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I experience PPD after the birth of my son. Nothing as extreme as what Brook Shields was describing but i think that was why it was sooo hard for me or anyone around me to know that something was wrong. I felt so completely overwhelmed and felt like I had lost my life in this being a mother thing. I knew I loved my child but I felt that I couldn't care for him properly, and that someone else needed to take over. Also, My fear of something happening to him while I slept just put me over the edge. I literally lost the ability to function after a while because i refused to sleep at night. Thank god my mother would come over early in the a.m. and take him so I could catch up on a few hours. When she would leave at supper time i would just start bawling. It was awful!! Gradually, my sanity returned to me and i got in the swing of things. My husband and I think about having a second and i'm so scared to go through all that again. This time i will talk to my Dr. about it before hand. That way she can have a heads up if I decide i need meds or something. Looking back, O know i should have consulted w/ my Dr. the last time. But I guess I just thought these were normal feelings to have and i had to work through it. Not so. Ladies, if you are feeling the slightest bit off - TALK TO YOUR DR. Don't go through it alone. Hopefully, it will be something that you don't have to worry about but if you do their is help out there. Don't be afraid to ask for it. Good luck!

Remember that it is very normal to feel sad for the fist couple of weeks following delivery. There is a major change in hormones after we give birth. This sad time is often called "Baby Blues", so if you find yourself down there is no need to run off and get a prescription, just the support of family and friends. When it continues and doesn't seem to get better after the first couple of weeks that is when you should seek the professional help. Good Luck ladies, best wishes to all!!!

i read your question and thought i would respond. i had a baby 12 weeks ago and beleive that i have experienced a form of post partum depression. i had a natural birth no drugs just a little gas. i did have a post partum haemoragge and was re hospitalised with multiple infections a week after her birth. i beleive the reason i have felt the way i have since her birth ( iam now feeling better), is due to several reasons. i was not mentally prepared for the reality of having a baby enter my life. i am thirty and have always done the career, uni, travel all about me thing and that can no longer be the case. i also believe lack of family support (no mum, dad and sister a long distance away) and most importantly lack of sleep. i have experinced 3 months with no more than 4-5 hours in a row. (this is now also getting better. during the first three weeks i thought on three seperate occasions of how it would be easier to just be dead and not have to deal with the situation. funnily i am a trained mental health wirker and i didnt even recognise my own symptoms. women put pressure on themselves and each other to sail through this most difficult time which i also did. we need to be able to openly say i love my child but i need a break from her or i love her but this is the single most difficult thing i have ever experienced. due to me feelings i have chosen to not have a another child as i have vowed to never put myself in a place where i can feel like that again. i will make the most out of my beautiful liitle girl who didnt deserve my crying, moodiness and crankiness for the first 10 weeks of her life.

Julie Hall- Wow...thanks for the advice. I would love to know how the natural birth went. Why did you choose to do so? I know I want to because I heard when you have an epidural you stay in labor for a longer amount of time. How long were you in labor? What is post partum hemorage? It sounds scary! Also, did you breastfeed? I've heard it might increase natural endorphins which can lessen the post partum depression. Thanks so much to everyone. I'd still love to hear more.

I battled depression after my daughter was born for about a year and I even saw a councelor. What we decided caused some of the depression was all the lack of sleep. My daughter did not sleep through the night for six months. When she finally did sleep and I got rest my brain started functioning again. I begain to process every thing I had just gone through and having a baby is a lot to go through. I did breast feed my child, I did have an epidural and I did not have a c-section. I don't think you will find a common ground here. I think just like every thing else it is how your body chooses to handle and respond to the hormone and physical changes you endure through out pregnancy and labor. Every body is different.
I can tell you one thing. It has all been worth it. I love my little girl and would do it all over again if I had to.
Good Luck! : )

At about 5-6 days after having my son I burst out in tears and did not understand why, I was angry all day - honestly it went away by dinner, I was so afraid (and so was my family) that this was PPD and I am sure it was baby blues combined with lack of sleep, I know other people who have experienced PPD but please do not feel like it will happen to you, it is serious but not everyone has such severe experiences like Brooke.

