Postpartum University® Podcast

The Urgent Reality of Postpartum Psychosis | Aaisha Alvi EP 217

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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Think postpartum psychosis is just a scary headline? Think again. This powerful episode pulls back the curtain on a condition too often misunderstood and dangerously dismissed. Join us as we listen to Aaisha Alvi, a postpartum psychosis awareness advocate and survivor, whose raw and compelling story will challenge everything you thought you knew. As postpartum providers and professionals, you'll gain invaluable insight into the lived experience of this psychiatric emergency, the critical warning signs, and the potentially life-saving actions you can take. This isn't just theoretical knowledge; it's essential postpartum education that could directly impact the lives of your clients and their families.

Check out this episode on the blog HERE. 

Key Time Stamps: 

  • 01:17: Meeting Aaisha Alvi & the urgent need for PPP awareness.
  • 02:24: Aaisha's progression from PPD/PPA to psychosis after birth.
  • 05:13: The onset of terrifying delusions & altered reality.
  • 06:38 & 09:29: Repeated dismissal by doctors despite clear distress.
  • 08:21: PPP after miscarriage: highlighting broader risk factors.
  • 17:07: Hallucinations & delusions: the critical diagnostic markers.
  • 18:07: PPP as a psychiatric emergency with suicide/infanticide risks.
  • 23:34: The heartbreaking impact of dismissed pleas for help.
  • 25:16: Aaisha's healing journey: medication, therapy, self-education.
  • 21:52: The critical importance of truly listening to mothers.
  • 15:18: Challenging the "rare" label & advocating for better care.
  • 28:35: Hope for improved provider awareness & life-saving interventions.


Connect with Aaisha

Aaisha Alvi is a postpartum psychosis awareness advocate and writer. Her book, A Mom Like That: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis was recently released. You can follow her awareness efforts below.

Website | IG |

Read the first 5 chapters of Aaisha's Book: A Mom Like That: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis ---> https://books.google.ca/books?id=kd_eEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT12&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1&redir_esc=y

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Speaker 1:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Bauer and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks, so that you can give your clients real, lasting solutions for lifelong well-being. Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. Miranda Bauer here, postpartum University, and we have a very special guest, aisha Alvi. She is a postpartum psychosis awareness advocate and writer. She has a new book, a Mom Like that. It's a memoir for postpartum psychosis, and it was recently released. I highly recommend taking a look at that. You can follow her awareness efforts at Ayesha Alvey writes and I'll have that in the show notes for you.

Speaker 1:

But this is such a profound and beautiful conversation, but I will tell you right away a little bit of a trigger warning, because we are going to get into Aisha's experience with psychosis.

Speaker 1:

She is a mother who's experienced this herself and has lived through something most providers only read about in textbooks.

Speaker 1:

Aisha, I want to give you a big, big welcome and thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for sharing your story and your journey here, which is so beautiful and so profound in terms of, like, getting this out into the world and sharing this, because it is not an easy thing to do this out into the world and sharing this because it is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of guts and will and just everything in between to be able to share your story and what you have been through. And I'd love to open up not only with a welcome but also to ask what did you most need from your care team that maybe you didn't receive? Maybe you can share a little bit more of your story because, again, this is something that most people only read about or hear about on the news and I'd really love to help providers kind of reflect on the real humanness and the impact of how care is delivered.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and thank you so much for the warm welcome, miranda, and I really appreciate you allowing me to be here, because without platforms like yours, the awareness wouldn't be able to even get out, like I mean, I could be willing to share my story, but if there weren't platforms like yours out there, it wouldn't get anywhere. So I really, really want to thank you for that, this opportunity, and I think you began in a really good way in terms of, like, what did I need from providers? And I think that that will become very clear when I retell some of my story. So I think I think I'll start with a little bit of my story, if that's okay, and then that will come right to what I would have wanted from providers. So, to begin, I just wanted to point out that I did have experienced postpartum psychosis twice, one after the birth of my daughter and the second time was after a miscarriage at like 14 weeks. So I never had any mental health issues prior to postpartum, to experiencing postpartum. I you know I was probably the type of kid that was like a little bit on the worried side, but I never had like nothing that ever restricted my life in any way. So I was pretty much, like you know, no previous mental health issues or anything. I was a very healthy kid, adolescent and adult. And then I got pregnant, which was something that I was really looking forward to. I really wanted to have my child and my pregnancy was relatively, you know, uneventful it was. I enjoyed being pregnant, it was. I was very much looking forward to having my baby.

