August 4, 2022 • 56 mins
Happy National Breastfeeding Month! To celebrate, Katie invites Alison Eakle (Shondaland’s Chief Content Officer of TV and Film) and Emily Rodgers (former corporate attorney turned stay-at-home mom) to chat about their experiences of surviving post-weaning depression.
The mothers discuss when they noticed that they weren't feeling like their usual selves, and some ways they tried to minimize depression around weaning. They also provide advice to fellow moms who may be suspecting they are also going through similar circumstances.
Plus, what are some additional things that this week’s awesome ladies have learned through post-weaning depression that no one told them about? Tune in for details!
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Casby Bias
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda land Audio
in partnership with I Heart Radio. I had a very
interesting relationship with breastfeeding. UM, I was incredibly lucky. I
had more milk than I could possibly have used. I
actually had my milk ducts and my armpits all filled up,
(00:24):
and I was I had like, you know, dinosaur eggs
sized like glands Emily's face And for everyone listening, I
have look, I have given Emily Rogers milk out to like,
if we can say this, I've given Emily Rogers milk
out to friends. That's how much she has. Hello, everybody,
(00:52):
Welcome back to Katie's Crib. I'm so excited about this
episode of Katie's Grip, which is postpartum depression that comes
around weening. I don't know why no one talks about this.
I don't know why there's no warning signs. I don't
know why it happens the way it does. But I
(01:13):
have come across so many friends that whether they wean
at six months, three months, one month, one year, one
and a half years, whatever, they have a major hormonal
drop off and it is postpartum depression. And yet we
are not prepared for this area. So I have two
friends on the podcast today, Dear dear, dear, dear personal
(01:36):
friends of mine who also know each other because we
were the same mommy and me class. And the first
of this dynamic trio is Alison Acle. She is Shonda
Land's Chief Content Officer of TV and film. Listen to
that title. She joined Sean Lannon two thousand of their teams.
She's developed a number of drama and comedy projects for ABC,
(01:58):
including the series How To Get Away with the Murder
Station nineteen. She is also the co executive producer for
Bridgton and Inventing Anna. On a personal level, like Ruben, saying,
she also had a postpartum depression while weaning. We've got
Emily Rogers, who is a former corporate attorney turned stay
at home mom of two highly opinionated, excellent, incredible girls,
(02:22):
the older of which is in nursery school with my son.
She has experienced postpartum depression after weaning with her older daughter, Evie.
She is currently weaning her younger daughter, Audrey. She's originally
from Vancouver, Canada, and she now lives in Los Angeles
with her husband, daughters, and her cat. Welcome to Katie's crib. Oh,
(02:44):
and Allison lives with her cat, right your okay, thank god? Okay,
I was the cat is here. The cats are year
my son. All he wants is a cat and a fish.
So I don't know, I think not, Yeah, that's not
(03:09):
a good duo, right, That's what I tell him. But
he doesn't really get it. He's just starting to understand that,
like when he eats beef or that's like like he's
asking weird questions. But anyway, let's get back to the
point of this podcast, which is I want to focus
on the period when you're breastfeeding and you're weaning off
of breastfeeding. And this is, like I said quickly in
the intro that for some reason, why the fucking hell
(03:31):
is nobody talking about this? Uh. Post weaning depression, according
to parents dot com, is a term used to describe
depression that can occur after a woman stops breastfeeding. Via
very Well Family dot com. Post weaning depression may occur
concurrently with postpartum depression, but it's a distinct experience. Most importantly,
(03:51):
post weaning depression is linked in time with the ending
of breastfeeding, whereas postpartum depression is linked with the birthing
of a baby. Okay, I'm going to shut up now, Allison.
Let's start with you. Yes, you breastfed your glorious son.
And when did you know? Baby? He is the greatest
(04:16):
king of all babies. I love him so much. When
did you know that it was time to wean? Well?
I don't think I did. I think this is why
this whole thing snuck up on me. And it's interesting
that it's it's called kind of post or weaning related
depression because it didn't manifest for me in any of
(04:36):
the ways that I classically understood what depression would look like.
So I feel like I was missing the signs. Shall
we say? For me? It was a raging dose of
anxiety is the best way, like a paralyzing dose of anxiety.
And what had happened was I'll take it. He's so
Walt is his name. He's a little bit Chris Farley,
a little bit Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's a giant baby.
(05:02):
Only the Chief Shanda Land Content Officer would nail her
son like you have described your son is to pitch
like I'm like that, Oh my gosh, you've nailed it. Okay, okay,
so Walt is he's a big dude. He's not like, uh,
(05:24):
a little little big no. And look he was a
little baby was born. There was a lot of drama
in the hospital of like he wasn't eating, and we
get that's a whole another side note of it. But
I was very lucky he took to breastfeeding, but it
was never enough for the sensatiable beast of a baby,
so you always we were always supplementing with formula, so
it wasn't it wasn't odd. Around two and a half months,
(05:45):
I started tiptoeing back into the Shawna Land waters that
I'd missed so dearly, and Walt started doing some very
part time daycare and over the next two and a
half months take him to about age five months. I
thought I was just gonna be able to you know,
we're work from home. It's a pandemic to I'll we're
just start you know. I got vaccines while I was breastfeeding,
and I was like, this is great. All I want
(06:05):
is for my son to have all the vaccines because
I thought that that's what the science was communicating and
this is hugely important. I'm going to do this as
long as I can, and I can pump from home,
but then I forgot that the other side of work
from home and COVID is eighteen meetings back to back, right,
So I was not pumping as much as I should.
And essentially, I think a little bit of like back
to work stress or pumping kind of scheduling issues turned
(06:27):
into my body starting to wean itself. So this is
a little different than I think, Like, well, my kids, one,
this feels about the right time. It was like my
body was cutting back. I was down to like at
best and making making like two to four ounces a day, right,
and I had a little bit of a stockpile, but
it was and I'm just hanging on for dear life.
So i am just nothing's coming out. But I'm like pumping,
(06:48):
I'm doing the tease, I'm taking the pills and doing
the whole all the lactation help. Right. Oh, this like
breaks my heart. I'm only interjecting because I have to say, like,
I've had a lot of friends whose bodies just slowly
stopped either slowly stopped producing or just fully stopped producing.
And it was so terrifying. All of those feelings we
(07:12):
talk about feeling like I'm failing. I can't. And I
think there's so much triggering for motherhood around the ability
to feed or not feed your baby and how much
or how little, and you use that to like directly
associate with your value and how well you're doing. And
I think in Allison's case, probably when you were back
to work, like you felt like, well, I can at
(07:33):
least give him this, And now that's like falling off.
I mean, oh my god, I can't even imagine in
the vaccine again, I'm thinking, I'm I'm thinking I'm shielding
him from COVID, right, like, Okay, this is this is
like the mission here, right, So he's got it in
my head, no science to support it. I'm just like,
if he gets a little bit every day, it's like
a little bit of a vaccine whatever I was telling myself.
(07:54):
And look, we're in the middle as we record this,
we're in the middle of this like gigantic, terrifying formula
short of and I can't talk about triggering and paralyzing.
I read those that news now and I'm like, I
don't know what I would have done. You know, seven
months ago, I have goose bumps all over my body.
Oh my god, it's awful, and I feel like kind
of no one cares. But that's a side note. But
but like people are not giving it its due of
(08:16):
how insane this is. But that's what that's what happened
with me, was like my body was just like we've
reached the end of a journey. I just wasn't ready
to let go, not even for anything truly, just this
kind of very utilitarian thing where I thought I was
still giving him COVID vaccine vietname, which is so weird.
I know, no it's not, it's really it's really important,
(08:38):
and it was really I I felt that way for sure.
I felt that way totally about my breast milk and
getting vaccinated and feeling like I was doing my part
in this pandemic to try to protect my unvaccinated baby.
Like that was definitely a huge, a huge, huge thing. Okay,
when did you start to realize that you were maybe
(09:00):
having disproportionate anxiety, that this wasn't um you were feeling
not your usual self, even though I mean, how could
you he had a baby five months earlier, but still right,
it's like, oh, I'm not I was not my zesta
usual self. For many reasons, but I think, look for me,
I've always lived my life with a bit of an
(09:22):
anxiety and worry. It's in producing. I think there's a
certain amount of help of it that helps you. Right.
I feel like Bill Hater. So many people have spoken
to like how creatively anxiety can be a help, right. Yes,
it had passed, allowing me to um, to put drive
in my heart or allow me to anticipate problems. I
think the day I will never forget was I was
(09:43):
on our couch in the living room trying to compose
an email about a note that was not easy to give,
which in UM you know, working with writers, this is
something you do all the time. Right that you figure
it out, you move past it. And my husband just
looked at me at one point t J and was like,
you've been writing that email for four hours. And I
realized I had been sat in the same spot, my
(10:04):
knee vibrating on my laptop, trying to write the same
unal for four hours. And I don't think I even
understood what was happening. And it was him finally being
like worried about it. I think maybe two and a
half weeks prior to that, we had done our first
trip with Walt to Palm Springs with one of my
best friends and her husband and there two and a
(10:24):
half year at the time, and I remember thinking it
was one of the I hadn't like properly planned a
place to pump um, so I, you know, we're all
sharing this house and also kind of working from there,
and I just all of a sudden remember this like
strange feeling in my stomach of like I don't feel
like I have much. This would be so much fun,
and it is, but I have this like sort of
(10:45):
damocles hanging over my head. I don't know what's wrong.
Something is freaking me out. And it kind of cast
Paul on the triple a little because I just I
remember walk up kind of sunburned for the first time,
and I maybe lost my mind. I was like, I've
ruined him and he'll never work out her And it
was such an outsized reaction and I could see it
a little bit. But as the next two and a
half weeks of my three week journey with this intense
(11:08):
anxiety and depression, now that I understand it, I don't
think I knew what was really coming and how bad
it would get because eventually, Yeah, by the time t
J caught me writing an email for four hours, I
had slowly stopped eating and slowly stopped sleeping. And it
was that was kind of like towards the end of
like finally recognizing like I have to do something really
(11:29):
drastic right now to like stop this and pull myself back.
Did you remember, aside from having just very disproportionate reactions
to like Walt having a really bad sunburn, or you
not being able to really a function Maybe you're really tired,
but like you were functioning at work and now all
of a sudden functioning is starting to be questionable. Do
(11:51):
you have any examples of like thoughts you were having
at the time. Oh my god, I'll never forget the
thought I had, which is I had remembered filling out
all of my pregnancy disability paperwork for when you file
with the State of California for your maternity leave and
all your benefits. You and I literally had this thought,
which is so wild now, but I was like, I
(12:12):
think I'm gonna have to file for disability. I think
I can't work ever again. Like it was that extreme
where I was like, oh, I guess this is it, right,
my brain is broken. And I think for you think
that postpartum depression is going to look a certain way. Fuck,
everyone I know thinks that they've broken, that they're broken,
and they're going to be insta like everyone well yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
(12:34):
yeah yeah. I was like, what else can I do?
