Episode 91SN: A Postpartum that inspired a Novel: Julia’s story, Part I

Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show today. We are lucky and excited to have author Julia fine on the show. And we’re going to talk about many things, one of which is her recent book, I think 2021 2021 Yeah, called the upstairs house and I want to describe it and you can correct me. Okay. So generally speaking, I’d say it’s a book about the challenges of the postpartum period. One of the themes is how cultural expectations about love and relationships can profoundly shape our actual experience of them. And what I’d say about the book is it follows two threads. One is the story of the main character in the present day, whose name is Megan, who’s working on her I’m guessing English dissertation,

 

Julia  2:40  

right? Yeah, it’s a history, but it’s sort of some overlap. Yeah.

 

Paulette  2:43  

And she has her first baby and is stepping into the postpartum period. And another thread starts off as a story of two women who are featured in Megan’s dissertation and progress and talks about their intimate relationship in the 30s and 40s. And one of the women featured in the dissertation is what I would call shadow famous, which is that we all know Margaret Wise Brown because every parent has read Goodnight Moon 4000 times, but we don’t know her know her which is coming through in the dissertation. And these two threads get tangled when Megan returns from the hospital with her firstborn and starts hallucinating that the women from her dissertation have moved in above her flat, there is no apartment above her flat. So that’s one of the signals that there’s this isn’t necessarily really what’s happening. And Megan is negotiating the intense challenges of this period of isolation, the exhaustion, the emotional flux, while her dissertation characters have invaded her home and in her mind are sort of stirring up trouble.

 

Julia  3:41  

Yeah, that sounds about right to me. Okay, excellent.

 

Paulette  3:43  

So I in some ways, on your perfect reader, because I did my dissertation at University of Chicago. I lived in Chicago was pregnant for that. I felt every single thing I lived in a walk up. All that stuff felt so real and familiar to me. I love this book. I thought it was really powerful. And for me, one of the marks of a good book is does it make you feel something and I felt panicked. I 100% I 100% felt it and I and I it is one of those books that you can’t put down so congratulations on this amazing work. And I know that you talk about in the book how you want to bring attention to the postpartum period. So we’re going to talk about that because I want to hear about your experience. How old is your

 

Julia  4:26  

i So My oldest is he’ll be six at the end of April. which just sounds nuts to say but it’s true. And then I also have a two and a half year old.

 

Paulette  4:34  

Okay, so you’ve been through this today. So let’s talk first about your experience. And then we’ll talk about this book and the one that you have coming out in June. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So with most people we talk about is how the family that you create is in some ways linked to the family that you came from, in terms of your ideas about what you want a future and what you think it’s going to look like. So did you grow up with siblings?

 

Julia  4:56  

Yeah, I have. So this actually is very, very apt because I’m the oldest of three I have two younger brothers, one of whom is three years younger than me, and it felt like everyone we knew the sibling, my age, and then there was younger. So when it came time to have a second kid, I was very much like, I want it to be three years younger, which I think ultimately means nothing, but to me felt very, very important. And it was funny too, because in order to have my kids three years apart, and one of them had to be born in June of 2020, which is like a terrible time to be giving birth. So if I had, if I had not felt so strongly, perhaps it would be different, but it definitely impacted you know, wanting my kid to have a sibling. I’m not sure that it would have been as important to me who I not grown up with siblings and sort of felt the value of that

 

Paulette  5:41  

Okay, so now let’s fast forward to your children. When you go to get pregnant, is it easy?

