Who Was Melanie Stokes?
If you want the Melanie Stokes Act to get a chance at becoming law, contact your Congressional representatives right away and let them know.
Who was she� Just a woman, like any of us. She had a loving husband. She had a best friend in her mother, with whom she chatted on the phone every day. She had a career, working in pharmaceutical sales. Like many of us, she wanted to be a mother more than anything else. Three and a half months after she gave birth to her first child, a girl named Sommer Skyy, Ms. Stokes jumped from a 12th story window to her death.
Melanie Stokes suffered from postpartum psychosis. Soon after Sommer was born, Melanie’s mother, Carol, noticed that her daughter didn’t seem to be responding to new motherhood well, but she chalked it up to exhaustion. When Sommer was a month old, Melanie stopped eating and began having paranoid thoughts, believing, for example, that her neighbors closed their blinds because they thought she was a bad mother.
Over the next seven weeks, Melanie was hospitalized three times and put on numerous courses of antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs. She underwent electorconvulsive therapy. She would start to improve, but then spiral back into psychosis, staring out of windows, walking to Chicago’s lakefront at 3AM, asking a neighbor if he owned a gun.
Then during Melanie’s fourth hospital stay, she seemed to be improving. She was eating and making a recovery plan. She was released. One week later, she killed herself.
The Melanie Stokes Act was first introduced in 2001 by Illinois Representative Bobby Rush. The act calls for the Director of Health and Human Services to “expand and intensify” research and related activities focusing on postpartum mood disorders (including the very rare postpartum psychosis and the much more common postpartum depression). Funding would go toward basic research into the cause of postpartum mood disorders, epidemiological studies, improvements in diagnostic tools, clinical research on treatments, and information and education programs for health care professionals and the general public.
The Melanie Stokes Act failed to become law the first time around, but it’s just been reintroduced by Rep. Rush. The Postpartum Depression Community Message Board is getting the word out, and I’m passing it along here.��You can contact your Congressional representatives and voice your support for the Melanie Stokes Act.
Do it for yourself, or someone you love who has been touched by postpartum mood disorders. Or do it for Sommer, so that some good can come from her mother’s death.
Posted by MommaSteph.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:33 am
I went to the website and read some more and I am so sad. So very, very, very sad. Women are not taken seriously in so many ways and this is just further proof. A baby comes into the world and instantly you are supposed to be bonded, loving and the perfect commerical image of ‘mother’.
I understand doctors are people too and they fail at times and are not perfect but so much time went on. How could they not take this seriously? I can not imagine the pain her family must be in and how tragic it will be to grow up with out a mother—a mother who was probably considered, at the time, “Just not handling things well….”.
So disrespectful. So cruel and so unneccesary. Even if you have never had PPD every single mother has been to a dark place for a moment while raising your child/ren. Just imagine not being able to escape unless you jump out of a window.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
That is tragic. I never suffered from PPD, but I can only imagine the pain and darkness she was feeling all those weeks. When you have your baby, its a life changing experience and having to deal with that and learning to live with it can be devastating, even if the child was wanted or planned. I do hope that doctors listen to new mothers and take them seriously when they are experiencing the stresses of being a new mom.
January 18th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I am a doctor that has been very concerned with the ever increasing incidence of postpartum depression and other PP illnesses. While postpartum psychosis is rare it is a very serious illness and the results arte often tragic. The enclosed article that I have written does not address PP psychosis but does address many of the other PP symptoms from a nutrient depletion viewpoint that is all too often left out of the picture. I hope it is helpful.
THE DEEP NEED FOR A POSTNATAL NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM FOR ALL POSTPARTUM WOMEN.
by Dr. Dean Raffelock
Throughout the past 30 years in private practice, hundreds of women have told me they felt that their current health problems started soon after the birth of their child. The child may have been her first or fifth, and might now be a teenager or even a grown man or woman, but the mother remembers the postpartum onset of her symptoms as if it were yesterday.
The symptoms that usually start within the first to twelfth postpartum months vary widely among mothers. A few of the most common are depression, chronic fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, lack of confidence, loss of sex drive and passion, muscle and joint pains, unhealthy skin and hair, digestive disturbances, bladder problems, heart disease, asthma, and a host of troubling emotions and moods swings. A woman can be puzzled, frustrated, even embarrassed when she reveals symptoms that have plagued her for years. She may have shared these self-observations with doctors only to find that they were not worthy of an acknowledgement or comforting comment from her physician. Any attempt on her part to connect the birth of one of her children with those symptoms may have been met with skepticism or passed over. Yet, she can’t shake the feeling that something about that particular birth began her health decline.
Her observations do have validity and merit. What most mainstream medical practitioners don’t fully take into consideration is that a baby’s body is formed and made entirely of nutrients donated by the mother’s body. Her child’s brain, eyes, muscles, bones, organs, glands, nerves, skin, tissues and fluids are completely comprised of the nutrients taken from its mother’s bloodstream via the placenta.
If there is a lack of vital nutrients, the mother’s body is the first one that is deprived because her developing baby is Mother Nature’s priority. All mothers need to consciously replenish their lost nutritional and energetic reserves during the postpartum period. If this isn’t done, they might end up spending the rest of their lives wondering why they “just haven’t felt the same since the baby was born.”
The energy demands of caring for a newborn can further drain and deplete the mother’s nutrient reserves, especially if she is breastfeeding and sleep-deprived. If a woman has lost a great deal of blood while birthing her baby, the need for replenishing the nutritional components of blood is even more critical. Women who undergo Cesarean section also need to restore nutrient reserves; not only have they become mothers, they have had to have major surgery in the process. Women who lose a good deal of blood during the birth process and who don’t replenish key nutrients might experience light-headedness and throbbing headaches, along with extreme fatigue, sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression.
A new mother is also faced with the stress of integrating the intense needs of a new baby into her lifestyle while tending to her mate and perhaps other children and returning to work. All of these responsibilities that women - and those who are cared for by them - have taken for granted for millennia demand high-quality nutrients. Our food supply presently contains only half the nutrients that food contained in the 1940s due to the nutrient depletions in our soil. This fact makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for a mother to fully replenish the nutrient reserves her body donated to make her baby’s body solely from the food she eats. Eating highly refined and processed “junk” foods further depletes vital nutrients, which deepens the need to replenish postnatal nutrients even more.
Every physiologic process in the human body depends upon nutrients. The most important time to consciously replenish postpartum nutrient reserves begins immediately after giving birth and extends to 24 months postpartum. The failure to do this often sets the stage for chronic health problems that may last for decades.
There was a time that women throughout the globe would be given their placenta in some edible form to consume directly postpartum, much like dogs and cats do instinctively. The placenta contains highly concentrated amounts of the nutrients and hormones that the mother has lost through giving birth. The fact that eating one’s placenta is now culturally distasteful further supports the need to make a concerted effort to consume the appropriate nutrients and nourishing foods necessary for rebuilding and replenishing the new mother’s donated nutrient reserves. A high potency postnatal nutrient program is now essential to help a postpartum woman replenish her nutrient reserves.
Presently, about 30 million Americans take anti-depressant drugs. The majority of these are postpartum women! Many doctors prescribe Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and a host of other anti-depressant drugs before considering whether the mother’s depression, fatigue, or lethargy might be caused by postpartum nutrient depletion. The neurotransmitters serotonin, GABA, epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine and all others are made in the body from nutrients. Postpartum nutritional depletion can cause a physiological depression that is far too often misdiagnosed as a mental/emotional depression. This is a medical short-sightedness that needs to change so that postpartum women will receive better care. A postnatal nutrient recovery program should be the very first thing a doctor thinks of and prescribes for postpartum women presenting these symptoms; especially with women who have no history of depression, anxiety, or fatigue prior to giving birth.
Even if one does truly need the assistance of antidepressant drugs, these drugs contain no nutrients, so the need to replenish nutrient reserves still exists and should be addressed to prevent other health problems. It is fine to take AfterBaby Boost postnatal nutritional program and an antidepressant medication simultaneously. The need for high potency postnatal nutrients is greater now than ever before because the pace of life keeps getting faster, more complex and stressful.
Omega-3 oils are robbed from the mother’s body at a very high rate via the placenta to help form her baby’s brain, eyes, nerves, and cellular membranes. Breast feeding robs even more Omega 3 oils from a postpartum woman’s body because it is removed from her body to form the milk her body is producing. Many studies show the importance of Omega 3 oils to relieve depression, dry skin, thin hair and nails, fatigue and prevent heart disease in postpartum women. Omega 3 oils are an essential ingredient in a good postnatal nutrient program to assist a mother to replenish her nutrient reserves.
All the major nutrients are taken from mother’s body to help form baby’s body. Alpha Lipoic Acid and coenzyme Q10 are essential for the body to make energy. Without enough of these two essential nutrients the energy producing mitochondria in our cells will often make only 2 units of ATP (cellular energy) instead of 39 units of ATP per cycle. These two deficiencies are major causes of postpartum fatigue and mood swings. These two nutrients along with B vitamins, minerals including calcium and magnesium are also essential nutrients to help a mother replenish her postpartum nutrient reserves and should be included in a good postnatal nutrient formula. The postnatal nutrient program offered contains these essential nutrients in very high quality form.
Postpartum mothers require a nutritious diet, adequate sleep, moderate exercise and a high quality postnatal nutrient program. Prenatal vitamins do not adequately supply all of the nutrients that new mothers require after bringing new life into this world. A high quality postnatal nutrient program should be an integral part of the pregnancy recovery program required for all postpartum women to replenish their nutrient reserves. This can assist new mothers to not only regain their health and prevent later health problems, but also to allow her the best chance of happily raising her family and having other healthy pregnancies and healthy children if desired.
Dr. Dean Raffelock is the lead author of A NATURAL GUIDE TO PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM HEALTH published by Avery, Putnam, Penguin in 2003. His website is pregnancyrecovery.com. Dr. Raffelock has taught research based clinical nutrition for numerous medical organizations over many years, formulates nutritional products for a number of nutritional companies (including Sound Formulas-the makers of After Baby Boost), and has a holistic practice in Boulder, Colorado
February 26th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I had postpartum depression with my son. So I do know that this illness exist. I couldn’t understand for the life of me and my son life. How could the doctors let me walk out the hosiptal with a new born baby, and no ones asked me how do I feel? How do I feel about becoming a new mother? I cried for three months! I couldn’t understand why I didn’t hold my baby. I was 29 years old. I waited to have this baby and now I didn’t want to touch him. Thats insane! Your afraid to talk to anyone because you think they will judge you. Your scared and feel alone. The men (father)act like you suppose to bond with the baby because you carried it for nine months but this motherhood thing is all new to you too! I feel so sad for Mrs. Stokes and her family and that baby without a mother. I still blame the doctors! They should know what going on in a woman mind as well as her body when she’s a first time mother. Thank God for my mother! She talk to me. She told me to pray to God and get on my knee’s and give it to him. I glad I had faith and believe in God. I wanted to hurt my baby. I had bad dreams. Evil dreams! I could understand what was going on with me. But my mother knew and one of my girl friend cried with me and told me her story. This is a serious thing. I hope postpartum be taking more seriously! By doctors, family, husbands, and anyone who cares about their love ones. If you notice a woman acting strange after she just had a baby? Talk to her and keep talking to her! Let her know that someone cares about her and not just about the baby. We sometimes seem to forget about the mothers and show love just to the new born baby. When you bring the new born baby and gift, bring a small gift for the mother as well. It does make her feel good too.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Khai, I’m so glad you had your mother and your faith to support you during PPD. It’s amazing how something so “natural” as having a baby can leave some of us so “broken”, but thank God many of us do come through it.