Mom-on-the-Run Erin: The Challenges of Postpartum Depression
Our Expert
Internationally recognized as the go-to expert on prenatal and postpartum depression and related mood and anxiety disorders, clinical psychologist Dr. Shoshana Bennett has inspired and transformed countless lives worldwide through her radio shows, books, lectures, interactive tele-classes, consultations, and videos.
Books:
Postpartum Depression For Dummies (2006)
Resources
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Erin
You know, having especially your first child, it is such a switch in how you view yourself. Suddenly your entire focus is being Mom. It’s this constant fear almost of… Am I doing the right thing? Am I gonna mess this kid up? They don't come with a handbook. Am I doing the things I’m supposed to do to give them the best start? You’re so concerned and wrapped up in being a good parent and being a good Mom that you lose what made you…you.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That’s Erin. She’s our protagonist on this body odyssey.
Erin
Pregnancy was not kind to my body. I was on bedrest for a while and I had preeclampsia and it was a whole slew of just… it just wasn't my deal. I wasn’t good at being pregnant.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Erin’s a mother of two and a high school chemistry teacher with a great sense of humor.
Erin
I tend to be a pretty private person, as I sit here on a podcast.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
If any of Erin’s students are listening, you’re lucky to have her. But Erin was not so lucky when it came to having her own children.
Erin
Pregnancy's no joke. Dealing with postpartum hormones and everything. I was coming in at 200 pounds, which is not where I wanted to be and not where I should be for my height.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Difficult pregnancy. The exhaustion of delivery. Then months of sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn and, in Erin’s case, substantial weight gain. But, more significantly, a deepening internal feeling of being weighed down.
Erin
I wasn't healthy and I wasn't feeling great about myself and all those things. I can acknowledge that now, that dealing with postpartum was part of my journey through that. So I was looking for something, to get – just first of all, to be healthier and some time for me, some time that wasn't about the kids and wasn't about any of that. So, my friend Janet had signed up for a 5k. She's like, you should train and you should do this with me.
Robert Pease (co-host)
This is My Body Odyssey, a podcast about the rewards and challenges of active lifestyle. I’m Robert Pease. Special thanks to Erin for helping to bring awareness to the important topic of postpartum depression.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And I’m Valerie Wencis. Today we’ll be exploring all the angles of postpartum depression, including the potential benefits of activity and exercise for new moms.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Postpartum affects millions of women each year. CDC research shows about 1 in 8 women experience depression after giving birth. It’s more widely recognized, discussed, and treated than a few decades ago but still not nearly as much as it should be, given its prevalence and impact on mothers, couples, and kids.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
New Moms need to take time for themselves. In Erin’s case, that turned out to be finding some Mom-on-the-Run time.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Let’s go back to where we first met Erin: at the finish line of the Mainely Marathon in Sanford, Maine back in 2019.
Robert Pease (co-host)
This was a triumphant moment for Erin. She’d just completed her first marathon. Something that seemed unthinkable two years earlier during that difficult pregnancy.
Erin
My body wasn't good at being pregnant and my body wasn't good at breastfeeding either. So when I was feeding my son, if I tried to start exercising too much, my milk supply would plummet and I couldn't exercise and feed him. So once I weaned him, after he was a year old, that's when my husband and I sat down. I said, I need to do something. I need to get back to me. Because I was never an overweight person and I was at that point and I wasn’t healthy.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Starting down that running path, Erin had the support of her husband, an important nudge from her friend and fellow teacher, and the guidance of a running app.
Erin
So I downloaded an app, one of those like couch to 5k things. And I started there and I started walking and I was horrifically slow, but I got up and I did it. And my husband is wonderful and we found the time to let me do it. So at the end of the summer I ran my first 10K. And again, my time was abysmal for where I am now. I was just happy to do it, happy to have done it.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Happy to have done it. In other words, Erin’s mood is elevating as she becomes a more regular runner and accomplishes her goals.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And with some success at shorter distances, these goals became more ambitious – again with help from her fellow teacher and running partner.
Erin
And then my friend who's out running now said, I have an idea and I think you should come with me. I was like, please tell me more. So she said, I'm gonna do a marathon – this is her first as well. I said, well, that's fun, good luck, good job. And she's like, you should come with me. I was like hard no, not gonna happen. But she talked me into it. She's very good at talking people into stuff.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Then the really hard work began. Including a serious change in diet.
