How to Support Someone With Postpartum Depression

When Iza Thiago-Munoz brought her first baby home, she instituted a rule: She was the only person allowed to carry the baby upstairs. At the time, she lived in a narrow Philadelphia rowhouse with a steep staircase. If anyone else—including her husband—wanted to take the baby up, they had to buckle the infant into a car seat first.Her husband occasionally tried to reason with her. He could hold the baby tightly, he pointed out. “But what if you fall down the stairs?” she would reply.She didn’t know it at the time, but Thiago-Munoz was struggling with postpartum depression and anxiety, which amplified her lifelong tendency to imagine the worst-case scenario. She also felt enormous pressure to be a perfect mother. “I thought I had to do everything,” she says. Otherwise, she worried, “people would just think that I wasn’t good enough.” Asking for help felt like admitting that they were right.Thiago-Munoz is now a lactation consultant, postpartum doula, and founder of Clementina Health, a postpartum and lactation telehealth company. Her work is informed by what she experienced after giving birth—and by what she wishes the people around her had understood. “I just didn’t feel joy in anyt...