I suppose, but it and it was such an intense
but I think that's the strange nature of this. It
was such an intense but casual thing. The other thing
that was happening is we were pulling out of Afghanistan. Um,
the US was leaving Afghanistan, and if you remember, it
was nothing but just intense footage at the airports of
(12:54):
like people hating their kids to soldiers being like, get
my baby at it. And I just remember that was
the other part is like, no humans should be spending
this much time scrolling through I don't know, Instagram reels
not even cool enough for TikTok alice an eagle. But
it was just like I think I sucked up my
algorithm for life. For life. My algorithm now is like
dead dark, get you a new name. We have to
(13:20):
get you a new Instagram and start over. Oh my god,
or be like how did I deal? With child asses
like bump bump bump, bom bomp op where they like
knock their heads in and I'm like their hands together.
I'm like, how did I get on this algorithm? I
think it's from the period I was waning, because I
think once the anxiety was rolling, I was just like, yeah,
(13:40):
I want to and did. There'd be those very traite
things of like your baby's only small for four years,
and then a little of that flooding could comes flooding
in of like the breastfeeding journeys ending for me, and
that's a big milestone. So I think the weird thing
about it was it would flip flop between intense and
same thought. I earned nothing saying that's terrible word, and
your fingering thought outsized reaction, right, it was like this intense,
(14:04):
outsized reaction that came to my brain in a very
casual manner, or it was sobbing for two hours at
videos of soldiers handing children or of civilians in Afghanistan
handing babies soldiers, and I'm like, this is not normal,
this is not usually my vibe um. And you know,
then there would be on top of that, like the
panic of like and now I've wasted all this time
(14:26):
that I need because my work brain is going so
slowly that I have to now that's now that times
God that I needed this like extra buffer. So it's
sort of a compounding effect, is the best way I
can think of it. My last question for you and
then I need I want to hear Emily story two
is I know you were not sleeping at all. Your
anxiety was reaching so bad that I know you also
(14:46):
started getting two and you weren't eating. I remember this
because when we spoke, I was like, funk, we need
to get to be secure. Word for it spoke when
I called you sobbing on a FaceTime on your vacation,
Poor Katie lows Man, just the absolute go to parent moment. Look,
(15:11):
I have been on that I have been on your
side of that place as well, where I have reached
out and needed a FaceTime and some of the darkest
ship I've ever seen. And I took one look at
your face, which is that classic for people who are
listening you, Um, you are not recognizable as the person
(15:33):
I know. It's so fucked And but the other funked
up thing is you know it will like being on
the other side of it as I was when you
called me. I was like, you will be okay, and
you will get through it, and you will feel like
yourself again and you will enjoy like it's all going
to be okay. But that does not seem possible right now.
(15:53):
Like that just does not a possibility right now. M
What did you do with the is three weeks to
kind of get through it? I mean I leaned on
t J so much, um and and also, look, I'm
lucky I work at a really supportive place with bosses
who have not like they haven't seen this before, right,
bosses who have had women I think, accustomed to being
(16:16):
type A professionals dealing with different challenges that come in
all shapes and sizes, with the idea of new motherhood. Right.
So it's like Shonda Betsy, all of my colleagues, my team,
Annie Marko Fwong, everyone was just like always there to
help and probably could tell something was like a little off.
I think I wound up realizing I'm masked better than
I thought I had. Honestly, like, I think what was
(16:37):
going on side my head was a lot worse than
what was presenting. So there'd be a little moments where
i'd let some pressure out where I would just say
to Betsy be like, look, Betsy, I don't know if
today's my best day. I think something's going on right
just so it's like okay, I can get it out
there for a moment. But I think there was just
this like power. I remember one meeting with a writer
of Zoom where I was I had a moment where
(16:58):
I was like, Okay, I'm outside of my body, watching
myself in this meeting. I'm not really here, but I
think it's going okay with that feeling. I know that feeling.
I know that feeling. Oh my god, We're like, oh interesting,
Allison's having a meeting. Oh crazy. I remember having this.
I remember when I was like, oh, I'm not functioning anymore.
(17:20):
When I had UM, I had to do a voice
one line pick up in Vivo and I I play
I don't even remember the character's name, but I had
a role that i'd done pre pandemic, pre baby, and
they needed me to do one pickup line. And I
sobbed to my friend Jackie saying, I don't think I
(17:40):
can work for five minutes, Like I'm in big fat trouble.
I don't know if I can pretend for five minutes
like nothing's going on, just to record one line that
was like wow, what you got there or some ship
like that, and I was like, I am never been
so scared the cuff right now? Yeah, okay, that's that's
(18:02):
you're the pro and that's why you're like, oh no,
you get to like a non functioning place is really scary. Yes,
But the thing that saved me was the after I
faced time with you and you let me sob I
knocked myself out with like a bend and drill right
because I slept, took the baby, the baby shifts that night,
and I never looked back to breastfeeding. It was over.
It was done. I barely had anything left. I remembered
(18:24):
your cabbage leaf advice from an earlier season one Kati's
crib o g But it was over. I was done,
And I remember it was the same weekend. I just
like slept, and then we had a weekend and Walt
started solids and I was like, goodbye breastfeeding, And by
Sunday night, I was myself again. And it was the
most bizarre experience and I feel very lucky that it
(18:45):
wasn't that it wasn't a longer drawn out experience, but
that was how instantaneous once I let go. And I
get why people sometimes don't advocate for this, because everyone's like, no,
we should breastfeed as long as again it's great, but like,
I just had to let it go and it was done,
it was over. I remember when we were face timing
and you were at your one of your lowest bottoming
(19:07):
out moments of and I was getting to you. I
know we had been texting and stuff like that, but
once you face time to me and you had been
going through three weeks to four weeks of no sleep,
anxiety attacks, not eating, stressing beyond all belief like, and
I remember just being like in my head, oh god,
I hope she just stops like it's not because at
(19:28):
some point what I always found interesting too. And then Emily,
I have to your story. But I always thought it
was really interesting when someone was like, whenever you decide
or your body decides that it's time, and and hopefully
you don't have this kind of reaction, you get this
opportunity where you have to find other ways to connect
to your child. Um, because I personally realized that I
(19:51):
spent so much time breastfeeding and sort of taking for
granted like that's my time with the baby, but I'm
really looking at my phone. Are you looking at Instagram
reels or like answering emails and ship like that, And
I'm not, And I'm just saying like, well, this is
my time with the baby, but like, is it really
And then I remember when I weaned. I'll be like, oh,
(20:15):
it's really important that I have other ways to calm him,
because I also used breastfeeding as like my way to like,
you know, make him feel comfort, make him feel this,
make it feel that, and so it's just like an
interesting thing for anyone listening, like it's I try to
reframe it in my mind as like the opportunity to
learn how to comfort and mother in like other ways. Anyway,
(20:38):
I will remember that FaceTime, and I honestly let it
be known, said I was so honored to be on
the other side of that call, and I I truly was.
I was so so so honored to be on the
other side of that call. And I really in my
heart was like, she needs sleep. Take whatever. Fucking Bena
Jules an X ambience. If you got on hand, you're
(21:01):
not taking care of the baby this weekend. Eat anything
and everything, please God, but you have to sleep. Emily
has to UM. Beautiful girls and very different. They're very different.
(21:26):
I'm thinking about that now. UM. And what's crazy about
me and Emily's journey is that we were pregnant with
both of our kids at the same time. It's just
sucking awesome. So I want to talk to you about
your experience with UM ev right now, because I know
you're in the midst of it with Audrey. I'm curious
how it's going because I'm still happening. But tell me
(21:47):
about your breastfeeding journey with Evie and when you knew,
similarly how we started with Alison, how you knew it
was time to wean for you. I had a very
interesting relationship breastfeeding UM. I was incredibly lucky. I had
more milk than I could possibly have used. And and
(22:11):
one of the interesting things that happened early on with
breastfeeding was I actually had my milk ducks and my
armpits all filled up, and I was I had like,
you know, dinosaur eggs sized like glands. Emily's face and
for everyone listening, I have love. I have given Emily
(22:33):
Rogers milk out to Like if we can say this,
I've given Emily Rodgers milk out to friends. That's how
much she has. Anyone who I ever get a text
from that's like I'm running low. I don't have or
is surrogate or da da da da. I'm like, just
call Emily. Just call Emily. She's feeding all of the
Los Angeles area. Okay, but yeah, And so I had
(22:58):
so much milk, But part of that was just my
relationship with it was always very different, interesting because it
had such an effect on my body. And I really
wish that I had known about postpartum from weaning, because
I was so clearly a candidate for it given how
much milk I had. I was also an endometrios as patient.
(23:22):
I mean I am an Endometrios's patient, and so my
hormone levels have always been insane. My goal for breastfeeding
Evy was I wanted to get to a year. That
was that was what I was trying to go for.
I obviously had the milk to do it. It wasn't
hard to get to a year. And then once I
got to a year, I said, you know what, I'm done,
And I just didn't think about it, and I started
(23:45):
dropping a feed a week because that's what some people
tell you to do. You just go drop a feed
a week. Now that I know about postpartum weaning, I
should have taken a lot longer to do it. I
should have let my body adjust over time to do it.
And that was just what I should have done. I
(24:06):
mean not to say that anybody else should have done that,
but I didn't. And at the same time, there were
all these things going on in our lives. Um My
husband had just quit his corporate job to go out
on his own, and Evie was I was. I didn't
know this at the time, but being with her as
(24:27):
a mother started feeling like a chore. I remember there
was one day that she had somehow there's like a
two part tuberculosis tests that they give kids at various stages,
and she had somehow failed the first skin test, and
I knew we hadn't done any traveling. We she did
not have tuberculosis. But they said, we want to give
(24:50):
her the blood test for tuberculosis. And I have this,
you know, I have a one year old and they're
telling me I need to do a blood draw and
they were going to send me to a quest lab,
like just some random quest lab. And I said, absolutely not,
I will go to the children's hospital and see no
lab where they you know, dropped. And I pitched a
fit in my pediatrician's office. And that afternoon, somehow, my well,
(25:14):
after I took my daughter to get her blood draw, crying, crying, crying,
you know, this one year old. And I'm sitting in
my car after and I'm crying, and I don't remember why.
I somehow got a call from my doctor, my regular
doctor that day. She must have been following up with
the test or something. And I just burst into tears
(25:34):
on the phone, you know, in the car with Evie
crying in the backseat, and and and I was telling
her all of the stuff that was going on, and
she said, you know what, honey, I think you've got
to crush it. And I'm really really lucky that I
had a primary care physician who could just point that
(25:58):
out to me so easily and with such care and such,
you know, just really understood who I was, what I
what I should have been like, and how I should
have handled all of these things. My husband likes to say,
I'm the best in a crisis, and so when all
of these things were happening to us and I wasn't
(26:19):
handling it well. I mean, my doctor knew that, and
she just said, you know what, like something's wrong, it's
not crazy insane, like I wasn't having crippling anxiety. I
wasn't having any of those things. It was so subtle,
but they figured it out. And my doctor was just
just said, I'm going to put you on a low
(26:41):
dose of Lexa pro. Let's see how it goes. And
I went on it. And a few weeks later, um
a dear friend of a mutual friend of ours, Mary O'Malley,
who's been on your podcast. I told Mary what was
going on in my life, and she said, I think
it's great that your doctor puts you on the US,
but let's get you some professional women's health like psychiatry.
