Postpartum University® Podcast

My Personal Battle with Postpartum Bipolar Disorder EP 214

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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What happens when a postpartum provider becomes the patient?

In this deeply personal and powerful episode, Miranda shares—for the first time ever—her lived experience with postpartum bipolar disorder. This isn’t a conversation wrapped in statistics and clinical jargon. It’s raw, it’s unfiltered, and it’s the story behind why she created the postpartum healing framework that has now supported thousands of women.

If you’ve ever worked with a mother whose emotional shifts feel like more than “just the baby blues,” or if you’re a provider seeking to understand the depths of postpartum mental health from the inside out, this is the episode you need to hear. We’re talking about misdiagnosis, trauma, gut health, sleep deprivation, and how one woman’s fight for her life became a movement for maternal care reform.

Check out this episode on the blog: https://postpartumu.com/podcast/my-personal-battle-with-postpartum-bipolar-disorder-ep-214/


00:00 – The silence and stigma around postpartum bipolar disorder
 03:07 – Birth reflections and emotional shifts begin
 05:56 – Support systems break down: Meal train, family, and overwhelm
 08:10 – Chaos of postpartum: Alone w/ 3 kids, house construction, a puppy
 09:23 – When darkness creeps in: Resentment, despair,  intrusive thoughts
 10:24 – Rapid mood cycling: Chipper days followed by terrifying lows
 11:26 – The physical toll: Colitis, exhaustion, hair loss
 13:19 – The diagnosis: “You have postpartum bipolar”
 15:09 – Mania and clarity: Using the highs to plan for the lows
 16:58 – The internal struggle: Knowing better but not doing better
 18:43 – Nutrition as medicine: Grocery lists, meal planning, supplementing
 20:12 – Prioritizing sleep: Hard conversations with her partner
 22:29 – Finding what works: Each child’s unique sleep needs
 23:29 – Delegating and support: What helped lighten the load
 24:48 – Breathwork, journaling, and nervous system regulation
 26:04 – Recovery: Symptoms gone in three weeks—no meds, no relapses
 27:00 – How her experience became the foundation of her method
 27:50 – Why this story has remained untold—until now
 29:24 – The call for nuanced, honest postpartum care

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Speaker 1:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Bauer and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks, so that you can give your clients real, lasting solutions for lifelong well-being. Hey, hey, welcome to the podcast. I want to first share that I have never told this story publicly, not because it isn't important, but because it is terrifying. And today I'm talking about postpartum bipolar disorder, not from a clinical lens, not from the research papers although I could do that but from lived experience, because I have been there, and for years I stayed silent. And for years I stayed silent Again, not because I was ashamed, but because I feared that my story would be misunderstood or worse, misused, that someone would hear what I did and try to follow it, that it might be taken the wrong way and used to discredit the very work that I have dedicated my life to, discredit the very work that I have dedicated my life to. But the world is changing and I'm seeing more mothers speaking up. I'm seeing this diagnosis come to the surface, and it's time, because what happened to me and how I healed, shaped everything that I teach you, everything that I know about postpartum health, and I believe it's time for you to hear about it.

Speaker 1:

My journey with postpartum bipolar started with my third baby, and by this time in my life I had already written a few books. I was supporting moms as a doula and a childbirth educator. I was back in school for a degree in biology, I was slowly taking classes and I had about eight years of work under my belt, which is no small feat, right. So no one knows everything about this story and nobody knows everything about postpartum, and it became very clear to me in this experience that, even though I had all of this training and I had all of these years experiences that I did not know everything. I was not, you know, well-versed in what was about to happen, and there was a lot of things that I needed to learn. At first, postpartum really seemed to be going fairly well. The birth went really well, recovery was okay, but what I noticed was and this popped up in the labor period as well is that I just needed a lot of support. I don't know what it was.

Speaker 1:

I feel like sometimes, the way that we birth babies and bring babies into the world is very representative of who we are in that process and representative of our babies as well. Like for my son, for example. He was like the stereotypical labor very, very textbook. And that is my son. He is like super textbook kid like goes at his own pace. This is how it is, and the way I birthed him was very similar. I wanted to be done. I was over it. I was just like let me jump through everything that I need to and forget about this whole experience and just get to the end, like I just want the good stuff. Just like let me jump through everything that I need to and forget about this whole experience and just get to the end, like I just want the good stuff. And honestly, that's exactly how I managed my life.