Speaker 2:

And really soon after I gave birth I started to feel depressed and super anxious and I kind of didn't really think much of it, because you know, we always hear about the baby blues and stuff like that. So nobody in my family was too concerned and I myself wasn't that concerned because I knew about the baby blues. But then, you know, like the depression was getting a little like more severe and like I was feeling like really like always weepy and I started to have like super anxious thoughts about, like you know, is my baby getting enough to drink, and just like worries that I was kind of becoming obsessive about. And then, pretty soon after that, I started to experience intrusive thoughts, like I started having thoughts about my baby drowning or like my baby's head like being, you know, like smashed and I didn't know it at the time because they were extremely frightening to experience these intrusive thoughts. But they're actually very common symptoms and about 90% of moms in the postpartum period and a lot of fathers to experience intrusive thoughts. So I started having some of that.

Speaker 2:

But then very soon after that like I mean, a few days after the intrusive thoughts started I started believing some really strange things. Like I started thinking that my family would start to act on the intrusive thoughts in my head. So I didn't think that they were having the thoughts. I thought they were in my head but I thought that they would act on them and that was a pretty strange kind of thought. And then, you know, I started to slowly, things started to evolve more and I started to think that my baby wasn't really a baby. And I started to think that my baby wasn't really a baby and I started to think that maybe she was like a grown adult that was pretending to be a baby. And then at one point I started to think that my husband had plans to molest my daughter.

Speaker 2:

And even though I had these strange beliefs which are actually called delusions, I didn't know they were called that, but strange beliefs are called delusions and, like strange beliefs which are actually called delusions. I didn't know they were called that, but strange beliefs are called delusions and like strange beliefs that have no evidence to substantiate it, they're called delusions. And so I have these strange beliefs but I didn't realize that something was wrong about the beliefs that I was having and I wasn't sharing them with anybody in my family. But my family did notice that, that that there was something off about me in terms of like the way I was behaving and stuff, because you know, I didn't really look like I wanted to share my baby with them, of like attacked him and started punching him in the head randomly.

Speaker 2:

So my family was like there's something not right about me and they took me to the doctor, like I would say, maybe like two or three times. They took me in and you know, I told them that I wasn't feeling like myself and stuff like that, but I was never diagnosed with anything. This was over 20 years ago, this the first time I had it and I was never diagnosed. And then one day, about four months later, I just spontaneously woke up and I was like, wow, why did I believe all those really bizarre things about my family and about my baby? And it just suddenly got better and I didn't believe those things anymore. This is my kind of sound a little strange, miranda.

Speaker 1:

You know what I it's not a story that we hear often, but it's a story that we hear, yeah, and and I am all for like sharing this story and your experience and again I thank you so much for doing so like what a crazy story, right. Like wow, like I was listening in, like holding on to my chair what's happening next. But and it's interesting because you're you're sharing your experience you, you went to get help or your family went to go get you help and you know, I had my oldest is almost 16 years old and I feel like the help that we had so many years ago is like very different than the help that we have now. Like we have so many more options. I don't know if you feel that, but I know that you have another story as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Miscarriage, yeah. So if you thought that part was crazy, like it just got even worse the second time. So what happened is that? Like, even though I didn't get help the first time, you know, I spontaneously got better four months later and like I was kind of like wondering, why did I think those things? And but because of that experience, I was really really scared of having another child, even though I wanted that experience. I was really really scared of having another child, even though I wanted another child. I was really scared because I didn't understand what what that whole four months had been about. Like I remembered the things that I thought, but I didn't know why that happened to me.

Speaker 2:

But you know, like when my daughter turned like like four or five years old, I I started, like you know, having baby fever and I was like, oh, everybody else had baby, had their second baby, so I really wanted to have another child and so I got pregnant and then, close to four months, at like 14 weeks, I miscarried and within days of miscarrying, within days of my body releasing my baby, I started feeling depressed and anxious again. But this time I personally recognized like I was like, hey, this feels exactly like how I felt after I had, you know, my daughter and I was like, okay, this is like feels exactly like that. I've never felt like this outside of that time. So I was like there's something wrong with me and so I went right away to try to get help and I explained to the there's something wrong with me. And so I went right away to try to get help and I explained to the doctor as best as I could that I didn't feel like myself and even though I had more insight into my symptoms and I this time I seriously thought something was wrong, rather than my family thinking that something was wrong I got dismissed by doctors. I got dismissed by five different doctors, like family physician, the doctor that had delivered my baby, psychologist.

