Post-natal depression

One of the factors of post natal depression is the sudden drop of progesterone once the baby is born.

When you consider that a women in her last trimester of her pregnancy is producing up to 400mg of progesterone via the baby’s placenta, after the baby is born and the placenta is expelled, the progesterone factory is literally turned off. This drop in progesterone is necessary to stimulate another hormone to bring on lactation.

Most women will be familiar with the term ‘baby blues’. With the sudden withdrawl of progesterone, depression can be triggered, known as post-natal depression. This can vary for every women in the time of onset, severity, and duration. And for other women, it can be insidious, undiagnosed and left untreated for many years after the baby is born. But it’s now recognised that women generally do go through a brief period of depression following the birth of their child which they usually get over in no time. Now, with the discovery of progesterone supplementation, it has been such a breakthrough in defeating post-natal depression.

As stated above, during the course of a woman’s pregnancy, production of progesterone (via the placenta) will peak at levels of 350 to 400 milligrams a day. Following delivery, her placenta-derived progesterone will plummet. The only source of progesterone at that time would be the adrenal glands, assuming mum is not in a state of adrenal exhaustion.

Measuring salivary levels of progesterone a day or two after childbirth would make sense. And if levels are below normal limits, progesterone replacement therapy could help significantly.

For mild to moderate depression, natural progesterone has proven quite adequate in small doses (15-20mg) for approximately 4 months uninterrupted. We suggest you start at lower doses and assess to see if your depression is lifting, and only increase if you feel you are not responding at that dosage. Give yourself a week to feel the benefits.

Unlike women who have to wait 6-8 weeks to reach saturation level in the body to feel the benefits of progesterone, new mothers don’t need to go through this process because their body, being familiar with this hormone, will response very quickly with the reintroduction of natural progesterone.

Moderate to severe depression may require higher doses (32-64mg), then wean back gradually. We suggest you make your GP aware of the fact you have chosen to trial natural progesterone and seek his support, rather than resort, at this point, to traditional anti-depressant drugs that might expose you and the baby to these substances.

Our observation has been that progesterone has provided women with a ‘happy’ and safe solution for mum and her baby, and has not interfered with her milk production. Some women have even commented that they’ve been able to relax, cope better and enjoy the experience of motherhood for the first time, where their previous accounts battling depression and their refusal to resort to medication, or the side effects of the medication they were encouraged to take may have left them feeling quite cheated of the whole mothering experience.

Women share with us their feelings of shame and failure associated with post-natal depression, particularly when it has not been explained to them that post-natal depression is the result of a hormone imbalance of which they have no control over.

There are cases where post-natal depression is very severe and requires you to be under the care of a specialist. If you wish to incorporate natural progesterone using high doses, you will need to find a doctor who will support this therapy. Dr Katharina Dalton is well known for her work and research in the treatment of post-natal depression (and PMS) using very high levels of progesterone (100-300mg) daily. Here in Australia, however, there are doctors who will incorporate troches and pessaries at high levels.

Note, please take precaution during lactation that you do not become pregnant. Breast feeding in conjunction with natural progesterone is not a substitute for contraception. Some women are, by nature, very fertile.

A Natural Guide to Pregnancy and Postpartum Health is a handbook that focuses on what a woman can do during pregnancy and beyond to attain her own optimum health and wellbeing after she delivers her baby. It explains how and why postpartum problems, such as depression, fatigue, anxiety, constipation and backache, develop and offers a definitive programme to help women avoid or relieve them.