Most of America is talking this week about Lindsay Clancy. And no matter what you think -- and we suspect you have an opinion -- the case has brought up a lot of conversation about postpartum mental health.
It seems clear the Church belongs in that conversation. So The Pillar spoke with Aimee Gutowski, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Denver Catholic Counseling, who specializes in prenatal and postpartum mental health.
Gutowski discussed the ways in which postpartum women are particularly vulnerable, and what the Church at different levels can do to support new moms.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
From a mental health perspective, what do women need after having a baby, and how can the Church help meet those needs?
The postpartum season is really one of the most profound transitions a woman can experience: body, mind, heart, and soul all at once. Women oftentimes experience extraordinary joy, fulfillment and peace, but alongside exhaustion, anxiety, isolation, the need for physical healing, and sometimes a really deep fog or emptiness. And all of this is really valid.
A postpartum woman is uniquely vulnerable. Physically, she’s still healing. Emotionally, she is raw. And a lot of times she’s more dependent on others than she has been in years, but that dependence can make her feel really exposed.
Bringing forth life is costly work. It is through pain and suffering, with Jesus dying on the cross, that God brings forth new life. Mothers really, truly participate in that.
One big way the Catholic community can support new mothers is through everyday presence and listening, creating a safe space for women to share their experiences, both the joys and the struggles.
When we can, through the Church culture, hold two truths together -- that motherhood is a sacred vocation and it is also a season of real vulnerability, physical change, and sometimes clinical need -- we’re allowing for that experience to be okay, to be welcomed. We cultivate a culture where it’s normal to need help and acceptable to admit that the season of new motherhood is harrowing as well as holy.
A mother who no longer has to wonder whether her struggles are unwelcome, or if her struggles are an indication of failure, or if her struggles seem ungrateful towards the gift she has of being a mother, when she can see past that, and see that she is valid for joy and struggle simultaneously, that gives her room to speak. And that is the first step in being able to access support when it’s needed.
What can priests do to support new moms?
I think priests can begin with intentional and humble accompaniment. This could look like an unhurried conversation after Mass, or a home visit that goes beyond ‘congratulations’ and ‘what a beautiful baby’ – actually asking how the mother is doing and then listening without trying to fix it or spiritualize.
The reason for that is when someone is willing to be present in her reality, it can kind of lower the sense of her being a burden or a problem. I also think about homilies that acknowledge the real mix of joy and struggle in family life, and help mothers feel seen – recognizing that those things can coexist naturally: the good, the bad and the ugly.
Also, connecting with her in confession, providing spiritual direction, and very importantly, having a resource arsenal for professional support when needed.
In addition, really appreciating her vocation, treating her as a whole person and appreciating that vocation as an extraordinary seat of constant sacrifice and ultimate joy. Listening to her without surprise or being scandalized if she is talking about some of the harder, darker pieces of her postpartum period. Creating a safe space for her to share. Knowing that a woman, when she’s able to know that rawness will be met with reverence instead of judgment, that that gives her almost the permission to be able to speak freely.
You mention the need to avoid spiritualizing postpartum struggles. Sometimes Catholic women talking about challenges postpartum get the advice to ‘offer it up.’ Can you talk a little more about that?
I’m not saying that we should never spiritualize things, but we should be careful not to spiritualize as a way of minimizing.
Sometimes we just need to validate and recognize, through empathy, the struggle that somebody is having -- listening in order to understand versus to fix it and find the solution immediately.
It’s similar to when someone tells a tired mother to just “sleep when the baby sleeps.” That can feel so minimizing when the reality is I’m so tired and it takes so much for me to get the baby to go to sleep. And then when the baby does go to sleep, I have a litany of other things, other competing demands that get in the way. Or maybe it’s that I can’t fall asleep as soon as the baby sleeps. I’m not in a place where I can just shut my eyes. And so when we rush in with solutions, sometimes we’re really invalidating the experience.
Sometimes we just need to allow things to be hard for a minute, to sit in that understanding, to sit with that empathy before we’re trying to jump to fix it, or before we’re trying to jump to rationalize it or to make it make sense.
