Every woman deserves an emotionally healthy and rewarding pregnancy
Welcome to this educational resource backed by medical research & inspired by questions from hundreds of my past and current patients. You’ll find helpful info on mood, anxiety, depression, mental illness, hormones, treatments, and resources.
I’ve been honored to contribute to these outstanding institutions:
Baby Blues or Beyond? Recognizing Postpartum Depression
The majority of women, more than three-quarters, experience the baby blues immediately after childbirth. It is a feeling precipitated by the sudden change in hormones after delivery, coupled with sleep deprivation and fatigue. You might feel more tearful, overwhelmed, and emotionally fragile. Generally, this will start within the first couple of days after delivery, peak around one week, and taper off by…
When to Return to Work? Maternity Leave and Mental Health
Maternity leave is an invaluable period of bonding time for a new mom and her baby and a time of recuperation after delivery. But how long does it need to be? Patients and practitioners alike ask me about when the right time is to return to work from maternity leave. Does mental health suffer when a woman goes back too soon? Can postpartum depression worsen or…
How a Relationship Changes With Parenthood
The transition to parenthood is stressful, and the months after a first baby is born are unique in a couple’s life. There are physical changes, social adjustments, and psychological adaptations. One repeat finding in the research of parental relationships is that parents, immediately postpartum as well as a year or even several after childbirth, report a decrease in satisfaction in their marital relationship. This has been shown…
How to Move Forward After a Traumatic Birth Experience
When women think about childbirth, they often have many different hopes and plans. What happens when those dreams of a beautiful experience do not go as planned? What if, in fact, the experience was psychologically traumatic? If childbirth was a traumatic experience for you, you might remember feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, helplessness, and a loss of…
Panic Attack During Pregnancy
If you have experienced a panic attack during pregnancy, you remember the sensation – shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, racing thoughts, and feeling like you might be having a heart attack or something is terribly wrong. It involves the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for our…
Guide to Folic Acid for Depression
Every pregnant woman is encouraged to take folic acid as a supplement during pregnancy. Folate is important for the formation of the neural tube – the precursor to the spine and brain. But did you know it has also been studied as a treatment for depression? Folate is one of the…
Medication Safety Review: Trazodone
This series will review a medication (commonly used in mental health treatment) weekly to describe its safety profile and answer five important questions. Today we focus on trazodone, a medication in the antidepressant class. However, its most common use is as a sleep aid. The doses of trazodone when used as…
Medication Safety Review: Zolpidem (Ambien)
This series will review a medication (commonly used in mental health treatment) weekly to describe its safety profile and answer five important questions. Today we focus on zolpidem (brand name: Ambien). Zolpidem is a medication used to help with sleep, a sedative that comes both in immediate and extended release forms. Sleep is essential, particularly during pregnancy, as poor sleep can lead to…
Medication Safety Review Series: Wellbutrin (Bupropion)
This medication is a commonly prescribed antidepressant. It is often used as a first-line treatment option because it is well tolerated and avoids some of the side effects of other medications (for example, no sexual side effects and no weight gain). It has also been prescribed to help with smoking cessation. I have had many women who continue to take this medication during…
Intrusive Thoughts and OCD Postpartum
Intrusive thoughts postpartum are scary. I have had several patients describe their fears to me – fears that they might do something to harm their baby because these intrusive thoughts pop into their minds. The thought of dropping the baby, the thought of throwing the baby down the stairs or…
Pregnancy Hormones’ Impact on Emotional Health
Pregnancy is a time when your hormones change drastically. These hormones are the reason you feel the way you do, both physically and emotionally, and are what allows a pregnancy to make it to term and promote a healthy mother-baby relationship afterwards. It is valuable to know about each of the hormones involved because they can have an effect on…
Nausea and Vomiting During Pregnancy
For many women, some nausea and vomiting, particularly in the early part of pregnancy, seems inevitable. For some, however, the condition becomes severe enough to compromise well-being and impact quality of life and mood. Severe nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) can impair a woman’s ability to function at work and at home, and can even have negative effects on the baby, such as…
The Pregnancy Brain Myth
The way a woman’s mind works changes during pregnancy. Many women say they experience baby brain or pregnancy brain, referring to feeling less confident with their thinking, attention, and memory. But is this a real phenomenon? Many have attempted to answer the question of how a woman’s cognitive abilities changes during pregnancy, with very mixed results. Some studies show…
Gestational Diabetes & Mental Wellness
Gestational diabetes (GDM) affects more than 9% of pregnant women, with the diagnosis usually made in the middle of the second trimester, and, unfortunately, on the rise. We know that this diagnosis can have a whole host of pregnancy related complications, so it is understandable that women who receive it find themselves with questions..
Sex During Pregnancy
For many women, their own views of themselves as sexual beings and their sexual behaviors change over the course of pregnancy and into the postpartum period. Many researchers of pregnant women note a pattern…
Emotional Side Effects of Infertility Medications
Infertility, affecting many couples, can have a number of mental health complications like depression. The most common treatment medications can themselves also have effects on a woman’s emotional state. One of the most commonly prescribed…
Acupuncture for Pregnancy Depression
Many of my pregnant patients struggling with depression ask about non-medication treatment options. Understandably, there are many concerns and hesitations about taking medication during pregnancy. For women with mild to moderate depressive symptoms, acupuncture is one such treatment…
OCD in Pregnancy
As we’ve previously learned, pregnancy and the postpartum period can predispose a woman to developing a new mental health condition or worsening of an ongoing diagnosis. This is the case with depression, with anxiety, and also with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This condition is characterized by intrusive, recurrent thoughts, often with a need to alleviate the tension of these thoughts by engaging in certain types of behaviors. This might mean…
Dr. Glezer began her training at Harvard and then transitioned to the University of California, San Francisco, where she has been a practicing physician, teacher, mentor, and is an associate professor. She is board certified in adult and forensic psychiatry, a member of the American Psychiatric Association, and the immediate past President of the Northern California Psychiatric Society.
She has worked with hundreds of women going through the emotional challenges of conception, pregnancy, loss, and postpartum. She has been interviewed for, and her written work has appeared on multiple leading sites, including Huffington Post, Fit Pregnancy, Health Line, Help Guide, and more.
She began her private practice to help women throughout the Bay Area access reproductive mental health services and is really passionate about helping as many women as possible.
