#ppd tw

Yeah I’ve got to the point where Talltail leaves and I’m starting to see that.

I will say though, although this is purely anecdotal (I am not well versed on PPD as a whole), that this does happen.

I was taking to my mum about Palebird, she’s someone who’s had PPD herself and had known others with it. And she knows of two separate women who have had PPD with their first child and never got therapy for it, and then once their second (non PPD child) has come along, they do favour the second child and are a lot more dismissive of the first. They do obviously still care for the first child, but as an outsider looking in you can see there is a bias towards the second. I know this is very anecdotal but very relevant I feel. Palebird, like these women, never got any kind of mental health care to help bond with Tallkit and get over her grief and depression, and so never got close to him, and could still associate him with trauma (which my mum says that she did do, associate the child with the trauma while she had PPD). The authors had said that she already had PPD, but the death of Finchkit just made it worse, so Palebird’s problem wasn’t just Finchkit dying, she would have still had PPD if Finchkit didn’t die but Finchkit’s loss just aggravated it.

I would perhaps imagine Palebird is inspired by someone the authors perhaps know or know of with her symptoms being specific like this (with first child Vs second children).

reduced concentration, especially in regards to interpersonal conversations. you’ll often find her staring off into space, and/or seeming like she’s not paying attention.

trouble sleeping. she’s awake a lot at night, and naps a lot during the day.

heavy mood swings. she plays these off a lot as just being exhausted from being a new parent. plus she already cried a lot before she was ever a mom, so it’s not really something that anyone looks twice at.

withdrawing from family and friends.

recurring thoughts of failing/and or that she’s somehow harming jee-yun.

also feeling like she can’t connect with jee, or figure out what jee needs.

feelings of guilt, shame, inadequacy, overall failure, etc.

this one also relatesto pre-pregnancy trauma surrounding her parents and doug, and is massively intensified with her PPD.

moderate anxiety attacks.

reduced interest in activities that she usually enjoys, like going out to dinner.

overwhelming exhaustion.

the house is just. less clean than it used to be, and she has both a hard time getting herself to clean stuff up and a hard time sitting around in what she perceives to be a mess.

she will go a few days without doing stuff like changing her shirt, and she really struggles with some forms of basic self-care.

she will spend hours on the couch with the tv on, staring off into space.

I want to talk a little bit about Daphne’s and Astoria’s mom, Cordelia. 

Her Korean name is Jin-Ae. She came from a long line of shamans descended from a hyeonhu ( 縣侯 ) or the equivalent of a town marquis during the Goryeo dynasty, and her family originated from Gyeongju or what is now known as modern-day Seoul. Towards the end of the Goryeo dynasty, they relocated to Jeju Island, South Korea. Due to generations of financial mismanagement, the once-noble Seo family became destitute, and by the time Cordelia was engaged to Gaius, the family was poor and barely getting by. She and her mother were the only shamans in their fishing village in Jeju, and what they did mostly was create balms, ointments, poultices, and other herbal medicines for the fishermen and their wives.

During her teenage years, Cordelia started to experiment with the herbs and plants that she and her mother used for healing. More specifically, she tried to explore the properties of Jeju blossoms ( also called King Cherry ) and seaweeds and algae endemic to South Korea. Later on, she was able to develop creams that lessened the appearance of scars, as well as facial oils that retained moisture and reduced acne. 

Cordelia wanted to make a career out of her creations, but she never had the chance. Once she was engaged to Gaius, he made it clear than he believed a wife should remain at home and run the household, and he refused her request to let her earn a living. When she moved to Great Britain with her husband, she found it difficult to acclimate. Cordelia didn’t speak a word of English and she wasn’t from the same social tier as the company her husband kept. This gave birth to her anxiety and depression, and throughout her marriage and motherhood, Cordelia experienced debilitating bouts of melancholy that often deterred her from her “duties” as a wife and a mother.

