In Today's Issue:

🧠 New Study of PPD and the Brain: What We're Just Beginning to Understand
🌿 Sharing What I’ve Never Shared Before: My Personal Story with Postpartum Bipolar
💐 This Mother's Day, We're Doing Something Different
🫠 Why I Used to Dread Mother’s Day (and How I Finally Changed It)

🧠 New Study of PPD and the Brain: What We're Just Beginning to Understand

Postpartum depression is often treated as if it's simply "another form" of major depressive disorder (MDD). But new research reveals that PPD is fundamentally different — biologically, emotionally, and neurologically.

A fascinating 2025 systematic review examined 17 fMRI studies of women with PPD. Here's what they found:

• PPD consistently shows unique brain dysfunctions — specifically in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), precentral gyrus, cerebellum, and key emotional regulation centers like the amygdala, ACC (anterior cingulate cortex), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).

• PPD overlaps with MDD in some areas, but is distinct enough that it needs entirely different treatment approaches.

• Drugs that are effective for MDD often have poorer outcomes in PPD — and can even make symptoms worse.

• Non-pharmacological treatments like TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) and acupuncture are showing real promise for PPD support.

The conclusion? Postpartum depression is NOT just major depression "after a baby." It’s a unique neurobiological condition requiring its own research, its own care pathways, and its own understanding.

And yet… most providers still rely on screening tools like the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), a tool developed in the 1980s.

As I shared on the podcast a bit ago and I'll and again here:
➡️ The EPDS is not enough. It never was.
Women deserve more than a 10-question form to determine the state of their nervous system, their hormones, their health, and their lives after birth.

This new research only strengthens that truth.
If we want to address postpartum depression at the root, we have to move beyond outdated models and tools. We have to lead with science and soul. We have to recognize postpartum women as complex, whole human beings — not checklist items.

📚 Cited study: DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2025.04.142

🌿 Sharing What I’ve Never Shared Before: My Personal Story with Postpartum Bipolar

For the first time ever, I’m sharing something deeply personal: my journey with postpartum bipolar disorder.

This isn’t coming from research papers or case studies. It’s coming from lived experience — an experience I kept quiet about for years, not out of shame, but out of fear. Fear that it would be misunderstood, misused, or seen as a discredit to the very work I've dedicated my life to.

But the truth is, my experience shaped everything I now teach about postpartum healing.

The frameworks, the methods, the protocols — they weren’t just built from textbooks. They were born in the trenches of surviving postpartum, of fighting my way back to health when the system had no answers.

Postpartum bipolar is one of the least talked about, most misunderstood parts of postpartum mental health. It’s often missed. It’s often misdiagnosed. And it's almost always buried under silence.

This story isn’t a prescription. It’s not a blueprint.
It’s a window into a reality many women live — and few ever get to name.

💬 If you’ve ever felt that postpartum was more complex, more sacred, and more unknown than the checklists and pamphlets allow… you're not wrong.
We need real conversations. We need radical honesty. We need spaces where mothers aren’t pathologized for suffering — they are seen and supported through it.

➡️ Tune in here to hear my full story.
And if you feel called, hit reply and let me know your thoughts. I’m here for the messy, sacred conversations we need most.

💐 This Mother's Day, We're Doing Something Different

When I first discovered The Exodus Road over 2.5 years ago, it hit me in a way few things ever have.

An organization working tirelessly to rescue women and children from sex trafficking, to not just save lives, but to restore dignity, to offer healing, to rewrite futures.

Every month since, Postpartum University has been donating to this mission. Quietly. Privately. Because real change doesn’t need applause, it needs action.

This Mother's Day, we’re bringing that spirit into the heart of our work.
Today through Sunday, 5% of every purchase of the Perinatal Mental Health Training will be donated directly to The Exodus Road.

The Perinatal Mental Health Certificate is unlike anything else out there.
While most programs teach you how to manage symptoms, this program shows you how to address the root causes of postpartum mental health struggles — and actually change lives.

