Beyond the baby blues: Professor Elizabeth Gold on her postpartum journey

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Elizabeth Gold, like many other women who go through pregnancy, experienced postpartum anxiety. Instead of letting her experience get her down, Gold,  a professor of  writing studies and composition, decided to write an article for The New York Times, sharing her journey in hope of helping other women suffering from the same condition. In 2016, Gold went on to publish a book called “The Mommy Group” with the same mission in mind.

Gold explained that her postpartum anxiety started with insomnia. She could not sleep for 48 hours, but she thought it was normal considering she was a new mother. Gold’s anxiety could have been treated earlier, but it would have required a doctor who knew what they were looking for, as well as “a mental and physical health care system and a maternal child health care system that is a lot more rigorous and conscious and well thought out than the one that exists currently,” according to Gold.

After giving birth, Gold said there was a six-week postpartum checkup from her OB/GYN to make sure her stitches had healed, but there was no mental health follow up.

“There’s checklists, [and] if you pass the checklist, then you’re good to go. All of this is very, very wrong,” Gold said. “In other countries, they have visiting nurses come to the house to see how the mother and child are with each other.”

When she realized something was off, many doctors expressed to Gold that she might have been experiencing the baby blues. Looking her symptoms up online was inconclusive: results appeared for “baby blues,” as well as postpartum depression, but Gold said she had never experienced depression in the past and believed the term “baby blues” was patronizing.

A friend of Gold’s eventually referred her to a psychiatrist who diagnosed Gold with postpartum anxiety, and prescribed medication that eventually helped Gold’s condition.

Reflecting on her life experience, Gold believes she most likely had an anxiety disorder her entire life due to genetics, but giving birth brought on a more severe form of anxiety due to hormone changes. Though taking medication was voluntary, Gold knew she needed the medication while she had a newborn in her house.

“It was very clear to me that what I needed [was] medication, because when you have a little baby, you can’t be unable to take care of that baby,” Gold said. “When you’ve got a little baby, that’s a life and death situation and my husband happened to be out of town for a couple of days as the real crux of it went down. He came back very quickly, but it was really scary.”

When the New York Times did a series on anxiety, Gold contributed an article about her experience with postpartum anxiety.

“I’m going to write about my experiences at some point but the key to me, and what I teach in class, is that you have to make the experience bigger than just the personal,” Gold said. “You have to figure out how it works in the world.”

When Gold’s article led to the opportunity to write a book, she was able to contextualize her personal experience, using her interactions with mothers in Brooklyn and beyond to explore the underdiscussed realities of motherhood. 

“[The book is] called “The Mommy Group,” which sounds like a small thing, [but] again, it’s taking this idea like the baby blues and actually saying it’s got real power. Like this is how women become real mothers, you change [and] you become a different person,” Gold said. “You’re not the same person you are before you have a child and after; you change. You change so enormously, and you need community. You need help; if you don’t have family close by, if you don’t have childcare leave, you need help, period.”

Not only did the release of her book give her publicity, but eventually people began reaching out. “I also got a lot of women writing to me thanking me and saying it was very helpful to them,” Gold said.

“Part of my book is about giving birth, [which] is one of the elemental life experiences. Elemental experiences need to be respected,” Gold said. “When you do not respect the power of an elemental experience, of a birth, of a death, people tend to react to them on the back end.”

Gold knows the value of being able to lead a conversation about postpartum anxiety. “At the time, there was very little discussion about [postpartum anxiety] as an issue, and it’s been really gratifying that my book has been able to help people and that it’s made a difference to them.”