Anyway, after the delivery your body comes back down and over a period of two weeks builds your progesterone back to normal levels. With PPD, your levels are very, very low and build up very slowly.
For example, I would talk about sexual abuse and I really felt like I had to, but, what it did to me and I felt like I couldn't write truthfully about PPD without mentioning it.
I did a book signing when we were in New York the day before yesterday. A lady came through and she was just weeping, and said, 'I wish this would have been brought out sooner, my sister is in prison for suffocating her child.'
I didn't know my mother had it. I think a lot of women don't know their mothers had it; that's the sad thing about depression. You know, you don't function anymore. You shut down. You feel like you are in a void.
I found for me that my safe place was work. I could control my environment. I became very fastidious and detailed, and wanted things a certain way.
I just think that women feel guilty.T he number one thing I found out from e-mails is that whether you're right or wrong it is still your reality. It doesn't make you a bad person to feel that.
I lost boundaries as a child that I didn't even realize it and it wasn't talked about back then. You know, it was something you just buried and dealt with, and moved forward. What could you do about it?
I think a lot of women do hide it out of shame. It is supposed to be the happiest time in your life after giving birth to a child, you know.
If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.
In my case, my progesterone levels didn't even register. I was at zero. And by the time I actually got help five months later they were still at zero.
It's a no win situation. I had food allergies. My body had basically shut down and decided it was going to die - and I'm a tough broad.
Little things in my past that I really thought were over and done with were still elements of the puzzle that weren't pieced together, and so she helped me do that.
Lots of times, when we feel out of control in certain areas, we find ways to control ourselves in other areas. And I became a bonafide workaholic. I can see now how it skewed my thinking.
Progesterone is created by the body - it's manufactured through cholesterol. We starve ourselves as women. We have very low cholesterol diets, which basically means we are starving our hormones.
So, babies are taken from their mothers because they get temporarily insane and it's not the mother's fault. This is the thing: they shouldn't feel ashamed. They didn't cause this. It is not something they did to themselves.
So, when I could no longer control these buried issues I went crazy. I was so, so depressed. I could not find any joy. Nothing.
The good Lord made us all out of iron. Then he turns up the heat to forge some of us into steel.
The other thing is that doctors test only the most common estrogen level. There are three kinds of estrogen in a woman but they don't test the other two because they are so rare; mine was the third kind of estrogen.
There are some great questions to ask your doctor. If he says 'no,' then you find yourself a different doctor. There really has to be a change in how we medically look at women at this time. I mean, this is not just baby gloom.
They can tie emotion into certain aspects of the body in Chinese medicine. There are a lot of things we can look at.It's been one heck of a journey.
This is a physical thing that is fixable. I know, I'm a survivor. Believe me, there was no way I thought I could survive. There are answers out there that need to be found.
This is a serious, serious condition that is also called postpartum psychosis. And that's where, literally, you get so bad that you end up either hurting the baby or killing yourself.
We know well and we know chronically ill, but there is a whole bunch of gray in between where I think we can heal people before they become chronically sick. I believe our thoughts make us sick.
What basically happens is your hormones get out of whack. Because of the stress in your life your body says, 'I need more hormones.' So, your hormones are trying to produce and produce and produce, and it's even more stressful and it is this wicked cycle.
When you have a baby, love is automatic, when you get married, love is earned.
You are in the back of your head somewhere and you want to close your eyes and go away.
You just need to be honest with how you're feeling. But, a lot of women are afraid of it because they think, 'Oh, they are going to take my baby away. They're gonna call me incompetent. I'm going to lose my job. I've got to be tough, it's a man's world.'
You know, you don't work 30 something years in this business without knowing how to push yourself. So, I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. The other thing that happens is when your hormones get out of whack your emotions come up.
Marie and Donny action dolls were released wearing outfits made famous by their television show. The dolls were also holding microphones.
Marie and her brother, Donny, were offered their own television series after co-hosting on The Mike Douglas Show.
She did voice recordings for the book Rose Petal Place as the voice of Rose.
Marie helped compile The Very Best of Donny and Marie: Volume One.
Marie married Brian Blosil October 28, 1986. They separated after 20 years of marriage.
As of August 2006 Marie will be celebrating her 15th anniversary of creating and designing dolls with the QVC network.
Marie is the daughter of George Osmond and Olive Osmond.
Marie was very famous in the 70's for her brother/sister act with brother Donny Osmond.
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