Hi, I'm Avery Young, and this is The Nourished Young podcast.
From the subway train to the soccer field, everywhere I go, people have a story to tell me about their experience feeding and caring for their new baby. And so I decided it was time to amplify those voices so we can all know what's real and what's possible, and make those who are beginning their parenting journey feel a little less alone.
Today I am going to be talking with Haley La Rosa about her journey with her amazing daughter, Avery, and her struggles with real and profound mental health and how that shaped her postpartum period. Hi, Haley. Welcome to the Nourished Young podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.
Haley:
Avery, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be with you today.
Avery:
So can you just get started and just let everybody know a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your daughter and your journey?
Haley:
Yeah. I'm Haley. I have a three-year-old, well, she'll be three and a few days, I guess by the time this comes out she'll be three already. But she's my first and only at the moment. And growing up I knew I always wanted to be a mom. I was super excited for that when it came around. And I think I just expected things to be super seamless and easy.
I don't know, you don't know until you know. And I guess it's naive looking back, but that's just where I was and none of my close friends had kids. I think that was actually a big, big piece. Nobody told me it was going to be hard to be honest. Maybe I heard that from older family members, but I take that with a grain of salt rather than a close friend who is really able to give you the real down and dirty of it all. So that's the main stuff I wanted to touch on today, and I'll let you get into it. I feel like I'm rambling already.
Avery:
No, you're not. You have so much important things to share. So this was hard for you. When did the hard start?
Haley:
Oh yeah, for sure. So I was undiagnosed with anxiety basically my whole life. So I had normalized living with anxiety and I was a high functioning anxious person, and so I really had never been treated. I'd been in counseling a bit, but I had always downplayed anything I'd gone through. And Avery, you know I have a background in school counseling, so I was actually a counselor before, and I related to you because you're somebody in the helping professions, it is easy to downplay our own needs because we're so focused on other people all the time.
And so looking back, my anxiety was ramping up during my pregnancy for sure. So that's why they call it perinatal mood disorders, not just postpartum. But I didn't realize it or maybe I thought it was normal or downplayed it. And then also the pandemic was happening and all kinds of things threw us off during that time. So that didn't help of course.
Avery:
Yeah. Let's pause for a second because I think just talking about being pregnant with anxiety in Covid is very profound in itself. I've had a lot of women here on this podcast who were pregnant in Covid, and that is a very underlying theme for everybody, was how much fear their innately was. And that's without an actual mood disorder that makes those feelings of anxiety feel bigger than it may feel for somebody else. So that's a very real stimulus.
Haley:
Sure. And just all the changes that were happening. I was still working at that time as a school counselor, so for part of the school year I had been remote. And then in my third trimester basically I was back in the school and that was just a whole thing right before I was about to deliver. So I just think there were so many unknowns that made people scared.
Avery:
What did hard feel like for you? So what did it feel like for you after you had Avery?
Haley:
I think we had that honeymoon period for a couple of weeks, and I am glad that I remembered some of that when they're so sleepy in the beginning you're like, "Oh, this is hard, but actually they're asleep a lot." But that didn't last of course, and I feel like I did have just the baby blues or what I thought was that. I think it probably was actually fairly normal in the beginning, but it slowly morphed and she had all these eating challenges and we had our tongue tie revised and stuff, and I was seeing a different lactation consultant before you.
But we were coping fairly well until month four, and that's when she... My anxiety was ramping up, but it was fairly manageable how my normal had always been until the end of month three when she was going through that four months sleep regression or whatever.
And she was waking up every 45 minutes at night. And then she also was starting to reject the breast, with breastfeeding. And that's when I saw you is when it started to get really bad and I think when I walked into your office, I would just bawled basically the whole...
I saw you at a breaking point essentially, and you were super helpful, but I was already too far gone to get help with breastfeeding. My mental health was already too far gone, and so it had nothing to do with you, but I just slowly, not slowly, fairly quickly spiraled from that point on with insomnia and just anxiety. And I just continued to get worse and worse, and I tried to get help, but I think being in the helping profession, it almost made it worse for me because I was in that mindset of nobody can help me.
I was really thankful for you, I think I mentioned just being somebody to look me in the face and be like, "This is really hard," and not just try to smooth things over as a lot of people in my life did. I have wonderful family and friends, but again, the older family members were whatever, 30 years out from having a newborn and just like, "Oh, it'll get better." All those platitudes that don't really help anybody and they don't want to see you struggling. Of course, my own mom she is beside herself, "I don't know what to do," and I was even pushing her away because I was ashamed to see her.