 

Julia  5:48  

Yeah, so my first is a surprise baby. I mean, we knew that we wanted kids, you know, within sort of like a three year window, but when I got pregnant, I it was not planned. And we were sort of like what now what do we do? And it sort of goes back to the book too, because I had just written but not yet sold. My first novel, you just signed with a literary agent. And I felt like I want to have a career before. I have kids because I had seen my own mother. How difficult that was. My mom had been a lawyer to work for the Justice Department and she had a career and took some time off to raise her kids and then tried to go back to it and it was so difficult. So I could only imagine how hard it would be if I had not yet really established myself because I was hoping to establish a career as a writer, which sounds nuts in any regard, especially nuts with a small baby. But we were sort of back and forth about like, is it the right time for us? And then ultimately, I think I felt like okay, well what if, you know, we decided it’s not the right time now. And then it’s hard to pregnant later or what if I regret it and so that was enough. For me to be like, This isn’t my timeline necessarily. We’re like two years off, but it’s gonna make sense for us. But what it meant was that in my circles, at least, I was the only one really having a kid I was 29 when he was born, I have just turned 29 which I know you know, in certain places is like, Oh, my goodness, why don’t you have five kids already? Among my friends and family. I was the first one and that made it, I think, more difficult because there wasn’t really I didn’t really know anyone who I could meet up with. afterwards. I didn’t know anyone who could sort of like explain pregnancy to me or sort of reassured me about things like I found myself in the role sense and but at this point in my life, like a lot of my friends have kids, but I found myself like as my college and high school friends were having kids. I was the one who’s like, Oh, this is normal. Oh, don’t worry about that. Oh, that’s weird. Maybe you should call somebody you know. It’s just nice to have that person. So I think that despite the fact that I had a very supportive family and very good friends who you know were there and what ever aspects they could be I found pregnancy and postpartum periods specifically to be very lonely. And I think that is what led me then to write a book about a very lonely woman who does not have the support that I had. And it also sort of led me to look into like, wait a minute, why is this the case? Like why as a country are we so obsessed with making women give birth and then giving them no resources? No preparation, I felt just like totally sort of thrown in the deep end. Because you read all the books, you know, like, you know, in six months of pregnancy, this is what your baby’s doing, and here’s how you should feel but then the baby comes out and it felt to me at least, like there were no real resources. There was a lot of like your baby should be eating and peeing this many times. But there wasn’t anything like for me necessarily. It felt it felt very isolated, very lonely. I felt like I was doing something wrong. And it took me probably like eight months to make friends who also had kids, and we were all like, oh, I felt that way too. And hence sort of feeling like Alright, there’s room to write more about what it feels like to become a new parent. Like, what it actually feels like.

 

Paulette  9:08  

Yeah, so I’m picking up two things from what you said. The first is this attempts to mesh a family life with a career as I said, I missed my grad school graduation because I gave birth and then I was racing to recover because I had to start a job within three months. And this that, you know, the the career system is not set up for birthing people in any way. And I am sort of hoping that since COVID, kind of grasp the work environment and shook it hard, that we’ll get different ways to progress in a work context because it doesn’t make any sense and like you, I want it to be established before I had kids and and that’s just those are too many things to juggle and balance and the current system we have does not actually strike the word balance because that’s a silly word that doesn’t really apply to this experience. If you’re lucky enough to get to control your fertility. It’s hard to know what to do with that. There’s no There’s no good time. There’s no right time to do it. And the second thing that you mentioned was that there is no emotional investigation of what it is to be a mother when you give birth to a baby now, two things are being born the baby and a mother. Absolutely. And those things are both brand spanking new. And I feel like the books that are out there that describe it are a little bit more medical or clinical then is useful.

 

