Beyond the Baby Blues

Rebecca Fox Starr is a writer, blogger, podcaster and mental health advocate with an unyielding desire to help other mental health sufferers. Among her greatest accomplishments, Rebecca has used the success of her blog, Mommy, Ever After, to create a private, online forum for women, in which they are able to open up about psychological and social issues that they would otherwise be too afraid to address. Her story has been featured in The New York Times, on ABC News and in all forms of media across the world. Rebecca lives and writes with her husband and two children in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Mommy, Ever After blog can be found at www.MommyEverAfter.com.

• A Happy StoryChapter 1. First Comes Love: A Pregnant Paws and Other Crazy tales A Hard StoryChapter 2: Professional Perspective on Prenatal Distress Chapter 3: Uncomfortably Numb: The beginning of My Prenatal Distress Chapter 4: “I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew to fear it”: My Prenatal Anxiety and Depression Chapter 5: Violated Expectations of Magic: Dr. Amy Wenzel’s Clinical Experience with Prenatal Distress Chapter 6: “I see the light going out in your eyes.”The beginning of My Postpartum Depression Chapter 7: A bicycle built for two (if that bicycle was actually an ER suite): My Severe Postpartum Depression A Hopeful StoryChapter 8: Support as a Key to Recovery Chapter 9: Together, Ever After Chapter 10: Hope

Women who struggle with anxiety and depression during and after pregnancy will feel reassured and no longer alone because of mommy-blogger Starr’s brutally honest account of her own mental health battle. She seemed to live a storybook life with loving husband Kenny and daughter Annabelle. But while pregnant with her son, she started down a dark path, and after he was born, negative thoughts wove their way through her brain 'like poison.' She ended up in treatment for anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and an unspecified feeding disorder that left her clinically malnourished. She tried to hide the cuts she inflicted on her arms. She was a suicide risk. 'Do you know what is worse than feeling deep depression?' she writes. 'Feeling deep depression when the world tells you that you are supposed to be happier than ever.' Starr includes insights from Dr. Amy Wenzel, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology (2016), and identity-concealed patient studies. As Starr passionately argues, mental health for moms matters. The less anxious and distressed a pregnant woman and new mother is, the better for everyone.