Speaker 2:

Like I tried all a gamut of different doctors and I literally kept getting dismissed and so my symptoms kept escalating and I again began to think strange things. Like I had this thought that maybe my daughter needed to die so that she could go to heaven and I didn't want her to die. It was like this thought, the saying that she needs to die, and I was like so freaked out by it. But like, when that happened, I went to the doctor and I was like I'm having really bizarre thoughts that are frightening me and I want it to stop, kind of thing. And I got dismissed You're fine.

Speaker 2:

And then my family started also noticing that I was behaving super bizarrely in response to these symptoms, and so they continued to take me to doctors and my symptoms kept escalating to the point that, rather than it just being limited to delusions which was like thinking false things I started this time hearing voices and seeing things. I heard command hallucinations that demanded that I stab my daughter. They demanded that I harm other people. And again I tried to go to the doctor and I told them literally I am hearing voices that are telling me to do things and they're frightening me. There I feel like harming people and I don't want to harm people. Please can you hospitalize me. And they sent me home. They literally sent me home, home. So eventually I saw a sixth doctor that was a perinatal psychiatrist, and then she is the one that ended up diagnosing me with postpartum psychosis, and she retroactively diagnosed me with having had postpartum psychosis that first time as well.

Speaker 2:

But like the first time, my postpartum psychosis lasted four months and I fortunately spontaneously recovered. But the second time, when it was worse, like with those command hallucinations, like demanding and literally like forcing me to harm my daughter and other people as well, like I was forced to suffer with those symptoms for like one and a half months, even though I kept begging doctors to help me, help me, and like that whole experience is like. Like the fact that, like I suffered for so long, I nearly lost my life and my child's life because of this illness and because of the ignorance surrounding this condition, is what made me like really want to become an advocate and raise awareness of postpartum psychosis. Because the reality is that you know, like there's so much ignorance about this condition and what I would have wanted doctors that I went to to know is know that this illness exists. You know, frankly, know that it exists so that you can help somebody that's seeking help.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think right now, most of our education for postpartum psychosis revolves solely on what we hear on the news. And that's really frightening, right, because I think we're not given the information that we need. But the reality of it is that there's hardly any information out there when you start looking at the studies and I've talked to a lot of clinical psychologists and people who are in the field of mental health and it's like this is new, we haven't studied this before and we're having a hard time differentiating between, you know, other postpartum illnesses and mental health versus what psychosis is, and where do we draw the line? And so we don't even know that clinically yet. We're still learning about it.

Speaker 1:

So it's so incredibly important that you're sharing this story and I'd love to know, like I hear this so often mothers who are terrified of postpartum psychosis, especially after something that we hear in the news, right, something that's very newsworthy, very scary, very horrific Right pops up and it's like, oh, she had postpartum psychosis and she tried to get the help but she didn't, and she was having these feelings, and then there's a lot of misconceptions about okay, what, what if I have that, you know? And and really, what they're experiencing is depression and anxiety right? How do we differentiate between what are these typical things that we normally see depression and anxiety versus something that is a lot more rare but still happens, as in postpartum psychosis?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that's such a good question, because apparently that was a problem that the doctors that I kept going to were having. So one of the things like this is just like my pet peeve. I don't actually like the word rare to describe postpartum psychosis, and I'll just mention that briefly, because when we say that postpartum psychosis is rare, I guess we're trying to state the fact that it doesn't happen as often as postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. Correct, miranda? Yes, you got it. Yeah, but and but what? What the statistics actually are surrounding these conditions is that postpartum depression is a very common complication. It's actually the number one complication of childbirth One in five births, right, and a condition like postpartum psychosis is less common, and it occurs in one to two out of 1,000 live births. That statistic, though, doesn't account for the fact that it can also happen after miscarriage, stillbirth and pregnancy termination, so we still don't have an accurate statistic for that. But that being the case, the reason I'm averse to calling it rare is because it actually happens at the same incidence as Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, which we never refer to as rare, and so I think that when we call it rare, like it kind of signals to healthcare providers in particular, that they don't really need to be on top of this because they're hardly going to see it in clinic. And that, I feel, was the problem with why the healthcare providers couldn't understand and process that what they were seeing before them was a case of postpartum psychosis, because they're like, oh my God, we'll never see that Right.