Julia  10:34  

Yeah, I think so. And it’s cut off at the Automate because I’m not the type of person who sits and reads parenting books as much as I would love to. I sort of feel even today. All right, well, I spend all day doing it. I’m not going to read about it, which is probably to my disadvantage, because I’m sure I would learn things from read articles. I don’t you know, there there definitely are things out there too. Because when I started to dig in to do research for the upstairs has to I found into Memoirs of women and birthing people who’ve written about their postpartum depression. or psychosis or just sort of ambivalent or whatever else it was. And it’s funny too, because as I was working on the novel, I felt like there weren’t very many novels about what it was like or a bit sort of included. That part of random and even since 2021. If you think about sort of the lifecycle of a book I think I sold the book in 2019, early 2019, and it came out in 2021. And in that time, there have been a lot more books that I think interrogate society’s idea of the new mother and if what to me feels like a more accurate depiction of what it feels like and people who are not afraid to be talking about breastfeeding, you know, for like 50 pages in a row because that is what absorbs you. And for such a long time. I think we thought oh, one it only is relevant to new moms, which I think is absolutely ridiculous. I think in the same way that we would need to learn about other people’s experiences, the experience of a new mom is equally valid, as you know, a world war two pilot that you’re reading about. They’re just different people, different minds. And also this idea that the things that women do in the domestic sphere is aren’t all literary, I think has also been sort of a pervading myth. In the past, however, many more probably from the very beginning of sort of like modern fiction, and I think that’s something that a lot of people are pushing to change that, you know, we could read about a man’s midlife crisis and be like Pulitzer Prize winning literature, but for a woman it just nobody, no one would want to quote unquote, buy it. And I think that is something that I was really, really pushing back against, because it sort of invalidates the experience. There’s nothing more nuanced, I think, than those first few early days of parenthood in terms of just your the way that your emotions are so mixed, and the highs are so high and the lows can be so low, and it’s so new, and it’s a reinvention and the idea that that would not be literary enough or that there wouldn’t be interest in that just struck me as so ridiculous that I felt like how can I write this as a book that sucks people in and forces them to acknowledge when it’s valid to feel however you feel about new parenthood and to, you know, this experience is just as deserving of literary treatment as anything else.

 

Paulette  13:25  

This issue of our cultural view of postpartum to an expert today we have Dr. Kate Tikka Patel on the show. She’s an OB by training, who saw and experienced some of the significant gaps in medical care for mothers who’ve given birth and is now focused full time on helping women manage the postpartum period. Dr. Patel, thanks so much for coming on.

 

Julia  13:45  

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

 

Paulette  13:48  

So I think part of Julie’s mission with this book is to normalize the experience of how difficult it is this early postpartum period. What are your thoughts about that, in your opinion? How does our current medical system handle this and what could it do better?

 

Julia  14:01  

There really is not a lot of reliable consistent guidance for women in the postpartum period. So I think it is really important to get the word out about the lack of care I mean, the current medical system is basically absent from this time period. And it leaves women adrift and looking for answers on their own. And unfortunately, I think in previous generations, that support may have come from expertise within the family or community but the way our culture is now we’ve kind of lost that. And early postpartum is full of changes and struggles and whether it was generational support community, they would provide the extra hands, they would provide the expertise, and they would provide the companionship, which which many women are lacking in the postpartum period.

 

Paulette  15:02  

So I totally agree with you and I think it should be a day Lodz. And just if we’re talking about statistics, let’s imagine it’s only women who care about it. 86% of women at some point in their life give birth. So that’s nearly half the population surely that’s enough. At the risk of suggesting this blaspheme. I think this is a movie. I think it’s a beautiful book. And one thing I like about it is I’m a little bit of a little bit of a snob for pretty prose, and it’s but but I think it is, this is a large story. This is a real story. You know, this woman in the book has postpartum psychosis. I think my legs say that. Yeah, yeah, it’s

 

Julia  15:41  

I mean, it’s sort of unclear throughout the book, if it’s like she’s, it’s an actual ghost or postpartum psychosis and that it sort of comes down like the medical establishment comes down on the side of postpartum psychosis, but I sort of hoped that the reader could interpret it, you know, however you wanted to, but definitely the sort of realistic way to interpret it is like she’s having a psychotic break.