Mine was bad with my first.I worked full time and overtime right up to the very end of my pregnancy so I really didn't give myself time to read all the books. I was clueless about colic and jaundice. My parents lived in another state and my in-laws and I had gotten into a fight just days after my daughtet was born. I thought she was fine but she had a severe case of jaundice.When the pediatrician finally called back with the test results, he told me to rush my daughter to the emergency room. By that time she was lethargic and had to spend 3 days under the billi light.My in-laws left and went back home while we were still in the hospital and didn't speak to me for two months after that. My husband had also just started his own trucking company and was on the road all the time so I was at home all alone with a colicy baby and no one to talk to. I had also planned on quitting my job but wasn't really sure if we could handle it financially. On nights when the baby was into her 2nd hour of screaming at the top of her lungs and it was 1am, I would cry and hold her in my arms and think about jumping with her in my arms off our balcony. I think I was like that for about 2 months. 2 months of non stop screaming from 11 pm - 2 am. Lonliness and mother hood just do not go hand in hand. No one was there to give me a break. No one was there to talk to. I was afraid if I talk to anyone about how I felt, they would take my daughter away from me and I would never see her again. I also knew that if I killed just myself, my daughter would be messed up for life so it would be better to take her with me.That's how my thought process was at that time. You must have a support system around you. I have good news though. My daughter is now 5 and my son is 9 mo. It took all that time to finally convince myself to have another one and I prepared myself for the worst. It was stressfull like all newborns can be, but I wasn't suicidal. I just loved him so much, I didn't mind going through colic and constant testing of his jaundice levels all over again because I knew the rewards were just a few months away.
P.S. To answer your question, I had an epidural and breastfed for 5 months.

After my son was born I suffered PPD really bad. I didn't admit it for months that something was wrong because I was so ashamed about feeling depressed. I used to say to myself what do I have to be depressed about? I have a beautiful baby a great husband and a perfect life but yet I didn't want to get out of bed everyday. I don't know how or why I got the depresssion but also studied Psychology in college and am pursuing a graduate degree and have learned it has a lot to do with the falling and rising of hormone levels. Once I finally admitted to myself that I had a problem I got some help (medication). My husband and I used to get into terrible fights because he didn't understand what was wrong with me. Once I got on my meds I felt like a new person. Now I am 5 months along and am depressed again. I have been off medication for almost 2 years. I have a feeling I am going to go through the same thing once this baby is born.

It was the worst feeling of my entire life. I had little self control and felt as though my family would be better off without me. Lucky for me i had a Dr. who picked up on this immediatly. I spent time in the hospital and took edication that helped me get through one of the lowest points of my life. I read an obituary of a young mother not long after, who took her own life on a beach in front of her home. She tried to seek help and was turned away from the clinic as well as the emerg/dept, wasn't from not wanting to help herself, just lack of knowledge and ignorance. She was desperate for help, and wasn't taken seriously. She left a beauitful 2 month baby boy and a loving husband. They had tried for many years to have a child and had finally a dream come true.

I am so scared I will get PPD. My mother had it bad when I was born. I have a brother that is Manic-Depressive and supposedly that greatly enhances my chances of getting PPD. I even talked with my husband about it before we got married so he would know that it is a possibility.

i never had a problem with my first one but when i had my son i kept the houes all closed up and i stoped working i felt depressed nothing band just opened my windows and got out of house more then felt fine and nothing with my third and now we are going to have a fourth but i had a friend who had it really bad after her 2nd she had to be put in hospital for a while

I had PPD after my first child and didn't seek help. I thought it was just my hormones. My mood stayed down for a while. I never discussed this with my husband (who is a physician!!) as my marriage became very strained during this time. However, 4 years later I had another baby and had such bad depression I sought pharmacalogical help in addition to talk therapy. What a difference!!! It opened a huge door for me and I felt relief. Ironically, I asked my mother if she experienced anything like this (she had four children) and she said she hadn't. However, a month or so after she had me she recalled feeling "blue" for a while. She also remembers holding me and just crying for no reason. This experience never occured with any other one of her children. I'm wondering if there is a link to this.