This really goes toward a mother feeling heard, a mother feeling like she can express that this is really hard, and that it being hard is not necessarily a problem that needs to automatically be fixed, but that there’s fairness and validity in her experience as it is.
What can parishes do, at the community level, to support new moms?
I think it’s important to create dedicated and practical structures for mothers. That can look different ways. Meeting immediate practical needs can be incredibly helpful: organized meal trains, a list of volunteer mother’s helpers or babysitters, resource navigation to meet immediate needs like lactation consultants, sleep training, or even therapists, medical professionals, pelvic floor therapists, etc.
I also think about having a well-run moms’ group. One that includes that really honest peer conversation -- women who have been there, having a chance to walk with women who are in it now. And setting that up as a dedicated confidential space, that definitely matters.
Moms can really benefit from that camaraderie and empathy, that knowledge and wisdom that comes with that new chapter of being a new mom and meeting those needs. Coffee and donuts after Mass is rarely the right setting for that level of vulnerability. What we want to do is create a space where isolation loses power, where it’s normal to be able to express that mix of joy, exhaustion and everything in between.
You mention the mix of emotions. Sometimes it seems like there’s pressure in the Catholic world to put on a happy face, in order to be an ambassador of family life to the broader culture – particularly if you have a large family. Do you think it’s important to talk about the difficult parts of parenthood too?
I understand the sentiment and the intention of saying that we don’t want to amplify the struggle to the point where it discourages people to have families.
But when the only image that we’re portraying is one of smiling children, tidy homes, mothers who appear kind of unfazed, then I think it can become disingenuous. There’s nothing that says that having a genuinely beautiful family life can only look good in that sense. A lot of things that are truly beautiful include struggle. And if we are portraying family life as effortless, always joyful, having it all together, then we might be signaling that postpartum struggles can look like personal failures.
There can be a kind of romanticizing the isolation and the struggle that often comes with motherhood. If we’re celebrating those who can push through without complaint, we’re really sending a message that struggle is unwelcome. And that’s not what the Church itself says. So I would say that it’s kind of contrary to the culture that we want to create. Church community should be a place where we have connectivity, where we’re joined together, where we share our struggles. As Catholics, we are called to join people who are suffering.
What I would say is that large families can be honest. I work with a lot of women in my practice as a Catholic counselor who have very large families. Adding more children can definitely change the game as far as how demanding the role of parents becomes. And when we can be really honest and normalize the genuine struggles and true joys that go into having a family, we strike balance.
And I don’t believe that discourages people from having big families or from pursuing children, because there is beauty in the struggle. There is also realness and rawness. It kind of goes along with that sentiment that nothing in life worth having comes without having to work really hard for it, comes without that vulnerability. All of that encompasses the beauty of being a parent.
Do Catholic employers have a role to play in supporting mothers and families as they craft their health care and paternal leave policies?
Absolutely. If my husband got into a horrible car accident, he’d go on disability and get paid time off etc. We should consider that the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aftermath of birth requires time and space for recovery for the woman, bonding with the baby, etc. And so I think that propping up parental leave as a priority and as a way for a Catholic employer to support new mothers is absolutely essential.
When it comes to healthcare plans, making sure that healthcare plans have accessible means to medical and professional services -- really being able to look intricately at that to say, what are the things that we provide access to, in order to give her the options towards what she might need in her recovery?
How about the average Catholic in the pew? What can they do to support new moms?
I think that it’s a really wide question, because it’s definitely person-to-person. What does each individual have to offer? Are they a mom themselves? Do they have the ability to kind of elicit friendship, even if it’s just a text, “Hey, can I drop something off? Or can I come over and just hang out with you?” Do they have some kind of professional background where maybe they’re a lactation consultant where they can offer services? Are they maybe somebody who could cook a meal? Are they somebody who could watch an older sibling or offer to come over and help with some cleaning? It’s really, I think, dependent on what resources, skills, or abilities that particular person has.
But if they can reflect within themselves and say, “What do I have to offer? Meeting practical needs? Emotional support? Professional resources?” Then that person can show up to support women after birth using their own skills and capacities.