Can you become a mother when you are bipolar?
When she discovers her pregnancy, Lila is overwhelmed. It’s no longer the old anxiety of always, it’s a psychic tsunami and it collapses. Staying at home is no longer possible, nor is staying with your partner. The baby? She doesn’t know. At her request, she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. It is in the strangeness of this unknown universe that Lila finds herself alone facing the most serious decision of her life: abort or remain pregnant despite your untenable mental state.
The psychiatrist who follows her tells her that she is having a “ prenatal depression » and that it affects more than 10% of pregnant women. And then he tells her that she is bipolaroffers him treatment. After ten years of exhausting therapeutic wanderinga timid hope pierces the darkness.
But with it, new questions: can you become a mother when you are bipolar?
With humor, lucidity and tenderness, Lila Albanese recounts her anger against the stigmatizing gaze of a society which forces women to put on a good face when they are pregnant and which, moreover, makes mental illness a taboo. A necessary and vibrant story.
The authors:
Lilac ALBANESE
Lila always wanted to be a mother. But the day she became pregnant, she suffered a serious decompensation which forced her to spend her first months of pregnancy in a psychiatric hospital. There she will learn that she is bipolar, discover the world of mentally ill people and then go through her tormented gestation like a merciless fight against suffering. Meleehis first comic strip, recounts this journey, as painful as it is initiatory.
Claire PAQ
Claire Paq is a graphic designer, artistic director and illustrator. After studying visual communication, she works as a freelancer, particularly for cultural institutions and committed projects. His work, at once colorful, dreamlike and sensitive, tells of poetic and narrative worlds.
Body to body – Pregnant and bipolar, Lila Albanese and Claire Paq, Steinkis éditions, March 2026, 208 pages, €22
