Help Juni Not Get Severe Postpartum Mood Disorder

Hello friends! It is hard for me to reach out and ask for help like this but with a baby on the way I am feeling the crunch and decided to swallow my pride and ask for support.

Earlier this year Tweedie was laid off and ever since our struggle to stay afloat has become slowly more and more precarious. He is employed again but his wages, though definitely survivable in comparison to times when we were in deep poverty (a strange way to measure financial well-being but it's my reference point!) we are still low income enough to be struggling to keep up as many families in similar positions are-with rent as high as it is and the rapid increase in basic cost of living due to inflation over the last year or so (I watched the grocery budget I so carefully calculated get absolutely decimated and thrown out the window). I guess when you come from “Will I make rent this month?” going to “I'm glad it's been awhile since the electric bill bounced and we can afford some luxuries we couldn't before but things are still constantly terrifyingly precarious.” feels like an insanely privileged position to be in. Being in a place where I’m “not struggling as much as before” makes it very difficult to ask for help!

Before becoming pregnant I was already struggling with long covid, and pregnancy complications have made it even more impossible to work on my writing/content creation to justify promoting myself for more than the extremely small amount of support I receive on Patreon and Comradery. Anyways between over a decade of chronic illnesses and being a full time stay at home parent for the last nearly 8 years of my life, any financial independence of my own has been near impossible.

I have dreams of not only catching up from when my partner was unemployed but also being able to afford crucial support postpartum to hopefully avoid the crippling postpartum depression, anxiety and OCD I had with my last baby. There are also some kind of basic needs we would like to cover that we haven’t been able to afford like new clothes and shoes for my 7 year old who had a recent growth spurt and updating the registration on our car that's about to expire that we can't currently afford.

The goal I’ve set covers costs of a little less than a week of support from a postpartum doula plus the other basic needs listed above.

I am so grateful for any and all support anyone has to offer as it helps relieve a massive burden on our family. Even if we can’t afford the postpartum support, just being able to catch up and cover some basic needs we currently have would be such a relief!

Thank you so much for reading this far and for offering support if you’re able. <3