(27:06):
And she put me in touch with her psychiatrist and
he I've been in treatment with him ever since. I've
never stopped. And he, I mean, he he changed my life.
He really did. And like I said, I didn't have
any of that crippling stuff, but you know, he he
got me on the right dosage afterwards, we you know,
and and he just he just really helped me figure
(27:29):
it out. And then it was the hindsight part of it,
and it's it's so frustrating that it took me getting
on medication to realize what was going on with me.
But I was looking back on things and thinking, oh
my gosh, I missed out on having fun with my
daughter for a while. I mean it was I don't
(27:50):
think I ever in my head thought of her as
a chore. But I realized after I came out of
that fog or whatever it was, that I I could
see that that's how I had been feeling. And then
I just started experiencing joy again being a mom. Mm hmm.
Did you have any postpartum depression right after the birth
(28:13):
or postpartum anxiety? Did you have that? See, that's the
fucking crazy ship. It's like we hopefully we're doing our
due diligence of like preparing people to look at it
in that first six week window, you know, but you're see,
I know people who they've gotten postpartum depression around the
(28:34):
time they've weaned, and that can be six months later
in Emily's cases, a year later. And you didn't have
it at all when you brought Evie home. From the hospital. Yeah,
And interestingly, I had been so prepared to have postpartum
depression from the birth, and we had you know, we
(28:56):
had people lined up to talk to you. I had
taken numbers from people. My Husben was, you know, kind
of told this is the things you need to look
out for. And I was cognizant of all that because
of my end though, and recognizing that I had all
of these hormonal things but never applied it to weaning.
And also I had somewhat of a traumatic birth. I
I broke my tailbone um in delivery. And so when
(29:21):
I had gone through all of that without experiencing postpartum depression,
in part because my husband, like he, like I said,
he says, I'm really good in a crisis, and so
I got when I got through all of that and
after having you know, broken my tailbone and breastfed through
it and all of that, and I was fine. I
it did not occur to me at all that I
(29:43):
could possibly have postpartum at any point. It's so funny
you say that, because honestly, like that is I think
that is the thing that stuck up on me too,
is that you have all of the meetings and all
of the pamphlets. And I did have a therapist through
my winning experience. I should have shouted that out too.
(30:03):
Oh that's yeah. I mean I wasn't in therapy. It
wasn't any of that. But never occurred to me that
it could happen with weaning, especially given the experience that
I had had. You know, it was just if I
was going to have depression, I was going to have
it after breaking my tailbone having a baby. Literally like
the baby, that can happen. But yeah, we should do
(30:27):
a whole another thing. They don't talk about another thing.
My god. I mean, I just think and what's crazy
for me? Um. In my personal experience weaning Albe, I
had the similar thing to Emily. I mean, I felt,
it's so interesting having a second baby because I just
(30:47):
I've I'm doing it so differently this time around, just
mothering in genter in general, where I'm having this conversation
with you. And when I was breastfeeding Albey, I was
so stressed all the time about how much, how little,
how many bottles. I can remember when he was coming
up on a year, I was out of my stock.
I was on Broadway. I was pumping every intermission I
(31:12):
was exhausted, um, my supply was heavily diminishing. Um, and
I was confused thinking I had to get him to
a certain point before I made him to cow's milk
and he had to have bottles. And it was so
fucking stressful and I was so miserable and measuring everything.
(31:34):
And I just say that to mean that now that
I'm doing this with Vera, I I never pump, I
never measure, I never care, I never know when I'm
going to breastfeeder. It's very like sort of like if
I'm at work, she doesn't get it. If I'm home,
she gets it. Like I have no idea what I'm making,
Like everything is just like whatever. And it's been really
a much more pleasurable experience. UM. I also think it's
(32:00):
lined up that I've had acting jobs this year that
are less grueling schedule, So I think that's also a huge,
huge part of this. Like if you're a working mom
and you're on a pump schedule, I mean I did
that with Albe and that's a crazy, crazy ride. Um.
But I had to wean, albeit at around a week
before a year because I when I was doing waitress
(32:22):
on Broadway, I got MERSA, which is a deadly staff infection,
and they called me and they said, I'm so sorry,
but we're gonna have to try a million different kind
of antibiotics so that this doesn't spread. And you just
had your last breastfeed, and I ugly cried and had
(32:44):
the opposite experience of you all, which was I ugly
cried and then felt such relief and finally felt like myself,
like I was done. I looked in the mirror two
weeks later and wait had fallen off for me that
just because my boobs were like flat, dehydrated socks now.
(33:04):
And I just had a different experience, which is funny
because I had postpartum depression after birth. All of this
to say, you don't know what you're gonna get, Listeners,
you don't know what you're gonna get. So it's Katie's
crib point to have all these different guests on to
make you aware and not make you scared, but just
make you aware that if either of these things should happen,
(33:26):
and all of the options in between, you are not alone,
and there are things that you can do to get
help and to feel better. There are some things you
can do to help minimize symptoms of depression around weaning,
(33:50):
which is weaning gradually Emily Rodgers, which takes me to
what are you doing for the Audrey situation? It's interesting,
you know, like best laid plans and all of that. Um.
I had talked to Dr Sparago, my psychiatrist. I had
talked to my therapist. I had talked to friends, I
(34:12):
talked to anybody that I could talk to about what
was your weaning plan? Like how did you do it?
And so? And I had come up with this elaborate,
you know, scheme where I was going to wean one
feed per month and that was it. And it's such
a lawyer like you do anything, like like I just
think you're so meticulous in all of this. I love it. Okay,
(34:34):
so you had this totally elaborate, detailed plan. And then
Audrey laughed at me, and so did Evie in fact,
because it was a combination of both of them. I
was still pumping at night right before I went to bed.
I dropped that first. That was easy. A few weeks later,
I said, okay, I'm gonna drop. I'm gonna drop a feed.
And in my head I had a plan that I
(34:55):
was going to drop her afternoon feed first, and I
don't remember at the time, I didn't why I had
insisted on it being the afternoon feed, because one morning
Audrey chopped down, like in her late morning feed, teeth
and all, just like took a bite and I was like, nope,
eleven am is done and we're dropping it today and
(35:16):
it's done. So then I dropped it. And then I
realized a week later why I hadn't why I had
wanted to drop the three o'clock feed first, because I
was taking my daughter to those ten day intensive swim
classes every single day at three thirty, and so I couldn't,
like I couldn't just nurse her. I had nanny's line,
(35:39):
you know, I had childcare lined up for when I
was taking her to swim class. There was going to
be a rush of me picking her up from school
and like so the whole thing. I ended up dropping
two feeds in two weeks. I was like, oh my god,
this is exactly the opposite plan. So all right, so
everything you've planned is not what's happening. Welcome shot. Yeah,
(36:00):
and so how do you feel? How do you feel?
I mean, you must feel okay, because you're on you
have the support and you're on medication, right, I have
the support. I'm on medication. I mean. The best thing
that happened to me was when my husband and Dr.
Sparago and I actually had an appointment together before while
(36:21):
we were deciding, you know, when to have our second baby.
And this was maybe five months before the pandemic hit,
and we were talking about should I go off the
antidepressants before I get pregnant again, YadA, YadA, YadA, and
we decided, and I made the decision. I was like,
you know what, I still need to be a good
mother to my older daughter, So I can't go into
(36:44):
postpartum depression again because I won't be able to mother properly.
And so and let's face it, your older one takes
so much more patience and the language and all of that.
That's so much more important that you need to kind
of be on for. And so I stayed on anti
depressants the entire time. And thank god, because then months
(37:08):
later we're in a fucking global pandemic and and everybody
went on them. Yeah, exactly, and so um, luckily I
actually upped my medication. UM after I gave birth to Audrey.
Um things just weren't feeling totally right. Everything was stressful
(37:30):
COVID I mean, you know, trying to protect your babies.
I mean, and Katie and I both went through very
stressful times of feeling like we couldn't protect our babies
from COVID, and obviously Alison you went through the same thing,
like the little bit of vaccine that I can get, Like,
so we were all in that frame of mind. Anyone
who's mothering, especially under five year olds during this pandemic,
(37:52):
or and we're pregnant during this pandemic. It it was
so intense. It was so scary, terrifying, and I was
the full coming in being like perfect timing. Wow, March
so much sorted getting my vaccines. Like I was just
mad that I missed being able to get it as
a pregnant lady. And pregnant lady, what do I say,
(38:13):
just as a lady. That's I thought I was coming
in And then it was like the oh Macron Christmas.
Then we all got COVID a month ago, just rolling
through the household. But it is well, I think I
can't even imagine the early days. Honestly, oh my god,
it was. I was pregnant the week before shutdown. I
was never forgot. I was like, we're, oh, yeah, it
(38:36):
was so awful. Um, Emily, you're feeling okay right now
even though your plan is not the plan. Yeah, I'm
feeling okay right now. I actually just dropped another feed,
so I'm down to one a day now, and um,
I'm feeling good. I mean, I'm I'm in treatment. I
(38:58):
talked to my psychiatry regularly, and there's so much of
motherhood that is letting go of your own control. And
I've learned that for the last several years. You think
I would remember when I'm making an elaborate plan for weaning,
that it's not going to go according to plan, and
that Audrey has her own ideas and she's basically weaned herself.
(39:21):
And in many ways, you know, she stopped, she stopped
um feeding every single feed. She The only one that
she's really attached to was the morning feed, and so
that's the one I've kept. And we'll see how much
further I go with that. Can I ask a queasy question,
(39:44):
a little bit of a woo uh do what ressault?
When the weaning happened? Did either of you ever just
have this instinctual thing of just like I don't know,
he seems upset, he's teething. It's a couple of months
since weaning. Should I throw this baby on the boob?
Did that ever? Strip? Because I almost did it a
few times where I was like, I don't know what
would happen. I didn't want to, like unleash the beast again,
(40:04):
but I was like, there would be these moments I'd
almost forget I wasn't doing it no matter how. Even
still there's moments where I'm like, and I sometimes forget
how it feels. Yeah, it's weird, Like I'll I remember
when I weaned out the like I was like, no,
we're not doing that right now, or like you don't,
like you said unleash the beast, like you don't want
(40:25):
to like open up that can of worms again and
confuse them like that, it might still be a possibility.
If it's not a possibility, but I do think, Alison,
I'm curious if I'm pretty sure that if a baby
started nursing on you regularly, you would start producing milk again?
Is that true? Am I You're out? I don't even know.
(40:46):
I mean, let's let's throw to our panel of down.
Does it only don't think so. And I can't believe
I'm bringing this up, but I read an article the
other day that when you stop breastfeeding, your boob basically
eats it self, so all of the stuff that your
breasts make in order to breastfeed, all that stuff is
(41:07):
like your boob eats it all up so that it's
no longer and that's why it goes to looking like
a dehydrated sock. And anyone, I don't know what that means.