I worry that I'll get it because I know I probably suffer from a little bit of depression now. I didn't plan on getting pregnant but it happened and I've been struggling with it for 24 wks. I try to stay excited but I so much liked my freedom. Not like we led an extravagant lifestyle but I liked running out the door and not having to worry about someone watching the baby or asking the hubby to while I ran errands etc. I'm trying to stay positive and hope that when she's born my motherly instincts will kick in but I'm not too sure of that. I'm worried my hubby will get mad at me or think I'm crazy if I don't bond right away or if I start crying for no reason at all.

Hey sweetie dont worry if is going to happen it happens and is horrible but there is a lot of thing you can do, i had my first when i was 19 and all my pregnancy i was scare to have postpartum depression because i would see it so much in the tv and the news that it would drive me crazy, so when the baby was born i had this horrible fear for about 6 months and would have horrible thoughts and thinking i wasnt goign to be a good mother or was going to do something horrendous like in the news, but in the back of my head i new i loved my baby and was just having this panic that i refused to stay alone and after 6 month i decided to go for help and my entire family was aganst me taking any medication but it got to the point that i was even lossing to much weith and i decided to go on paxil for a little while and got 100 % better never had any othe panic attack, but now i got pregnant again right when i was getting off the medication so i went off of it and was good for 3 months and then started having anxiety again and panic attacks and now is not about the baby is about me i tend to get palpitations and think that i'm having a heart attack so i freak out and got back on meds for a while until i have the baby and get back to normal. I hope this helps, good bless you.

i had ppd with my daughter. it didn't catch up to me until she was about 5-6 months old but when it did it was bad. i never got suicidal but i was extremely paranoid. i thought my husband was going to kill me once (for no apparent reason) and called 911, i couldn't sleep at night for fear that someone was going to break into our house and kill us all. my husband would have to push the stove in front of the door just so i would close my eyes at night. i thought i was losing my mind and i was. it was making me insane. one day i just lost control and couldn't think anymore. i was hysterical. my mind would not function. i just shut down. that's when i was admitted to the hospital and the problem was dealt with. if it wasn't for me getting help i don't know what would have happened. i think a lot of things going on with my daughter had a lot to do with my ppd being so bad. she was born with a disability we didn't know about until she was born so i think just realizing the unknown and unthinkable could happen to me sent me over the deep end. my daughter is now 3 years old and i still get paranoid at times but not nearly as bad. just talking about it and realizing what the problem was helped me. btw i was put on effexor and it only made things worse. i believe talking through your fears and emotions is the only real solution this problem (at least in my case). otherwise you might just suppress something that might catch back up with you later on in life..p.s. i had a scheduled c-section.

hi..i had ppd after the birth of our first child.I had emergency c-section at 36 weeks and breastfed. I fell that the c-section may have been contributory as well as the early and surprising arrival of our daughter, coupled with a very emotionally unsupported pregnancy. we also(stupidly) didn't arrange for family to be there after the birth (in another country) so we were just overwhelmed afterwards. I suffered insomnia despite being dogtired.. wouldn't eat all day long and had very fleeting thoughts of suicide but dispelled those as soon as they came into my head. I also found i obsessed over the tiniest things.. like.. if only we could get a decent breastfeeding pillow everything would be alright. i found the worst symptom to deal with was that my head felt as if it was full of the white noise you get when ur tv isn't switched to a channel.. all the thoughts just rampaging round and u not able to focus on any one of them.. i feel that might be why some women get obsessive.. ur brains way of trying to focus on an idea?i cried and cried and would have happily dissappeared on a plane anywhere, without husband and baby, had someone given me a ticket! i also felt a strong urge to care for our baby but no real love. I declined drugs cos i wasn't convinced about their safety regarding breastfeeding and although the extreme symptoms went after about 3-4 weeks i was left feeling fairly overwhelmed and counted the hours in everday until about 8 months after the birth and at that point in faded into the normal tired mother thing. I now worship my daughter (don't we all) and although i felt worse than i imagined i could, i now feel my old self and ppd is treatable so it isn't the end of the world although it may feel like it at the time. like many posts my best recommendation is get help after the birth.. as many close family and friends as are willing.. and even non close ones.. you don't even care who they are or if u like them .. as long as they'll cook and clean, u don't care :-)