Postpartum Depression | You're Not Alone

No one in my family has any history of depression, neither did my mom when she had the three of us, never a history of depression. I never thought I would come anywhere close to any kind of depression.

My pregnancy wasn’t easy, I pretty much went through my pregnancy alone, of course with the help of my family and friends, my support people, but it was a little bit complicated of a pregnancy. I went into pre-term labor, so I was home early from work, so I was home before, actually 2 months prior to my due date.

So I was pretty much home alone. I often did bring a lot of work home to do to keep caught up with work, but I was a little bit lonely, a little bit down. I never attributed it to any kind of depression, I just thought that was a normal process of being home and bedridden.

I was on a couple of meds to prevent pre-term labor, but other than that I was excited. It actually let me catch up on her room, painting and stenciling, so I took that time for me to get ready for her, because I knew once she came I wouldn’t have the free time to myself.

Every once in awhile, I did cry because I was home and didn’t have the contact with my friends from work, and everybody was working in the day and I was home. It was beautiful out, but I couldn’t go out. I’d sit on the balcony and read a magazine, but I couldn’t do shopping, because any time I did a lot of activity I'd have contractions and stuff so I was pretty much on bedrest during the latter end of the pregnancy.

I was hospitalized a couple times because of the complications, not so much because of the nausea and vomiting, but I did have a lot of reflux so I was on a lot of medications for that, so it wasn’t the smoothest transition into motherhood.

I went into the hospital because I was having contractions, and it was exciting. I was nervous, I was a nervous Nelly throughout the pregnancy. Being a nurse I knew the complications that could go along with a pregnancy. My specialty is neonatal intensive care nursing, so I always knew the worst. I guess ignorance is bliss in this case.

So I went in and they hooked me up to the monitor and I knew what the strips were reading and I knew what was going on, so I was a little bit nervous, and I knew they were going to call for a C-section, and called my family to come in. My best friend was there, I had great support from work, everybody was there, and it was just wonderful, the first 24 hours were wonderful.

I was on a high, I was very excited to see her, and she had a lot of hair, she was beautiful, she was my world. So I was very excited, and my dad, I’m his oldest daughter, so he was excited to see his granddaughter, so it was just perfect, it was beautiful.

I didn’t even think, postpartum depression was the farthest thing from my mind, I didn’t have any thought that it was going to affect me at all.

I was there about three or four days. I took the extra day, I said, let me get my rest, let me get the extra support while I’m at work (in the hospital).

I brought her home and my mom stayed with me for a week, and it was just wonderful. The first few days were great, I was breastfeeding, everything was going well. I think I took the turn, at work (in the hospital) the day before I came home. I was breastfeeding, sleeping, getting some rest, and I remember sitting there at the end of the bed ... it was a Sunday night, and I was sobbing and I couldn’t understand why, so I was reaching out for anybody I could call, just to talk to, and I didn’t understand why, the breastfeeding was going so well.

I was just looking to speak to somebody, and at that point I knew it was just hormones, and I thought I would get over it. And I did leave messages for people to call me back, and they were in a panic because they didn’t want to call back because it was so late and I was calling. So the next day I did see those people I was reaching out to, and it was fine. I told them I was just having a moment, I’m fine, I was just having the baby blues.

It was two or three days later, and I knew at that point with my experience that I would be fine, I’d be home, I’d be in my own house, in my own bed, and I’ll be able to do what I need to do and not have any interruptions with what I’m doing, and I’ll have my time with my daughter and my mom.

And then when I came home it was fine, it was bliss. She was home, I showed her her beautiful room. I was excited and I was able to dress her in her cute little clothes. I was just bonding really well and breastfeeding really well, and once that week ended I had my mom go home. I just needed time for myself, I was just feeling very overwhelmed at that point. And I think that’s when everything just turned.

I had another moment when I really needed to speak to somebody, and I was just crying frantically calling people, just crying all the time, and I still believed that this was just the hormones raging. And the breastfeeding started to fold, it didn’t go very well. She became very colicky, and I got very upset with that.

I’m a maternity nurse, this has to work, this is the way it’s going to go, I’m going to breastfeed her for 6 months to a year until I get back to work, and I just started to feel that everything was falling apart. The breastfeeding didn’t go well at all, and it just made me feel so bad, because I think she sensed it when I tried to breastfeed her.

And I lived with it for so many months, with the colic. We put her on formula, and I was disappointed for that because I couldn’t breastfeed her. To me it was almost embarrassing when people would ask me, oh are you breastfeeding her? No, and it was almost like, I’m a big supporter of breastfeeding and I couldn’t do it because of the colic, and things that were going on with me personally, and I couldn’t do it so I was just embarrassed and ashamed.

So for me, that was a failure and the colic, and I put a lot of blame on me with the colic. And I always felt there was something wrong with me, I’m a nurse, and my mind was racing all the time, and I reached the point where I was like, I want to breastfeed her, and it was four months later, and I just broke down crying, and my mom was here and I told her to go home again. I told her, I will manage.

I’m the type of person who likes to manage things on my own. So for awhile I told no one what I was going through. I thought it was just my nature of being so regimented, things done a certain way and this was out of my norm now, and I didn’t know what to do. So I kept it very quiet for a very long time.

My mom really didn’t understand. She knows how I am as a person, and she knows I have a Type A personality, and she took it to that. And she knows when I need my space, she would give me my space. But she didn’t see anything that she would consider depression to be concerned about. She thought it was just my way of coping, so she really never questioned me. She would call me a couple times a day, but she would never think twice about me not picking up, she just thought I had things to do, and I respect her for that. And I got through it, but there were times where I never had any doubts about having my daughter or regrets, but it was just getting to the point where my focus was, is she OK?