So you almost need a third party having you be there for me like that was super helpful. And I had one coworker who also, I am super thankful for her who had gone through postpartum depression, and she just continued to reach out to me. And I think calling too, not just texting. I think with texting people assume, "Oh, she didn't respond, she's just busy."
But she called me and she could hear how desperate I was on the phone, so she would continue to pursue me and my husband and making sure that we were okay. My journey got to an extreme point, but I am still thankful for people along the way that were able to realize how bad it was.
Avery:
Yeah. I think it's interesting that you said you coped, right? And I think that's really true for lots of families that are struggling, is that you cope until you can't. Anybody's coping is as long as nothing changes and you're at the end of your rope, then you can keep coping at the end of your rope, but if anything turns the heat up, you're out of coping skills. Your body just ran out of coping skills.
Haley:
Yeah, it's scary. Of course, in hindsight, I would've gotten on medication while I was pregnant for sure. I'm ashamed to say that I had a stigma against mental health medication. I think it's just how I grew up. My mom's weird about prescription drugs of any kind. So inadvertently that wore on me, and I don't think I even really understood how an SSRI works. It's not like it changes your personality.
Avery:
But I think that's not just you, Haley, I think society has a stigma against medication. And I also want to say that we have a stigma against taking medication when we're breastfeeding because-
Haley:
And that's I... because my anxiety was ramped up. Then the thought of even taking medication made me more anxious. So it was this vicious cycle. It's just so compounding.
Avery:
I think that's the thing that is so important for people on the outside to hear is that it becomes this cycle that you just said is compounding. You think you're helping by saying, "Hey, I think you need some medication." But when you're already in that spiral, then your brain just takes the thought of needing medication and that exacerbates your anxiety even more. It's not helpful, even though that might be the right pathway that the thought of that can even add to your struggle.
Haley:
It did. Pretty badly. But of course, it's like if I had been on an SSR, I wouldn't have needed some more extreme medications later, which I've tapered off of. But it went from, you can still breastfeed on an SSRI to... there was a point where it's like, "I have to take some heavy drugs to sleep." I hadn't slept in weeks, and that's not an exaggeration, more than maybe 20 minutes.
So I had just totally gone cuckoo bananas. Another thing you would say to me, Avery, is your brain is lying to you, which was helpful. And now it's so easy for me. I know it was not me. I was just sick. So it's easier to talk about now. But there came a point where I had to... and my daughter also wouldn't take a bottle, so that was another... So I was so scared about taking some... but I had don't know, in my sleep depraved state, I got her to take a bottle finally, somehow. I was like, "Okay, this is it." And I had no nice ending with my breastfeeding journey. It was like, all right, we didn't even wean. It was like, "Okay, I got to get on the heavy drugs now so you're taking a bottle."
Avery:
But what if this is your nice ending because you made it back to her and she has you, right? That is the nice ending. The breastfeeding is just an asterisk in your story. This is the most important part.
Haley:
We're doing great now. But I'm not going to glorify the getting better part was still really crappy.
Avery:
I think part of the problem is we do glorify it. Why can't we have real, honest conversations and not have to feel ashamed, or embarrassed, or that anybody's done anything wrong? This is just one pathway of life that it's what it looks like for people, and it's so important that we understand that's true. And it's not because you did it wrong, it's because that was your pathway. And it's amazing that you made it through that pathway because not everybody does.
Haley:
Yeah. It's really sad.
Avery:
And Avery was a hard baby. I think that was the thing is that you just had lots of things happening together that ended up being the compounding of her being hard and that situation being hard, just depleted your battery faster than you could fill it back up.
Haley:
Yeah, for sure. It's tragic that there are deaths from maternal mental health, and I think that's something that largely goes untalked about. It's something that could have happened to me, and it's just terrifying and sad. And I am somebody that has resources to get help, and I still got that bad and that close, and I know there are a lot of people that don't have those resources and it's scary.
Avery:
Aside from taking an SSRI in pregnancy, because now it's easy to look back in hindsight and be like, "Oh, I wonder what would've been different if we had started support earlier to get to that point?" Is there anything else after birth that you think could have been more supportive for you where you feel like, "Okay, this is what opened the door to the next thing?"
