Maternal Mental Health Month is a time to raise public awareness of perinatal mental health problems, from immediately before to months after childbirth. Mothers may experience difficulties long before and after childbirth, however. Depression, pain, self-doubt, loss of sense of self, physical, emotional and mental exhaustion are challenges that can last years after the birth of a child and can manifest in many different forms.

For Maternal Mental Health Month, we hosted a special SciMom Chats event to speak openly and honestly about the raw truth of motherhood. A panel discussion with four incredible mothers in STEMM from our team shared their motherhood experiences with pregnancy, traumatic childbirth, post-partum depression, isolation, pressure to be a perfect mom, among other topics which are normally "taboo”.

The speakers in this panel discussion included our co-founder/CEO, Isabel Torres, who is a science editor/communicator and a mother of four based in France. Also joining us from Europe, Ahana Maitra is a postdoctoral researcher and a mother of one based in Italy. Sherin Shibin is a PhD candidate and project coordinator and a mother of two based in Canada, and speaking from the opposite side of the world in Australia, Belinda Di Bartolo is a COO at a biotech startup and a mother of three.

Maternal mental health matters

Over 100 moms from our community registered for this event, showing just how important it is to have these difficult conversations about motherhood and mental health. After the discussion, the attendees could ask questions and share their own experiences during the Q&A session. We talked about the unnecessary judgement that mothers experience – one participant called it the “mother meter” – the bad habit many of us have of comparing mothers and measure them against each other. 

Isabel Torres, CEO/co-founder of Mothers in Science and a mother of four, talked about the constant judgement that she experienced since she became a mother, starting from her first pregnancy (a twin pregnancy) all the way through to her choices in parenting. Sherin Shibin, a Project Coordinator and a mom of two girls, very bravely discussed her difficult experiences with traumatic birth and post-partum depression, noting how she lacked support and empathy even when she asked for help. Mother-of-one and postdoc Ahana Maitra opened up about how she didn’t enjoy being pregnant and felt so guilty about not wanting to look at or hold her child straight after childbirth, because she was still in shock and exhausted. Finally, Belinda Di Bartolo, a startup COO and a mom of three, moderated the session and questioned the concept that it takes a village to raise a child, asking where is the village, touching on this consistent lack of support for mothers.

Bringing these discussions to the light means that these topics are no longer ‘taboo’ and they become mainstream and it prevents us all suffering in silence. That was our aim when we planned this event- it is time to stop keeping these thoughts and feelings to ourselves and pretending that motherhood is the perfect package of happiness… Because it’s not!

Let’s continue having these conversations and increase awareness of maternal mental health.

Written by Belinda di Bartolo
Edited by Isabel Torres
26th May 2022