All things considered, she was doing okay when Daphne was conceived. Daphne’s birth was planned and Cordelia was able to prepare for it, mentally and physically. Astoria’s conception however, came as a surprise. After her first child, Cordelia was adamantly against having another kid, so when the news of Astoria came along, she was insistent on not pushing through with the pregnancy. However, no matter how hard they tried, Astoria clung to survival, and after a while, Gaius determined there was no other choice but to conceive. When she gave birth to her second daughter, the effects on Cordelia’s body were more drastic compared to her first pregnancy. The physical and emotional toll caused her to succumb to post-partum depression, from which she took weeks to recover.

As a result, the relationship between Cordelia and Astoria became strained, and care for the baby was usually delegated to servants and house elves. She continued caring for Daphne -- the child she actually agreed to having -- and Astoria was sort of alienated from her mother’s love. As for Gaius, he was sort of around for all this, but in a very come-and-go sort of way. As much as possible, he tried to distance himself from his wife’s bouts of melancholia, and since he considered child-rearing to be a woman’s job, he also failed to care for Astoria or Daphne. 

Gaius’ main contribution was enforcing the idea that since Daphne was the eldest child, she was supposed to represent the family in the best way and be a model for Astoria to look up to. He preached to his daughters about pureblood ideology and the importance of conducting smart business for the family. Otherwise, he was not involved in any real paternal way, unless you count paying other people to care for and educate your children as paternal, in which case, he was very involved. 

When Hope was pregnant with Aurelie, how did she find out? How did she feel? Who did she tell? I want all the details. Okay, thanks, love you!

𝐆𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐋𝐘𝐍 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐒 . . . This is a great question! I am so in love with Aurélie that I am down to answer all the questions about her! She's my baby to my other baby (Hope). Alright, so I've written Aurélie a few times & every time has been pretty different, so it wasn't until recently that I've really figured out what I wanted to do with her storyline for Tumblr. Everything else that I've done remains the same, as those are private verses. Aurélie currently has three verses, but none are written up.

Me: absolutely not, nothing is wrong, everything is OK like always.

Sister: You almost rammed that truck because he got right beside you and then cried when you got angry...

a very good question! i do think in her earlier teen years, that rhaena wanted to be a mother, eventually. i side with the idea that aIysanne's birth and their time together was what really rooted that as a desire, though i'm certain she knew it would be an expectation before that point. i think she idealized her time with a tiny aIysanne, and then that changed when she had her girls. it's one thing to have children, another to have children as a lesbian, and a third to have children in a period of instability unplanned as a lesbian, and i don't think rhaena could have possibly prepared herself for all of those things together. i believe she probably suffered from pre and postpartum depression, and a lot of anxiety, which explains her pleas to aegon, and some of her inability to summon emotion over losing him and melony. and immediately upon their birth, having her girls declared abominations was probably sentiment that made her very angry and defensive. following that, her experience with motherhood involved giving them away to protect them, expecting them to be harmed, and then having that confirmed in part. having that anxiety a constant reality, even worse not knowing how they are every day, and then having to watch them be subjected to a fate in maegor's court that she thought only she was going to have to endure. having to come to terms with her own powerlessness. i think originally, she thought of it very positively despite the discomfort she knew she'd have to endure to get there, and now, i feel like she's very regretful of it. not that i think for a second she doesn't love them— but because of the life she wasn't able to give them, the skills to raise them that she could never master because of intense growing trauma, the fact that they now only have one parent, and her bitterness at the rest of the world for abandoning them both in care and in birthright. as for alyssa, i think it goes deeper than what we see in text. i think it's worth remembering that it was alyssa's brother, rhaena's uncle, that sold her out as an idea to maegor after he and alyssa returned to court. he was willing to throw rhaena's name in the mix for a bride after maegor murdered aegon. not necessarily reflective of what alyssa would have chosen, but there's some velaryon animosity there to me. a your brother did this to me type of animosity from a woman already so messed up that it may not be rational thought.