Alessandra Johnston is a teacher, wellness coach and host of the Simply Woke podcast who lives outside of Toronto with her blended family. She is mom to her 10 year old son from a previous marriage, a 17 year old step daughter, and 3 year old daughter with her current husband. 

This is the third episode where I’m devoting most of our chat to discussing a mom’s journey through postpartum issues.

Alessandra shares her postpartum story where she talks about how she started having intrusive thoughts about her baby. She had anxiety about anything that could potentially bring harm to her child like knives, hot water, bridges but that evolved in to these scary vivid images of herself bringing harm to her child. 

She was still finding joy, so she assumed she wasn’t depressed. At least not in the traditional sense, so she thought everything was fine. 

She just happened to read a book that mentioned postpartum OCD and she realized it was exactly what she was experiencing. Alessandra struggled through this by herself and she did not receive any screenings to help her realize she needed to seek help.

Thankfully she knew what to expect the second time around and was more prepared by having the right team of professionals at her fingertips. She talks about using video conferencing tools with her doctor to address any issues that came up so she didn’t have to travel as much with a new baby.

Check out episode 15 and 17 for more chats like this one.