Erin
I talked to my doctor about it and we came up with a plan where I was running for athletic activity. I also did a keto diet for about six months, which is a low carb, high fat protein diet. And again, that's a commitment, because you have to track everything and that's really hard. So I did that for about six months, which got me closer to where I wanted to be and the more weight I lost, the easier it was to run too. You know, when you first start out, it's a lot of body mass to be hauling. But learning how to, once I started seeing progress, that just motivates you to do it more.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Progress fuels more ambition. But that running app kept Erin from doing too much, too soon.
Erin
Before, whenever I had tried to run longer distances, I would go too hard too fast – and then the next day I would hate my life and I would be like, why do people do this? This is terrible, blah, blah, blah. So for me, I needed something to tell me to slow down and to break it into more manageable training.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Sure, the running app helped Erin make steady progress when out on her runs. But it wasn’t always easy getting out the door for those runs.
Erin
At the time I had two really small kids and you lose yourself for a while. Like it's hard to be anything more than mom. So for me, getting into running, the running part of it at least was really more about finding something that was for me. And just for me that I could get out and put time and effort into something that was putting me first. There are times when you're gonna walk out the door and your kid is gonna be crying behind you. Like, he's fine. He's with dad. Like, nothing bad is gonna happen. But mom guilt is hard. That impacts your training sometimes too.
Robert Pease (co-host)
We spoke with Dr. Shoshana Bennett, or Dr. Shosh, as she likes to be called, about that Mom guilt.
Dr. Shoshana Bennett
Often it is difficult, again with a myth of motherhood, of baby always comes first. Children always come first. We need to get rid of that.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
She’s a licensed clinical psychologist who in 1987 founded Postpartum Assistance for Mothers. She’s also a former president of Postpartum Support International. And she has personally struggled with postpartum depression.
Dr. Shoshana Bennett
I mean, obviously, do we need to focus on our children and their needs? Yes. But you're taking care of yourself for your children.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Erin did push past that mom guilt, learning in the process that taking care of herself meant taking care of her whole family.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Santa Claus also played a role in keeping Erin on track. He brought the essential present for anyone running through the winter in Erin's home city of Buffalo, New York.
Erin
I hate running on the treadmill, but we had to. We got a treadmill, especially when I signed up in November. And it was like, well, I'm gonna have to train in January, so treadmill's gonna have to happen. So that was my Christmas present. I have my Nordic track in the basement.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And for those warmer winter days of 20 degrees and up in Buffalo, she also had the appropriate running attire.
Erin
I have the craziest Under Armour, like 4k base layer stuff. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that you take when you're gonna go climb Mount Everest. So I have that. And then I do have spikes. What, moose tracks? What do they call 'em? Those ones, yak tracks. I do have those. I try not to run when it's like ice-ice though. Because I have absolutely bitten the ground.
Robert Pease (co-host)
But the most important ingredient for Erin’s progress may have been her own tenacity in biting that frozen ground, or hitting some other wall, but pushing ahead and continuing to train. Which she did right up to the finish line of her first marathon where we first spoke to her.
Erin
So as hard as it can be, and as much as you might struggle to get out there at the end of it, when you're done and you have that rush of adrenaline and serotonin or whatever, you feel wonderful, you feel great. Like right now I feel great. I definitely need a shower. I'm sure I'm stinky. I apologize to everybody. I'm probably gonna be hurting a little bit tomorrow, but yeah. You know, you feel like you took over the world and you feel like you did something with your day. Like, you know, it's noon-ish. And I can say I ran 26.2 miles this morning. Wow. Wow.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Mission accomplished for this Mom-on-the run. She stuck to her diet and training over that year and a half. She finished her first marathon. But most importantly, her mood and confidence improved.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Erin had a lot of things going for her in meeting that challenge. Her supportive husband. Her insistent and persuasive friend. Her own tenacity.
Robert Pease (co-host)
So we wondered: is this a unique story? Or are there other Moms and Dads on the run out there with similar odysseys? We played some clips for Dr. Mark Stoutenberg of Temple University. He designs exercise and specifically running programs for public health.