Speaker 2:

And the reality of the situation is you, what differentiates postpartum depression from postpartum psychosis, which is so important? Because the reality is that a lot of people with postpartum psychosis will also experience a lot of symptoms of other PMADS perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, like postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety and postpartum OCD. So they will likely experience depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, intrusive thoughts, and I think I mentioned that in my story. I was depressed, I was having anxious thoughts, I was having intrusive thoughts. They will also experience insomnia and stuff. But what the hallmark symptoms of postpartum psychosis are that tell you this is postpartum psychosis and not postpartum depression is if a person is hallucinating and or delusional. If they have either of those two symptoms, it is not postpartum depression, it is not postpartum anxiety, it is not postpartum OCD.

Speaker 2:

They have postpartum psychosis, which is a psychiatric emergency. There's very few psychiatric disorders that are considered life-threatening emergencies and postpartum psychosis is one of them. So like for me to be going into the doctors and telling them I'm hearing voices, I'm feeling like something is like forcing me to harm people and for them to be like you know, this probably has postpartum depression, like that's shocking. It really speaks to the fact of how ignorant people are of this condition. Because, like when I, when I saw my perinatal psychiatrist and she was like you were telling the doctors everything like it's not, like you're hiding any of your symptoms from them, and still they couldn't recognize it for what it was right. And that's like the most important thing that providers should know about. They should be able to recognize what the hallmark symptoms of postpartum psychosis are, because if somebody comes in complaining of experiencing those symptoms, they need to be directed to an emergency room right away because there is a very, very real risk of suicide and infanticide. The rates are 5% suicide rate and 4% infanticide rate and risk.

Speaker 2:

So does that kind of? Oh, should I define what hallucinations and delusions are? You sure can? Yeah, so hallucinations are? People usually think it just means seeing and hearing things, but it actually is not limited to seeing and hearing things. It's seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling things that are not actually there. So, like in my postpartum psychosis, I saw things, I heard voices, I smelled smells that were not there. I felt things happening to me, like things on my body, and happening to me that weren't actually happening and that you know. Other people were like why is she, like you know, moving in that manner? I felt like I was being pushed, I felt like I was being pulled and I was reacting in that way. So hallucinations can be, can take different forms. They don't just involve visual and auditory. They can be olfactory and tactile. So they're all about things experiencing. Those kinds of sensations in the absence of external stimuli.

Speaker 2:

And delusions are when a person has a fixed belief that can't possibly be true, but the person still believes it, even when you present evidence to the contrary. Like believing you're like the Queen of England, when, like you know, you're not, like there's no evidence to that fact, but you still believe it and you very viscerally believe it. So, like I was believing that my husband was going to molest my daughter. I had no like evidence of it, but it was like internally I was like, yeah, this is for sure going to happen. I thought my family could read and would act on the thoughts in my mind. That's not possible for somebody else to act on somebody else's thoughts that are internal to their mind. But if you told me that was impossible, I wouldn't have believed you, because that was how strong the delusion was.

Speaker 1:

You are absolutely blowing my mind right now. First off, I want to say that, first and foremost, I will never call postpartum psychosis rare again, because you are a thousand percent right and just incredibly brave for sharing your story and I'm just, I'm awestruck by you right now. I'm literally sitting on the seat, like the edge of my seat right now, like listening into this, and I would love to know, like what you would, what do you say to providers who are listening in, who may encounter a mother with early warning signs of postpartum psychosis, or maybe in the thro of it, like what do they do, what do they not do?

Speaker 2:

Well, I would say, listen, like completely listen to what this person is saying, hear them out. Don't not try to like place them into like a like you know, one of those square peg things like when you're trying to fit something in. Because I really felt like the doctors that I saw cause they, they were my GP from like you know, since I was in my 20s, so they knew me fairly well and they were like she's like intelligent, she's articulate, she's like things she can't possibly be quote unquote, crazy. You know what I mean. Like I think that that's what was going on. People really need to like listen to what the person is saying, because when I went back to look at the notes in my files, I just kept seeing notations from the five different doctors about like they would write things like patient is very intelligent, patient is articulate, patient has insight. But like, where were the notes that saying that patient is hearing voices? Patient is saying that she feels like harming people and wants to be hospitalized. Like where were those essential things in the notes? They weren't there. Patient is saying that she feels like harming people and wants to be hospitalized Like, where were those essential things in the notes? They weren't there.

Speaker 2:

So I really think that it's so important not to let your biases affect you, like looking at a person and being like, oh well, you know, this person's educated, this person. No, you need to just listen to what the person is saying. Well, first of all, be aware of this illness. Listen to what the person is saying Well, first of all, be aware of this illness. And then, next of all, after you are aware of this illness, just really listen to what the person is saying. Because in a lot of these cases I, like I call myself like a little bit of a pee pee pee stalker, in the sense that I'm always reading news stories and I have my Google Alerts set to like things like infanticide, and when I read these stories, my story is not my own story.

Speaker 2:

A lot of those cases of infanticide, 90% of those mothers they sought help. How sad is that. They reckon, even in their insanity, like me, they recognize that something was wrong and the same people that were there that could have helped them didn't Like. To me, that is. That is the ultimate tragedy. Somebody who is literally not in control of their mind has enough sense to be like something's not right and then they keep getting dismissed like that.

Speaker 2:

That is so like heartbreaking to me and to know that, like I felt like I had a duty to write this book, because a lot of those women who had tragic outcomes to their cases either they took their own lives or they took the lives of their children are and are now currently incarcerated. I wanted to do justice to their stories because I was fortunate enough that mine didn't end that way, although it very, very easily could have my. My psychiatrist, who also has done forensics. She said like you know what, like you were a hair's breadth from being a story like that, because you were feeling like stabbing your daughter. You were feeling like, you know, shoving people into the street, like those were all the things that and that, and I was crying and begging to be hospitalized and they wouldn't hospitalize me.

Speaker 1:

Can we talk about your healing journey, not just the crisis, but the recovery? What were the things, the people, the practices that helped you most in reclaiming your life? What did the providers do? Obviously, the ones did nothing, but the one who recognized, like whoa, we got to do something. What happened?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so basically the number one thing that helped was getting on antipsychotic medication. The right medication is what helped. Like I was so astounded by how quickly like I would say within two weeks I was like reversing through my symptoms and by three months I was able to get off of that medication. Can you believe that Like at one point I was taking like 18 pills a day for like three months and then I was able to wean off of them Because after my psychosis, after all of that like got controlled, I was able to come off of that medication. And then I had to continue with an antidepressant for like a year and a half and then I was allowed to wean off of that too.

Speaker 2:

So medication is the number one thing that is absolutely necessary for postpartum psychosis. And then after that, like you know, after that, you know, going to therapy and stuff is really important. In my case it was super important because I had so much PTSD from from being dismissed and from the fact that my psychosis was allowed to get so bad. You know I had so much PTSD from that, so I needed a lot of you know therapy, which my psychiatrist also provided. So that was really good and in my case, what really kind of helped was just learning as much as I could about postpartum psychosis. I really wanted to know, like what was this thing that happened to me and why, and just educating myself about it really helped me, I think.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was a really big part of my journey too, through postpartum depression and anxiety and rage and postpartum bipolar, and so that was absolutely essential and my journey is like getting the help, getting you know, practicing all the tools I had to change my lifestyle so much. I don't know if that was part of your journey too, especially in terms of like getting off the medication to be well enough, to like be able to do that and then like really educate myself, like that was a huge component to healing and recovering of like what happened to me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah for sure, like I mean, I'd always been the type of person that tried to always like have like a clean lifestyle.

Speaker 2:

I was, you know, never the type of person like even like I was like, oh, I don't want to be addicted to caffeine, I don't want to like you know, I was always like that and I think that you know I do. I'm such a big like proponent of things like juicing and things like that. But I think just having like a healthy lifestyle in every type of manner, in terms of just like emotionally everything, was like super important. And my psychiatrist taught me to, you know, take time for myself and engage in activities that that that would would, would make me happy and make me feel at peace, like swimming or whatever. It was that that that brought me that sense of like wholeness, you know. So engaging in all of those kinds of stuff also really helped. But I think the most important for me was having a doctor that actually listened to what was happening so it could diagnose me correctly and get me on the medications that that that would help, you know, stop what was going on with me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Here in my home, alaska, there's so many limited options and there's like and I just want to bring this up really quickly because I know a lot of people struggle with this immensely where they go to their provider and they're like oh well, you have psychosis and I know several stories here locally where that has occurred and then they're like you need to go immediately to the hospital.

