Ivanka Trump Opens Up About Postpartum Depression

Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Trump, is one of many famous women who has come forward to talk openly about postpartum depression.

Trump is the mother of three children, Arabella, 6, Joseph, 3, and Theodore, 18 months. When she appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, she said, “With each of my three children I had some level of postpartum depression. It was a very challenging emotional time for me.”

Trump continued that when she had postpartum depression, “I felt like I was not living up to my potential as a parent, or as an entrepreneur, or as an executive. I had such easy pregnancies that in some ways the juxtaposition hit me even harder.”

Trump said he hadn’t planned on discussing this on Dr. Oz, but she added, “It’s incredibly important and look, I consider myself a very hard-charging person. I am ambitious, I’m passionate, I’m driven, but this is something that affects parents all over the country.”

Trump also told Dr. Oz, “One thing that I continue to do is meditate. It’s been enormously helpful to me.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 1 in 9 women suffer from postpartum depression. As Karen Kleiman, the founder of the Postpartum Stress Center, told Us Weekly, symptoms can include "feeling sad, weepy, anxious, hopeless, angry, inadequate, guilty, suicidal, unable to sleep, unable to wear, with scary intrusive thoughts about harm coming to the baby."

Kleiman added that acting early is the key. “The longer a woman waits to get help, the harder her symptoms can be to treat and the longer it might take for her to recover.”

In recent years, more famous women such as Adele, Chrissy Teigen, Jena Malone, and Alanis Morissette have come forward to talk about suffering from postpartum depression. Adele told Vanity Fair, “I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me.” She was also afraid to seek help at first, adding, “I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant.”

Chrissy Teigen also fought back against postpartum depression with the help of antidepressants. In an essay for Glamour, she wrote, “I’m speaking up now because I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone.”