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The Oscars Rejected This Frida Mom Postpartum Ad for Being ‘Too Graphic'—and People Are Angry


As Hollywood’s A-list prepares to walk down the red carpet at tonight’s Academy Awards, a new Frida Mom postpartum ad is causing some controversy after being rejected by the Oscars for being “too graphic.”

The commercial shows a new mom in the first days after giving birth, facing the realities of what is happening to her body. You can see her postpartum belly, the mesh underwear given to new moms at the hospital, her struggle to go to the bathroom, the pad she must wear as her body continues to bleed—all while a newborn is crying in the background.

Frida Mom, a company focused on the postpartum needs of women, went ahead and posted the ad on its Instagram feed for all to see. “The ad you’re about to watch was rejected by ABC & the Oscars from airing during this year’s award show,” the caption reads. “It’s not ‘violent, political’ or sexual in nature. Our ad is not ‘religious or lewd’ and does not portray ‘guns or ammunition’. ‘Feminine hygiene & hemorrhoid relief’ are also banned subjects. It’s just a new mom, home with her baby and her new body for the first time. Yet it was rejected. And we wonder why new moms feel unprepared. So spray it forward and share this video with every new mom. She deserves to be prepared.”

The ad also has over 800,000 views on the Frida Mom Youtube channel.

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Many rallied to the defense of Frida Mom and the ad, including Busy Philipps. “I legit teared up when I just watched it. Partially because this is clearly an ad made by women who have been there and get it and partially because I DO believe so strongly that the more we can NORMALIZE A WOMAN’S BODILY EXPERIENCE IN MEDIA, the better off our culture and society will be. AND YES THAT MEANS ADS TOO,” Philipps wrote on Instagram. “You probably don’t even flinch when an Erectile Disfunction ad comes on but THIS AD IS REJECTED?! I think this is an incredible piece of advertising that accurately represents something millions of women know intimately. And I’m so fucking sick of living in a society where the act of simply BEING A WOMAN is rejected by the gatekeepers of media. Well. Shame on them and NOT on us for simply being human women.”

Many of the commenters on the brand’s post agreed. “Such a beautiful ad. I completely teared up. It brought me right back to having my babies and that our bodies are so badass. Thank you for creating this. It is beautiful. If anything you have impacted me today,” one wrote. “Such an honest representation of the new mom experience! My little one is now 20 weeks and your products were amazing! Thank you for sharing this and trying to help remove the stigma from the postpartum journey,” another said.

(ABC has not yet commented on the backlash.)

While the Frida Mom postpartum ad may not get its moment on Hollywood’s biggest night, it’s still making an impact on normalizing the experience of so many women—and that’s a very good thing.



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Postpartum Depression Treatment Made Me Feel Helpless—Women Deserve Better Options


When my son was born nine months ago, I was—like most new moms—a puddle of emotions. I was so eager to see my baby after giving birth, I tried to walk to the recovery room before my epidural had fully worn off. Spoiler alert: I collapsed on the tiled floor. But even on the ground, I was ecstatic. After hours of labor, I had emerged victorious. It felt like my greatest accomplishment.

But the new-mom high was short lived. My first attempts at breastfeeding were not so glorious, and when the unfriendly nurse on duty tried to “help” by grabbing my breast and shoving it into my son’s mouth, I started crying.

I didn’t really stop for the next two months.

I’ve struggled with depression my entire adult life, so I braced myself for the possibility of postpartum depression from the beginning. Most women experience the “baby blues” after delivery—mood swings, irritability, anxiety, sadness, and feeling overwhelmed—a therapist specializing in maternal mental health told me while I was pregnant, but if the blues lasted more than two weeks, it might be postpartum depression. I took note.

I made a mental health protection plan, monitoring my moods carefully, meditating frequently, and exercising regularly during pregnancy. Going into labor, I felt great.

After a smooth delivery and a standard 48-hour stay, we were discharged from the hospital. But I already knew in my gut that I wasn’t ready. As we were wheeling out to the parking lot, the scorching Miami sun suddenly felt unforgiving; tiny beads of sweat appeared on my nose, the humidity fogging my glasses. I held my baby, wrapped up in his layette set, to my chest. I was scared to put him in the car seat, so afraid that I’d break him. On the way home, I clutched his carseat on the verge of a panic attack, terrified we’d get into an accident.

