Catherine Reitman Quotes

There's this culture where we celebrate people snapping back into shape a week after the birth, but I don't want to be one of those people - I just want to enjoy Arabella.

I'm doing stand-up comedy. I'm working on a one-woman show about how I don't like my baby. There is a period of time where a baby is born where the next 3 months is harrowing. A lot of people say it's the most wonderful time, but for me it was harrowing.

There is enormous shame around depression of any kind and at any time. And there's enormous social stigma attached to it, which we need to go on fighting. But I think that the sense of depression during pregnancy and early motherhood has been particularly stigmatized, that people especially feel that should be the happiest time of your life.

When I had a baby, I was consumed with my body.

Maternity leave is for women to hide and heal their disintegrating body.

Having a baby makes me grateful that I work for a company that does give you four months' leave. And my heart breaks for women that don't get that time with their child. As a mom, you're just not ready to go back immediately - physically, you can't. You just need some time not only to bond, but you need some time to heal.

I talk about postpartum depression and all these things I don't hear a lot of women talking about on TV.

I remember, after my first postpartum depression, I didn't know what had happened to me. I was stuck in this gray depression where I just wanted to retreat and pull the covers over my head and weep. My mother and I, we went to a psychiatrist, and he just patted me on the head and told me I had baby blues, which was not helpful, obviously.

(Cartoon caption:) I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.

It's horrible, horrible, horrible. It took a year and a half until I found out that I had post-natal depression.

The very damaging, frightening part of postpartum is the lack of perspective and the lack of priority and understanding what is really important.

I suffered from post-natal depression after Rowan was born. I had a healthy, beautiful baby girl and I couldn't look at her. I couldn't hold her, smile at her. All I wanted was to disappear and die.

Somehow I am really relaxed within the chaos of having a baby - and anyone who's a mother knows it's very hard to relax, because there is so much to do and worry about!

In many ways, being pregnant and working were more difficult than motherhood.

I suffered from a mild case of postpartum depression after my second child and the physical challenge of maintaining an overnight shift at CBS, a marriage, and two in diapers made the symptoms worse and everyone in the house paid the price.

I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I'm trying to be what my mother wasn't for me. My mother's battled depression, so I understand it now as a parent, some of the things that she must have been going through.

When you study postpartum depression, there is a very clear understanding that in communities where you see more support, there is less depression.

I think I'm going to spend some time learning how to be a first-time mom, and then I'll go back to work.

Being a mother is more exhausting than working, and sometimes I push myself too hard and burn myself out. I can appreciate how exhausting it must be for women who have to do everything themselves all the time.

First of all, returning from motherhood, I was looking for something lighter, and I wasn't as much attracted to Kate as I was to the relationship between the two people.

After having your first child, it's a massive shock to the system. I work in an industry where people judge you and the way you look, and you always want to put your best foot forward when you can.

I came back to work when my children were two months old. At that early age, they seem to have little awareness of anybody but their Raggedy Ann dolls, so it wasn't a matter of them missing me. I was missing them.

I don't know if women are meant to run, especially after having kids.

When I was pregnant, I wanted to take some time off from acting, but I still needed a creative outlet for myself. My first two books were created during my pregnancies and after giving birth to my first child.

I would love to live free of the fear and sadness and real desperation that I think the effect of childbirth has on women, especially because we are expected to be so concerned by 'recovery' from childbirth.