It just works for me. But like I anyone I
know who had big boobs and hated them their whole life,
like loved their chest after they weaned because it was
(41:29):
just like they've never been like that kind of flat before. Um. Okay,
one of the additional things you've learned through post weening
depression that no one told you about that you wish
you had known all of it. I honestly, I just
like truly have never heard of it. I don't I
(41:51):
know this, And I read a lot of books, I've
crept a lot. I had a top o b G
y n um apparently, by the way, I don't know
if you all knew this, but and I was panicking
and didn't know if just stopping would stop it. When
I called and she didn't get back to me about it,
she said, oh, yeah, I already told the guy that
like the Kenemine therapy clinic that you'd be calling. And
(42:11):
I had no idea that kenemine therapy is now one
of the treatments for postpartum I was like, special k man.
I just rolled up. You know, yeah, kenemine would be
special k um. People are doing small, small doses of
that actually for postpartum depression. And they're also doing micro
(42:36):
dosing mushrooms. Guys. People are just getting into it. People,
let's open up our brains. But yeah, I really couldn't
believe no one it's anything. And I have an amazing
WhatsApp group that is shout out Montown. It's just like
sixty women in the business who've had kids over the
last year and sharing very openly with each other. And
I remember when it was a smaller group. I did
(42:56):
just put it out there. Finally, guys, I don't know
what I just lived through. And all of them said
that they'd only seen one Cosmo article. And that article actually,
and I can't remember the name of it now, but
it was like, why did no one tell me this
would happen from like five years ago? And um it
was it described perfectly the moment I had in palm
Springs of just like sitting there and suddenly this deep
(43:17):
sadness just opening up over you. But it's not. No
one talks about it. Emily, I don't know if you
had heard of it. I just didn't know what was happening.
I literally didn't know it existed. And I want this
is the conspiracy theorist to me, I'm like, do they
not tell us because they want to us breastfeed? And
they're so, But I'm like, there's a little of that,
right there is a little bit of like, you know,
(43:39):
you hope for the best and know that if there's
a problem, of course, and we'll come talk to you
about it. But I almost would have It's not like
it would have changed my drive to breastfeed. Had I
known about this, I just would have been like, got it.
I know now to look for the signals of that.
Oh yeah, you could get postpartum depression from having a baby,
and it doesn't stop having a baby, you know, or
I mean it doesn't really equally equate, but how but
(44:00):
I think. I think I personally still would have been like,
we're going for it. At least when it hits, i'll
know what it is. I can dive into action, will
get that to do list going. But it was best
to do find out why I think I need disability,
go on disability. At this moment, you're the absolute fucking
(44:21):
bes I'm obsessed with you. Okay, Emily, what about you?
What are some additional things you learned through post meaning
depression that no one told you about that you wish
you'd known. Actually, when I found out that I was
doing this podcast, I asked my psychiatrist. I said, if
you could tell women, Yeah, if you could tell women
about postpartum and weaning, like, what would you say? And
(44:43):
he said, I want women to understand that even though
we think that breastfeeding is controlled by the breast, it's
actually controlled by the brain. It's all neurotransmitters and hormones.
Are you know, I'm going to botch them medicine, But
it's the neurotransmitters in your brain that control whether or
(45:04):
not you breastfeed. It's up to your brain. And so
I think when you think of breastfeeding as a mental
function rather than a physical function. It really opens your
mind to the idea that it will. Of course, you
can get depression from it. I mean, you're you're basically
stopping these neurotransmitters from producing prolactin and you know, oxytocin
(45:30):
and all of these things that give us the euphoria
of breastfeeding. It's also the waves, which is something that's
really hard for some women to shake. It's like when
you have a letdown producing milk and you get serotonin
flooding your brain because you love your baby, which is
why milk is happening. Then it dries out and then
it that's all gone. It's like very Some women like
(45:53):
literally get headaches every time they get a let down.
Thank you to doctor, your doctor for telling us that bit.
I'm like, doctors, Okay, if a mom is suspecting she
has post weeding depression, what questions can she ask herself
to confirm? For me, it's always about functioning. Have you
lost function? Like I'm always like, but I but you
(46:15):
know what in Emily's case, it's different than that. For me,
it was like I couldn't even return a text. Allison
took four hours to write an email. She could have
written for Emily. It was that, which I also think
is a great tell you've lost the joy in doing
these things, like there's just a real And I had
that too, which was just I no longer felt joyous
(46:40):
taking care of my children at all. I mean I
not everybody has a partner when they have a baby,
but I did, and my husband and I I found
that the second time around, at least, when I had Audrey,
I checked in with him a lot. I was like,
how do you think I'm doing? And I think that
that question is just so important because with me, at least,
(47:04):
it was so such a gradual process to getting to
where I was depressed that if he weren't paying attention,
I don't think he would have even really noticed, because
it's just you get lost in your own I mean,
he was super busy. I was super busy. We had
the kid, you know. But when I made a point
of asking him after I had the baby, probably like
(47:26):
once every two weeks, I just asked him, I said,
how am I doing? How do you think I'm doing?
Especially since I think a lot of times after you
have a baby, or when you're whatever it is that's
going on, I think a lot of husbands don't want
to say to their wives like you're you're not being
normal or whatever it is like that, but they don't
want to call attention to the fact because they don't
(47:48):
want to kiss you off and there's all of the
stuff going on, and they want to be understanding and
sort of like give you more leeway to have the
emotional experience that you're having. But it's it's a it's
a difficult balance to try and figure out. And the
best person who knows you, like, the person who knows
you best is your is your partner. And he was
able to say to me, you know at certain times
(48:08):
he's like no, I at least after all he was like,
I think something's going on. I think you should talk
to your doctor. I think you should tell him these things.
Can I jump on the call with you with your doctor?
Can we all talk about it together? Um, which I
was really lucky, Like my Jamie has been on calls
with me and my my psychiatrist. He's the ship. You
(48:31):
both have such wonderful partners. Oh my god, that's amen
for that. I mean truly again, like exactly, like if
I try to think about the thing about questions, you
can ask yourself. Here's one of you. Would ask me, Katie,
what coping mechanisms did you use? And I was like, none,
it was terrible. I stop dating it. I did for
a while still try to go back to things that
(48:51):
used to work. So meditation was a huge one. Um.
I would get nervous about sending you know, cut notes
or whatever it is, and before I would say down
to do it, I would go meditate and I would
just it didn't work. Like it was not unlocking any calm.
I was vibrating and thinking through the whole. It wasn't
just like come back to your practice, cycle back, No,
it was it was not working. And going on walks
(49:15):
like t J would force me to leave the house
sometime around five pm every day. That used to be
so calming to me in a early pandemic days and
did nothing for me. I would come back just as so.
I think that's a good test, is like, are those
things that usually calm me down, bring you back focus
you do they still work? And if if they're not working,
(49:36):
there might be something more aggressive happening even if you
do them inconsistently. That's that's the other thing that really
helped me understand something goes wrong. I had the same thing.
I remember hanging onto this like meditation app on my
phone and like trying to play it to like go
to sleep and just being like I am spinning the
funk out. I cannot do this. And then I remember
(49:59):
going on Fai only walks for at sunset at five
o'clock and just being so sad and like so feeling
out of body, feeling like I was watching myself like, oh,
you should be enjoying this, like you're going on a
walk with your baby strap to you and your toddler
and your husband, and I'm a shell, like a shell,
(50:19):
like I I why I'm not in the experience like
at all. It reminds me of something that I heard
in my childbirth class about you know, whether or not
you should get an epidural. Tally A Moore taught my
childbirth class, and she had said, you know, it's supposed
to be painful, but you're not supposed to suffer. And
I think that that's like a very good way of
(50:40):
the parton too. It's supposed like just supposed to be hard,
but you're not supposed to suffer, and it's not supposed
to be so hard that it feels debilitating, or that
it affects the way that you go about your life,
or you have no joyless with your child. No, but
suffering is a different suffering. Suffering is different things. Analogy,
(51:01):
but it's no, hard is different than suffering. Hard can
be okay, you know, but suffering is a different thing. Um.
What would you recommend to women who are going through
or who suspect they have post weaning depression. One of
the best things I could recommend to is, like, I
(51:23):
didn't have a general practitioner before I gave birth. It
was just all on my OB G A N. She
was my everything, her and her and my amazing rheumatologist
for with my cool young people arthritists that I have
middle aged people now. Um, but I wish I'd had
a GP in place before I gave birth because I
didn't have a psychiatrist right so I didn't. I just
(51:45):
had my my talk therapist and my O B G N.
And I wish i'd had somebody I could have gone
to in this very kind of like distinct way from
both of those experiences to do an assessment at the
early stages of it, just to be like, my, okay,
what's happening and they could have then like guided the
rest of that experience, because I think I had some
(52:07):
like I just don't I think that would have allowed
me the freedom to maybe even I know this sounds weird,
say things I wouldn't have maybe said to my b G,
I N and my therapist about physically like what was happening,
because I think I was a little nervous to admit
I wasn't sleeping and eating and I was also like
doing a high octane job and caring for a baby,
and I feel like just a Mr g P. I
(52:27):
just signed up with miss GPS. I don't have a
GP either, Like what the hell? And this is not
as helpful for new moms, but like, as you're getting ready,
have a have a person who's just like this separate entity,
I think, and then can and they can be like, hey,
I want you to see a psychiatrist right but in
this and kind of have a speed and an ease
(52:48):
of care with that person. Because that was one of
the things when somebody casually mentioned it to me in
the midst of the weaning of like we'll get a
GP and they can like see you and then they
can get you a prescription, and I was like, a
g you want me to find a GP in Los
Angeles and I just seem like they've asked me to
go to the moon. I was like, are you kidding there?
(53:10):
So that was the one thing I really wish someone
had told me at a time. That's great. And your
GP is the one who told you Emily right, Yeah,
she's the one who fish interesting. Interesting. And what would
you say to that question? I would say, talk to
the people in your community. Talk to them, Talk to
(53:32):
your mom, friends, talk to or if you know you're
the first person of your friends to have kids, go
find you know, your sister's cousins, mother's neighbor's daughter, you
know Whoever, because the moment I started talking to people
about my postpartum depression, you discover that everybody you know
as postpartum depression or depression of some sort. Everybody's medicated,
(53:55):
everybody's got it off, like seriously, like everybody has a talk.
So yeah, you'll find referrals within your community, people that
you trust, and just give them a call and talk
to them. I love it. And last question that we
always ask parenthood is parenthood should be a choice. Right
(54:21):
up now, perfectly said, uh, perfectly said, parent parenthood is extremes.
I think it's the best way I can think about it.
Extreme lows and eyes at least in this all my
limited experience of fourteen months of it. But hats not
(54:42):
limited because you were you were pregnant for a year
before that, and you were trying for longer before that.
I mean, this has been a fucking journey so and
it's been extreme, and it's it's not a bad thing
that it's extreme. It's a it is like none if
there's power, and knowing it's extremes. Yeah, I'm so appreciative
(55:06):
of you both coming on to Katie's crib and sharing
your personal experiences. I think it will be so helpful.
I think hopefully we can add to the great canon
of the Cosmopolitan article depression around Me, around weaning to
hopefully make women more aware information is power and let
(55:30):
them know that they're not alone and that this is
fucking common. I freaking love you both. I love your children,
I love your partners, I love your faces, everything about
you now everyone knows why I FaceTime do you crying now? No,
right back at you, And so so endlessly grateful to
(55:51):
be invited to be a part of this conversation and
I do hope it, I do help, it helps people.