 

Paulette  16:01  

This kind of psychosis is pretty rare. But, but, you know, I was looking at statistics for it. Let’s say there’s about 4 million births a year 350 to 9400 9400 is a lot of people. If you would think these sorts of things. It’s a small fraction, but there’s enough there are enough births, that it’s that is significant, but postpartum depression is like a half a million with women a year. Like that’s just a huge number of people who I’m sure can see their own experiences in this because this postpartum period is such a fun house. It’s just it’s such a weird transition and your view of reality gets so exactly warped by exhaustion and I totally agree with the isolation which I had no, I did not give birth during COVID at all, and and it was totally isolating in a way that I had was not prepared for

 

Julia  16:50  

how I Yeah, so it was funny because the isolation of becoming a new parent. So my son was born in 2017. And my daughter was born in June 2020. And it should have been so much harder to give birth and COVID We had no outside help. We were all crammed into this small condo couldn’t go anywhere. No one could come to the hospital with me, you know, and she was early there were all these complications. And it was still harder for me the first time around with all of the social support and trends like not in a pandemic just because that transition is so hard.

 

Paulette  17:23  

Yeah, it is. Can you speak specifically to the issue of isolations? Like what suggestions do you give to others to help us adjust to the dramatic shift in priorities when the social structure doesn’t shift with it?

 

Julia  17:37  

Yes, so this is so important. I can’t even emphasize it enough. And I think that the first step is awareness that we have to talk about this it has to be more normalized and understood, not just among women who are getting pregnant or had been pregnant, but also their partners and the entire community in general. We have to talk about it. And because it happens so often in our culture, and if you think about why it’s happening, it makes perfect sense, right? We’re going from these social beings completely in control of our schedules and activities. In our lives. We are going to work or you know, hanging out with friends. And then suddenly we’re new moms, and we are constantly have a little helpless infant who can’t survive without us. We can’t sleep when we want. We can eat when we want. We can even use the bathroom without being interrupted. Much less go out, go to work, hang out with friends or have a normal phone conversation. Right? So so there’s none of that interaction that we get before having the baby and so it’s it’s only natural that it would lead to isolation. The partner may also feel the same isolation. If you know, the mom and the dad or mom and partner are both just taking care of baby on their own and they’re again neither one is getting out for a while or whatever. So they may feel it as well. And they also may not be aware that mom is feeling it if they’re going to work all the time and they don’t feel it at all right. So the partner is an important person ought to also be aware, along with extended family and friends. But once there is awareness, I think the other thing to emphasize to Mom is that this is a change that is not going to go go back to what you believe is normal anytime soon. So a good idea is to accept it to accept that these are changes that have to happen right now because this little one can’t survive without you. But you can also figure out ways to reduce the isolation. You can try to get support. You can join support groups, you can share your experiences with other new moms that are going through the same thing. You can ask for someone to come and help and maybe take baby for a little while so you can spend some time doing things that you want to do. I think it’s natural for us to try to fight it right to be like, Well, no, I’m supposed to be happy. I’m supposed to be joyful. I’m supposed to be fine with this and and everything will just be fine. And but I think that fighting and that sort of negative outlook on it doesn’t help either. We have to just say okay, this is what it is. And it’s really hard but let me see what I can do to alleviate it.

 

Paulette  20:30  

So let’s get your son’s story so you get pregnant easily on and I you know thank goodness for that story because that’s the story we all have in our head. The first time I connected sex I was like I’m pregnant. Thank you very much pregnant, which was not how it works for a lot of people so I’m glad for that. And and it is hard to be the first in your friend group to be pregnant. So what is your pregnancy look like?

 

Julia  20:53  

Oh, it was fairly easy. I had a decent amount of nausea, especially when I compare it to doing it a second time around with a three year old versus doing it just Oh, I could just lie in bed and watch movies and I was working as an adjunct professor so I had a lot of downtime. Where I didn’t need to be in an office. I only had to be on campus three days a week. So I literally was just eating grilled cheese and watching romantic comedies in bed thinking this is so hard and retrospectively I wish I could go back there. But yeah, no, it was a fairly uncomplicated, pretty easy, you know, up until like even even labor and delivery was pretty easy like I pushed for a very long time but that’s normal for you.

