postpartum — Exhale: A Blog for Women's Mental and Emotional Health | Online Therapy

postpartum

The Importance of Prioritizing Your Mental Health During Your Pregnancy From An Online Therapist In Tampa Florida

The Importance of Prioritizing Your Mental Health During Your Pregnancy From An Online Therapist In Tampa Florida

Pregnancy is an incredible and transformative journey filled with joy, anticipation, and excitement. While the process of bringing forth new life can be beautiful and happy, as we know, it can also be a struggle for many women. It's a time of significant emotional, physical, and life changes, which can be exciting, but also bring along uncomfortable emotions and challenges to the mother’s mental health. From anxiety and depression to overwhelming stress, the wellbeing of both the mother and the developing baby can be impacted. 

How Online Therapy Can Help Moms With Postpartum Depression In Tampa

How Online Therapy Can Help Moms With Postpartum Depression In Tampa

Pregnancy is such a special time in life. There’s the glowing sense of abundance that somehow outweighs the uncomfortable body changes, the feeling of connection to new life, and the eager anticipation of meeting baby for the first time. No matter how labor and delivery unfolded, whether with ease and as planned or requiring emergency intervention, the postpartum period is often a different story. 

How To Find An Online Therapist That Treats Postpartum Anxiety and Depression in Louisiana

 How To Find An Online Therapist That Treats Postpartum Anxiety and Depression in Louisiana

Online therapy has become a new normal for therapists and clients alike. Once viewed with skepticism, the format has taken off in the wake of the global pandemic and an increasing need among people to access mental health services. 

It’s particularly useful for women living with postpartum depression and anxiety, both of which are serious mental health conditions that can affect women after childbirth. They are characterized by a range of emotional and physical symptoms that interfere with a woman's ability to care for herself and her new baby.

What Is Postpartum Psychosis?

What Is Postpartum Psychosis?

Few things are as life-changing as childbirth. The physical and emotional tolls of the act itself multiplied by the social isolation experienced by a new mother make this event one of the major stressors for a woman. As a result, it’s relatively normal for a new mom to experience mood swings and some mild depression in the first two weeks called baby blues but it’s important to be aware of the more serious manifestations of postpartum motherhood. 

10 New Orleans Area Date Night Ideas For Women From an Online Therapist

10 New Orleans Area Date Night Ideas For Women From an Online Therapist

We talk about it as moms all the time, and our friends likely warned us about it before we had kids of our own. Your relationship with your partner will probably struggle in the months and years after you grow your family by adding a child. And yes, the day-to-day grind of raising small humans can be exhausting and seemingly all-consuming of your energy. So, your connection with your partner gets put on a back burner, assuming this season of life will pass and someday you’ll be able to pick up where you left off with your Number One. 

How to Cope With The Pain of Loss With The Start of the New Year: Tips from an Online Therapist in Honolulu, HI

How to Cope With The Pain of Loss With The Start of the New Year: Tips from an Online Therapist in Honolulu, HI

The truth is that hanging up a new calendar on the wall will not change how you feel nor does it define where you are or should be in your healing journey. 

With that in mind, here’s 5 tips to cope with feelings of loss in the new year. 

5 Ways Moms Can Prioritize Their Mental Health in 2023 | Therapy for Moms in Florida

5 Ways Moms Can Prioritize Their Mental Health in 2023 |  Therapy for Moms in Florida

While it isn’t always easy to make time to prioritize your mental health as a mom, here are five simple ways to put yourself first in the new year. 

5 Tips for Rediscovering Your Identity in Motherhood

5 Tips for Rediscovering Your Identity in Motherhood

There’s a common myth that motherhood completes or defines us as women. When you begin the journey toward becoming a mother, there is a hopefulness, a feeling of excitement and wanting to have a child. Then it happens. You have your perfect baby in your arms and all of a sudden, in that instant, you go from being the person you’ve been your whole life to being some new and different person – somebody’s mom. And it’s exciting and wonderful and then…

5 Tips on How to Cope with Feeling Overstimulated As A Mom

5 Tips on How to Cope with Feeling Overstimulated As A Mom

Do you ever feel yourself holding on to your last bit of patience when you’re not even upset or angry about something? You may be overstimulated. In other words, your brain feels like it has 50 tabs open simultaneously, which can be overwhelming and frustrating.

Whether you go to work full-time or are a stay-at-home parent, there are a few creative ways to sneak downtime into your schedule. So if you feel yourself wanting to wear earplugs just to hear yourself think, keep reading. This article explores a few ways to cope with feeling overstimulated as a mom.

Four Tips To Help Moms Cope with Panic Attacks

Four Tips To Help Moms Cope with Panic Attacks

If you’re a mom that has struggled with anxiety for some time, you may not know the difference between an episode of extreme anxiety and a panic attack. While panic attacks sit under the umbrella of ‘anxiety disorders’ they are far more severe and come on much more suddenly than a quick bout of anxious thoughts.

Five Ways to Prioritize Your Mental Health as a New Mom

Five Ways to Prioritize Your Mental Health as a New Mom

The journey into motherhood can be filled with moments of joy, despair, anxiety, sadness, exhaustion, excitement, and everything in between. Here are some tips for navigating those emotions and prioritizing your mental health after having a baby.

Four Benefits of Seeing an Online Therapist During Your Pregnancy

Four Benefits of Seeing an Online Therapist During Your Pregnancy

If you are pregnant, you probably have heard from friends, your family, your doula, or your OB-GYN about the possibility of experiencing postpartum anxiety and depression after delivery. Perhaps you’ve even considered that you might reach out to a therapist after your baby arrives if you feel like you are struggling with your mental health. But beginning to see a therapist while you’re pregnant can have significant benefits throughout your pregnancy and in your postpartum period. Here are four benefits of seeing a therapist during your pregnancy.

How the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline Can Support Your Struggle With Postpartum Depression and Anxiety

How the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline Can Support Your Struggle With Postpartum Depression and Anxiety

Postpartum Support International and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Health Resource Services Administration (HRSA) recently launched the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline. This support line is truly the first of its kind in that it is specifically focused on providing mental health support for moms, and even their partners and families.

Combating Toxic Positivity: Learning to Accept Your “Negative” Emotions

Combating Toxic Positivity: Learning to Accept Your “Negative” Emotions

When we dig deeper and stop to explore why there is a belief that something is wrong with having these “negative” emotions, there usually has been some kind of overarching message in that woman’s life that has said, “It’s not okay to be mad, angry, sad, depressed…” and the list could go on. This message could have begun early in childhood by parents, siblings, teachers, and friends, or it may have appeared later in life from professors, employers, romantic partners, or the community within which they live. While the message is that those emotions are bad, the other message communicated is “You just need to be happy. Just focus on the positive.” And this is where “toxic positivity” begins to take root.

Learning to Let Go of "Mom Guilt"

Learning to Let Go of "Mom Guilt"

Motherhood is hard, like really hard. And parenting in the time of a global pandemic is a whole other level of stress and difficulty. We aren’t going to always get it right. Rather than heaping guilt on yourself, almost as a form of self-punishment, try approaching yourself with a sense of self-compassion.

Five Ways to Prioritize Your Mental Health as a Mom in the New Year

Five Ways to Prioritize Your Mental Health as a Mom in the New Year

Our minds and bodies are not designed to be under the constant and consistent stress that they’ve experienced the last two years. The majority of moms I’ve spoken to feel burned out, overwhelmed, and exhausted. While there isn’t a quick fix or a pill that will simply take the overwhelm and exhaustion away, by taking small steps to prioritize your needs and your mental health, you may begin to feel some relief or a reprieve from the stress. Check out these five ways to prioritize your mental health as a mom in the new year.

What is Postpartum Depression?

What is Postpartum Depression?

Adding a new baby into your family can be a really big adjustment. Whether you are bringing home your first baby or your fourth, this new little life can be beautiful and all-consuming at the same time. You feel overwhelmed, exhausted, cry so easily, and no longer feel interested in the things you used to love.

When you talked with your friends during your pregnancy, they told you that caring for a newborn would be hard, and now you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, this must be what my friends were talking about.” It can be very easy to try to attribute these feelings to “This is just how it is,” but there may be something bigger going on.

How Can A Psychiatrist Help You During Pregnancy?

How Can A Psychiatrist Help You During Pregnancy?

When I see patients in my office or through telepsychiatry, I typically hear that they are confused and upset by their symptoms. Often, it can be very isolating. Most women just want to enjoy what is supposed to feel like “the happiest time in my life.” While postpartum depression has started to get more press, peripartum anxiety is not often talked about, suspected or diagnosed. The good news is that peripartum disorders are often VERY treatable. The important thing is to be working with someone who has experience in this area, as symptoms can show up a little differently.

This Isn’t What You Expected: Pregnant and Giving Birth During Hurricane Ida

This Isn’t What You Expected: Pregnant and Giving Birth During Hurricane Ida

For any woman who has found herself pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic, expectations have had to be adjusted based on the requirements and guidelines of the doctors’ offices and delivery settings. And while these adjustments have required pregnant women in New Orleans to shift their expectations, there has been a fair amount of time to process and accept those changes and disappointments.

But one thing that no expectant mom was prepared to deal with is the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. For women who are still pregnant and for those who are newly postpartum, life is currently filled with so many unknowns, so much worry, anxiety, and sadness. Where you are in your pregnancy or postpartum experience may impact the intensity of those emotions and the types of questions you find your anxious mind mulling over.

Breastfeeding and the Impact on Postpartum Depression & Anxiety

Breastfeeding and the Impact on Postpartum Depression & Anxiety

“I knew the lengths to which I was going to try and do all the things (nurse, pump, bottle feed, formula feed) was not sustainable. I knew my mental and emotional health were suffering and would only get worse if I continued this cycle.”