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Date: 7/13/2023
WILBRAHAM — Jessica Petit, is a Wilbraham resident and licensed mental health clinician who specializes in perinatal mental health — mental health related to pregnancy and the period after giving birth, known as postpartum. She is also a mother who has personal experience with the same mental health struggles for which she treats clients. She wanted people in similar situations to know they are not alone, so she put together a book of their stories, “A Woman’s Journey: Postpartum Healing.”
Petit said there is still a stigma surrounding maternal mental health. “People ask about how the woman is doing physically or about the baby, but they don’t ask how the person is doing [emotionally]. There’s an idea that you’re supposed to be glowing during pregnancy, and it’s just not like that” for some people.
Petit experienced a period of postpartum depression after giving birth to her now-6-year-old child. Then, three years ago, she experienced a miscarriage, which left her with postpartum posttraumatic stress disorder. When she because pregnant with her youngest child, she began to have perinatal anxiety.
Part of Petit’s healing process was writing about her experience, a practice in which she had engaged her clients in the past. Considering the wide variety of mental health conditions that can develop during the highly transitional perinatal phase of life, she felt people could benefit from hearing other people’s stories. In January 2022, Petit decided to put out a call for people to share what they had been through so she could then put together in an anthology.
“I didn’t know how many people had a story to tell. It was incredible,” Petit said. The number of people who wanted to share their experience “literally brought tears to my eyes.” She gave the people who had reached out to her “as long as they needed” to tell their stories, because it can be retraumatizing, she said.
She chose 15 of the stories people submitted to her to include in the anthology. While she knew the book would have a narrow audience, Petit said she wanted to include a variety of perinatal experiences, from fertility issues and miscarriage to identity as new parents. There are also a host of postpartum conditions. “It’s not just depression,” she said. In the postpartum period people can go through depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, psychosis and other related conditions.
According to TheBlueDotProject, an organization that raises awareness of maternal mental health conditions, up to twenty percent 20% of women experience clinical depression during and/or after pregnancy and up to 15% of women will develop anxiety during pregnancy or after childbirth. Between 3-5% of people experience perinatal obsessive compulsive disorder. The rate of postpartum posttraumatic stress disorder is 3.1%. Most often, this illness is caused by a real or perceived trauma during delivery or the postpartum period. Stillbirth affects about 1 in 175 births annually and one in four women experience pregnancy loss.
“I wanted women to read this and for it to resonate with them,” Petit said. She said she wanted the book to provide validation that “whatever they’re going through is real and there are people out there who have been through it.”
Mental Health conditions often present during pregnancy and in the months afterward because pregnancy causes dramatic fluctuations in hormone levels. It the individual is predisposed to mental health conditions or there is some trauma connected to the pregnancy, Petit said they may be more likely to develop perinatal mental health conditions. A lack of support from family or a partner can also be contributing factors.
“A Woman’s Journey: Postpartum Healing” was published on Maternal Mental Health Day, May 3. Since then, she said people have been “coming out and spewing their stories, like the book gave them permission to their stories.”
All profits from the book will be donated to Empty Arms Bereavement Support, a group that provide support to people who are experiencing perinatal trauma and training in trauma-focused care for those individuals.
Petit will be signing copies of her book at The Grati Shop, 2440 Boston Rd., Ste. C, Wilbraham on Saturday, July 15, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. “A Woman’s Journey: Postpartum Healing” is available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/bXUp5G5.