Dr. Mark Stoutenberg
Yeah. I mean that was my typical person in our running program. There's just so many people. I came out, like we were not elite people I worked with. It was people exactly like that. And when we had a plethora of high school teachers, and then the word would spread and a friend would tell another friend and they would come out and you know, I just think there's a lot of things to hang onto. With what she said is one, that the husband providing the social support, the friends, providing a different type of support, the technical support from the app, you know, like all these things are really crucial to actually helping her stay on path. And then once folks kind of adopt this healthy lifestyle, it really becomes addictive.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
In addition to the external support she received, Erin was also conscientious about setting goals, scheduling runs, and tracking progress
Erin
But for me at least, I needed a goal. I needed a deadline. I needed a day and time that I could point to and say, you better be ready, cuz this is coming on that day. So for me, signing up for that race was such a huge first step and then training for it. Every time I finished a workout and I had this whole training rubric spreadsheet situation, I could cross off the day and I felt such a sense of accomplishment. Like I'm one step closer to doing something that's just for me. But it was really having that epiphany of, if I keep doing what I'm doing, nothing's gonna change. And I knew I wasn't happy with where I was.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Setting goals and tracking progress. Are these key elements in battling postpartum? We reached out to Dr. Shosh for an expert viewpoint.
Dr. Shoshana Bennett
That’s the key. Each person needs a plan that is well suited for that personality for their functioning level, et cetera. So the take home message to your listeners shouldn't be, I have to run a marathon in order to beat postpartum depression. It should be, find something where, not necessarily a huge project, but on a daily basis, there could be a bigger, longer, more long term project. It could be cleaning the garage. That's gonna give them great satisfaction.
Robert Pease (co-host)
After that finish line interview in 2019 we didn’t speak with Erin for another two and a half years.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And it was a rough two and a half years for all of us. The COVID years. The outbreak. The quarantine. Then variants and new outbreaks. We wondered how she was doing. And we worried a bit, too.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Depression does have a high rate of recurrence, lots of people gained back lots of weight during COVID, and lots of healthy habits like running were made so much more difficult, especially for parents of young kids.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
But it turned out, Erin had come through COVID in seemingly good emotional shape, if no longer ready to run a marathon.
Erin
And really, at the time I was just in survival mode, I think everybody was, and keeping up with training was not on my radar at all at that point. So I pivoted. And also leaving the house was tough. I have two little kids and my husband was still trying to figure out how he was gonna work from home. And I was trying to figure out how to work from home. And we were trying to teach kindergarten, remotely. So getting out for runs was not going to work. So I didn't really run in 2020 much. And then last winter, when it looked like a lot of the races that had been postponed were going to start to run again in spring of 2021, I signed up for another half marathon again with the same group that I did my Maine marathon with.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And how about any kind of app? You credited the app for helping you get started. Are you still using apps at this point or you no longer need them?
Erin
Honestly, it depends on my mood. I still do. Occasionally I pull out the same app that I used to do my original training, just to get intervals because I find that really works well for me. You know, where it's, you run for five minutes and then you walk for two, and I'll use those types of things, to first of all, to pace myself, but also I'll do sprints then where maybe the first five minute interval of running, I'll try and run at a faster pace than what I would do a half marathon at.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
We asked Erin what her biggest challenges were during this period of remote teaching and 24/7 parenting.
Erin
You know, it's time, right? There's never enough time to do anything. So finding that time and making it a priority was definitely a challenge, especially with, I think I spoke about this the first time we talked, you know, that mom guilt of leaving your kids and they're fine, they're beyond fine. They probably don't even know you're gone half the time.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
The importance of being able to leave kids for the sake of kids is very much confirmed by Dr. Shosh.
Dr. Shoshana Bennett
What I help my clients do is change the self narrative, you know? So they're patting themselves on the back. As they walk out the door with their kid, trying to hold onto their leg, you know, they're saying good for me. Good for me. Good for me. This is what good mommys do. I'm recharging my batteries. I mean, this is the only job where breaks aren't mandated by law. I mean, if we don't set them up, they don't happen and we get depleted and depletion leads to depression.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
In Erin’s case, with less time to run and more obligations at home, Mom-on-the-run became Mom-on-the-zoom.
Erin
I couldn't leave the house because I had to stay home with my own children. So we set up this situation where they were, like basically Zoom workouts. So every morning at 9:30 we'd log into Zoom and there would be 15 to 20 of us. And someone would lead a workout for half an hour, 45 minutes, whether it was, resistance bands or just using your own body weight, we were using soup cans, anything in the house. I was doing pushups with my son on my back, you know, I mean, the dogs are all there. We were making it work with what we had, but it was a really special group of people. And I still talk with them.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That's awesome. So it's kind of like goat yoga, but without the hooves, I guess.