 

Paulette  21:36  

But let’s go a little bit slower. So even the nausea would you want me to walk past that and be like oh so easy. I was throwing up every day. Like it is. It is I’m it’s Yeah, it is normal, but it is your first kind of wake up call that you are renting out your body and you are no longer the owner, the owner, the only owner. And it’s a little bit shocking. I mean, I was in grad school. So I also had a lot of flexibility. But I remember falling asleep on my keyboard. Like I think of it as like natural chloroform. Like you just all of a sudden you just can’t you just can’t write which is not what I expected. The overwhelming fatigue and the and the nausea of I again I was lucky in the in the scheme of things because I only threw up in the morning. It wasn’t like all day nausea. Yeah, but but that’s still a pretty big thing to undertake.

 

Julia  22:28  

Oh, it was a lot and I think I just mentally when I think back to pregnancy, the first time around. I just knew it was so new. And again, I didn’t have any close friends who had been through it. And so every little thing. It’s like oh my boobs hurt is that normal? Oh I’m you know bleeding. Is that normal? Is this normal? Should I be throwing up this offense? You know, I was on the What to Expect When You’re Expecting message boards where you just ask every single question it’s everybody’s asking all these questions like Is this a normal thing does this look at this like does that and I feel like it says something culturally, we’re gonna get 10 xiety inducing just carrying a child is but also like how unprepared we are because we don’t really talk about it in any circles other than that particular circle. Imagine if growing up, I had talked to people all the time who were pregnant about the specifics of pregnancy, I feel like it would have been a very different experience.

 

Paulette  23:27  

Totally, totally. And so it sounds like the pregnancy went along pretty normally. And then before we get to the birth, did you have an idea of what you hoped it would be like or how

 

Julia  23:37  

so I am such a baby when it comes to pain. I was like I want the epidural. As soon as possible. I knew I wanted to be in a hospital where I could be as zonked out as possible from it. I’m trying to remember if I had a playlist I might have had. I might have made a playlist, but it was not very precious at all about what I thought would happen. I just wanted to help the baby and I wanted to feel the least amount of pain that I could possibly feel.

 

Paulette  24:05  

Okay, totally fair. So take us through the day. How do you know Today’s a day?

 

Julia  24:10  

Oh man, so I my son was born on his due date. So it was I had gone in for all of the checks where they’ll what do they call it where they write down your cervix or whatever they do? Or they stick their finger up there, you know? And I kept thinking, oh my god, I was so I was so uncomfortable. Everybody is in those final days and weeks of pregnancy that I was just like, come on, come on, come on out. And I can remember I eat spicy food and had sex took a walk and did all the things and then it was 9pm the night before my due date and all of a sudden I started having contractions, and I was there. I’m in general, a fairly prompt person. I like to be like Okay, now it’s time to do this. Now it’s time to do that. So it’s like now it’s time to the hospital. And they’re like, No, it’s not you know, you stayed stayed home for a while to remember I finished the book I was reading. And it was a 200 pages of a book that I read between 830 and I sent my husband as you go to sleep because you’re going to need you know, I can’t sleep right now and one of us should be well rested. And I remember I woke him up probably at like 2am to be like this really really hard. And when made called they say the thing of you know wait for the contractions are five minutes apart and lasting however long and when a time that it wasn’t quite so we tried to put something on TV and it’s like I can’t even sit here and watch us we have to just go. So we got super lucky because we live in we’re in Chicago and really in the middle of the city and our hospital was downtown. And I had been like oh my gosh this traffic What will we do but it was 3am so it hurt it was terrible like every pothole felt like I was gonna die. But there was no traffic so we got there really quickly. But when you get to the hospital at 3am There’s just not as much good they cannot move quite as quickly. So we were in triage for three or four hours or Wow by which point because i They admitted me at first and they were like you’re not dilated enough. And I said how is that possible? And they sent me to walk around in the halls for a while. So I did and then I came back I was like, please check me there’s no way and then they checked in like oh wow, you’re now which sounds like is that fair? Like? But then yeah, I just remember being in triage. We got to the hospital around three and I was admitted around 7am or 730. At which point I was like it felt like heaven to be moved from the tiny little triage room with the blurry TV and you know, there’s no space at all into the big birthing room. And then I got asked for the epidural on the way up for you guys like I’m ready for it now and then it was great both times I had I’ve had the epidural and has worked. So it’s not even true with my daughter. They couldn’t find the nerve for it. So that part was awful. But for my son, they found it right away. The epidural kicked in. It was great. I was great. I was calling my mom texting my friends. You know, so ready, maybe napped a little bit. Although I do remember my husband was like, I’m gonna go get something to eat and I’m like, don’t leave you might miss the baby and the nurses were like, go get by. Yeah, so I it was a nurse that I liked. I remember I was chatting with the nurse. I started All right yeah They’re like two hours into pushing. Maybe we’re all of a sudden it’s like a switch flipped and all of a sudden is like, this is actually terrible. I’m in so much pain. It’s really bad. And it went from being like if he had just come come right on out, it would have been such a pleasant experience. But then I think he was crowding for 45 minutes. And wow. It was awful. They had to bring in the mirror, which I think I have in the book, too. They brought in a mirror because they were like, look, look at him. He is progressing, but I just use the big headed kid. And it wasn’t my OB either because it was so early in the morning, I guess or I’m not sure exactly what it was, but that would be there. I’d been seeing it was somebody else too, which felt very weird. But yeah, it just took it took a while but then he was out and it was fairly uncomplicated after that no carrying no bleeding. So in retrospect, I got very, very lucky but it was at last hour and a half of pushing. It’s all Oh, I’m actually

