Welcome friend! On the publication day of Your Brain on Pregnancy, let’s have a second Non-Fiction Feature of the month. đ As an advanced reviewer, I am fortunate to have access to upcoming books long before they arrive and I knew I was going to request Your Brain on Pregnancy as soon as there was a date for its publication. The timing worked out really well because I was at the end of my first trimester, tired and exhausted in body and mind as I tried to make sense of the huge change ahead of me and this book finally became available to request. You bet I read it on over a weekend!
Dawn Kingston | Goodreads
An enlightening and practical guidebook for mothers to help them navigate mental health challenges during and after pregnancyâbased on cutting-edge science by one of the worldâs foremost researchers of maternal mental health.
For women who are expecting, pregnancy can be a time of excitement, but it also comes with the expectation that they are supposed to feel happy and joyousâthat they must be âglowing.â The truth is that many women who are pregnant experience troubling anxiety, depression, and stress, accompanied by feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy. They are often ashamed to seek help, chalking up their feelings to changing hormones, lack of sleep, or a phase that will eventually go away.
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Dawn Kingston, world-renowned expert on mental health and pregnancy, reveals that more women are affected by mental health issues during pregnancy rather than after it. While postpartum depression is a real and serious issue, depression during pregnancy is lesser known but just as pernicious, if not more so. Over the course of her twenty-five years working with women and babies as a registered nurse and mental health clinician, Dr. Kingston has discovered that as many as one in four pregnant women struggle with their mental health, and without treatment, symptoms can continue after the child is born, impacting a motherâs long-term health as well as her babyâs development. But it doesnât have to be that way.
Kingston takes readers through the three most common mental health strugglesâanxiety, depression, and toxic stressâand shows how common life challenges such as relationship issues, financial problems, job transitions, and lack of support are often the trigger. She also debunks the popular belief that hormonal changes are to blame. Then, using proven science-based strategies, she shares easy and effective ways expecting parents can manage the stress and other feelings caused by these challenges, and actually reverse negative effects to make a lasting difference to both them and their babies.
With real-life stories, easy-to-use self-assessments, and advice on how to talk to your doctor, this definitive and practical book breaks down stigma and gives women the tools they need to safeguard their health and their babyâs health for all the milestones to come.
Your Brain on Pregnancy: A Guide to Understanding and Protecting Your Mental Health During Pregnancy and Beyond – Review
In this book Dr Dawn Kingston, an award-winning researcher and mental health clinician who has worked in many universities across Canada, offers a number of insights and additional resources that I was very happy to have come across.
Mental Health: A New Perspective
The book is divided into eight chapters and though the focus is pregnant women and new mothers, I loved that each chapter has content that someone new to reading about mental health, depression and anxiety would also find helpful.
A glaring shortcoming that Dr Kingston exposes through this book is the focus on postpartum depression in new mothers when there is evidence that the signs for depression can often be prevalent during pregnancy. In the Canadian healthcare system, pregnancy is a time of frequent check-ins with a medical team. I see my maternity clinic monthly until week 28 after which the appointments will become biweekly and after week 36, they will see me weekly until the baby is born. These 15-30 min appointments focus on the physiological measures of my health – weight and blood pressure, and later blood work related to gestational diabetes. There isnât a mental health professional who I can turn to readily, even though I know one would be available when I need it. Dr Kingston questions this practice of only focusing on the body and not the mind when it is well known that pregnancy is a time of transition like no other. In a system that does not focus on mental health, books like this one are important to give people the tools and information they seek.
Hormones take a lot of blame for the changing body and mood in pregnancy and Your Brain on Pregnancy addresses this belief from the very start. The book is centred around the paradigm that mental health issues are caused by brain and nervous system dysregulation. There are techniques like counseling and talk therapy that have existed for a long time to address mental illness but the takeaway that Dr Kingston wants to drive home is that nervous system regulation is a great way to build our unique toolkit. I loved that singing featured on one of the lists and its effect on improving mental health was talked about.
The Causes and Risk Factors for Depression, Anxiety and Extreme Stress
As a pregnant person, two words that come up a lot are âpostpartum depressionâ. My worrying brain wanted to know if I would get it, how would I know I had it and, of course, could I do something to not get it? Family and friends tell me I will be ok and I want to believe them but I just donât know. Your Brain on Pregnancy is the first book that laid out the causes and risk factors for depression, anxiety and extreme stress for me. The three main causes of negative impacts on our mental health that lead to manifestation of an illness are
- A dysregulated nervous system
- Genetics
- Personality traits
The section on Personality traits was fascinating as it also talked about perfectionism and how it develops in us.
In terms of risk factors, things that allows the causes to grow are:
- relationship trouble
- toxic stress in the year before pregnancy
- a history of mental health problems
- lack of support
Learning about causes and risk factors was very helpful to me. It let me logically evaluate whether my fears around depression are valid and the support I have in place that will help me. Through stories and self-assessment tools, the book provides a number of questionnaires and how to interpret them. Some assessments included are ACEs Questionnaire, The Maternity Social Support Scale, The Brief Resilience Scale and The Recent Life Changes Questionnaire. There is a recommendation to return to each self-assessment during pregnancy and postpartum.Â
âAnxietyâ is one of those words that I have used in everyday life, mimicking how friends and family use it, without quite understanding what it means. Your Brain on Pregnancy makes a distinction between anxiety and worry. It also outlines how mood swings different from depression. I am grateful to finally know what these conditions feel like and being able to check myself.
Your Brain on Pregnancy was an easy read for me. I found a plethora of information and had that bittersweet feeling at the end when my journey with this book was over. I learned so much and now I go out and use the strategies and return to the pages I bookmarked. I am glad to have read it.
Whether you are new to mental health around pregnancy and postpartum or wanting to learn the latest research, I am sure you will find something new here. This book is out today. Add it to your Goodreads or find it at your local library.
if you are interested in pregnancy, two very cool articles I highly recommend are:
- Pregnancy is a genetic battlefield â how conflicts of interest pit momâs and dadâs genes against each other
- For decades, mothers have borne the brunt of scrutiny for alcohol use during pregnancy â new research points to dadâs drinking as a significant factor in fetal alcohol syndrome
Check out other Non-Fiction reviews on the blog here.
Part of why I dont want children is because im medicated for anxiety & depression.. and I fear iâd lose my mind as they can be harmful for the baby, so id need to get off them đ thatâs a great topic to write about! Definately needed
Agreed! I had not considered that aspect at all before. This book discusses it in detail.