Mother in Florida kills her three young sons and herself

My initial thought when reading the headline of this story was how tired I am of seeing these stories, over and over.  I felt this welling of frustration in my stomach.  Once again, more babies lives are destroyed, yet again, another mom takes her life ...  because we still have so much work to do to spread awareness of postpartum depression and its horrible life-threatening sister disorder, postpartum psychosis.  And authorities in Floral City, Florida, where this latest incident took place, are all scratching their heads, wondering why this young mother killed her babies and then herself.  Makes me want to scream.

Jenny's Light shines bright in the PPD world

I've just come upon a truly beautiful web site dedicated to an extraordinary young woman, Jennifer Gibbs Bankston, who became very ill with a perinatal mood disorder, and subsequently took her baby boy's life and then her own.  I cried as I read through the site and saw the photos of Jenny and her gorgeous son Graham.  I applaud the tremendous efforts of her family and friends who have created Jenny's Light and are reaching out to help prevent other moms and families from going through a similar, horrendous ordeal.  Please visit www.jennyslight.org.  

The Andrea Yates case and the insanity defense

Andrea Yates' case was an especially gripping one for me personally because of the timing of it. I gave birth to my fourth baby on June 18, 2001 (see my beautiful baby in the photo to the top right giving me a big smooch). She was born just two days before Andrea Yates killed her five children. Having barely survived PPD with my third baby, and knowing well the grim statistics of having it reoccur, I was slightly nervous, to put it mildly, that I would experience it again. Being bombarded with the Yates’ case on the news shortly after giving birth didn’t help my nerves to say the least…

Anyway, during that time, I was furious at the ignorance of the media on the subject of postpartum psychosis, or rather postpartum insanity. Every reporter who covered the story said she had postpartum depression, which is a completely different disorder from postpartum psychosis. I felt that this ignorance seeped its way into the Texas court system. Or perhaps it was already there to begin with. Regardless, no one, including the judges, seemed to understand the psychosis that she had to have experienced to have done what she did. Her case should have been an easy one for insanity defense. Insanely easy. However, the Texas court system has this crazy insanity standard that even Andrea Yates' illness was no match for. Unbelievably, she was found sane and locked up.

However just last week her conviction was thrown out (six years later!) and she will have a new trial. A great article was recently posted by Jonathan Turley of the LA Times about this as well as the various and weirdly conflicting (let's just call them insane!) insanity laws we have scattered around the country. It's an interesting read. But even more interesting will be how the Yates case ends up after all of these years and how Texas will come to terms with it.

Crisis Nurseries are an option for women suffering from postpartum depression

With the big stories in the news lately of women doing harm, and sometimes killing, their children, a Crisis Nursery in CA is trying to reach out to mothers who are suffering from PPD and don't know where to turn for parenting relief. I just read an article about a woman who apparently drowned her 8-day-old daughter and how this particular Crisis Nursery in Sacramento is speaking out about their resources.

I had never thought about crisis nurseries as an option for women who are suffering from PPD. I guess I'd envisioned battered and/or homeless or drug-addicted women as needing that kind of assistance. A temporary safe haven for their kids, to keep them safe. But I can see how a crisis nursery would be just as helpful to a mom who is at the end of her rope, suffering from PPD and without family in town or friends available to help out. I just read about a local crisis nursery here in Arizona, just out of curiosity, and it said that they provide day and night care for babies and children and that they can stay there for up to 30 days. This type of respite care would enable a mom to focus on getting the resources she needs to get herself well.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a centralized, national number to call to find a local crisis nursery in one's area, but it looks like they're fairly easy to find by state. It sounds like they could be a tremendous resource for women with PPD in need of help, but I just hope that women aren't put off by thinking that crisis nurseries are only for cases of abuse. Hopefully crisis nurseries around the country will follow suit and do what the one in CA is doing: reaching out more to let women with PPD know they're there.