How Prozac Made Me a Better Mom

We just got back from traveling with our baby, and the flight attendant kindly reminded us to put our oxygen masks on first. A common trope and the ultimate parenting metaphor, this self-care symbol is cliché for a reason. We are different parents when our cups are empty, those days when we are surviving off little to no sleep, haven’t been able to muster a shower, or can’t remember the last time we had an adult conversation. But the way we show up for ourselves has a direct effect on the way we show up for our kids—whether you are pregnant and navigating your mental health, working through the daunting IVF process, or being gentle with yourself through grief. We shouldn’t need a Southwest employee to remind us of this eternal truth: No one is fine unless you’re fine.

I used to be terrified of medication: a mixture of the stigma, a generous dose of health anxiety, and a dash of pride. But my mental health began to crumble in 2020. There were always issues below the surface, but a worldwide pandemic sure helped them bubble up. I started talk therapy with someone who specialized in OCD and health anxiety and, while we worked very hard to try different exposures and coping mechanisms, she mentioned medication. I was so against it. I worried about everything—that I was accepting defeat, that I’d have side effects, that I was “crazy.” I was scared that I would have to be on it forever. She assured me that, if anything, it would make everything I had been working on in therapy more effective. As someone who loves efficiency, that was good enough for me. I started taking a low dose of Zoloft and, though it took a couple of weeks, I noticed a slight ease. Before, when I experienced intrusive thoughts, they set off every alarm in my nervous system. The medicine did not make those thoughts go away, but tamed them significantly.

Before my husband and I even started trying to have a baby, I talked with my psychiatrist about my prescription. The Zoloft had been successful in my eyes, but I experienced a very decreased libido, which would not be especially helpful for the whole procreation thing. She suggested that I switch to Prozac, and said there was a lot more research around Prozac and pregnancy. Luckily, I responded even better and, when I got pregnant, we talked through plans for a slight dosage increase due to the blood volume increase in pregnancy. My OB was also very supportive, as the risks of my anxiety and depression are much more potentially harmful to the baby than the actual risks of the medication. The way I see it, my choice to stay on medication was the first good decision I made for my child.

I say all the time how incredibly thankful I am to have gotten on medicine and done therapy before pregnancy. The way pregnancy transforms your body and introduces new sensations and different kinds of pain would have sent me spiraling. I probably would have called my doctor nightly, or made several unplanned trips to the emergency room. Instead, I had coping techniques to get me through. I often feel the need to overexplain myself (can you tell?), which may be the anxiety rearing its compulsive head. But I think it’s also to protect myself from the judgment people feel toward SSRIs in pregnancy. The opinions surrounding mothers and motherhood as a whole are intense. In this time of organic, all-natural, baby-led everything, it feels like you are doing something wrong by exposing your child to a drug made in a lab.

As I have become a parent, my anxiety has changed. It’s no longer focused on what I’m feeling, but more so on my children and what they are feeling. I’ve had to regroup and learn how to also apply these ways of thinking when my children are sick or hurt. That change was the most important to me, because I don’t want to pass on my issues to them; I don’t want them to see me panic. Those situations are already scary when you’re a kid and I want to be strong and dependable. The expectation is that kind of strength should come easily because moms are superheroes. Well, this superhero needs a little help in the form of a 80-milligram dose of Prozac—and I’m okay with that. —Lauren Bell Martin

Products that made my IVF journey a little easier

IVF is one of those things that feels like a far-off concept, a planet in another galaxy, until it’s happening to you. Then it’s so close, in your face, between your legs, piercing your skin, for months, or years, however long it takes. But there are pragmatic ways to cope, and I can’t be the only one who deals with anxiety by organizing. When so much about your journey to conceive has been out of your control, it feels downright cathartic to take a trip to the Container Store and just go hog wild. Call it prenesting. Here are the ways I tried to keep everything together through four rounds of IUI, five rounds of IVF, and approximately one million Q-caps and alcohol wipes. Hopefully, sharing these recs can make this otherworldly experience feel a little more down to earth. —Jess Mayhugh

Meet trauma-informed counselor and yoga instructor Rebecca Radcliffe

Though Rebecca Radcliffe has been a licensed counselor since 2011, her true calling didn’t kick in until the pandemic. “The timing was wild,” she says. “Right before COVID, I did a five-hour, trauma-informed yoga teacher training geared toward healthcare professionals.” She explains that this approach is less about fitness and more about “interoception,” the concept of turning inward. That following year, she experienced her own traumatic loss and knew where her career had to take her.

She now teaches yoga classes specifically geared toward those with fertility challenges and/or loss. I’ve taken them during some of my darkest days and the balance of sharing my story followed by a yoga flow was incredibly healing. Here, she talks about the unique format of the classes, where we hold grief in our bodies, and what three simple things you can do to instantly feel better. —JM

On how she got started
After my first embryo transfer, I had a miscarriage and I remember there were a few days where the grief felt very heavy in my body. Instead of bottling everything up, I started flowing on my mat and just doing whatever I felt—that was very healing—and to go at my own pace, not like a designated yoga class. I also found songs were very emotive and moving, even Taylor Swift’s fucking songs made me cry. But, yeah, music helps you process in a different way. Eventually, after more IVF and a successful pregnancy, I did give birth. Once the postpartum fog started to lift, I was like, What if I could pair this idea of trauma-informed yoga with the fertility experience—to bridge my therapy mind with my knowledge of the body and nervous system? Something just clicked.

On what makes her classes unique
What I’ve seen more of around the yoga community are practices to promote fertility, and not from a trauma-informed place. And I felt like that was almost harmful. You don’t want more pressure that you’re not doing it right. So I didn’t want to come from a place of promising anything. I did take some of the poses that I know help blood flow to the organs and some poses to calm the nervous system, but I really try to create a space that is more of an emotional community, to give people permission to talk about their experience. You’re masking so much just to get through your day, and it’s really gratifying to see people’s guards go down. We can dip our toe in the vulnerability pool in the beginning, and then internally process on the mat after that.

On where we hold grief in our bodies
A lot of people have unconscious tensions stored while grieving… your jaw, your shoulders, your back, your hips. That’s why I always start with slow movements, because, when I was going through grief-filled days, I needed to start really, really small. And sometimes that’s just shoulder rolling, lifting your head, taking a breath. When we go through grief and fertility, we can feel betrayed by our bodies or disconnect from them as a survival mechanism. Yoga helps us rediscover the safety of turning inward. Also, this class might be one of the first times you’ve been able to get back into movement because it gets so disrupted by the fertility roller coaster. In our society, we feel like we need these high-intensity workouts or hourlong blocks of time to make it count. This is more about doing what you can. One of the simplest things is matching your yoga eye gaze (drishti), movement (asana), and breath (pranayama). If you’re matching those three things, you can really ground into your nervous system. 

On energy in the room
Any time I lead, whether it’s in a therapy session or in a yoga class, people say they didn’t realize what they were holding, didn’t realize they were sad, didn’t realize they were tight. So a lot of it is increased awareness of self. Even if we’re not talking, there is a shared energy in the room, the idea you’re not the only one. I know the statistics say one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage, but we don’t know the one in five. Where are they? Because my friends all had no problems having babies. So this is a tangible way to feel less alone, to have people articulate what you may be feeling.

On not limiting what loss means
I try not to define my classes. Everyone’s story is their story, and if it helps you, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t have challenges with your first but you’ve had real challenges with secondary infertility, or some people have never been pregnant, or someone has had a stillborn. I open it up to all the experiences. What I’ve learned about my own grief through this is that it’s never over. When you think it’s over, it’s not. I still get triggers, which I could look at as either Why is this still bothering me? or This is part of my story, and I’m acknowledging and coping. It becomes about acceptance.

Went for an hourlong walk with the front wheel of the stroller in a locked position. Haven’t struggled to push that much since childbirth. —JM