Um and Emily helped me hearing your story, which could
not have been more different from my own but still
loves me feel connected. Yeah, definitely, thank you so much.
Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
(56:14):
I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Let me know. You can always find me at Katie's
Crib at Shonda land dot com. Katie's Crib is a
production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(56:36):
favorite shows.
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda land Audio
in partnership with I Heart Radio. I had a very
interesting relationship with breastfeeding. UM, I was incredibly lucky. I
had more milk than I could possibly have used. I
actually had my milk ducts and my armpits all filled up,
(00:24):
and I was I had like, you know, dinosaur eggs
sized like glands Emily's face And for everyone listening, I
have look, I have given Emily Rogers milk out to like,
if we can say this, I've given Emily Rogers milk
out to friends. That's how much she has. Hello, everybody,
(00:52):
Welcome back to Katie's Crib. I'm so excited about this
episode of Katie's Grip, which is postpartum depression that comes
around weening. I don't know why no one talks about this.
I don't know why there's no warning signs. I don't
know why it happens the way it does. But I
(01:13):
have come across so many friends that whether they wean
at six months, three months, one month, one year, one
and a half years, whatever, they have a major hormonal
drop off and it is postpartum depression. And yet we
are not prepared for this area. So I have two
friends on the podcast today, Dear dear, dear, dear personal
(01:36):
friends of mine who also know each other because we
were the same mommy and me class. And the first
of this dynamic trio is Alison Acle. She is Shonda
Land's Chief Content Officer of TV and film. Listen to
that title. She joined Sean Lannon two thousand of their teams.
She's developed a number of drama and comedy projects for ABC,
(01:58):
including the series How To Get Away with the Murder
Station nineteen. She is also the co executive producer for
Bridgton and Inventing Anna. On a personal level, like Ruben, saying,
she also had a postpartum depression while weaning. We've got
Emily Rogers, who is a former corporate attorney turned stay
at home mom of two highly opinionated, excellent, incredible girls,
(02:22):
the older of which is in nursery school with my son.
She has experienced postpartum depression after weaning with her older daughter, Evie.
She is currently weaning her younger daughter, Audrey. She's originally
from Vancouver, Canada, and she now lives in Los Angeles
with her husband, daughters, and her cat. Welcome to Katie's crib. Oh,
(02:44):
and Allison lives with her cat, right your okay, thank god? Okay,
I was the cat is here. The cats are year
my son. All he wants is a cat and a fish.
So I don't know, I think not, Yeah, that's not
(03:09):
a good duo, right, That's what I tell him. But
he doesn't really get it. He's just starting to understand that,
like when he eats beef or that's like like he's
asking weird questions. But anyway, let's get back to the
point of this podcast, which is I want to focus
on the period when you're breastfeeding and you're weaning off
of breastfeeding. And this is, like I said quickly in
the intro that for some reason, why the fucking hell
(03:31):
is nobody talking about this? Uh. Post weaning depression, according
to parents dot com, is a term used to describe
depression that can occur after a woman stops breastfeeding. Via
very Well Family dot com. Post weaning depression may occur
concurrently with postpartum depression, but it's a distinct experience. Most importantly,
(03:51):
post weaning depression is linked in time with the ending
of breastfeeding, whereas postpartum depression is linked with the birthing
of a baby. Okay, I'm going to shut up now, Allison.
Let's start with you. Yes, you breastfed your glorious son.
And when did you know? Baby? He is the greatest
(04:16):
king of all babies. I love him so much. When
did you know that it was time to wean? Well?
I don't think I did. I think this is why
this whole thing snuck up on me. And it's interesting
that it's it's called kind of post or weaning related
depression because it didn't manifest for me in any of
(04:36):
the ways that I classically understood what depression would look like.
So I feel like I was missing the signs. Shall
we say? For me? It was a raging dose of
anxiety is the best way, like a paralyzing dose of anxiety.
And what had happened was I'll take it. He's so
Walt is his name. He's a little bit Chris Farley,
a little bit Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's a giant baby.
(05:02):
Only the Chief Shanda Land Content Officer would nail her
son like you have described your son is to pitch
like I'm like that, Oh my gosh, you've nailed it. Okay, okay,
so Walt is he's a big dude. He's not like, uh,
(05:24):
a little little big no. And look he was a
little baby was born. There was a lot of drama
in the hospital of like he wasn't eating, and we
get that's a whole another side note of it. But
I was very lucky he took to breastfeeding, but it
was never enough for the sensatiable beast of a baby,
so you always we were always supplementing with formula, so
it wasn't it wasn't odd. Around two and a half months,
(05:45):
I started tiptoeing back into the Shawna Land waters that
I'd missed so dearly, and Walt started doing some very
part time daycare and over the next two and a
half months take him to about age five months. I
thought I was just gonna be able to you know,
we're work from home. It's a pandemic to I'll we're
just start you know. I got vaccines while I was breastfeeding,
and I was like, this is great. All I want
(06:05):
is for my son to have all the vaccines because
I thought that that's what the science was communicating and
this is hugely important. I'm going to do this as
long as I can, and I can pump from home,
but then I forgot that the other side of work
from home and COVID is eighteen meetings back to back, right,
So I was not pumping as much as I should.
And essentially, I think a little bit of like back
to work stress or pumping kind of scheduling issues turned
(06:27):
into my body starting to wean itself. So this is
a little different than I think, Like, well, my kids, one,
this feels about the right time. It was like my
body was cutting back. I was down to like at
best and making making like two to four ounces a day, right,
and I had a little bit of a stockpile, but
it was and I'm just hanging on for dear life.
So i am just nothing's coming out. But I'm like pumping,
(06:48):
I'm doing the tease, I'm taking the pills and doing
the whole all the lactation help. Right. Oh, this like
breaks my heart. I'm only interjecting because I have to say, like,
I've had a lot of friends whose bodies just slowly
stopped either slowly stopped producing or just fully stopped producing.
And it was so terrifying. All of those feelings we
(07:12):
talk about feeling like I'm failing. I can't. And I
think there's so much triggering for motherhood around the ability
to feed or not feed your baby and how much
or how little, and you use that to like directly
associate with your value and how well you're doing. And
I think in Allison's case, probably when you were back
to work, like you felt like, well, I can at
(07:33):
least give him this, And now that's like falling off.
I mean, oh my god, I can't even imagine in
the vaccine again, I'm thinking, I'm I'm thinking I'm shielding
him from COVID, right, like, Okay, this is this is
like the mission here, right, So he's got it in
my head, no science to support it. I'm just like,
if he gets a little bit every day, it's like
a little bit of a vaccine whatever I was telling myself.
(07:54):
And look, we're in the middle as we record this,
we're in the middle of this like gigantic, terrifying formula
short of and I can't talk about triggering and paralyzing.
I read those that news now and I'm like, I
don't know what I would have done. You know, seven
months ago, I have goose bumps all over my body.
Oh my god, it's awful, and I feel like kind
of no one cares. But that's a side note. But
but like people are not giving it its due of
(08:16):
how insane this is. But that's what that's what happened
with me, was like my body was just like we've
reached the end of a journey. I just wasn't ready
to let go, not even for anything truly, just this
kind of very utilitarian thing where I thought I was
still giving him COVID vaccine vietname, which is so weird.
I know, no it's not, it's really it's really important,
(08:38):
and it was really I I felt that way for sure.
I felt that way totally about my breast milk and
getting vaccinated and feeling like I was doing my part
in this pandemic to try to protect my unvaccinated baby.
Like that was definitely a huge, a huge, huge thing. Okay,
when did you start to realize that you were maybe
(09:00):
having disproportionate anxiety, that this wasn't um you were feeling
not your usual self, even though I mean, how could
you he had a baby five months earlier, but still right,
it's like, oh, I'm not I was not my zesta
usual self. For many reasons, but I think, look for me,
I've always lived my life with a bit of an
(09:22):
anxiety and worry. It's in producing. I think there's a
certain amount of help of it that helps you. Right.
I feel like Bill Hater. So many people have spoken
to like how creatively anxiety can be a help, right. Yes,
it had passed, allowing me to um, to put drive
in my heart or allow me to anticipate problems. I
think the day I will never forget was I was
(09:43):
on our couch in the living room trying to compose
an email about a note that was not easy to give,
which in UM you know, working with writers, this is
something you do all the time. Right that you figure
it out, you move past it. And my husband just
looked at me at one point t J and was like,
you've been writing that email for four hours. And I
realized I had been sat in the same spot, my
(10:04):
knee vibrating on my laptop, trying to write the same
unal for four hours. And I don't think I even
understood what was happening. And it was him finally being
like worried about it. I think maybe two and a
half weeks prior to that, we had done our first
trip with Walt to Palm Springs with one of my
best friends and her husband and there two and a
(10:24):
half year at the time, and I remember thinking it
was one of the I hadn't like properly planned a
place to pump um, so I, you know, we're all
sharing this house and also kind of working from there,
and I just all of a sudden remember this like
strange feeling in my stomach of like I don't feel
like I have much. This would be so much fun,
and it is, but I have this like sort of
(10:45):
damocles hanging over my head. I don't know what's wrong.
Something is freaking me out. And it kind of cast
Paul on the triple a little because I just I
remember walk up kind of sunburned for the first time,
and I maybe lost my mind. I was like, I've
ruined him and he'll never work out her And it
was such an outsized reaction and I could see it
a little bit. But as the next two and a
half weeks of my three week journey with this intense
(11:08):
anxiety and depression, now that I understand it, I don't
think I knew what was really coming and how bad
it would get because eventually, Yeah, by the time t
J caught me writing an email for four hours, I
had slowly stopped eating and slowly stopped sleeping. And it
was that was kind of like towards the end of
like finally recognizing like I have to do something really
(11:29):
drastic right now to like stop this and pull myself back.
Did you remember, aside from having just very disproportionate reactions
to like Walt having a really bad sunburn, or you
not being able to really a function Maybe you're really tired,
but like you were functioning at work and now all
of a sudden functioning is starting to be questionable. Do
(11:51):
you have any examples of like thoughts you were having
at the time. Oh my god, I'll never forget the
thought I had, which is I had remembered filling out
all of my pregnancy disability paperwork for when you file
with the State of California for your maternity leave and
all your benefits. You and I literally had this thought,
which is so wild now, but I was like, I
(12:12):
think I'm gonna have to file for disability. I think
I can't work ever again. Like it was that extreme
where I was like, oh, I guess this is it, right,
my brain is broken. And I think for you think
that postpartum depression is going to look a certain way. Fuck,
everyone I know thinks that they've broken, that they're broken,
and they're going to be insta like everyone well yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
(12:34):
yeah yeah. I was like, what else can I do?
I suppose, but it and it was such an intense
but I think that's the strange nature of this. It
was such an intense but casual thing. The other thing
that was happening is we were pulling out of Afghanistan. Um,
the US was leaving Afghanistan, and if you remember, it
was nothing but just intense footage at the airports of
(12:54):
like people hating their kids to soldiers being like, get
my baby at it. And I just remember that was
the other part is like, no humans should be spending
this much time scrolling through I don't know, Instagram reels
not even cool enough for TikTok alice an eagle. But
it was just like I think I sucked up my
algorithm for life. For life. My algorithm now is like
dead dark, get you a new name. We have to
(13:20):
get you a new Instagram and start over. Oh my god,
or be like how did I deal? With child asses
like bump bump bump, bom bomp op where they like
knock their heads in and I'm like their hands together.
