Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Notes

A husband brings in his wife at postpartum day 5 because the wife has had wild mood swings from elation to tearfulness for the last 2 days. She has a distant history of depression but did not take medications for it. You advise conservative treatment and when you see the patient a week later, her symptoms have resolved.

Challenge: Diagnosis?

Image shown under GNU Free Documentation License.

4 comments:

CodeDog said...

Baby blues
The baby blues can happen in the first few days that follow the birth but generally resolve within a week.
No treatment is necessary but it can help if the mother tries to nap at the same times the baby naps and gets help from others with the baby's care.
A new baby, especially for a first time mother, can be a huge shock and a great deal more work than she thought it would be.

Alex said...

normal?

Anonymous said...

Postpartum blues

Craig said...

I guess that one was too easy.
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Notes

The image shows blues notes with flattened third, flattened fifth, and flattened seventh scale degrees. This is postpartum blues, to be distinguished from postpartum depression. The postpartum blues begins postpartum day 2-3, peaks on day 5, and resolves within 2 weeks.

Sources: UpToDate; Wikipedia.