Speaker 1:

My second birth was 90 minutes and so that was a stark contrast from the, the 17 hour labor that I had with my first and I was not expecting it in the least bit and with her, that labor she was just like bullet fast. She was coming. There was no stopping her. She was into this world before the even the midwife even showed up and that was so representative of who she is as a person and again how I experienced that. I was like it was a crazy journey. I flipped out in the in the middle of it and then the end. I was like it was a crazy journey. I flipped out in the middle of it and then the end I was like, yeah, I conquered that. That was amazing.

Speaker 1:

And then, in this third experience, I just needed so much support. My midwife came and she had to help me with a lot of things and in terms of moving my body and just releasing the tension that I was holding in my pelvis and slowing my breath and breathing deep into like this low noise rather than this more high pitch, and it was all things that I'm, like again, very familiar with. But I just I needed somebody to be there to support me in that and that was very much how my entire postpartum ended up, what I needed during that time, but what I didn't get and it was very interesting because you know I there was a couple of things that that stuck out to me now that were kind of a big deal for me. One was that I was getting a meal train going in the early trimester, last trimester of my pregnancy, and everything thought I thought was going really well, but let me tell you, it went so bad postpartum. No one stuck with it or they didn't listen to the food allergies that my family had. I was extremely allergic to pork at the time. Thankfully I've healed that allergy.

Speaker 1:

And there was an incident with my parents. They had came over, they cooked a big like meal and then they put pepperoni like pork thing in there and I was like, guys, I'm allergic to it. And they're like no problem, we're just going to let it simmer in there and then we're going to take that pepperoni pork, stick out and you'll be fine. And I was like completely flipped out because they and it wasn't of their fault, they simply just didn't understand how food allergies worked. I would be so sick with that and I became really afraid that if it wasn't myself or my husband cooking the meal then something was going to go wrong and that became a huge burden for me.

Speaker 1:

And then, after the first few weeks, my husband went back to work and you know, kid number three and at the time we were also building a house like 20 minutes away, and so my husband, he would go to work, he would go to the property actually like very, very early in the morning. He would leave around like five o'clock in the morning and then he would go immediately to work and then he would come home from you know a full eight hour shift and then he would eat dinner with us and then he would leave again and he would go to the property. And a lot of times he was like, oh, come to the property with us and we'll sit around and we can eat dinner and all of that things. But there was still so much work that I felt like was on my shoulders and again he was like trying to build a house for us to live, because we very much needed that it was. We were in a rental at the time and I was like adamant about being in this rental because before we were in the rental we were living in a fifth wheel. Like y'all, my life was crazy, insane and I didn't have the running water that I needed to have a home birth Okay. So that is how we ended up in this little rental and anyway I'm. My life is pretty much chaos, like you could see, like there was so much that was just happening and so little support that I had because we summer was approaching.

Speaker 1:

My third was born at the end of March. We actually just celebrated her her ninth birthday, which is crazy, but she, we were. It's the beginning of spring and and the season of building. It's the beginning of spring and the season of building, and so he ended up having to be away a lot longer than I thought was going to happen, and more so than what he thought was going to happen as well, and it was a lot. We had three kids. I had the food and the chores and the house and the laundry, and we had a puppy that we got before I found out that we were pregnant. It was actually right before I got pregnant.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, the exhaustion was bad, the amount of work that I felt that I had on my shoulders was significant, and then it just kind of started to happen where I found myself thinking the most awful thoughts and being in a place of total despair, like why did I become a mom? I hate everything, not just like an exasperated frustration of of hating, but this like deeply felt in my bones, in my bones, disgust for my life. I love my babies and I love my kids, but I was loathing being their mother, like I didn't deserve it and I would just sit there and cry in one spot for hours as much as I could, you know, sitting in their playroom with like a bunch of diapers next to me, and just like hating life. And then the next day I'd wake up and I'd be completely fine, like all, happy and chippery, and I'd be calling my family and friends, I'd schedule appointments, I'd go meal prep and go shopping and I'd go for a walk and I felt like, oh, thank goodness, like I'm all better. That was ugly. Phew, I must've gotten sleep, I must've gotten something that I needed. I'm good. But then it would come back and I thought at first it was like, oh, it just must've meant like I had less sleep that night, like it was just extra awful or whatever. And so that's why I'm feeling this way.