I'm like, how did I get on this algorithm? I
think it's from the period I was waning, because I
think once the anxiety was rolling, I was just like, yeah,
(13:40):
I want to and did. There'd be those very traite
things of like your baby's only small for four years,
and then a little of that flooding could comes flooding
in of like the breastfeeding journeys ending for me, and
that's a big milestone. So I think the weird thing
about it was it would flip flop between intense and
same thought. I earned nothing saying that's terrible word, and
your fingering thought outsized reaction, right, it was like this intense,
(14:04):
outsized reaction that came to my brain in a very
casual manner, or it was sobbing for two hours at
videos of soldiers handing children or of civilians in Afghanistan
handing babies soldiers, and I'm like, this is not normal,
this is not usually my vibe um. And you know,
then there would be on top of that, like the
panic of like and now I've wasted all this time
(14:26):
that I need because my work brain is going so
slowly that I have to now that's now that times
God that I needed this like extra buffer. So it's
sort of a compounding effect, is the best way I
can think of it. My last question for you and
then I need I want to hear Emily story two
is I know you were not sleeping at all. Your
anxiety was reaching so bad that I know you also
(14:46):
started getting two and you weren't eating. I remember this
because when we spoke, I was like, funk, we need
to get to be secure. Word for it spoke when
I called you sobbing on a FaceTime on your vacation,
Poor Katie lows Man, just the absolute go to parent moment. Look,
(15:11):
I have been on that I have been on your
side of that place as well, where I have reached
out and needed a FaceTime and some of the darkest
ship I've ever seen. And I took one look at
your face, which is that classic for people who are
listening you, Um, you are not recognizable as the person
(15:33):
I know. It's so fucked And but the other funked
up thing is you know it will like being on
the other side of it as I was when you
called me. I was like, you will be okay, and
you will get through it, and you will feel like
yourself again and you will enjoy like it's all going
to be okay. But that does not seem possible right now.
(15:53):
Like that just does not a possibility right now. M
What did you do with the is three weeks to
kind of get through it? I mean I leaned on
t J so much, um and and also, look, I'm
lucky I work at a really supportive place with bosses
who have not like they haven't seen this before, right,
bosses who have had women I think, accustomed to being
(16:16):
type A professionals dealing with different challenges that come in
all shapes and sizes, with the idea of new motherhood. Right.
So it's like Shonda Betsy, all of my colleagues, my team,
Annie Marko Fwong, everyone was just like always there to
help and probably could tell something was like a little off.
I think I wound up realizing I'm masked better than
I thought I had. Honestly, like, I think what was
(16:37):
going on side my head was a lot worse than
what was presenting. So there'd be a little moments where
i'd let some pressure out where I would just say
to Betsy be like, look, Betsy, I don't know if
today's my best day. I think something's going on right
just so it's like okay, I can get it out
there for a moment. But I think there was just
this like power. I remember one meeting with a writer
of Zoom where I was I had a moment where
(16:58):
I was like, Okay, I'm outside of my body, watching
myself in this meeting. I'm not really here, but I
think it's going okay with that feeling. I know that feeling.
I know that feeling. Oh my god, We're like, oh interesting,
Allison's having a meeting. Oh crazy. I remember having this.
I remember when I was like, oh, I'm not functioning anymore.
(17:20):
When I had UM, I had to do a voice
one line pick up in Vivo and I I play
I don't even remember the character's name, but I had
a role that i'd done pre pandemic, pre baby, and
they needed me to do one pickup line. And I
sobbed to my friend Jackie saying, I don't think I
(17:40):
can work for five minutes, Like I'm in big fat trouble.
I don't know if I can pretend for five minutes
like nothing's going on, just to record one line that
was like wow, what you got there or some ship
like that, and I was like, I am never been
so scared the cuff right now? Yeah, okay, that's that's
(18:02):
you're the pro and that's why you're like, oh no,
you get to like a non functioning place is really scary. Yes,
But the thing that saved me was the after I
faced time with you and you let me sob I
knocked myself out with like a bend and drill right
because I slept, took the baby, the baby shifts that night,
and I never looked back to breastfeeding. It was over.
It was done. I barely had anything left. I remembered
(18:24):
your cabbage leaf advice from an earlier season one Kati's
crib o g But it was over. I was done,
And I remember it was the same weekend. I just
like slept, and then we had a weekend and Walt
started solids and I was like, goodbye breastfeeding, And by
Sunday night, I was myself again. And it was the
most bizarre experience and I feel very lucky that it
(18:45):
wasn't that it wasn't a longer drawn out experience, but
that was how instantaneous once I let go. And I
get why people sometimes don't advocate for this, because everyone's like, no,
we should breastfeed as long as again it's great, but like,
I just had to let it go and it was done,
it was over. I remember when we were face timing
and you were at your one of your lowest bottoming
(19:07):
out moments of and I was getting to you. I
know we had been texting and stuff like that, but
once you face time to me and you had been
going through three weeks to four weeks of no sleep,
anxiety attacks, not eating, stressing beyond all belief like, and
I remember just being like in my head, oh god,
I hope she just stops like it's not because at
(19:28):
some point what I always found interesting too. And then Emily,
I have to your story. But I always thought it
was really interesting when someone was like, whenever you decide
or your body decides that it's time, and and hopefully
you don't have this kind of reaction, you get this
opportunity where you have to find other ways to connect
to your child. Um, because I personally realized that I
(19:51):
spent so much time breastfeeding and sort of taking for
granted like that's my time with the baby, but I'm
really looking at my phone. Are you looking at Instagram
reels or like answering emails and ship like that, And
I'm not, And I'm just saying like, well, this is
my time with the baby, but like, is it really
And then I remember when I weaned. I'll be like, oh,
(20:15):
it's really important that I have other ways to calm him,
because I also used breastfeeding as like my way to like,
you know, make him feel comfort, make him feel this,
make it feel that, and so it's just like an
interesting thing for anyone listening, like it's I try to
reframe it in my mind as like the opportunity to
learn how to comfort and mother in like other ways. Anyway,
(20:38):
I will remember that FaceTime, and I honestly let it
be known, said I was so honored to be on
the other side of that call, and I I truly was.
I was so so so honored to be on the
other side of that call. And I really in my
heart was like, she needs sleep. Take whatever. Fucking Bena
Jules an X ambience. If you got on hand, you're
(21:01):
not taking care of the baby this weekend. Eat anything
and everything, please God, but you have to sleep. Emily
has to UM. Beautiful girls and very different. They're very different.
(21:26):
I'm thinking about that now. UM. And what's crazy about
me and Emily's journey is that we were pregnant with
both of our kids at the same time. It's just
sucking awesome. So I want to talk to you about
your experience with UM ev right now, because I know
you're in the midst of it with Audrey. I'm curious
how it's going because I'm still happening. But tell me
(21:47):
about your breastfeeding journey with Evie and when you knew,
similarly how we started with Alison, how you knew it
was time to wean for you. I had a very
interesting relationship breastfeeding UM. I was incredibly lucky. I had
more milk than I could possibly have used. And and
(22:11):
one of the interesting things that happened early on with
breastfeeding was I actually had my milk ducks and my
armpits all filled up, and I was I had like,
you know, dinosaur eggs sized like glands. Emily's face and
for everyone listening, I have love. I have given Emily
(22:33):
Rogers milk out to Like if we can say this,
I've given Emily Rodgers milk out to friends. That's how
much she has. Anyone who I ever get a text
from that's like I'm running low. I don't have or
is surrogate or da da da da. I'm like, just
call Emily. Just call Emily. She's feeding all of the
Los Angeles area. Okay, but yeah, And so I had
(22:58):
so much milk, But part of that was just my
relationship with it was always very different, interesting because it
had such an effect on my body. And I really
wish that I had known about postpartum from weaning, because
I was so clearly a candidate for it given how
much milk I had. I was also an endometrios as patient.
(23:22):
I mean I am an Endometrios's patient, and so my
hormone levels have always been insane. My goal for breastfeeding
Evy was I wanted to get to a year. That
was that was what I was trying to go for.
I obviously had the milk to do it. It wasn't
hard to get to a year. And then once I
got to a year, I said, you know what, I'm done,
And I just didn't think about it, and I started
(23:45):
dropping a feed a week because that's what some people
tell you to do. You just go drop a feed
a week. Now that I know about postpartum weaning, I
should have taken a lot longer to do it. I
should have let my body adjust over time to do it.
And that was just what I should have done. I
(24:06):
mean not to say that anybody else should have done that,
but I didn't. And at the same time, there were
all these things going on in our lives. Um My
husband had just quit his corporate job to go out
on his own, and Evie was I was. I didn't
know this at the time, but being with her as
(24:27):
a mother started feeling like a chore. I remember there
was one day that she had somehow there's like a
two part tuberculosis tests that they give kids at various stages,
and she had somehow failed the first skin test, and
I knew we hadn't done any traveling. We she did
not have tuberculosis. But they said, we want to give
(24:50):
her the blood test for tuberculosis. And I have this,
you know, I have a one year old and they're
telling me I need to do a blood draw and
they were going to send me to a quest lab,
like just some random quest lab. And I said, absolutely not,
I will go to the children's hospital and see no
lab where they you know, dropped. And I pitched a
fit in my pediatrician's office. And that afternoon, somehow, my well,
(25:14):
after I took my daughter to get her blood draw, crying, crying, crying,
you know, this one year old. And I'm sitting in
my car after and I'm crying, and I don't remember why.
I somehow got a call from my doctor, my regular
doctor that day. She must have been following up with
the test or something. And I just burst into tears
(25:34):
on the phone, you know, in the car with Evie
crying in the backseat, and and and I was telling
her all of the stuff that was going on, and
she said, you know what, honey, I think you've got
to crush it. And I'm really really lucky that I
had a primary care physician who could just point that
(25:58):
out to me so easily and with such care and such,
you know, just really understood who I was, what I
what I should have been like, and how I should
have handled all of these things. My husband likes to say,
I'm the best in a crisis, and so when all
of these things were happening to us and I wasn't
(26:19):
handling it well. I mean, my doctor knew that, and
she just said, you know what, like something's wrong, it's
not crazy insane, like I wasn't having crippling anxiety. I
wasn't having any of those things. It was so subtle,
but they figured it out. And my doctor was just
just said, I'm going to put you on a low
(26:41):
dose of Lexa pro. Let's see how it goes. And
I went on it. And a few weeks later, um
a dear friend of a mutual friend of ours, Mary O'Malley,
who's been on your podcast. I told Mary what was
going on in my life, and she said, I think
it's great that your doctor puts you on the US,
but let's get you some professional women's health like psychiatry.
(27:06):
And she put me in touch with her psychiatrist and
he I've been in treatment with him ever since. I've
never stopped. And he, I mean, he he changed my life.
He really did. And like I said, I didn't have
any of that crippling stuff, but you know, he he
got me on the right dosage afterwards, we you know,
and and he just he just really helped me figure
(27:29):
it out. And then it was the hindsight part of it,
and it's it's so frustrating that it took me getting
on medication to realize what was going on with me.
But I was looking back on things and thinking, oh
my gosh, I missed out on having fun with my
daughter for a while. I mean it was I don't
(27:50):
think I ever in my head thought of her as
a chore. But I realized after I came out of
that fog or whatever it was, that I I could
see that that's how I had been feeling. And then
I just started experiencing joy again being a mom. Mm hmm.
Did you have any postpartum depression right after the birth
(28:13):
or postpartum anxiety? Did you have that? See, that's the
fucking crazy ship. It's like we hopefully we're doing our
due diligence of like preparing people to look at it
in that first six week window, you know, but you're see,
I know people who they've gotten postpartum depression around the
(28:34):
time they've weaned, and that can be six months later
in Emily's cases, a year later. And you didn't have
it at all when you brought Evie home. From the hospital. Yeah,
And interestingly, I had been so prepared to have postpartum
depression from the birth, and we had you know, we
(28:56):
had people lined up to talk to you. I had
taken numbers from people. My Husben was, you know, kind
of told this is the things you need to look
out for. And I was cognizant of all that because
of my end though, and recognizing that I had all
of these hormonal things but never applied it to weaning.
And also I had somewhat of a traumatic birth. I
I broke my tailbone um in delivery. And so when
(29:21):
I had gone through all of that without experiencing postpartum depression,
in part because my husband, like he, like I said,
he says, I'm really good in a crisis, and so
I got when I got through all of that and
after having you know, broken my tailbone and breastfed through
it and all of that, and I was fine. I
it did not occur to me at all that I
(29:43):
could possibly have postpartum at any point. It's so funny
you say that, because honestly, like that is I think
that is the thing that stuck up on me too,
is that you have all of the meetings and all
of the pamphlets. And I did have a therapist through
my winning experience. I should have shouted that out too.
(30:03):
Oh that's yeah. I mean I wasn't in therapy. It
wasn't any of that. But never occurred to me that
it could happen with weaning, especially given the experience that
I had had. You know, it was just if I
was going to have depression, I was going to have
it after breaking my tailbone having a baby. Literally like
the baby, that can happen. But yeah, we should do
(30:27):
a whole another thing. They don't talk about another thing.
My god. I mean, I just think and what's crazy
for me? Um. In my personal experience weaning Albe, I
had the similar thing to Emily. I mean, I felt,
it's so interesting having a second baby because I just
(30:47):
I've I'm doing it so differently this time around, just
mothering in genter in general, where I'm having this conversation
with you. And when I was breastfeeding Albey, I was
so stressed all the time about how much, how little,
how many bottles. I can remember when he was coming
up on a year, I was out of my stock.
I was on Broadway. I was pumping every intermission I
(31:12):
was exhausted, um, my supply was heavily diminishing. Um, and
I was confused thinking I had to get him to
a certain point before I made him to cow's milk
and he had to have bottles. And it was so
fucking stressful and I was so miserable and measuring everything.
(31:34):
And I just say that to mean that now that
I'm doing this with Vera, I I never pump, I
never measure, I never care, I never know when I'm
going to breastfeeder. It's very like sort of like if
I'm at work, she doesn't get it. If I'm home,
she gets it. Like I have no idea what I'm making,
Like everything is just like whatever. And it's been really
a much more pleasurable experience. UM. I also think it's
(32:00):
lined up that I've had acting jobs this year that
are less grueling schedule, So I think that's also a huge,
huge part of this. Like if you're a working mom
and you're on a pump schedule, I mean I did
that with Albe and that's a crazy, crazy ride. Um.
But I had to wean, albeit at around a week
before a year because I when I was doing waitress
(32:22):
on Broadway, I got MERSA, which is a deadly staff infection,
and they called me and they said, I'm so sorry,
but we're gonna have to try a million different kind
of antibiotics so that this doesn't spread. And you just
had your last breastfeed, and I ugly cried and had
(32:44):
the opposite experience of you all, which was I ugly
cried and then felt such relief and finally felt like myself,
like I was done. I looked in the mirror two
weeks later and wait had fallen off for me that
just because my boobs were like flat, dehydrated socks now.
(33:04):
And I just had a different experience, which is funny
because I had postpartum depression after birth. All of this
to say, you don't know what you're gonna get, Listeners,
you don't know what you're gonna get. So it's Katie's
crib point to have all these different guests on to
make you aware and not make you scared, but just
make you aware that if either of these things should happen,
(33:26):
and all of the options in between, you are not alone,
and there are things that you can do to get
help and to feel better. There are some things you
can do to help minimize symptoms of depression around weaning,
(33:50):
which is weaning gradually Emily Rodgers, which takes me to
what are you doing for the Audrey situation? It's interesting,
you know, like best laid plans and all of that. Um.
I had talked to Dr Sparago, my psychiatrist. I had
talked to my therapist. I had talked to friends, I
(34:12):
talked to anybody that I could talk to about what
was your weaning plan? Like how did you do it?
And so? And I had come up with this elaborate,
you know, scheme where I was going to wean one
feed per month and that was it. And it's such
a lawyer like you do anything, like like I just
think you're so meticulous in all of this. I love it. Okay,
(34:34):
so you had this totally elaborate, detailed plan. And then
Audrey laughed at me, and so did Evie in fact,
because it was a combination of both of them. I
was still pumping at night right before I went to bed.
I dropped that first. That was easy. A few weeks later,
I said, okay, I'm gonna drop. I'm gonna drop a feed.
And in my head I had a plan that I
(34:55):
was going to drop her afternoon feed first, and I
don't remember at the time, I didn't why I had
insisted on it being the afternoon feed, because one morning
Audrey chopped down, like in her late morning feed, teeth
and all, just like took a bite and I was like, nope,
eleven am is done and we're dropping it today and
(35:16):
it's done. So then I dropped it. And then I
realized a week later why I hadn't why I had
wanted to drop the three o'clock feed first, because I
was taking my daughter to those ten day intensive swim
classes every single day at three thirty, and so I couldn't,
like I couldn't just nurse her. I had nanny's line,
(35:39):
you know, I had childcare lined up for when I
was taking her to swim class. There was going to
be a rush of me picking her up from school
and like so the whole thing. I ended up dropping
two feeds in two weeks. I was like, oh my god,
this is exactly the opposite plan. So all right, so
everything you've planned is not what's happening. Welcome shot. Yeah,
(36:00):
and so how do you feel? How do you feel?
I mean, you must feel okay, because you're on you
have the support and you're on medication, right, I have
the support. I'm on medication. I mean. The best thing
that happened to me was when my husband and Dr.
Sparago and I actually had an appointment together before while
(36:21):
we were deciding, you know, when to have our second baby.
And this was maybe five months before the pandemic hit,
and we were talking about should I go off the
antidepressants before I get pregnant again, YadA, YadA, YadA, and
we decided, and I made the decision. I was like,
you know what, I still need to be a good
mother to my older daughter, So I can't go into
(36:44):
postpartum depression again because I won't be able to mother properly.
And so and let's face it, your older one takes
so much more patience and the language and all of that.
That's so much more important that you need to kind
of be on for. And so I stayed on anti
depressants the entire time. And thank god, because then months
(37:08):
later we're in a fucking global pandemic and and everybody
went on them. Yeah, exactly, and so um, luckily I
actually upped my medication. UM after I gave birth to Audrey.
Um things just weren't feeling totally right. Everything was stressful
(37:30):
COVID I mean, you know, trying to protect your babies.
I mean, and Katie and I both went through very
stressful times of feeling like we couldn't protect our babies
from COVID, and obviously Alison you went through the same thing,
like the little bit of vaccine that I can get, Like,
so we were all in that frame of mind. Anyone
who's mothering, especially under five year olds during this pandemic,
(37:52):
or and we're pregnant during this pandemic. It it was
so intense. It was so scary, terrifying, and I was
the full coming in being like perfect timing. Wow, March
so much sorted getting my vaccines. Like I was just
mad that I missed being able to get it as
a pregnant lady. And pregnant lady, what do I say,
(38:13):
just as a lady. That's I thought I was coming
in And then it was like the oh Macron Christmas.
Then we all got COVID a month ago, just rolling
through the household. But it is well, I think I
can't even imagine the early days. Honestly, oh my god,
it was. I was pregnant the week before shutdown. I
was never forgot. I was like, we're, oh, yeah, it
(38:36):
was so awful. Um, Emily, you're feeling okay right now
even though your plan is not the plan. Yeah, I'm
feeling okay right now. I actually just dropped another feed,
so I'm down to one a day now, and um,
I'm feeling good. I mean, I'm I'm in treatment. I
(38:58):
talked to my psychiatry regularly, and there's so much of
motherhood that is letting go of your own control. And
I've learned that for the last several years. You think
I would remember when I'm making an elaborate plan for weaning,
that it's not going to go according to plan, and
that Audrey has her own ideas and she's basically weaned herself.
(39:21):
And in many ways, you know, she stopped, she stopped
um feeding every single feed. She The only one that
she's really attached to was the morning feed, and so
that's the one I've kept. And we'll see how much
further I go with that. Can I ask a queasy question,
(39:44):
a little bit of a woo uh do what ressault?
When the weaning happened? Did either of you ever just
have this instinctual thing of just like I don't know,
he seems upset, he's teething. It's a couple of months
since weaning. Should I throw this baby on the boob?
Did that ever? Strip? Because I almost did it a
few times where I was like, I don't know what
would happen. I didn't want to, like unleash the beast again,
(40:04):
but I was like, there would be these moments I'd
almost forget I wasn't doing it no matter how. Even
still there's moments where I'm like, and I sometimes forget
how it feels. Yeah, it's weird, Like I'll I remember
when I weaned out the like I was like, no,
we're not doing that right now, or like you don't,
like you said unleash the beast, like you don't want
(40:25):
to like open up that can of worms again and
confuse them like that, it might still be a possibility.
If it's not a possibility, but I do think, Alison,
I'm curious if I'm pretty sure that if a baby
started nursing on you regularly, you would start producing milk again?
Is that true? Am I You're out? I don't even know.
(40:46):
I mean, let's let's throw to our panel of down.
Does it only don't think so. And I can't believe
I'm bringing this up, but I read an article the
other day that when you stop breastfeeding, your boob basically
eats it self, so all of the stuff that your
breasts make in order to breastfeed, all that stuff is
(41:07):
like your boob eats it all up so that it's
no longer and that's why it goes to looking like
a dehydrated sock. And anyone, I don't know what that means.
It just works for me. But like I anyone I
know who had big boobs and hated them their whole life,
like loved their chest after they weaned because it was
(41:29):
just like they've never been like that kind of flat before. Um. Okay,
one of the additional things you've learned through post weening
depression that no one told you about that you wish
you had known all of it. I honestly, I just
like truly have never heard of it. I don't I
(41:51):
know this, And I read a lot of books, I've
crept a lot. I had a top o b G
y n um apparently, by the way, I don't know
if you all knew this, but and I was panicking
and didn't know if just stopping would stop it. When
I called and she didn't get back to me about it,
she said, oh, yeah, I already told the guy that
like the Kenemine therapy clinic that you'd be calling. And
(42:11):
I had no idea that kenemine therapy is now one
of the treatments for postpartum I was like, special k man.