I was always thinking the worst. I was always crying like, I had visions of her with IV lines and being sick and attached to monitors all the time. It just got to the point where I would have to wake myself up from sleeping and get up and walk around and make sure she was OK. And I would wake up five to 10 times a day to make sure she was still breathing. And then I started to have visions of me burying my daughter, and I got to the point where I wasn’t sleeping.

And I never admitted it to anybody but it was just horrible. I’m supposed to be excited, she’s starting to be six months old and starting to smile, and I would have visions of her being sick or me with my family burying her in a little casket. And it just got to the point where I said, you know what? I’m going to deal with it, I’m going to shake it.

And I never admitted this to anybody and it took me awhile until one day I was listening to the news, and there was a news report about something that happened in the city, about a toddler found in the city in his stroller who was murdered alongside with his mother. And I was cooking and I saw the knives, and I had to throw all the knives in the drawer.

And I said, this is it. I can’t do this anymore, there’s something wrong, I shouldn’t be having these visions. I never had visions of hurting my daughter, but I don’t want to get to that point. So I said, you know what, I m a strong person, I can do this. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. And I called my mom and I said come over, I need to go somewhere.

I made an appointment with a psychiatrist, and he told me I had the postpartum depression, and from then on it was almost like, it was like bricks were lifted off. To me, it was like immediate therapy. I was able to speak to him, and I started my medications the same day, and within 24 hours I knew I got the help I needed to get, that she was going to be OK, we were going to be OK.

I knew I wasn’t going to hurt her, not that I was going to hurt her, but just the dreams and visions of her being hurt,, the anxiety, the dreams of me burying her. To this day, I think about those dreams. I go back to that time of me having those and it’s just hurtful and I love her with all my heart, and I thank God every day that I came to that point, that I had the courage to do that.

I didn’t think about it. I want to say no. In the beginning, I was just trying to cope and adjust because I was set in my ways and here’s a new little human being coming in and I have to do other things and I have to put her first and I just needed to cope and change my life. And I thought it was going to happen step-by-step, day-by-day, and I didn’t work for the first six months so I thought it was going to be easier for me to transition to that. And then I went back to work and it was OK but I had to change my hours at work and I had to change, and I don’t do well with change.

And I got to the point where I thought I would get through that, coping and being a mother, and a life-altering event, and I was going to be fine. And when the visions started coming of her getting buried or being in an incubator, hooked up to IV tubing, and intubated and always thinking the worst. And then Brooke Shields' book came out and I think with the media focus on that, I think I started to think, do I have PPD? Am I going through that? And that’s when I started to think about it and I thought you know what, she’s going to be a year, and it’s usually within the first year, and I tried to ride it out, and tried to let myself get adjusted, get my me time back and change my focus a little bit and it didn’t, it just got worse.

Work for me personally changed but I don’t think anyone caught on to it, I wasn’t as focused at work. I knew how to manage my time prior and I wasn’t doing that anymore, and it was affecting me personally, so no members of my staff thought anything differently of me, but myself personally I knew because I was falling behind on a lot of projects that needed to be done, a lot of work, a lot of statistics that I needed to do, that was falling behind. So I knew there was something. I wasn’t focused. I took part of my day daydreaming, and just thinking about things, life, my daughter what am I going through, how am I feeling, and I was there in body but not in mind.

I would’ve probably from the day I went into the hospital and I was crying hysterically, I think at that point I should’ve talked to my OBGYN, who has been very supportive, who actually referred me to my psychiatrist. I would’ve told them sooner, I think a lot of it was, I’m embarrassed. Here I am as a maternity nurse. I should know the signs and symptoms and I should know that it was more than baby blues. And I had a lot of guilt with that, and I just hope and pray that it didn’t affect the bonding with my daughter, and that’s the timeframe that bonding is very important.

And I still have regrets that I didn’t breastfeed, and to this day I still have regrets, and to this day having visions of her not being here, to think that if I didn’t get the help would she still be here? Would I be talking to you now? I don’t know what, and I didn’t want to get to that point, and I said, I cannot do that.

I’m more attuned to it. If I have a patient that is stating XYZ, I’ll go in there speak to them one-on-one, not as a nurse, but as mother to mother. I do that a lot more, it’s taken me this long to get comfortable with sharing my story, because of the embarrassment. I didn’t want people to think, but people still have a lot to learn about it, people often tend to stereotype, and I didn’t want that, especially with my line of work. I’m in charge of the department, and I didn’t want people to think I lost my composure, and I knew it wasn’t like that, but people still have that belief, and there might be stragglers who still think that.

But I think now, with all the education out there, with the media, people are really starting to become more focused and aware about PPD and it affects everybody. So I talk about it more and more now. A lot of my friends are really surprised that I kept it for three-and-a-half years to myself. And I think if I could help just one person realize, don’t be scared, don’t be worried, just get the help that you need, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. And it’s taken me this long not to be ashamed, and I still have a lot to work on with it, because I only tell a select few, but it’s getting better.

With the experience of postpartum depression, it takes a lot of the time away that you’re supposed to be sharing with your children, at that high of your life, and you don’t get that back. So if you can do whatever you can do, with your family, your support, to help you get through it as quickly as you can and not lose that valuable time, it’s worth everything, because you don’t get that back, that quality time that loving time, that you’re supposed to be so excited about, the emotions are supposed to be there for your child. You may not identify as quickly as most, there’s risk factors. The PPD scale is a wonderful tool, don’t shy away from taking it. If you’re taking it in the hospital, use it. Use it as a guide to get the help that you need as early as you can, because that’s key, that’s a tremendous key.

Wendy

Wendy: My name is Wendy, I live in Hoboken, and our daughter is going to be 2 in March.

Ron: My name is Ron and my daughter is also 2 in March.