The panic didn’t subside for months. Like all new parents, we documented all of the exciting firsts with our son—his first feeding, his first bath, his first diaper change. Often in these photos, I’m posing and smiling like I should be, but if you look closely, my eyes are pink and puffy and a stream of tears stains my cheeks. I really wanted to be present, but I felt myself starting to get lost.

Days of depression turned into weeks and then months. I felt as if someone had stuck a syringe into my enthusiasm to be a parent and sucked out every milliliter of joy and excitement until there was nothing left. I was empty.

My husband, being the supportive partner that he is, took on a large portion of the infant care and house work while I tried to tolerate just existing—a gargantuan task. Sometimes I lay in bed with an eye mask and headphones. Other times I would close the door, shut the lights off, and sit on the floor staring at a blank wall. I read articles about postpartum depression that left me feeling even more hopeless. I shut off communications with the outside world.

I became lost in the delusion that I was so incompetent as a mother that I was just getting in the way. I thought my family would be better off without me. I fantasized about packing a bag and flying to a far city and never coming back; I could send my family letters and maybe visit during the holidays. I needed to escape. I couldn’t tolerate what I was doing to my family. I couldn’t be the mom I had imagined myself being during the pregnancy. I felt like a failure. The negative thoughts became more insidious and blared on repeat in my mind, muting out any hope or happiness I had ever felt in the past.



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The New Postpartum Depression Drug Zulresso Comes With a Catch


When you’re pregnant, the promise is that motherhood will make you the happiest person on earth. That’s a far cry from reality for many women, but for the one in seven dealing with postpartum depression, the new-mother whiplash is much more severe. For these women, options are scarce. “Postpartum depression has been neglected—it’s been underdiagnosed and undertreated,” says Samantha Meltzer-Brody, M.D., director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. “So many women suffer. Screening is spotty, treatment is spotty, and it’s one of the greatest causes of maternal mortality.” So it’s groundbreaking news that this week the FDA officially approved the first postpartum-depression drug therapy.

The approval is a true game changer. Currently available treatments for postpartum depression, usually prescription antidepressants, can take anywhere from four to six weeks to start working. That may seem like a lifetime for a new mom suffering with severe symptoms. The new drug brexanolone, which will be sold under the name Zulresso by Sage Pharmaceuticals, starts working almost immediately. In clinical trials of women with moderate to severe postpartum depression, most women saw improvements within the first day, says Dr. Meltzer-Brody, the principal investigator for the trials. And women still felt relief 30 days after just one treatment.

So how does it work? “What’s really exciting in terms of postpartum depression is that this is a hormone-based therapy,” Dr. Meltzer-Brody says. Zulresso is a synthetic form of allopregnanolone, which the body makes as it breaks down the fertility hormone progesterone. During pregnancy, levels of progesterone reach all-time highs, but after giving birth, levels of the hormone drop quickly, which researchers think could be tied to postpartum depression. Zulresso is administered via an IV.

That’s where things get a bit trickier. The IV infusion lasts 60 hours, and women have to be monitored closely while the drug is being administered. That means for women to receive the treatment, they’ll have to check in to a certified medical center for two and a half days, a big chunk of time during those early days when a mother is still bonding with her newborn, or perhaps already back at work and juggling many demands on her time. But Dr. Meltzer-Brody says that women in the trial found those hours spent in the clinic to be a “minor inconvenience” compared with the precious weeks they’d otherwise have to wait for more traditional antidepressants to kick in. “For women who are depressed, who are not able to return to work, who are not able to care for their baby—there are so many economic burdens and impacts of untreated depression that you have to weigh,” she says.

The treatment, which Sage estimates will be available in June, doesn’t come cheap—the average cost per patient is $34,000, not including the stay at the clinic, according to The New York Times. Insurance coverage, which is currently being negotiated, will be vital to making sure women have access to Zulresso. “Our philosophy has really been about making sure there’s going to be access for patients,” says Mike Cloonan, Sage Pharmaceutical’s chief business officer. He says the company has been talking to more than 500 insurance providers for more than a year, raising awareness of postpartum depression and the issues facing women. “We feel very confident that we are going to have access for patients based on the feedback that we’ve received,” he says. Sage is also pledging to roll out a suite of tools to help patients navigate insurance, financial assistance, and where to go for the 60-hour infusions. “We’re trying to surround the patient with the support they’ll need throughout this process,” Cloonan says.



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Adele Wrote a Touching Post About Her Best Friend’s Postpartum Psychosis Recovery


Adele is bringing awareness to a very important issue: postpartum psychosis, which her best friend, Laura, has experienced. On Monday (August 13), the singer posted a picture to Instagram of the two cuddling with Laura’s son (and Adele’s godson), alongside a poignant message.

“This is my best friend,” she wrote in the caption. “We have been friends for more of our lives than we haven’t. She had my beautiful godson 6 months ago and it was the biggest challenge of her life in more ways than one. She has written the most intimate, witty, heartbreaking, and articulate piece about her experience of becoming a new mum and being diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. Mamas talk about how you’re feeling because in some cases it could save yours or someone else’s life x [.]”

Adele included a link in her bio to Laura’s first-person blog post about her experience. In it, Laura documents what she calls “the worst time of [her] life.” “Since having my baby boy in February this year I’ve been suffering from and battling against post partem [sic] psychosis,” she began. “A rare and unpublicised illness that affects 1 in a 1000 women and is seen as a medical emergency (don’t worry I had never heard of it either until it tried to ruin my life). In my case it was built upon post-natal depression and exhaustion and escalated into a phase of what I can only describe as hell; mania, mood swings, insomnia, delusions, paranoia, anxiety, severe depression with a lovely side order of psychosis.”

She continued, “My pregnancy was a dream, I was totally prepared to be unprepared and have no history of mental illness and yet this cruel and savage sickness completely and unexpectedly swallowed me, smashed me and my family against the rocks. “

In the blog post, Laura describes a wide range of symptoms, from hiding congratulations cards to sleepless nights to mania, anxiety attacks, and thoughts of suicide . After an intervention, she spent two weeks in the hospital, and she’s currently in the midst of recovery with the help of family support, a psychiatrist, medication, and psychotherapy.

“Talking about this has been a huge part of my recovery and I was constantly searching for any stories that offered me hope or salvation in this dark and testing time so that’s why I’ve shared this and to raise awareness of this awful sickness and to confront the stigma attached to post natal depression and the pressure put on women to become mothers,” she wrote. “You have to talk. Birth and motherhood is a shock to the system and traumatic, and we shouldn’t have to suffer in silence.” You can read her full blog post here.

Related:

I Didn’t Think I Had Postpartum Depression Until It Was Gone

Adele Was Queen of the World at Her Titanic-Themed 30th-Birthday Party



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Ivanka Trump Opens Up For the First Time About Her Postpartum Depression


Postpartum depression can affect any new mom—and First Daughter Ivanka Trump just revealed she is one of them. Trump told Dr. Oz “with each of my three children I had some level of postpartum depression,” in a new sit-down interview, which will air on Thursday.

While there have been several celebrities who have recently talked openly about dealing with postpartum depression including Chrissy Teigen and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Trump told Dr. Oz she didn’t plan on being one of them. When Dr. Oz asked what made Trump feel ready to talk now, she said “Well, I didn’t know that I was [ready]! But you asked me a question and it’s incredibly important.” Trump is right, of course— many moms who are experiencing symptoms of postpartum depression don’t get treatment because of the stigma surrounding the condition and the pressures of new parenthood.

Trump acknowledges how hard it can be to admit to yourself and those around you that you’re experiencing postpartum depression. “Look, I consider myself a very hard-charging person, I am ambitious, I’m passionate, I’m driven,” she told Dr. Oz. “But this is something that affects parents all over the country.” In other words, no matter how strong you are—physically or emotionally for that matter—postpartum depression can strike anyone, and it does not mean you are a bad parent.

Trump also admits she was taken aback by her symptoms, though she doesn’t go into too much detail about what she experienced. “I had such easy pregnancies that in some ways the juxtaposition hit me even harder,” she explains. “It was a very challenging, emotional time for me because I felt like I was not living up to my potential as a parent.”

These kinds of feelings are extremely common among women experiencing postpartum depression. If you think you may have postpartum depression, reach out as soon as possible to a therapist or even your ob-gyn, who can recommend a therapist, as symptoms can worsen over time. And tell your partner or family members, too—as Trump and these other celebs have shown, there’s no reason to feel like you have to go through it alone.



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