Speaker 1:

And then, the more these darker moments came, they would stick around a lot longer and they were really, really dark, and it would be days of being in this space, and y'all, when I say dark, I don't have another word for it it was dark to the point where I was thinking I should no longer live Like I should just end all of this. I will be in the closet like crying, thinking about how much better my kids would be without me, and I had no control. These dark moments would last for days and then I'd pop out of it and then I would be fine again and I hid it right. So if my husband was home like he would not see this, I would make sure that he was not seeing what I was seeing. Like this was happening when he was at work. It was happening when he was at the property and my kids had no idea. They knew nothing of what I was experiencing and there were a ton of other symptoms that started around that time too.

Speaker 1:

I had been diagnosed already in my second postpartum with ulcerative colitis and I noticed my bowel issues coming back full force and the exhaustion that I had felt was next level. I thought the despair in my closet was just the feelings of exhaustion, because all I wanted to do was sleep. I just wanted to go to sleep and honestly, I just wanted to sleep and not ever wake up. But I couldn't because I had three kids to take care of and I resented that and my hair was falling out in clumps and I know people say that's normal in postpartum and I'm going to tell you that is not normal. Clumps are not normal. That's another podcast episode. Is not normal, clumps are not normal. That's another podcast episode.

Speaker 1:

So it was around three months postpartum and I went to an appointment for my daughter to see her functional care provider. I don't know why we were there. To this day. I still have zero idea. I do not do well child visits. I only show up when my kids are sick beyond what I can support them with or if I have some sort of concern, and so I have no idea what that was. But I do remember that appointment went from my daughter's care directly to me and I remember her looking at me and she was the provider who, she's like, takes care of my whole family. Right, she diagnosed me with colitis. She knew me very well, she did what other providers missed and I had credited her and still do for really saving my life in my second postpartum. She knew me, she knew me very well, and then she started to ask me questions. Today I cannot tell you what those were. I have no idea.

Speaker 1:

I think at this point in my life things were really dark and heavy and I was extremely unwell and I just remember sitting down. Later I was at an office for mental health and I was sitting down at the office and the only thing that I remember from this, this moment of hearing my providers you know concerns to this moment in time was hearing the words you have postpartum bipolar ma'am, do you hear me? Are you okay? Bipolar ma'am, do you hear me? Are you okay? That's the quote. You have postpartum bipolar Ma'am, do you hear me? Are you okay? No, I was not freaking, okay, I had. No, I was not okay. I think I had to wait a few, like I left. I remember leaving and leaving very, very quickly with my baby and my toddler in tow and I think my other one was probably at school. I just remember them two in tow with me leaving fast and I think I had to take a couple of days to process this information.

Speaker 1:

And I remember when my mania would come online and I could actually like get stuff done Y'all. I don't know what cocaine feels like, but mania has got to be like that. Everything that I have ever studied in regards to this. I never had delusions, but I had what felt like such strong clarity and endless energy and I had it for days and after my diagnosis, when I hit this mania, I knew immediately that I had to make a plan and use my highs to support my lows. And this is where things get really tricky, because I don't want anyone ever to get this idea that what I did was the best choice and what I'm about to tell you was the best choice. I actually don't think that it was at all. Please do not follow in my footsteps. I'm telling you my story and this is it. This is not my recommendation at all.

Speaker 1:

For me, telling anyone about my postpartum bipolar was the worst thing in the world. I never told my husband Actually, I didn't tell him until a couple years later, and he was flabbergasted. It was a really big deal that we had to work through. I was embarrassed slightly, but more so I felt like I was not in my right mind to really be having these conversations and I was determined to do better, because I really didn't know better. I was not in my right mind. I knew what my body needed, I knew what it wasn't getting and I knew how to make it better.

Speaker 1:

I had studied this for eight years, but somewhere along the lines I thought that I knew everything and so I applied nothing Like. There comes a time in our lives where we're like, yeah, I, you know. I just cognitively understood all of this, and so I was like, yeah, I knew it, I know, I know it, but I never really applied it in the way in which I needed to. And when this, my mania, came online, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, I know exactly what it is that I need to do. I know what's going to be enough and again, I'm not saying any of this was logical, like there were some. You're going to hear the story, but I'm just telling you what it is that I did. So I was going to do all of this on my own, bad choice, don't do that.

Speaker 1:

And I used my highs to plan for my lows, and so I started with everything that I need. I wrote a list of exactly what it was that I was going to need. First off was food. First and foremost, I knew that I was gonna spend my high going shopping. I planned meticulously all of my meals to ensure that I was going to get nutrient dense foods. That was very easy for my stomach, right Ulcerative colitis is no joke and I knew exactly what I needed I was going to. I was not on medication for that either, and I. That's a whole nother story, but it was a very smart move on my part. I actually had an allergic reaction to the medication, but it was something that was so incredibly important to me to get the nutrients that I needed, so I made a plan. This is exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to get all of my shopping done.

Speaker 1:

I think this was before meal delivery. You guys, this is way before any of those services existed. This is way before you could go order your food from the store, like online. I'm showing my age here. None of that was an option. Like I literally had to go to the store and buy all of my groceries and and then make batch cook like batch cook for the week.

Speaker 1:

Everything I had, all I had it all laid out and then I had made sure that I knew exactly what supplements I needed to take. Like it was very, very clear. And what I did was I wrote everything down Like this is exactly what you need to do in the morning, this is exactly what you need to do by afternoon and exactly what you need to do in the evening and I did it in this way and exactly what I was going to eat and how I was going to take my supplements, because I knew that when my dark depressive episodes were going to strike, that I was not going to know anything, like I just I would know that I did it or that you know, yeah, this stuff exists, but I wouldn't know how to move through that, because really, when you're in those deep, dark depressive spaces, like everything feels difficult. It feels like getting out of bed is is so much of a challenge, let alone remembering what you know supplement to take or what meal is up next, like it's just not doable.

Speaker 1:

The next component that was so important to me was sleep. Like I had to figure out sleep and this was probably one of the hardest things, because I know how hard my husband was working. He would. He was working so insanely hard to try to navigate like spending enough time with his family and his, his babies and getting to know his newest daughter, and like raising our children together and also working full time and also trying to navigate building a house, which we knew was going to be challenging, but it proved to be a lot more challenging, right, which is just life in general. But I had to sit down with him and be like this isn't working. We can't do this and I don't know exactly what this means, but I know that I need help getting sleep because it's not happening and I feel like I'm losing my mind over it. And if you can't help me, then we're going to have to hire somebody to do it, because I can't live like this anymore. And it was very much of a very like, just like that right, it was not asking permission, it was not like I need help, how are we going to get it? It was very much of like I can't live without this and I don't know exactly how we're going to do it, but something has got to change, even temporarily, until I'm out of this mess. And I didn't even tell him what mess I was in. I was just letting him know that I felt like I was losing my mind over not having enough sleep.

Speaker 1:

I was breastfeeding in the middle of the night, I was co-sleeping and honestly, nobody talks about this, but I have what I now call a little badger. She was she's the only kid that I've ever met. Actually, I take that back. My niece is the exact same way, but she slept better in a bassinet next to me than she ever did in my own bed in a bassinet next to me than she ever did in my own bed. She is still my kid, who is like hyper dependent, like she'll look at me, she'll hug me, she'll give me a kiss and then she's off. Like she's just that kid I don't know what it is, but she's she and all of my kids.

Speaker 1:

If I wanted sleep, I had to co-sleep with them. That was the thing that made sleep possible or doable, and for her it wasn't, and that took a lot of a learning process. But I also needed my husband to be there so that I could get longer stretches, so that I can breastfeed and then hand her off to be burped and to hand her off to be changed or whatever, and then work through whatever it is that we needed to work through. So there was a couple of weeks where he actually stayed home. He either went to the property because he had to manage something, but was home by bedtime so that I could get the sleep that I need, and that was insanely supportive and helpful. And so that plan was developed and during that those manic episodes and then implemented immediately, and then I had to make sure that I had enough support.

Speaker 1:

So we were looking at okay, what else is it that I that I need? Like, should I be the one doing all of the grocery shopping? And the answer was no. He was going to take on a lot more of the like the grocery shopping aspect of things, which feels like such a big burden. Sometimes I look at it now and I'm like I can't believe I needed so much help with that Like. That felt like such a big thing, but in the moment it was, it was such a big deal for me. I needed more help with laundry and I also needed some other like hands-on modalities, and so I ended up doing more massage, like I made sure that I had scheduled out some appointments that was going to help me, things that I knew that I was going to feel really good about. So there was a couple of massages that I would schedule and Reiki appointments that I would schedule, and those things always just felt really good to me, energetically and just more aligned, and so I would schedule one or two of those for like at least one a week, and I would make sure that that would be my time to leave and be an adult you know, an individual without my baby for like an hour time to go get whatever it is that I needed and then come back.

Speaker 1:

And the other thing that I did was make sure that I was very focused on my breathing and my nervous system and I became very religious about journaling and making sure that I was paying attention to my breath and my thoughts and making sure that I was talking to myself in a very healthy way, which is it was nice in the moment, especially when you're feeling really good, to be like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. But you know, in the darker episodes it was a lot harder to do. But I think in those manic episodes where I was feeling really high, I could journal about all of the things that felt really hard and I can become aware of them in a way that I wasn't doing before and that was insanely helpful. So food, sleep, support and breathing and I will tell you and writing in my journal, within three weeks. Within three weeks, I had no mania and no depressive episodes again. It was gone. No medications. It never came back, and so much of that story is now like what I'm sharing with you.

Speaker 1:

That's what you've seen in my method of work and how I teach it right. That is my five point framework and it stemmed from this exact healing journey and then applying that to the moms that I supported. So obviously, you know, I had to go through my own major shift and change in the way that I took care of myself and that works and that's great. But then I was like I wonder how this is going to work for other people. And having those conversations and applying the stuff to my clients, it was life-changing and it was incredible what I was witnessing from others as well as myself. And let me tell you, when I got well, like my entire life, very already dedicated to birth and postpartum, became that much more important to me. I changed my entire business model after that. The way I supported moms changed deeply.

Speaker 1:

This is also why I have such a hard time sharing it, because I know that my story is not the same. For a lot of people. It is, you know, an easy. It's like, oh yeah, she walked through this thing and it sounds so easy and she applied these methods and then she was fine, like whatever. Or giving somebody a false hope, or encouraging somebody to not do medications during such a significant life, altering diagnosis as postpartum bipolar, like I don't want that to be a thing whatsoever. That's not what I'm saying. So why am I sharing this? Because the stories like mine, real, raw, unfiltered are missing from the conversation.

Speaker 1:

Postpartum bipolar is deeply misunderstood, it's misdiagnosed often and it's buried in silence. And I've carried this story for years out of fear that it would make people question my work, my credibility, my expertise and my ability to teach what I teach and to misconstrue it as advice. And that's not what I'm doing. But what I've come to know is this my lived experience is part of my expertise. It's what drives the depth of compassion I bring to this work. It's what shapes the frameworks, the protocols, the education I share with providers, the protocols, the education I share with providers. It's what helped me understand that healing is not a one size fits all path and that postpartum care must go so far beyond symptom management.

Speaker 1:

This episode is not a blueprint for how to handle postpartum bipolar. It is a story. It's a reminder that we don't need more shame or stigma or more silence. We need more nuance, more honesty, more conversations about real postpartum experience, the messy, the sacred and often terrifying parts of it. And, more than anything, we need providers like you who are willing to hold space for that complexity of the situation.

Speaker 1:

If you're here listening, thank you. Thank you for being someone who wants to know more, to do better and to be a part of a revolution and care that says we see you, we hear you and we will never stop fighting for your healing. Thank you for hearing my story and holding space for this. Until next time, stay rooted, stay curious and stay in this with me. Thanks so much for being a part of this crucial conversation. I know you're dedicated to advancing postpartum care and if you're ready to dig deeper, come join us on our newsletter, where I share exclusive insights, resources and the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. And the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. Sign up at postpartumu the letter ucom, which is in the show notes, and if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving.

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Maranda Bower

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