Wendy: Umm, the pregnancy was planned and we were very fortunate to get pregnant right away. The pregnancy was very normal, sick for the first three months and after that. I live a fairly healthy lifestyle, practice yoga for a long time, I eat very healthy, and I remained very active and worked up until six months. I’m a flight attendant, and they let you work up until six months. The pregnancy was very normal, I was really happy.

Ron: And another thing, we were very well-informed, with the Web you have so much access to information, and I think a lot of couples here in Hoboken and the rest of the country have so much access to information. So you go into this thinking, I know everything, oh this this this and this, it’s all laid out for you. We felt like we had control of the information and control of ourselves, and we know what’s going to happen and how everything progresses. But we felt like we had the bases covered, not to be hyper- controlling, but we felt like we had all the information we needed. So what could go wrong other than things happening with the birth?

Interviewer: Were you aware of PPD prior to the birth?

Wendy: I was aware of it, I had read about it. I had heard about Brooke Shields was open about it and had written a book about it. I had read about it in the preparation for pregnancy, and that after birth this could happen. And I have to be honest, I kind of skipped over those chapters. This is supposed to be one of the happiest times in my life, you don’t want to have to read about something that might not apply to you. So I just figured we’d cross that bridge when you get to it type thing.

I remembered seeing this one commercial about it, a father's at work and someone’s asking, “oh, how’s the baby?” And in his mind he’s thinking, oh everything’s terrible, my wife doesn’t want to be around the baby, and (choking back tears) and I remember when he answers he says, "oh, everything’s perfect, everything’s fine." And I remember seeing the commercial thinking, oh that poor woman. But that seems so far off, I didn’t think I was at risk at all.

I thought from what I understood, it affected women with a history of depression, history of depression in their family, their situation was possibly unwanted pregnancy or having a stressful time in their marriage. Certain things were just lined up if you’re at risk, and I thought I’m not at risk, so I just dismissed it.

Those things I didn’t read of all the certain things that could go wrong. Why would I fill my head with those things? I had heard of it, but hadn’t heard much about it other than depression. I had heard of others with depression and for me there was always a sense of, well, after a time can’t you just pick yourself up and snap out of it? Can’t you just do certain things in your life to make yourself happier? I didn’t understand it until I had it myself, and then there was just this aha moment like, oh, these people are suffering. It just shed a light on depression and mental illness for me that I could never have understood unless I had gone through it.

Speaker: Was your labor particularly stressful?

Wendy: I wanted to attempt a natural birth. I had a midwife and I really felt that birth is a natural thing, your body knows what it’s doing, let’s not let medicine and doctors get in the way, wanting things to happen too controlling of it, so let’s just let my body do what it does. So my water broke at 3 o’clock in the morning, I was a week overdue. I would say the only time was the week I was overdue, it was starting to bear on me, all the calls, did the baby come yet? did the baby come yet? And I don’t know if that had anything to do leading up to the situation. My water breaks ...

Ron: We called the midwife, we said things were OK, and we were told the contractions were too far apart so we should just go back to sleep. And we woke up and everything was normal, but she slowly started to feel irregular contractions, so I figured I’d take the dog out. There was nothing consistent that I could say, well, we should go, I come back about an hour later, it was about 11 in the morning, and at this point she’s just gripping the table. So what we started to do was time them to say what’s going on, to get a sense. For about 30 minutes we were doing that, it was starting to really hit, so it was like Ricky and Lucy, running back and forth, I got this you got that, it felt like that to some degree.

We get in the car at about noon. We had the route figured out. We go through the toll and ... we’re stopped dead, the lights for the tunnel go to red. And we’re in between the toll and the mouth of the tunnel. So I said, the traffic's not right, so I put it in park, tell the cop, and he said a bus is broken down in the tunnel. So I pull over to the side, the cops are radioing back and forth. And once they told me about the bus, I said, why can’t we just go around the bus? The ambulance then came, and we looked at each other and said, I guess this is going to be our story. The cop said, “Will you guys go to the Jersey City Medical Center?” And I didn’t know there was a hospital there, because they called it a medical center, she got into the medical center.

Wendy: At that point I didn't care, just get me there. I didn’t want it to be in the ambulance. The woman in the back with me said, if you need to push just push and we’ll pull over. And I was like, I am not having this on the side of the road, I’m not going to be on the news tonight.

Ron: It only took 90 minutes, here I say, oh it only took 90 minutes. It was a relatively new hospital, the experience of that was exciting and different.

Wendy: At that point I surrendered to it. Once the baby was out and safe, everything was fine. Before we left, I had to fill out a sheet on postpartum depression, it had maybe 10 questions, and I’m thinking well, I haven’t experienced any of these things, I’m exhausted and delirious, and I’m thinking what kind of questions are these? I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine.

Ron: We were thinking, oh, it must be a little overreaching in these questions. Oh, it’s only people who have had a history of all these things going on for this to hit you. So that was the only thing about this information. If it had been structured in less of a broad spectrum, you kind of felt like you could wave it off. We put it in our folder, and filed it at the bottom of our pile of papers.

Speaker: Did you feel a sense of disappointment about how the birth didn’t go the way you wanted it to?

Wendy: To be frank, I was really happy that we had a little story, and happy that we could do it naturally. In many ways I fulfilled what I wanted, just not in the location I wanted.

Ron: I wanted our daughter to be born in NYC, she was going to be born in NY and live in New Jersey. Which is fine, it was one of those things, one of those stories you have, more of an oh shucks.

Wendy: I don’t think there was a sense of disappointment. It was exciting.

Speaker: So you guys come home and are completely clueless.

Wendy: My mother came in to stay with us for a week, and I really thought that was going to be perfect. And I don’t know which night it was, it was the second night we were home, she was maybe 4 days old, we were watching a movie at night, and I had my daughter and I was holding her, and this feeling came of being overwhelmed. These feelings came in of - what was I thinking? I can’t be a mom. I can’t do this. This is completely, no, I didn’t sign up for this, and now she’s ours. And I remember sitting here and I was like, Ron, and I started balling. I am completely overwhelmed, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I’m thinking.

Ron: We were told in advance that your body is flushing out a lot of different chemicals and hormones, even if you read about it its more than what you’re expecting.

Wendy: It was this constant buzzing going on inside of me, it was getting to the point that I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t sleep, whatever I was doing it was always there, when I sat still I could feel it crawling inside of me.

Ron: Plus, she stayed pretty active, it’s not this obvious dramatic thing, she still went about doing what she would do. We kept trying to be active, let’s keep busy, maybe that could help it out.

Wendy: I was nursing, it was important for me to nurse, I had enough milk, but it was nothing compared to the stories I hear. I was very fortunate, and because of that, and a friend of mine once told me, and she told me, you know the baby nurses every two hours, and they nurse up to an hour. And I thought, I could deal with sleep deprivation, I was a flight attendant, I’ve done red eyes.

But the sleep deprivation just accumulates and accumulates and accumulates, and with the anxiety it was pumping my body full of Cortisol and anxiety. So when I had a moment I couldn’t sleep. I just fretted and fretted. I thought, I’m not cut out for this. And I look outside and I see all these other women with children and I thought, how do they do it? And my friends said, it’s hard, and you just do it. And a couple heard in my voice, they were like, Wendy, you might want to talk to somebody.

I was really asking, how do I get through today? I can’t get through the rest of today, I feel like I’m going to jump through the window at any moment.

It just was so overwhelming and I couldn’t see past her infancy. And I thought, for 18 years I’m going to feel like this. I can’t make it to 8 o’clock tonight; I can’t make it to her first birthday. And I guess that’s part of what depression does; you can’t look past the small things.

Ron: You get tunnel vision. We were fortunate because we had one mom who could be here for a week, and my mom who could come out here whenever we needed. I was able to take off three-and-a-half weeks from work. And we thought to ourselves, imagine the people who don’t have these kinds of resources. They don’t have family, don’t have the money to take the time off, and they have to deal with having postpartum depression, just the combination of those things. So it’s not just the sort of class issues, it’s the human issue. Any woman can be hit by it, it can sneak up on anyone, you can think you have all the information, but you don’t know, you just don’t know. And that’s why it’s important to separate the issues of it's not about the issue of you just being weak, thinking, I’m the only one suffering this.

Wendy: From what I could see, everyone was fine, and I was a defective mother because there was no sense of ease with her. I would care for her, kiss her, but when my mom left, I broke down. I really thought I was going to jump out the window.

Ron: That was when I started feeling a little, uh oh, not just for her, but the translation to me, thinking, I can’t take care of the kid by myself. I knew it was serious, but I thought it could work its way out. I had gone through battling the black dogs as they’re called, I had gone through periods of dealing with depression. I thought I’d be the one feeling overwhelmed, I mean, I was overwhelmed when we first got our dog.

Wendy: That was the interesting thing. We were so excited, everyone tells you it's tough. I am up for the challenge, I can make the sacrifices ...

Ron: I had to convince myself, I overanalyze things, and I’m dead asleep upstairs, and a lot of what happened was, I knew what was happening to her, but I wasn’t sure if it was just a mild case of the blues, and I could feel a little edgy, feeling the ghosts of my own problems. But I knew what she was going through, and tell her this is what’s happening, this is what I felt like for me.

Wendy: I was so very fortunate, because he was able to, I called him constantly, it's coming, I can feel it. That was the thing, it was this underlying feeling of anxiety, through the morning and afternoon everything was OK, it’s going to pass, it’s a new day, and then the day went on, you could see it coming. And the women that I’ve talked to say, yeah, you see it coming, and you’re like, oh, I’m kidding myself, aren’t I?

Speaker: Do you have a memory of your lowest day or what prompted you to get help?

Wendy: I do remember a couple really bad times, one was later, when she was three months old. The initial time I decided to find help was when the baby was three weeks. It wasn’t that I wanted to hold her or being around her, but it was just that, please somebody take her, take her off of me for a minute, I need to clear my head, I couldn’t see clearly at all.

Ron: The nursing was the problem. Well, I can’t even get away for three hours, because she always had to go back, so even if she could get a breath, no one could take over feeding. It was almost like this kite, depression, was tied to her. She could walk down the street but she was always pulling this thing along with her.

Wendy: The awful thing about that was that at the same time, I had this option of giving the baby formula. I truly started to feel that I was so incapable as a mother, I was doing such a disservice that I wasn’t feeling joy of mothering her, that at least I was giving her my milk. It was something I didn’t have to figure out. The milk was perfect for her, it didn’t what was in my head, one of the things that really couldn’t get my milk.

Ron: I felt bad going to work. It’s like, well, your brain exists in two, you have this one side that’s ... scrambling around like crazy, but you have to pull yourself by your boot straps. You tell yourself things you have to do to give structure, you go to the gym, you eat, but doing things, being around people, seeing people going about their lives, it gave a sense of flow to what was going on around you, that didn’t make you feel so separate from what was going on, and you could have a connection with people which helps to ease the clouds in your head. But whatever remedy you’re seeking, it makes it better to follow it. You start seeing a pattern saying, well I got out of that day, how can I get through today?

Wendy: The low point was, we were at a coffee shop, the baby was two weeks old. Another mom there had a baby, a couple weeks older than my daughter. She said, we go to this moms groups, and I thought, people had told me about groups and I thought, I have enough friends. But when she told me about it I put it in my head, and maybe the baby was two weeks old and I thought, maybe I should go to this to see if this is what everyone was feeling. But it was canceled that week and I cried. But I waited until the next week and I went. And I didn’t break down that week, but I remember them talking about PPD, and a psychiatrist came in, and he said I’m available to talk anytime, give me a call and come talk to me.

And the very next day was bad, it was really bad. I was sitting in the back room just weeping, and weeping. I couldn’t get out of this head, it seems like it’s never going to end. I can’t ever foresee finding any happiness in anything I found happiness in again -- listening to music, I would listen and think, oh that’s when life was this way, it will never be like that again. I’ll never be able to surf the Web again.

And I called to get a hold of the doctor, and I made an appointment for the next day, and the thing that was so wonderful was that, No. 1, when you’re so sleep-deprived and in a state that your normal functions, you can go to the bathroom and eat, but to try to organize or look something up, she was on me all the time so making a phone call, the easiest thing, seems so overwhelming because I had no time. The hour I had between feeding her I was trying to sleep or I was eating, or I was changing my clothes. It was like, oh, time to feed again, and so I made one phone call and she told me to come in.

And seeing Dr. Barnett, I see her once a week, and it was a professional that was watching me, monitoring me, so if I were going off the deep end, and I needed more than just talk therapy, she would catch me if I needed to be caught. And there was something so relieving about that. And she was really able to help me see, to cope with how to get around caring for the baby so I could sleep, rework my schedule, rethink things so I could get more sleep.

She said, “If I think you need to take medication I’ll let you know.” I had asked my midwife when my baby was a month or two old, and I asked her, can I still breastfeed and take antidepressants? And she told me that I couldn’t to her knowledge, which I’ve found out since that you can. But I don’t know if I should take them.

Ron: I was more against it because I know how the basic antidepressants work. There’s a time to use them and a time to wait and see. And one of the things about it was, to say you couldn’t use them it bothered you because you felt like a potential safety net was taken away from you. Sometimes knowing you have the pill in the cabinet is a reassurance, not that you have to take it. I remember you thinking, maybe you should be taking it. From what my own experiences were, well maybe, I would wait longer than the three months, because doctors said after three or fourth months you should take antidepressants. And I was like, I was on a more conservative viewpoint of it, so unless you have total desperation ...

Wendy: There were really only a couple times that I was on that edge. I remember thinking, I got to get out of here, and I thought, well, if I run what am I going to do? I’m nursing, that’s not going to solve anything.

And for the first time in my life I felt like such a burden to my husband and my baby. And not that I was calculating how to end my life, it seemed like that was the only way to end everything. I won’t have to deal with the feelings, trying to figure out how to get through this for the rest of my life. I was calling him all the time, he was constantly talking me off the edge. How long will my friends and family want to have to hear about all this? I’m even tired of hearing about it, maybe I should contemplate leaving this Earth, not calculating how am I going to do it ...

Ron: Committing suicide is like having this option, like the pills. In a lot of ways it’s almost a relief to think about doing it, and you don’t go and do it, and it’s not something you should be scared of, you shouldn’t think about isolating yourself as a result. It’s a normal thing that normal people go through. It becomes an option, it’s just something people sometimes think of. I had gone through it.

She said, you’d probably be sick of hearing this. I thought, at my worst, I was like this for a year. I didn’t sleep for a year. You haven’t even gone through what I went through for a year.

We were lucky because I had been through on my own. What happens if you’re that women who’s on her own? You have to go through it, maybe if you have a stronger will, but it’s harder the more isolated you are.

What’s worse is, they expect the opposite thing, you get farther away because it pushes you into isolation, not just being on your own, but expect the opposite emotion coming from you. And it pushes you apart, and you have to find a way to get unisolated, deisolate yourself, and that’s where seeking help on a Web site, that’s the great thing about the Web. You can type something in and get the right information, sort through the right information, and the important thing is to get through the isolation thing.

Wendy: I agree. It was like, reach out reach out, and that’s the important thing about the new mom group. New motherhood is challenging. You’re in this group of women where everyone was challenged, everyone was sleep-deprived. We’re all nursing in front of each other, and we’d all say the best and worst of the week. And it was nice to hear people's challenges, and it felt like a safe environment, which is so important to just let it out. It was such a load off the first time I said something, everything just came gushing out of me. I told everything, everything I was feeling.

I couldn’t stop it, and tears were streaming out and I talked about how miserable I was feeling, and I felt so much love from everybody, and Robin came over and hugged me and said, you’re going to get through this. We can figure it out.

Iit’s so much more difficult to do by yourself, you suffer longer and it’s just such a relief to hear other people, my baby’s 2 years old and it’s still so comforting to hear other women say they’ve been through these things. You feel like a freak, so to feel comforted ... once you reach out, it starts to take on its own source of support where more people can get involved, people checking up on you. You’re also so involved in nurturing your baby, you need someone taking care of and watching you so that you in turn can take better care of your baby.

Speaker: At what point did you think you started to get better?

Wendy: I think probably I’m guessing maybe three months ... I sort of saw things coming, but after June (her daughter was born in March) I started to have more consecutive good days and I remember Robin having told me that, be aware for a year you can still come in and out of this, and I’m so glad because I’d still have some bad times.

Ron: You get ambushed, you can get ambushed any time, just be aware when it occurs.

Wendy: Your mind will tell you terrible things, and you want to believe them all, and the very least I can say no, they said this would happen and I can come out of it, and I would. So then I would say, I nursed her up until a year, and after I stopped nursing, for that full year it was a slow and steady climb. But still I'd fool myself, I’d say, you're pretending to be a good mom, and you’re not. And there’s still times I feel like, oh, am I a good mom? And now it’s like, the more time that passes, the further it gets away, the more time I get under my belt of being a confident mother it seems like it’s more of a blip on the screen.

Wendy: We’re not meant to raise children in isolation. In nature you would have the whole community around you, your mom, your aunts, your sister, someone would always be there to step in, and either nurse your children, or cook for you. You get your sleep, so even though PPD clearly occurred back then, you had the support group around you, other women were there for you, and that’s how the human race survived.

Ron: And now we have modern solutions for different problems. Modern life has isolated us more. We have apartments, we have a tendency to think we’re raised as individuals. The modern solution is that you have therapists, Web sites, literature, nannies to get breaks. And if you don’t have the money, there are avenues, like with New Jersey, the state has things available. These are the modern solutions to help you get through it, that’s fortunate that this is where we’re at now.

Speaker: Is it different the way you deal with your friends who have babies now?

Ron: I understand what it’s like to raise a child now, that’s the real difference. From the standpoint of suffering I’m more aware, you give that second look, or you make ask, did you notice anything different? But not so much that I react differently.

Wendy: Pregnancy should be a happy and hopeful time, but I always stress, you’re going to need more help than you think, you can get ambushed.

I do look for it, there’s always a little bit of me that’s waiting to be there for a friend, to help them see their way through it, and none of them, thank goodness, have communicated to me that they suffer through it. I didn’t think I’d be a candidate, and I didn’t think it would happen to me, but part of me is like, the statistic is this, something is going to have to suffer from it.

Ron: If you hear somebody else has gone through it, you don’t feel that isolation, you feel like, at least it wasn’t just me.

Speaker: People expect you to be happy ...

Wendy: Our friends were getting e-mails saying, I’ll e-mail you back when I have something good to say about motherhood.

Ron: I remember thinking, telling other people, this one friend of ours felt like I overdid it. What did you expect, saying like, it's 100 times harder than you expect. And she actually didn’t follow up with her. It was hard to deal with, but it wasn’t like, oh darn, I remember thinking also, I overdid it.

We’re not going to be like, oh, it’s so wonderful, we wanted to be like, this is what it’s really like, what we went through is what we went through. There's no mathematic equation that says, you have to go through it for three months. There maybe something wrong, but it’s not an issue of time element. You have to go through your suffering on a certain time element, you have to go through your suffering the way you go through it. It’s very individual and very specific and you shouldn’t compare yourself to other people, because that’s another thing that isolates you, You just have to find ways to get out there and find help in your own way.

Speaker: When did you send out the e-mail, I’ll tell you when something good happens?

Wendy: It was probably the first week, that first deep where things just didn’t let up and they didn’t let up for a while. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was so painful. I didn’t realize how depression was so very painful, not physically just that emotional pain of that you feel bad, it’s just that feeling of hopelessness, that nothing's every going to feel good again. It's lower than the lows of having a bad day and it lasts longer than you ever imagined. And you start to think, this is the way it’s going to be for a long time, I can’t live like this.

Speaker: Do you remember your first moment where you had good thoughts about motherhood?

Wendy: Yeah, there were times when she would do something that would make me laugh. She would giggle so loud and it was infections and it just felt so good, it felt so good. I couldn’t say when.

Ron: Even if you had a temporary parting of the clouds, the predominant feeling was that you would always go back into that feeling bad, and even if it only felt a few hours, it always dominates your thoughts because you fear that you’re going to go back into it.

Wendy: And you just don’t feel like they were genuine moments, because once you go down you’re like, that’s not real.

Speaker: Did you feel like you could have joy as a father with all this going on?

Ron: I had my own things trying to deal with a newborn baby. I thought I’d be the one to be more concerned and partly it was more of a time management, as scientific as it sounds, it’s an issue of administration. If I could put structure to it in my brain, during the time it was definitely colored, and I felt bad that she was missing out on the joy of being a mom and enjoying that thing. But I definitely remember plenty of times enjoying what it was like to be a dad, holding her, having her fall asleep on me.

Speaker: Did you feel guilt about enjoying it?

Ron: No, I know it's specific to the individual. I felt a little guilty if I wasn’t trying to help her out and understand what she was going through. Why am I enjoying it and she’s not? But I understood what she was going through. You feel bad for her, that you wanted her to feel better about things, but you don’t let that color your experience.

But time flies by so quick when you have a baby, next thing you know they’re not as small anymore. It would’ve been nice to have a smoother ride but ultimately I don’t feel like it was terrible, because here we are, it wasn’t terrible, this is our story, this is what it is.

Wendy: I would tell them, you’re going to get through this, you’re going to get through this. You've got to reach out and share what’s on your mind, you have to be honest, there’s support right there. Just let it out, let it out and you’ll feel so good. And look at me, I’m on the other side, you’ll do it, you’ll do it.

Ron: I remember, about four or five months, when we had more time, we started to look back and I think the summer, when the weather changed ...

Wendy: I’m so lucky, my husband knows what I’m going through. I’m lucky I have supportive friends and family, I have a moms' group. If there’s a silver lining I was so very fortunate, that I had all these other things in line. At the time I didn’t think I was fortunate, at the time I was drowning, so my heart goes out to women who don’t have the stars aligned. It’s a little more difficult, they’ll still get there.

Ron: But there is a way to do it, there’s a lifeline out there.

Wendy: Whatever gets you through the day, don’t worry about tomorrow, just get through today. I thought I can’t get through this for 18 years, I was honestly thinking this is what it’s going to be like, you just tick off the days, you tick off the calendar, you’re 5 weeks, you’re 6 weeks ...

Ron: We had a healthy baby; she was on the better end of health. She cried a bit, and adding all these other things to women, and you add in all these things that we had and others didn’t, you just need to find ways to get support.

Little things just pile on top, and that’s the other thing that make you feel worse than you thought you were, we had certain things that made us lucky and still the effect was strong. So anyone who has even less of that, even more so need to try and find ways to get out there and get help.

Connie

I actually just experienced postpartum depression with my second child; with my first child I had the baby blues for two to four weeks. With Nikos, considerably different.

I never cried but I started getting these very bizarre thoughts in my head, very early on after his birth like three days after he was born.

I was aware of PPD, ironically, in the sense that I used to work for Maternal Child Health Consortium. I'd set up conferences on PPD. I didn’t know anyone personally who had gone through it, but I knew what I was going through, but it was such a shock that I was experiencing it that I didn’t tell anyone about it.

Both my pregnancies were planned, three months before we wanted to try to start getting pregnant, I went into preconceptual care. I got prenatal vitamins, I got tested for everything, making sure that I was healthy enough to take a pregnancy to term. I have to admit nothing was very different, on the second time around. I knew kind of what to expect, even though every pregnancy is different. I was relaxed, just as excited but a little more tired because I had a toddler around and I was nauseous in the beginning, I felt a little more relaxed because I had already gone through it.

It's weird because you see me and my younger sister are two years apart so we’re very close, and Michael and his sister are close but not so much, but of course you're nine months pregnant and you have a 2-year-old. They play together, they’re not as high-maintenance as they were when they were both very young.

When Katarina was born it was so traumatizing. I mean, they tell you it hurts, but they don’t tell you how much it hurts. Also I didn’t take any medication so it was completely medication free and that’s painful. And also it was 25 hours from the beginning to the end. The minute she was born I was like, there’s no way that just happened to me.

And then I really do wonder why I didn’t go through it with Katarina because right after I gave birth to her I actually hemorrhaged. I was bleeding a lot that the midwife had to put her hands into my uterus and take out blood clots. And I’m just lying there and I couldn’t believe this was happening and even though I was thinking that 50 years ago this is how women died, I mean they bled to death after a birth. So that happened and just giving birth to me was very traumatizing, as well as I didn’t have any family around, even though Michael stayed home for the first week. He went back to work and left me there like, OK what do I do now? But it was only the baby blues.

But definitely with Nikos, he was 24 hours, so I gained an hour of no pain but he was a big baby. Katarina weighed 6.13, he weighed 9 pounds. So pushing him out was actually quite stressful because I couldn’t. He was a big baby and the nurse actually had to push on my uterus. I remember looking at Michael thinking, I can’t push him out, and eventually I did, and again without the use of medication, which, I don’t recommend that. But I still remember though the minute I pushed him out I’m thanking the midwives for helping me, which I didn’t do for Katarina.

So I felt that the experience of labor was different from one baby to the next, and then afterward I literally just stayed in the birthing center for four hours, partly because they made me feel like I couldn’t stay longer. So I was kind of upset leaving as quickly as I did. But at the same time I realized at home I could be in my own bed and relax so I could fine with that, even though I really did feel like they wanted us to leave sooner than later, which I didn’t think was right.

But it was great, he fell asleep the whole night at 4 weeks, where Katarina didn’t sleep for two years for the whole night, so it was great. ...

I’d have to say a couple of days afterward, he was the best baby ever, which is weird to say. He breastfed very quickly, he was such a loving baby, you name it he was great, She was actually difficult to breastfeed, did not sleep through the night, even when she got older, she did not want to sleep at night, definitely a night person, so she was definitely different from him. She stressed us out when he didn’t.

When he was 2 weeks old he almost died of RSV, which is some type of lung infection which actually kills a lot of preemies, and he wasn’t a preemie. And when we went to the emergency room they said that if he was a preemie, he would’ve died of it. But he was a big baby, but that was just horrific.

But what’s interesting is that I had literally been experiencing his death every day since he was about 3 days old. And it was just very bizarre because he was a planned pregnancy. I always wanted these children, I love my children, so the thought that I was seeing my son die every single day was just horrific. It was very difficult the fear of what people would think, I really did feel though that there was a chemical imbalance, because that was so not me.

I’m not saying I never experienced depression before, but I always saw it as environmental factors that caused my depression, where this I was happy.

Michael actually after the first week of being home with me he decided that you know what, I’d like to say home full time with our son and my daughter. And I just thought that was awesome. And he quit his job on Wall Street to stay home full time with our children for about 9 months until I had to go back to work because we needed money.

It was amazing, he’s such a great father, so it was interesting that certain things were coming into place that I just thought were phenomenal. So I didn’t see any environmental factors that would lead to depression, yet so quickly on the most bizarre thoughts were coming into my mind that were literally giving me physical symptoms of disgust.

I can’t explain to you how it really felt when I went into the kitchen and at the time we lived in Jersey City in a really small apartment and it was a really small apartment, and I’d walk in even if I wasn’t carrying Nikos, and I would envision him in the oven burning .And I could see him, even thought I knew he wasn’t there, I could see him in the oven as a newborn burning. And I could smell his flesh burning, how could I possibly smell something of my own child burning, when it had never happened before? But I knew that’s what I was smelling even though that made no sense to me.

Then I’d get these physical symptoms. I felt my heart was in my throat, my stomach was churning, my knees were buckling, and I was having a panic attack, and I knew he wasn’t there so how could this be happening to me? And this was happening on a daily basis, so I would never go into the kitchen, and my saving grace luckily was that I never cooked. I mean I can make a joke of it now, but Michael had no idea, it’s one thing if he said, how come you don’t go into the kitchen? But he’s the cook in our family. I don’t need to go into the kitchen to be honest for anything pretty much, and I rarely did then unless I really had to because I always saw my son in the oven.

And I always wondered, is it me doing it? There was always such a fear, and I think that’s also why I never told anyone, because I thought one, I would never do that to my children, and two, there’s a line I would never cross about my hitting my children. And I always thought that so long as I kept it to myself I'd be the only one who was suffering, and I’d be OK with that because a true aspect of me of suffering is if my children were taken away, and even if I was having these horrific thoughts, I'd still have my children, and they just don’t have to know about it, and I could just hide what’s going on within me. And I truly thought that if I told Michael about it he’d take the children away, because to be honest I put myself in his shoes, I’d take the children away. So I’m thinking if he told me this and I wouldn’t want him close to my children why would expect anything different from him?