Speaker 1:

So they go to the hospital and then the hospital says that you know, our emergency room says that we don't have anything here for you, like we can't do anything for you, so you're going to have to go talk to the you know your provider and they're like but my provider just told me to come here and like it goes back and forth and there's real support system. There's no, no one has the tools here in this state. Even those who are trained in perinatal mental health. They don't have the ability to help with psychosis, or or they feel as if they are too liable, like it's too much of a risk for this to hold onto a patient who has psychosis, and so they they want to refer out, and so they want to refer out. And the only way to refer out is out of state inpatient care, which often and when we're talking about postpartum psychosis they don't want your baby to be a part of that which is also extremely detrimental, and we have studies that show that even women who have postpartum psychosis need to be with their babies.

Speaker 1:

They just need to be supported more and watched and cared for. It's actually more detrimental to their mental health if their babies are taken away or they're separated from them. So you know, having these tools that are ready, and so that when you do have a client, you know exactly what you're going to do when they walk into your office and say I need help where this thing is happening to me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and it's really sad that in North America we we don't really have those mother baby units that they have in the UK and in lots of other countries. You know, like that would be the ideal, but like, even without having a mother baby unit, like in my story, I actually never was hospitalized and it was actually in. And I know sometimes people are like, oh, I wish I wasn't hospitalized but honestly it would have made my suffering a lot less. Like because when you have somebody with postpartum psychosis and you hospital hospitalize them, they can be stabilized very quickly, like within a day. So, um, like I mean I have, I still have, like 20 years after I still have nightmares from like you know, like the stuff that that I hallucinated, saw, the experiences that I had. I still am very much afraid of that, of that moment in in time.

Speaker 2:

So like it's like really shocking to me to see, to hear that like like hospitals would be sending women home, because I would think that they would be more liable in that way, because if they actually got sent home and did something, then they would be held liable. That's why I always tell um patients, I always tell them um who come to me, like, who come to me and ask me for advice, like they're, like I think my loved one has postpartum psychosis. I always tell them take them to the emergency room and say that to them, because then they'll have to write that in their report and they can't release you because they will look they can be held liable for releasing somebody who is whose family members expressed concern that they had postpartum psychosis.

Speaker 1:

This is. This is brilliant. This is absolutely amazing, and you wrote a book like you wrote a book on this. Can you tell everybody what that book is and what you're hoping people will learn from what you've written?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so my book is called A Mom Like that A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis. I know it's a controversial title and I specifically chose that title for a reason because people I've heard people have conversations where they'll talk about, like you know, I'm overwhelmed, I'm like this, I'm having rage, but you know I'm not a mom like that and they'll reference, like you know, some mom that has committed infanticide and it always used to make me feel sad because I would be like but I am a mom like that, like I had postpartum psychosis and I had those kinds of thoughts or feelings or whatever. And it doesn't make me a bad mom, it just meant that I was really sick, right? So I wanted people to kind of think about that thing of what is a mom like that? When you think about, when you think about calling a woman that has had a tragic outcome to her postpartum cycles a story, a mom like that issue. I want people to read my book and think are you really that different from me? Because when you read my book and you see everything that I was thinking, everything that I was saying, everything that I was trying to do to get myself help, like, do you do people really think that they're that much different from me and would they have acted much different from me if they had gone through what I had went through? So you know, my book is.

Speaker 2:

The hope with my book is that it will increase awareness of this condition. It'll give voice to women who have not made it out of this condition and taken their own lives. It will give voice to women who have had tragic outcomes and taken and harmed their own children. And I want people to understand where, what can make somebody do something like that and how this illness really messes with your mind and makes you actually think that this is something that you have to and need to do. And I also just wanted to show health care providers how much suffering can be caused because of their own ignorance of a condition like this, like you know, their own liability in in these, in these tragedies, when, if they remain ignorant. And then the last thing was just to increase public awareness of it. Like I had like four reasons for writing my book and that that was the four reasons.

Speaker 1:

This is incredible. Again, you are absolutely blowing my mind, aisha, and I am so grateful for you, and I can't wait to share this book with the world, literally. I have some big plans in my mind of how this is going to happen, but if you haven't read it, please, please, please, go get this book and I'm going to link that in the show notes here. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

I also wanted to send you a link that anybody can read the first five chapters of my book for free, and I'll send you that link to put in your show notes as well.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, you're amazing.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, I appreciate you, thank you, and I appreciate all the work that you do as well.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, and I appreciate allpartumu the letter ucom which is in the show notes, and if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving.

People on this episode

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Maranda Bower

Host