Page 55 - Summer 2019 Journal

Homeopathy Journal
A REAL MEDICINE FOR POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
By Joette Calabrese, HMC,CCH, RSHom (NA)
By Joette Calabrese, HMC, CCH, RSHom(Na)
“Take her away. I don’t want her.” No one imagined that Suzy would actually announce it aloud. Not her husband, not her mother and certainly not the attending doctor—but mo- ments after she gave birth to her daughter, Suzy was clear about her demands. “Take her away.”
Postpartum depression shows up differently in different women. Some mothers cling tightly to their babies and weep, while others feel little or no connection to their offspring. For some it occurs at the moment of birth, while for others it sets in during the following weeks. In Suzy’s case, she was actually repelled by the thought of a baby from the moment of conception and was determined she would not keep her. She tried to fall in love with the idea of a child, but it just didn’t happen.
What makes it possible for something so natural to women to become so dreadful to some? How could a mother’s mind convince itself to turn against her own precious child? Some have made the compelling argument that postpartum depression and a host of other behavioral effects can be linked to the previ- ous use of synthetic hormones.1 What kind of synthetic hormones would young women be the most likely to use during their childbearing years, you ask? Why, birth control pills and injections, of course.
LONG-TERM SIDE EFFECTS Freedom—we love it, and we expect it.
And ever since the 1960s, when the contracep- tive pill became widely available, women have celebrated the “freedom” it granted them. No longer bound to child rearing, women embraced “the pill” for affording them a freedom that was unimaginable in millennia past.
But also unimaginable were the pill’s side effects. And I’m not talking about the ones that were immediately evident, such as the weight
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gain, depression and blood clots, which the drug insert casually mentioned (as if it were normal to experience them). The risk of those side effects made the choice to stay with the pill or not one that women confidently felt in control of. No, I’m talking instead about long-term effects that surreptitiously invade a woman’s life and manifest themselves in a more sinister way, many years later—namely, behavioral effects that include what has come to be known as postpartum depression.
THE MEDICAL CONVEYOR BELT
Is the pharmaceutical industry squarely facing the evidence that
synthetic anti-birthing hormones might be causing peculiar behaviors? No. Instead, the industry has decided to answer the postpartum depres- sion dilemma with—you guessed it—yet another drug. In March 2019, the FDA approved a drug called Zulresso for the intravenous treatment of postpartum depression.2 At the time of this writing, the FDA approval pertains only to a restricted program administered by health care provid- ers in “certified” health care facilities.
It’s not the industry’s fault. It’s ours! We buy the stuff. Our demand is there, and the industry merely fulfills it. The articles I’ve recently read, ranging from pieces in The Wall Street Journal3 to Huffington Post,4 laud the new drug as another “boon” for women. (That’s what the media are still saying about birth control drugs in general, too.) But there’s no discussion of how this will affect women, children and families in the short term, much less in the long run.
Zulresso, of course, will not have been tested on newborns, who will be directly affected by any drug their mother takes during the nursing pe- riod. There’s no mention of how tampering with a most delicate endocrine system may affect subsequent pregnancies and perhaps menopause years later. With these uncertainties that only time can answer, we have to ask ourselves: Are we allowing ourselves and our newborns to be guinea pigs?
And then there’s the most compelling question of all: is it prudent to treat the side effects of one drug with yet another? This is the medical conveyor belt that we, as members of the Weston A. Price Foundation, work so persistently to escape.
HOMEOPATHIC SEPIA
What about our previous decisions? Are we confined to live with and
blindly accept medical choices we agreed to years ago? Of course not. This is where homeopathy comes in.
Suzy’s mother, a client and friend, contacted me from the hospital where her daughter had just given birth. In a hushed and intense voice,
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