Haley:
Yeah, I think the fact that I had always wanted to be a mom and thought it would come "naturally." I feel like I rejected help a good bit, and I would encourage anybody to get a support plan early on, or in their pregnancy for just getting a break. Because part of my anxiety was I wouldn't leave her either and now I'm totally different. I'm like, "Oh, you want to go with the 13-year-old babysitter for a couple of hours? Sounds good."
Just so in some ways I'm a totally different person now that I came out of this, so it is hard to talk about because I don't know that I would've accepted it, but maybe somebody else could. Just coming up with more of a support game plan for that fourth trimester, how they call it.
Avery:
A support plan that the conversation needs to stop being about how do we have a baby? We spend all of our time preparing for the actual birth, which literally is out of our hands most of the time anyway, and very little time really thinking through how to prepare for plan A, B, and C if those things come along, especially when those B's and Cs aren't uncommon.
Haley:
And I think it is a lot to expect of parents when they're pregnant to be able to grasp. So I think that's part of the problem because it's way easier to grasp the birth. And even I did a birth class with this woman I really liked, and she did touch on the postpartum stuff. And I think it's so much to hold in your brain that I couldn't focus on that.
So I think I was so focused on the birth and maybe just putting more of an importance on that part because I just think my brain was so full. I'm like, "I can't think about another thing." And thankfully lactation support, they do come in the hospital. So I think I knew that was a normal thing. But again, that's where it seems like it's more for the baby, even though it can be for the mom too, that's the ideal.
So I think that's why I was okay with lactation support, but just other support. I think the idea of, what do they call them? Overnight doulas or postpartum doulas. I was probably like, "Why would I need that?" Which in hindsight, I'm like, "Oh, anybody could use that. They're amazing." And I had to get... Yeah, you helped me get a postpartum doula, but I was already so far gone, but she still helped. So I wish I'd had that earlier.
Avery:
I think a lot of women struggle with getting postpartum doulas because it can be expensive, and they struggle with giving themselves permission because society tells us that we're supposed to be able to do that, and then it makes us feel like a failure that we need it. And then now we're running through our family's finances for something that I'm supposed to be doing, which could add to your anxiety too.
Haley:
And with the finance piece, I'm like, it is so true how it's expensive, but my mental health got so bad at a point where we had to have help in the house. I essentially quit my job because I couldn't work. I was disabled essentially by mental health. I have a different career now, but we had to spend so much money on getting help in the house where I'm like, if we had just planned more and spent that money more thoughtfully on the front end, maybe it could have helped. But obviously I'm not trying to wish away how things happen, but...
Avery:
Yeah, so if you have a final piece of advice for a new mom who's pregnant and listening right now, or somebody that is starting to go down a pathway where things are starting to feel a little hard, what would that be for them?
Haley:
Probably the pathway of it starting to get hard is just reminding yourself that there's nothing wrong with you and that you can get help and that things can get better. Because when your brain is hijacking yourself, it's so easy to be like, "This is not going to get better." And that was where I was for so long. "This is not going to get better. It can't get better." So just remaining to hold on to the tiniest sliver of hope that you possibly can is better than completely giving up and just finding those support people. And I will say if things get really bad, there are emergency support lines and things like that, so you might want to throw up those numbers at some point.
Avery:
Yeah, we can definitely put those in the notes below, and then I can put them on my website too, because I think that those resources can be really helpful. So thank you for bringing that up, and thank you for sharing your story. I'm so grateful that you're willing to share your story that you were willing to do that, because I think so many people can't because they feel like there's a feeling that society doesn't talk about mental health. And so talking about it can feel like feelings of shame and other things are just a reflection of society's inability to have these conversations that matter. So the fact that you were is such a gift to so many women, and I am so deeply grateful for that, and I'm sure that they are too.
Haley:
Well, thank you for your time.
Avery:
And for everybody listening in, thank you for being with us today. Make sure you subscribe to this channel and then tune in again the next week and hear another amazing parent share their wisdom too.
Do you have a story to tell? If your feeding experience has been transformative for you and you'd like to share it with others, then please let us know. We're always looking for new stories to let other people know what's possible. Just send your name and a short overview of your journey or even just your words of wisdom for new parents to stories at nourishedyoung.com. And if you need support or want to connect with other parents who understand what you're going through, then make sure you head over to nourishedyoung.com and check out the Nourished Young community so we can help support you in your journey too.