we did meal prep, you know, all
of those things, but from a really approaching the depression
or potential personat or depression, those were two really big
things that we did. And how did it go much
much better? Much better the second time around. I think,

(01:15:38):
first of all, is a slightly more experienced mum. Every
baby is different, but obviously you kind of knew a
little bit more of what to expect. I also had
a very different birth experience. Earlier we talked a little
bit about how hormones come into play and the birthing experience,
and I spoke about with my daughter's birth because it
was quite traumatic. I really missed the oxytocin hit that

(01:16:02):
mothers get at birth, whereas with my son, I really
felt this amazing injection of oxyde, the love hormone at
his birth and post birth, which was just the whole
opposite experience of what I had had the first time.
And so I think that really that was a first shift.
I felt that hope from the very beginning as I

(01:16:24):
held him, I felt a connection to him, and that
was the first thing that set me off on a
different trajectory. Now, don't get me wrong, the first twelve
weeks were still really, really rough. He was a collaguy baby.
If he wasn't asleep, he screamed for basically sixteen weeks,

(01:16:44):
which was really stressful in its own terms. But I
felt much more prepared to deal with it, and I
had the tools that I really needed, so I was
already on medication. I had the people that I needed
around me to help keep me feel a little bit
more stable, and I had just that little bit of
experience under my belt as well to know that the
state wasn't going to be forever.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Gosh, well done putting all those things in place.

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):
I guess, said Project manager by Tray. I love at
the intersection of problems and solutions is my tagline network.
So I had to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
In my personal AF Isabelle, as Laura mentioned, and it
would be wrong not to bring us up really that
she had some suicidal ideation when she was experiencing postnatal depression.
How common is that?

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
It is very common, and it is you know, it's
something that we don't want to talk about, but it
is there. I mean, having thoughts of death or not
wanting to wake up, or not wanting to do this
again the next day or something like that is very common.
When mold is low. There is a I can't remember

(01:17:51):
the exact figure, but a reasonable rate of suicide amongst
women who experience post natural depression. And yeah, so I
think it's very important that we open this channel in
And I just want to say it's not because we
have thoughts of death that we act on them. So

(01:18:13):
when you do have thoughts, it's okay to tell someone
about it. It doesn't mean that you're going.

Speaker 4 (01:18:19):
To do it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
It's not because I have the thought of you know,
buying a pink Kileffhon that I'm not good at, I'm
going to do it. I So, yeah, talk to someone,
and there are a number of helplines that you can
talk you can call in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
Yeah, and I know that one of those helplines is
of course one seven three seven, where you can talk
to a trained counselor at any time of the day
or night. There's a text here says hi, Laura, thank
you so much for sharing part of your life journey.
It has been very helpful.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
That's lovely. Like I said, if there's one person out
there today who hears, whether it's a mother or a
partner and just can provide support to someone, that's my
only goal in being here today. So yeah, we're always
in help.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
If you want to give Laura another message, you can
always text nine two nine two, or if you want
to call up and have a question for our psychologists here.
We'll just have an experience of your own that you
want to share. Give us a call on eight hundred
and eighty ten eighty. We'll be back after the break
here on the Nudders Club.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
This is the Nutters Club thanks to New Zealand on
news dog z'b.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Welcome back to the Nudders Club tonight. We're talking all
about post natal depression and we're going to go straight
to the phones and we're going to chat to Dina.

Speaker 6 (01:19:31):
Dina, Hello, oh, good morning. I'm just doing the post
natal depression I experience. I experienced it twice after two
birth in the seventies, in the seventies years when there
was very little acknowledgment of it. And one thing that

(01:19:56):
I have noticed I've studied. I've got a university degree
as the psychiatrist, and even some psychologists don't really pay
enough attention to the fact that it's hormonal.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
Right, Was that your experience and you feel like your
experience of postal depression was brought on by hormones.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Do you well?

Speaker 6 (01:20:24):
I think yeah, And from my studies I know it
as you know they it's the same with menopause and
often with premium staal tension. You know it's a hormonal.

Speaker 5 (01:20:36):
Show, right, what would you say, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
I mean, there's no doubt that hormones have a role
to play. I mean, I'm sorry you had that experience
in the seventies. Today, it's certainly part of it. We
look at it mostly from a biocycle social approach, So yes,
hormones and other factors like the environment, the relationships, personality traits,

(01:21:05):
previous history of depression or more disorders, or vulnerability in
terms of genetic factors. It's kind of a whole picture
thing now.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
Right, Yeah, Laura, do you think having experienced postnatal depression
makes you more susceptible to depression in general even though
you've stopped having kids.

Speaker 4 (01:21:30):
Yeah, great question. I had experienced about of depression prior
to having children and then experience this again. So I
don't write off depression, situational depression from being in my
future at some point. I do know that I, on
a day to day basis, have good coping mechanisms for
both anxiety and depression, and as long as those and

(01:21:50):
as long as I can maintain those, I feel comfortable
and in control, which is probably one of my biggest problems,
needing to control everything. But it does give me a
sense of control, to feel like I can function, feel joy,
participate in my life, be a part of my beautiful family.
So I don't write that off for the future as

(01:22:11):
a potential, and I always know that that risk is there,
But for now, just really enjoying being totally deep in
the trenches with a four year old and a one
year old and just enjoying everything that every day has
to bring.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
You mentioned coping mechanisms. What to say too that you
just really have to lock in every week?

Speaker 4 (01:22:31):
Well, my number one downfall is exercise.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
I have to go to the toe that's cracked up
to me?

Speaker 5 (01:22:38):
Here is it?

Speaker 4 (01:22:39):
Oh no, some people dread it. I just cannot wait
to get to the gym every day. I think I've
just got cortisol and adrenaline running around my body and
I just have to burn it off somehow. So that's
my first one, and the second one is just finding
a little bit of something of an enjoyment for yourself.
For me, I just love reading. I read every night
before I go to bed, So that's the first one,
and my second one is that first cup of coffee

(01:23:01):
in the morning. I will even get up on the
weekend at five in the morning just to have a
quiet cup of coffee before my children are a and
I found that that actually just sets me up for
success in the day. Sounds terrible setting out in an
alarm for five o'clock in the morning on a Saturday,
but it really helps me. And so I've just found
these little, tiny things that I can do to bring

(01:23:23):
myself some joy, ground myself a little bit before the
day begins, and move forward.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
We mentioned earlier that there would likely be people up
now are women who have babies who are having a
hard time as we speak, maybe trying to get them
to feed late at night, or they're crying or Isabelle
you know, to that person listening now, what would you

(01:23:51):
like to say to them?

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
I would like to say, please don't lose hope. I've
seen people very very unwell with severe depression, basically in
the fetal position in my office on the ground, and
seen transformations in a few weeks to a few months.

(01:24:15):
The amount of people that I've seen coming out of
the other side is so inspiring. So what I would
say is this is temporary. It's hard, it hurts, and
it's temporary, and it won't be like that forever. So
please don't lose hope.

Speaker 2 (01:24:34):
And what might be one small first step someone.

Speaker 3 (01:24:39):
Talk to someone, to talk to someone close to you,
and then to a professional, so either GP or a psychologist,
or a counselor or a nurse, anyone that that you
have access to, and talk about how you're feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Laura, what's one thing you wish everyone knew about personatal depression?

Speaker 4 (01:25:03):
I call it. Catherine touched on this earlier, but it's
often the people that you least expect that are going
to fool the hardest. And so sometimes it's people who
you think, Wow, she's got it all together. You know,
she's that organized mum. She's the one who she comes
to the play dates and she's got the nappies and
she's got the wipes, and if I need to borrow something,

(01:25:24):
she's got it. But that might actually be the person
who's in the darks place. And so I think it's
watching out for everyone and just looking for any signs
where someone might need some help and they might be
offering support or it might be having a deeper conversation
with someone. But yeah, really just looking out for everyone.
Everyone's having you know, everyone is dealing with their own

(01:25:45):
things and having their own hard time, So keeping an
eye out for your mates as Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
Yeah, do you think, and this is a question for
either or both of you, do you think there's any
kind of dominant narratives in society or narratives about motherhood
that make that set the stage for personatal depression that
we could afford to break down any thoughts.

Speaker 4 (01:26:14):
The biggest one for me was the narrative that I
was just going to immediately fall in love with this baby,
be carried away on a sea of love, and everything
was going to be beautiful. And that wasn't the truth
for me, and it was a really hard reckoning. And
so I think acknowledgment that introducing a child into the

(01:26:36):
home is an incredibly difficult and jarring experience. And also
that you've mentioned the statistic multiple times that fifteen percent
of women experience postnatal depression, I would venture to argue
that that number is probably quite a bit higher. I
think diagnosed probably fifteen percent, but I think there are
probably many mothers who, whether it be for a short

(01:26:58):
to medium term, experience these feelings of despair, isolation, and
loneliness as they enter this new period of their lives.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
Was I'm glad you made that, Laura, because actually the
difficulty bonding with the baby in the first stages is
a very common you know, I want to say symptom,
but consequence of baltinatal depression, and it's really common, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
Yeah, And what about you know, we don't have long Laura,
but what about you to that woman listening now up
late at night with a baby and struggling, what would
you say to her?

Speaker 4 (01:27:38):
I love what you said earlier about it's really really hard,
but it's temporary. And I remember when I was in
the depths of it with my daughter, my mum saying
just wait until seven months and everything will be so
much better. She really had this advice to me that
seven months was going to be better, and I was like, Mum,
I'm not going to make it seven minutes, you know.
But really it is the truth that it will pass,

(01:27:59):
and getting help and support is what you need to
move forward.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
There's always hope. That's what I'm hearing from both of you,
and it's not permanent. Those are hopeful words. And I
want to thank both of you for coming here tonight
and bringing them. Doctor Isabelle mcclett for joining us tonight.
If you want to find out more about Isabelle and
Chuckole Leadership Group, you can go to Chuckole Leadershipship Group
dot com. Thank you, Isabelle, Welcome, Laura. Always good to

(01:28:24):
see you. I'd love to come around with some peak
AMPI again sometime soon. That was good, Pie. Thank you
so much for staring his story, being so vulnerable with us.
I know there's a lot of people out there that
would have benefited, so thank you so much for having it.
If listening to Laura's story tonight has brought anything up
for you and you'd like to speak to someone, you
can call one seven three seven anytime it's a day
or night to speak to a trained counselor. Big thank

(01:28:47):
you to our producers Boris and Bevin. Thank you also
to News Talks he'd be for letting us in the
door and using on the air, for picking up the bills.
And finally, thank you to you for listening, for being
part of this community, for calling in. It's really great
to be back in this chair. I will be back
in this chair next Sunday and I will see you
then at night here on the Nutters Club.

Speaker 5 (01:29:09):
Poor Marty, this is the Nutters Club.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
Thanks to new Zealand on air on News Talks EDB.
For more from News Talks ed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio