Click this link to read a powerful story from a woman who shares her experience with postpartum psychosis in The Guardian, a leading newspaper in the United Kingdom. (Alert: she goes into some detail about what happened to her, so if you are in a fragile state it would be better to skip over this one.) I like this because it is a well done account of how her symptoms — delusions, religiosity, paranoia — became worse and worse over the first few weeks and months postpartum, as well as of the efforts to treat her.
In general, the symptoms of postpartum psychosis are seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, having difficulty sleeping, feeling manic, having difficulty communicating and more. If you aren’t experiencing hallucinations or delusions, you likely having a different type of perinatal mood or anxiety disorder, such as postpartum depression or postpartum OCD.
For more on this topic, see the following other posts from Postpartum Progress:
The Symptoms of Postpartum Psychosis (In Plain Mama English)
Postpartum Psychosis Higher in First-Time Mothers
Naked on the Side of the Road: One Mother’s Story of Postpartum Psychosis