 

Paulette  28:23  

there’s no fear.

 

Julia  28:24  

Oh, I was really scared. I think that

 

Paulette  28:29  

I accelerated Prentice

 

Julia  28:30  

Women’s Hospital which is just I felt very I have a few friends who work there, which I think helped. But I also felt very I just felt very secure very safe very much if something goes wrong. That’s why I’m in a hospital which in a way, I was so nonchalant about the birthing process that then when I had a baby to take care of I was like, Whoa, this is the end result of this, you know, but yeah, when I hear other people’s stories, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I maybe should have been more afraid. And my mother actually when I asked her what her labor with me was like she’s like I’m not even going to tell you so bad. I’m not going to get it in your head. I still don’t even really know that story. But for my son it was. Yeah, especially then when I think my second time around was much more complicated. And so it was just sort of your textbook, labor and delivery.

 

Paulette  29:31  

That’s great. That’s great. So they hold you for 24 hours after vaginal delivery.

 

Julia  29:36  

I stayed for two days. I think I hadn’t started nights and I wasn’t checked in until I showed up at 3am. So do count as a night so I got an extra one.

 

Paulette  29:50  

Okay. Okay. And then what’s it like when you go home?

 

Julia  29:53  

Oh, gosh, that was hard. That was I mean, I that was almost directly what I what I wrote about where I remember I sat in the backseat with him. So terrified to have this child float. Drive slower. Oh my gosh, drive faster.

Julia  0:07  

That was I mean I that was almost directly what I what I wrote about where I remember I sat in the backseat with him so terrified to have this child flow that drive slower oh my gosh drive faster you’re driving too slow cars gonna hit us it was just very very intense

 

Paulette  0:23  

if it makes you feel any better when we came home from the hospital my husband dropped me off in front of our walk up and then crashed the car in the air. I’m tired. Like it’s so stressful. So drive your egg around, right it’s just it’s

 