Erin
We were doing anything we could, you know, bicep dips using chairs and people's counters were breaking. It was a laugh.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And that’s the most important aspect of this body odyssey. The behavioral journey from depression, to the ability to laugh again, even during the stress and uncertainty of COVID. Like when you have a classroom full of kids on your computer screen and a couple of your own kids zooming or possibly zooming around at home.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And today, somewhat post-COVID, or the worst of it, Erin is maintaining balance amidst the chaos of parenting, even without daily doses of that runner’s high.
Erin
Like anything, it ebbs and flows, right? There's weeks when a month goes by when I'm really focused. And I feel really good about what I'm doing. And then there's another month where life happens and it's been hard, people. We've lost people in the past two years and people have moved and close friends have undergone divorce. I mean, work alone has changed so much in terms of what the work is, the time you need to do your job now is completely different than it was two years ago.
So finding that balance is a struggle, but it's definitely something that I’m trying to make a priority and trying to still navigate. And every week is different. Every day is different sometimes. So it's squeezing in those moments when you can, even if you're getting up at 4:30 to go for a run or you put the kids to bed at 8:30 and you're down on the treadmill because that's what you need to do.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Postpartum depression. Definitely something that needs to be talked about. And we learned from Dr. Shosh that 10% of fathers also experience postpartum-like symptoms.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
But there are now some substantial networks of support groups for postpartum including Postpartum Support International, an organization that Dr. Shosh led for many years. There’s a more complete list of resources in our show notes.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Many thanks to Dr. Shosh for her expertise on postpartum to better inform Erin’s story and emphasize that new mothers do not need to run a marathon or run at all to find a behavioral path forward. That said, regular activity or exercise can be an important part of the overall plan.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Next up on My Body Odyssey: We all know life can be unfair. But isn’t it particularly unfair when someone young, fit, and healthy is afflicted with a potentially life threatening condition that immediately threatens her livelihood?
Robert Pease (co-host)
Our protagonist Jessica is a respected yoga teacher with graduate degrees in anatomy and physiology and a former Division One swimmer. But she now needs to be cautious demonstrating even the most basic yoga movements.
Jessica
At this point I was young, I was healthy. So then I got the ultrasound, and then they did my left arm. And then I went into the waiting room and the doctor came back in. He's like, you do have a blood clot. I was just like, WHAT?
Robert Pease (co-host)
We hope you’ll join us for that episode. And if you have an odyssey you’d like to share, go to our website – mybodyodyssey.com – or find us on social media to send a message or provide show feedback. I’m Robert Pease for the rest of the production team. My Body Odyssey is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.
Pregnancy is no joke, Erin tells us in this body odyssey, both deeply personal and all-too-common. According to the CDC, one in eight new mothers experience postpartum depression, which in Erin’s case, as with others, came after a difficult pregnancy.
“I was on bedrest for a while and I had preeclampsia,” confides Erin. “And I wasn’t good at being pregnant.”
Weight gain didn’t help matters either. But Erin had a close friend and fellow high school teacher who convinced her that running might be part of the solution to her behavioral and physical challenges. “She said, I'm going to run a marathon… you should come with me,” recalls Erin, looking back over a year and a half of training. “I was like hard no, not gonna happen. But she's very good at talking people into stuff!”
And it was a lot of stuff Erin was talked into, in large part because Erin knew she had to make changes. That included a major change in diet, a lot of support from her husband making time for her early morning runs in the Buffalo, NY winter, and a treadmill from Santa Claus for those days when ice covered the roads outside.
But it was also because Erin made her own goals and charted her own progress, which turns out to be a key element in finding a way out from postpartum depression.
“Each person needs a plan that is well suited for that personality and for their functioning level,” advises Dr. “Shosh” Bennett, a licensed clinical psychologist who founded Postpartum Assistance for Mothers and has personally struggled with postpartum. “The take home message to your listeners shouldn't be, I have to run a marathon in order to beat postpartum depression. It should be to find something that's going to give them great satisfaction.”
Did Mom-on-the-Run Erin find that satisfaction in running? Did she ever complete that awfully ambitious marathon? Or is that beside the point, considering the emotional distance traveled in this odyssey?
Tune in to find out more about postpartum depression, the potential rewards of exercise for this condition, and a master class from a high school chemistry teacher who needed to put in those miles for the sake of her kids, her partner, and herself.
Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney
