This therapist wasn’t ready for the unexpected thoughts that came with motherhood

Paige Ballengee hands her 5-month-old son Jackie off to her husband before an interview. (WCPO via CNN Newsource)

Warning: Graphic content.

CINCINNATI, Ohio (WCPO) -- They just finished playing Bingo, and Paige Ballengee asks her 5-year-old daughter if she wants to put together a puzzle.

“OK,” Ballengee said. “Let’s spread these pieces out.”

Her 5-year-old daughter holds the box up high in the air and laughs while dumping the pieces out. Jemma tells me her favourite colour is black and that her favourite animal is a cheetah and a lion.

When I ask her about becoming a big sister, she gives me two thumbs up.

Then, Jemma smiles and says her mom promised her a Frosty after this interview — an interview the 5-year-old eventually leaves the room for. Because it’s an interview about maternal health. It’s about how one in five mothers are impacted by some type of mental health condition, according to the maternal mental health leadership alliance.

That organization says 75 per cent of those women don’t get treatment. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide and overdose are the leading causes of pregnancy-related death.

“It just completely changes you in every way — especially being a new mom," Ballengee said. “It is one of the most intense life transitions that any woman goes through.”

Ballengee is a mental health therapist. She’s holding her 5-month-old son, Jackie, while describing how the brain changes dramatically during pregnancy. Then, she asks if it’s OK to breastfeed.

In graduate school, Ballengee studied postpartum depression. Still, the therapist wasn’t prepared for the type of thoughts she had when she became a mom.

Scary thoughts. Bad thoughts. Thoughts about dropping her daughter. Thoughts about death.

“It is extraordinarily hard,” Ballengee said. “And it’s worth it.”

Ballengee was diagnosed with postpartum OCD. And she’s sharing her story now, a few weeks before Mother’s Day, because she wants other moms to know it’s OK to feel this way. And seeking professional support doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.

It doesn’t make you a bad mom. It makes you a good one.

It’s why Ballengee and her friend started Holos House, a nonprofit focused on accessible mental health support for moms. The organization offers a donation-based group and scholarships for mothers who might not otherwise be able to afford professional support.

After her first child was born, Kristen Kelly remembers feeling a sense of dread anytime the sun set.

“I kind of crashed out,” Kelly said.

The vice president of Holos House tells me she had a supportive partner. She had access to healthcare. She even knew her mom had postpartum depression.

“And I still struggled tremendously,” Kelly said. “When I came out of that, it became one of my life’s missions to help women who are experiencing that same thing.”

Because motherhood can be good and bad. It can be wonderful and terrible.

“It’s just everything all at once,” Ballengee said.

By this point in the interview, we’ve moved from her therapy space to the studio where many of the nonprofit classes are conducted. Jemma is back, and she’s been picking up items from around the room and placing them in front of my camera.

I ask her if she has any questions she’d like to ask her mom.

“Can we go get a Frosty now?”

By Keith BieryGolick.