Julia  0:40  

yeah, no, I yeah, I remember we got in and this was good too, because this was not a COVID delivery. So my sister in law had come and I saw many of these details ended up in the upstairs house. She had come and she had cleaned up for us and she had put food in our fridge and made a little fine. And it was me she was so so sweet. And then I felt terrible because then when she had kids, I was like, I can come do this, but I’m dragging my one year old along so it’s not quite the same. But yeah, she had prepped everything. It was great. I had totally set and then I think it was that first night we’ve had actually I just remembering this now so he was circumcised at the hospital but you were supposed to wait after the circumcision. They want you to wait until he has a wet diaper. I think before you go home but because of insurance and timing and everything and the doctor’s schedule, they were like you can just go home but check for it. And I remember being so anxious. I mean, like I can’t tell heads up what’s happening. I’m calling I remember I called the doctor at 1am That first night and they were like well hold on hold on. I remember I was on the phone with a doctor. He looking straight up at me. You know, it’s like Oh, thank God, but it was Yeah. It was very surreal. And it I think I feel like it was like fun sort of at first because you’re still kind of loopy and then it very quickly. So my husband had at that point he had like 10 days of paternity I think good luck and enjoy your five minutes. So yeah, he had 10 days and so for those 10 days i do i very clearly remember my in laws coming over and I didn’t I just wanted to lie on the bed and cry. I was just like I retrospectively clearly this was not you know, I should have been talking to someone for this but at the time I think now I can look at it and be like yeah, I probably did have postpartum depression, but at the time I felt like well, it’s not that bad. And like baby blues suck it up. You know,

 

Paulette  2:29  

first of all this term of baby blues, what can we change that? It’s silly. That feels patronizing.

 

Julia  2:35  

Well, how much of how much of medical care is not paid for? But baby blues is I don’t even know who coined the term but it’s become a term that’s accepted and so changing it might be difficult, but I agree with you. I don’t I don’t love that term. I also feel like it doesn’t really describe what’s going on. So can

 

Paulette  2:53  

you can you describe like what actually is happening that we’re labeling the baby blues? Yeah, so baby blues

 

Julia  2:59  

can happen at 70 to 80% of births, which is a really large number, right? And the fact that people don’t talk about it, like as a routine thing is kind of crazy. But so the symptoms of baby blues are basically very similar to depression. You may experience sadness, sleepiness, irritability, insomnia, impatience, anxiety, fatigue, poor concentration, all the things that you associate with depression. It usually starts within the first few days after giving birth and lasts usually about up to two weeks, but it goes away on its own, and symptoms come and go. They’re intermittent. So you might be super weepy. And then 510 minutes later, an hour later, you’re feeling perfectly fine. So the symptoms usually lasts for a few minutes up to an hour or two. But usually not longer than that in one go. And we don’t know the exact cause of baby blues, but we believe it. It’s related to the large hormone fluctuations that come with delivery and also combined with the lack of sleep that mom is having at that point, the changes in her routines, a lack of control all the emotions from her childbirth, experience, all of those together can lead to baby blues.

 

Julia  4:23  

But then when my husband went back to work, it was really really hard. Even with visitors adjusted you know, I had gone from having my own life and my own creative work and teaching to like, you know, the baby was my full time job and I wasn’t sleeping and my son still doesn’t sleep through the night. He’s almost six and is still awful and that has been like from day one to use a terrible sleeper. We didn’t even get those good. The first few newborn nights that people get with that fool you into thinking that oh, it’s not that bad. We didn’t even get those. It was just, it’s just exhausting.

 

Paulette  5:03  

I’m going to end my conversation with Julia here. I’m grateful to her for both the beautiful novel she’s produced and for her willingness to share her own experience of this enormous transition. The suggestion that these early days weeks months of becoming a parent, especially from the mother’s point of view is not worthy of literary investigation. That’s something anyone wants to read. About. Sounds like a quote from a TV villain version of a publisher. Although I don’t doubt for one second that Julie is reading the landscape is accurate. It just feels very distant from reality. Hope her book sales bear that out. I also appreciate Dr. Patel’s work and her suggestions. Next Friday. I’ll share the second half of my conversation with both Trulia and Dr. Patel. You can find links to Julie’s work and Dr. Patel in the show notes available on the war stories website. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, please share it with friends and subscribe. We’ll be back next week with the rest of Julia’s inspiring story.