I just rolled up. You know, yeah, kenemine would be
special k um. People are doing small, small doses of
that actually for postpartum depression. And they're also doing micro
(42:36):
dosing mushrooms. Guys. People are just getting into it. People,
let's open up our brains. But yeah, I really couldn't
believe no one it's anything. And I have an amazing
WhatsApp group that is shout out Montown. It's just like
sixty women in the business who've had kids over the
last year and sharing very openly with each other. And
I remember when it was a smaller group. I did
(42:56):
just put it out there. Finally, guys, I don't know
what I just lived through. And all of them said
that they'd only seen one Cosmo article. And that article actually,
and I can't remember the name of it now, but
it was like, why did no one tell me this
would happen from like five years ago? And um it
was it described perfectly the moment I had in palm
Springs of just like sitting there and suddenly this deep
(43:17):
sadness just opening up over you. But it's not. No
one talks about it. Emily, I don't know if you
had heard of it. I just didn't know what was happening.
I literally didn't know it existed. And I want this
is the conspiracy theorist to me, I'm like, do they
not tell us because they want to us breastfeed? And
they're so, But I'm like, there's a little of that,
right there is a little bit of like, you know,
(43:39):
you hope for the best and know that if there's
a problem, of course, and we'll come talk to you
about it. But I almost would have It's not like
it would have changed my drive to breastfeed. Had I
known about this, I just would have been like, got it.
I know now to look for the signals of that.
Oh yeah, you could get postpartum depression from having a baby,
and it doesn't stop having a baby, you know, or
I mean it doesn't really equally equate, but how but
(44:00):
I think. I think I personally still would have been like,
we're going for it. At least when it hits, i'll
know what it is. I can dive into action, will
get that to do list going. But it was best
to do find out why I think I need disability,
go on disability. At this moment, you're the absolute fucking
(44:21):
bes I'm obsessed with you. Okay, Emily, what about you?
What are some additional things you learned through post meaning
depression that no one told you about that you wish
you'd known. Actually, when I found out that I was
doing this podcast, I asked my psychiatrist. I said, if
you could tell women, Yeah, if you could tell women
about postpartum and weaning, like, what would you say? And
(44:43):
he said, I want women to understand that even though
we think that breastfeeding is controlled by the breast, it's
actually controlled by the brain. It's all neurotransmitters and hormones.
Are you know, I'm going to botch them medicine, But
it's the neurotransmitters in your brain that control whether or
(45:04):
not you breastfeed. It's up to your brain. And so
I think when you think of breastfeeding as a mental
function rather than a physical function. It really opens your
mind to the idea that it will. Of course, you
can get depression from it. I mean, you're you're basically
stopping these neurotransmitters from producing prolactin and you know, oxytocin
(45:30):
and all of these things that give us the euphoria
of breastfeeding. It's also the waves, which is something that's
really hard for some women to shake. It's like when
you have a letdown producing milk and you get serotonin
flooding your brain because you love your baby, which is
why milk is happening. Then it dries out and then
it that's all gone. It's like very Some women like
(45:53):
literally get headaches every time they get a let down.
Thank you to doctor, your doctor for telling us that bit.
I'm like, doctors, Okay, if a mom is suspecting she
has post weeding depression, what questions can she ask herself
to confirm? For me, it's always about functioning. Have you
lost function? Like I'm always like, but I but you
(46:15):
know what in Emily's case, it's different than that. For me,
it was like I couldn't even return a text. Allison
took four hours to write an email. She could have
written for Emily. It was that, which I also think
is a great tell you've lost the joy in doing
these things, like there's just a real And I had
that too, which was just I no longer felt joyous
(46:40):
taking care of my children at all. I mean I
not everybody has a partner when they have a baby,
but I did, and my husband and I I found
that the second time around, at least, when I had Audrey,
I checked in with him a lot. I was like,
how do you think I'm doing? And I think that
that question is just so important because with me, at least,
(47:04):
it was so such a gradual process to getting to
where I was depressed that if he weren't paying attention,
I don't think he would have even really noticed, because
it's just you get lost in your own I mean,
he was super busy. I was super busy. We had
the kid, you know. But when I made a point
of asking him after I had the baby, probably like
(47:26):
once every two weeks, I just asked him, I said,
how am I doing? How do you think I'm doing?
Especially since I think a lot of times after you
have a baby, or when you're whatever it is that's
going on, I think a lot of husbands don't want
to say to their wives like you're you're not being
normal or whatever it is like that, but they don't
want to call attention to the fact because they don't
(47:48):
want to kiss you off and there's all of the
stuff going on, and they want to be understanding and
sort of like give you more leeway to have the
emotional experience that you're having. But it's it's a it's
a difficult balance to try and figure out. And the
best person who knows you, like, the person who knows
you best is your is your partner. And he was
able to say to me, you know at certain times
(48:08):
he's like no, I at least after all he was like,
I think something's going on. I think you should talk
to your doctor. I think you should tell him these things.
Can I jump on the call with you with your doctor?
Can we all talk about it together? Um, which I
was really lucky, Like my Jamie has been on calls
with me and my my psychiatrist. He's the ship. You
(48:31):
both have such wonderful partners. Oh my god, that's amen
for that. I mean truly again, like exactly, like if
I try to think about the thing about questions, you
can ask yourself. Here's one of you. Would ask me, Katie,
what coping mechanisms did you use? And I was like, none,
it was terrible. I stop dating it. I did for
a while still try to go back to things that
(48:51):
used to work. So meditation was a huge one. Um.
I would get nervous about sending you know, cut notes
or whatever it is, and before I would say down
to do it, I would go meditate and I would
just it didn't work. Like it was not unlocking any calm.
I was vibrating and thinking through the whole. It wasn't
just like come back to your practice, cycle back, No,
it was it was not working. And going on walks
(49:15):
like t J would force me to leave the house
sometime around five pm every day. That used to be
so calming to me in a early pandemic days and
did nothing for me. I would come back just as so.
I think that's a good test, is like, are those
things that usually calm me down, bring you back focus
you do they still work? And if if they're not working,
(49:36):
there might be something more aggressive happening even if you
do them inconsistently. That's that's the other thing that really
helped me understand something goes wrong. I had the same thing.
I remember hanging onto this like meditation app on my
phone and like trying to play it to like go
to sleep and just being like I am spinning the
funk out. I cannot do this. And then I remember
(49:59):
going on Fai only walks for at sunset at five
o'clock and just being so sad and like so feeling
out of body, feeling like I was watching myself like, oh,
you should be enjoying this, like you're going on a
walk with your baby strap to you and your toddler
and your husband, and I'm a shell, like a shell,
(50:19):
like I I why I'm not in the experience like
at all. It reminds me of something that I heard
in my childbirth class about you know, whether or not
you should get an epidural. Tally A Moore taught my
childbirth class, and she had said, you know, it's supposed
to be painful, but you're not supposed to suffer. And
I think that that's like a very good way of
(50:40):
the parton too. It's supposed like just supposed to be hard,
but you're not supposed to suffer, and it's not supposed
to be so hard that it feels debilitating, or that
it affects the way that you go about your life,
or you have no joyless with your child. No, but
suffering is a different suffering. Suffering is different things. Analogy,
(51:01):
but it's no, hard is different than suffering. Hard can
be okay, you know, but suffering is a different thing. Um.
What would you recommend to women who are going through
or who suspect they have post weaning depression. One of
the best things I could recommend to is, like, I
(51:23):
didn't have a general practitioner before I gave birth. It
was just all on my OB G A N. She
was my everything, her and her and my amazing rheumatologist
for with my cool young people arthritists that I have
middle aged people now. Um, but I wish I'd had
a GP in place before I gave birth because I
didn't have a psychiatrist right so I didn't. I just
(51:45):
had my my talk therapist and my O B G N.
And I wish i'd had somebody I could have gone
to in this very kind of like distinct way from
both of those experiences to do an assessment at the
early stages of it, just to be like, my, okay,
what's happening and they could have then like guided the
rest of that experience, because I think I had some
(52:07):
like I just don't I think that would have allowed
me the freedom to maybe even I know this sounds weird,
say things I wouldn't have maybe said to my b G,
I N and my therapist about physically like what was happening,
because I think I was a little nervous to admit
I wasn't sleeping and eating and I was also like
doing a high octane job and caring for a baby,
and I feel like just a Mr g P. I
(52:27):
just signed up with miss GPS. I don't have a
GP either, Like what the hell? And this is not
as helpful for new moms, but like, as you're getting ready,
have a have a person who's just like this separate entity,
I think, and then can and they can be like, hey,
I want you to see a psychiatrist right but in
this and kind of have a speed and an ease
(52:48):
of care with that person. Because that was one of
the things when somebody casually mentioned it to me in
the midst of the weaning of like we'll get a
GP and they can like see you and then they
can get you a prescription, and I was like, a
g you want me to find a GP in Los
Angeles and I just seem like they've asked me to
go to the moon. I was like, are you kidding there?
(53:10):
So that was the one thing I really wish someone
had told me at a time. That's great. And your
GP is the one who told you Emily right, Yeah,
she's the one who fish interesting. Interesting. And what would
you say to that question? I would say, talk to
the people in your community. Talk to them, Talk to
(53:32):
your mom, friends, talk to or if you know you're
the first person of your friends to have kids, go
find you know, your sister's cousins, mother's neighbor's daughter, you
know Whoever, because the moment I started talking to people
about my postpartum depression, you discover that everybody you know
as postpartum depression or depression of some sort. Everybody's medicated,
(53:55):
everybody's got it off, like seriously, like everybody has a talk.
So yeah, you'll find referrals within your community, people that
you trust, and just give them a call and talk
to them. I love it. And last question that we
always ask parenthood is parenthood should be a choice. Right
(54:21):
up now, perfectly said, uh, perfectly said, parent parenthood is extremes.
I think it's the best way I can think about it.
Extreme lows and eyes at least in this all my
limited experience of fourteen months of it. But hats not
(54:42):
limited because you were you were pregnant for a year
before that, and you were trying for longer before that.
I mean, this has been a fucking journey so and
it's been extreme, and it's it's not a bad thing
that it's extreme. It's a it is like none if
there's power, and knowing it's extremes. Yeah, I'm so appreciative
(55:06):
of you both coming on to Katie's crib and sharing
your personal experiences. I think it will be so helpful.
I think hopefully we can add to the great canon
of the Cosmopolitan article depression around Me, around weaning to
hopefully make women more aware information is power and let
(55:30):
them know that they're not alone and that this is
fucking common. I freaking love you both. I love your children,
I love your partners, I love your faces, everything about
you now everyone knows why I FaceTime do you crying now? No,
right back at you, And so so endlessly grateful to
(55:51):
be invited to be a part of this conversation and
I do hope it, I do help, it helps people.
Um and Emily helped me hearing your story, which could
not have been more different from my own but still
loves me feel connected. Yeah, definitely, thank you so much.
Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
(56:14):
I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Let me know. You can always find me at Katie's
Crib at Shonda land dot com. Katie's Crib is a
production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(56:36):
favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.