Hey Alyssa. Hey Sam. Hey Dr. Badalli. Hello. Are you guys both ready today? I am ready. I'm ready.

So for today's episode Dr. Badalli has agreed to come back on the podcast to talk with us about some anxieties that Sam has been having.

So if you didn't catch our previous episode with Dr. Badalli where we talked about phobias and what was the other thing we talked about?

What didn't we talk about very clearly? I want to talk about anxiety and depression and something like that too.

Then I will give you a quick little intro. Dr. Melanie Badalli is a registered psychologist with over 20 years of experience and she specializes in anxiety and is very passionate about protecting our world's anxiety.

So what happened here was Sam had taken to Twitter and as I'm known to do. What was your tweet? I think I was just tweeting about anybody that was afraid of childbirth and how did it go for you and stuff so I could hear from the horror stories.

Yeah and this is something that Sam is so afraid of if I can speak on here please do because I think sometimes people can think oh like it's just a funny tweet or whatever but this has been something even before Sam got pregnant that she had come to me with.

She had come to Matt her husband about and it's something that like really causes you a lot of fear.

So I think that Dr. Badalli had kind of read between the lines there and seen that you know it is a serious thing that Sam's scared of and there's other things that come along with motherhood as well you know postpartum depression and you already struggle with depression so Dr. Badalli reached out to us and said hey let me see if I can come on and speak to you about it.

So thank you so much for being on the podcast with us today.

It's my pleasure and it's an area I'm really passionate about and don't worry Sam I'm not going to try and do psychotherapy on you or assessment or anything like that I'm just here for education and it's one of those things I really admire you guys for being good role models or influencers like this is the more cool term these days.

You know to really start the conversation about this because there's so many moms who think these things and feel these things and suffer and and don't have you know the confidence or they're just not ready yet to be able to talk to people about it so thank you so much for having me on today.

Thank you.

Just to jump right into it I think people have talked a little bit more about like postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety and stuff like that I think that's becoming a little bit more well known but I guess my first question is is there a difference between regular depression anxiety and postpartum depression and anxiety and if there is what what is that main difference.

I think that's a great question.

I mean if you dig into the literature and you look at you know what causes these things and what do these things look like there's always you know many factors that go in it's seldom like one thing.

You know for me they look very similar in terms of how they present but what is tricky is that you know just having a baby or being pregnant makes it harder to see sometimes for a health care providers but also for people themselves so for example you're really really tired you feel like you know you're covered in tar and you just can't get out of bed.

You know if you weren't pregnant or just had hadn't just had a baby and weren't sleeping that might just you know you'd be like oh something's definitely wrong here I can't go to work and you know if you're pregnant you'd be like oh maybe this is just normal I got hormonal changes I got physiological changes my my body's doing different things I'm like growing a baby or I just had a baby and so I think there's a lot more.

Confusion about exactly what's going on for people themselves and you know so that makes it a little bit harder to figure out exactly what's going on and whether we should just say you know it's a wait and see approach and time will take care of it and you'll be back to normal soon or you know what I think something's going on here.

We got to pay attention to this and throw some strategies at it or some medication whatever you know the best thing is going to be for the individual so I think it's a really good question and I think in terms of like if you were doing an assessment and you were looking at different symptoms it's not like we're looking for different things with you know depression or anxiety it's just that sometimes it's really harder to see and also like sleep deprivation which is often goes along with this whole process.

Really makes it hard because it's so hard to regulate your emotions and feel good when you can't sleep and that's happening for a lot of people and not just people you know not just women who are having biological pregnancies but you know people who are adopting parents of all genders and you know different ways of getting babies like babies disrupt sleep even the.

Yeah it happens and some babies are harder than others like they actually are harder and some people's environments make it more challenging you know if you have a safe environment that's easier if you have a lot of support that's easier and yet still you know sometimes people have their first episode of depression even though they have all that stuff in place it just it just comes on and and in enough people you know maybe like.

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