This is immediate implementation.
This is root cause resolution.
This is holistic integration that makes a difference, physically, emotionally, culturally, and socially.

When you step inside this training, you’ll learn to:

• Spot the hormonal chaos, inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, trauma, and societal pressures behind what we label as “PMADs”

• Support mothers with trauma-informed, evidence-based holistic care within your scope of practice

• Use practical tools and strategies immediately (no fluff or filler)

• Build trust, deepen your client outcomes, and set yourself apart as a true leader in perinatal care

And all of this is backed by evidence, rooted in holistic care, and built for immediate application, no endless theoretical lectures, no waiting to make a difference.

You won’t just be “checking boxes” or recommending therapy and medication.
You’ll be leading mothers back to wholeness — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

This isn't just about growing your practice or earning another certificate (though you'll do that too).
It’s about becoming the kind of provider who can truly hold space for the sacred, for the messy, for the real healing that postpartum demands.

• Every time you choose to heal at the root, you break a chain that was never meant to bind mothers.
• Every time you choose to lead with compassion, you rewrite the story of what postpartum care can be.
• Every time you say yes to deeper knowledge and true integration, you say no to the silence, the suffering, the injustice.

This Mother's Day, we aren't just launching a course.
We're building a world where no woman is unseen, unheard, or unworthy.
Where postpartum is sacred — and so is every life we touch.

When you enroll in the Perinatal Mental Health Training, you don't just sharpen your skills.
You rise.
You heal generations.
You stand shoulder to shoulder with those rescuing women from the darkest places on earth — and with those nurturing them back to light.

This is not charity.
This is solidarity.
This is transformation.
And it begins with you.

Enrollment is open now. 🌿 

Join us here -> because the future of postpartum care is already being written, and it’s calling your name.

🫠 Why I Used to Dread Mother’s Day (and How I Finally Changed It)

Mother’s Day has always stirred a lot inside me.
And I’ve realized — it’s not just about being celebrated. It’s also about how we choose to celebrate ourselves.

Earlier, I shared how we’re giving back this Mother's Day through The Exodus Road. That giving feels so sacred to me, so connected to the heart of motherhood itself.
But there's another side of this, too.

For a long time, I approached Mother's Day with a quiet frustration.
I'd wake up, get a sweet breakfast... and then we’d spend the whole day visiting parents, running errands for them and doing chores at their houses (anyone else had to do this?!).
It never felt like my day.
And honestly, I felt like a b-word for even thinking that way.
Like — how dare I not just be grateful?

But one year, it finally hit me:
Mother’s Day is about giving.
And it’s about receiving, too.

Years ago, I sat down and asked for what I needed:
"I want to stay home. Quilt all day. No housework. No cooking. No errands."

And something amazing happened.
My family was all for it.
They didn’t need me to keep giving. They wanted to meet me where I was.
They just didn’t know until I told them.

Now, every year, we celebrate both ways:
We give outwardly before Mother's Day to our moms. 
And on the big day, I nourish myself with my family.

That, to me, is the real heart of Mother’s Day.
Giving and receiving. Supporting others and letting ourselves be supported.

So I want to gently ask you:

👉 What do you need this Mother’s Day?
👉 How do you want to be celebrated — by others and by yourself?

Because you deserve to ask for it.
And you deserve to receive it.

(Reply and tell me — I’m cheering for you.)

Stay fierce, stay rooted,
Maranda Bower
CEO & Founder of Postpartum University®
www.PostpartumU.com

Current Ways You Can Work With Postpartum University®
🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
🎒FREE Provider's Postpartum Nutrition Toolkit
🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training

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💌 Know someone who gets it?
This newsletter is basically a secret handshake for providers who are done with surface-level postpartum care and want something deeper, realer, and rooted in truth. Forward this to your people—the ones who need to be in on these conversations.

👉 They can join us here: www.postpartumu.com/newsletter