A Picture of Postpartum Depression

About a year ago, there was a case in the news about Ee Lee of Wisconsin who was arrested after she admitted to torturing her 6 week old daughter to death. I followed this story, like many others, because I was intrigued by the connection between infanticide and Perinatal Mood Disorders.

I wanted to get inside the mind of the media and society to see what they were doing to help prevent these tragedies from happening. So, in my research, I found an article in The Daily Page of Wisconsin that quoted an expert on postpartum depression. The quote really struck a cord in me. It read, "If I could draw an image of postpartum depression," she says, "it would be of a woman just sitting on one side of the room with her child far away on the other side of the room. And there's all this distance between them."

I really did not think that generalization was a fair description of postpartum depression as a whole. You see, if I could draw an image of my postpartum depression, it would be of me, in total exhaustion, hovering nervously over my baby with complete terror that the alarm on cardiac monitor would go off indicating that he stopped breathing again. It would show no distance between us at all. It would demonstrate fear as most may never experience or begin to comprehend. It would be of a mother, filled with love and fear concurrently, embracing her baby never wanting to let go. I almost lost my baby in the hospital nursery, he had to be resuscitated once and I did not want to have it happen again.

Signs of postpartum depression and the ones I experienced are in bold:

• Feeling restless or irritable.
• Feeling sad, depressed or crying a lot.
• Having no energy.
• Having headaches, chest pains, heart palpitations (the heart being fast and feeling like it is skipping beats), numbness, or hyperventilation (fast and shallow breathing).
• Not being able to sleep or being very tired, or both.
• Not being able to eat and weight loss.
• Overeating and weight gain.
• Trouble focusing, remembering, or making decisions.
• Being overly worried about the baby.
• Not having any interest in the baby.
• Feeling worthless and guilty.
• Being afraid of hurting the baby or yourself.
• No interest or pleasure in activities, including sex.

• Having one picture depicting postpartum depression would not serve it justice. You would need a gallery to host the various depictions of each individual mother's experience.