The Line

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6:00 pm. The witching hour. Up since 5:30 in the morning with baby, no shower, rice cereal for lunch (we mean you, not the baby), spit on your shoulder, Raffi playing for the 10th time today in the background and Jack refusing to eat the broccoli you cooked and pureed for him. This day has got to end.
We all have those mom days when we have (or would like to have) dissolved into tears on the kitchen floor. But there is a fine line between ‘normal hormonal’ tears and the more serious tears—ones that are a result of depression. The difficulty is often how to distinguish between the two.

We’ve learned that we moms are not alone:

  • For reasons not entirely clear, women are twice as likely as men to experience major depression.
  • 25% of women will experience depression in their lifetime.
  • 15–20% of new moms will experience postpartum illness (which can come anytime within the first year after giving birth).

So, we set out to find out more about where that fine line was from Dr. Ariel Dalfen, MD, who is a new mom herself.

She is also a staff psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto), specializing in treating women with mental health issues related to pregnancy, infertility, pregnancy loss, and parenting, and she shared with us the signs to watch out for and what to do.

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