So I thought so long as I’m not hurting them physically I’m fine. Hindsight is 20/20. They didn’t suffer, but we all suffered in some way, because I never wanted to carry him. I never wanted to be home, it went from the oven to him drowning in the bathtub, him falling out the window and we lived on the 19th floor. I mean you name it.

And also I was going to school for my doctorate degree, so me not being home wasn’t an issue, even though it was my excuse, to be at school to be in the library, because I couldn’t deal what was going on with my children and with my son.

The most horrific was the oven, but I guess because it was my first initial thought, but I think maybe both of those together, the seeing and the hearing of him burning, as well as smelling burning flesh, whereas not that it’s not horrific to see him drowning in the bathtub, but there wasn’t any sound or smell connected to it. Then when he was falling out the window, I could even see his brain splatter. I can’t even believe these thoughts were coming from me. There was even a point when I was walking through my apartment thinking there must be aliens up there doing this, I was seriously contemplating that because I’m thinking how could this possibly happen one to anyone but two I really did feel like my life my environmental factors in a sense didn’t in anyway come together to say this is going to happy to you. In hindsight I still couldn’t see why it happened, never why me, but thinking, where’s the cause of it all? And part me did think it was aliens, but I was serious at the time, there must be aliens up there in space doing this to me, because I could not in any way believe that I personally in any way put these thoughts in my head.

I didn’t have the baby blues, they just quickly went into postpartum depression, at least as they’re defined as the thoughts leading to depression. But I never had the baby blues with Nikos, with Katarina definitely, I would cry over a commercial, and it had nothing to do with anything sentimental, but never with Nikos. So very early on there was such a shift in everything that I knew it was more extreme and definitely serious.

After I gave birth to my son, the midwife called me every day for a week, which was interesting. So maybe they thought something, but I never told anyway, feeling guilt, shame or fear, as well as thinking this will go away, sooner or later, it’s not going to last. But it didn’t, it didn’t go away.

I crossed the line I didn’t want to cross, I hit my daughter. My husband had gone back to work, Nikos was around 15 months old crying, my daughter was crying. I had had it and all of a sudden I smacked her, I hit my daughter in the face. And I couldn’t believe I did that and right there all of a sudden I had to take a step back thinking, oh my gosh, I just did something I thought I’d never do, and I had to get away.

And, interestingly, right at that moment Michael had just gotten back from work, and he was late. He went back to work and he was working 12- to 14-hour days, so when I was off from work I'd be with the kids, and that was very difficult for me, because here I am trying not to have these thoughts and be a parent, and literally I was thinking about my son dying every day. I would see a casket, I’d be in a cemetery burying my son every day. I didn’t understand why I was doing that. So as much as I loved my son, I found it so tough to bond with him, because it was so tough to watch him die every day, and I felt so bad.

He was such a loving child, he still is, but I cannot tell you, such a loving child. From the beginning, he loved to be hugged, he loved to be taken care of, oh my goodness, and now I can’t give that back to him. And I just think about that, what I lost, I have to tell you that’s why it’s so difficult to tell my story sometimes, because it’s so painful, but women and families need to understand one, for most women, after 15 months, it didn’t go away, and two, I had lost so much time and energy of trying to be in the moment, trying to keep these thoughts and feelings of death and not enjoying what I had right in front of me.

It is so sad that I do not have a lot of memories of my son's first 15 months of his life, I don’t want women to regret that, because I could never get those back, I mean now I have great memories of him as he grows up, but now he’s 8 years old, he’ll never be 6 months again, never be a year old again, I’ll never have that. I don’t want women to experience that, they don’t have to, I didn’t have to. I mean I think we live in a great state that we have such amazing resources that weren’t around when I was experiencing PPD, and there’s just so many avenues that women can take to get so much help, not for the shame, not for the guilt, and realize they are so not alone and so many other women have experienced it and feel their pain, their shame, their guilt, but their hope, because I had hope, because I finally got help, and they changed my life.

I went to the emergency room right after I hit my daughter. (When Michael came home) I literally put my hands up and said, I’m done, and he thought I went to the mall, which I laugh about now, until it got late and he thought I guess he didn’t go. I went downstairs, and thank goodness we had a doorman, I had completely fallen apart.

I had kept myself together with Scotch Tape. I felt myself in pieces, and I remember looking at the doorperson and I thought to myself, there’s no way I’m going to drive myself, and I said, can you call me a cab to take me to the emergency room? I didn’t want to get anyone involved in my business, but I had to, I had to ask for her help even though he didn’t know what was going on. And I completely fell apart in the hallway, just sitting down balling, until the cab came and I just set take me to the nearest ER, and I remember seeing the cab person's face and he felt so bad for me, he didn’t know what was going on with me. I remember getting out of the cab and he said, do you want me to wait for you? which I thought was amazing and I thought I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, and I said no, I’ll find a way home. And I remember him saying, I hope you feel better.

There was a moment I remember thinking, do I enter the ER or do I throw myself in the river? It was interesting the thought process in my mind, because I thought my children are better off without their biological mother. I thought it was better to kill myself because I thought I was such a horrible mother. I don’t know what kept me from actually doing it. I don’t swim and part of the fear was, how long does it take to drown? And I can see the humor in it now, but I thought to myself, how long does it take for someone to drown? Is it going to hurt? And I seriously think I contemplated that, and I thought, it won’t be that quick. I was thinking, I’ve been through enough I don’t want to suffer when I die, and I went in and I put my name down and I waited for six hours in the corner of the hospital, crying the whole time, no staff member ever stopped to see how I was doing.

Finally I was seen by the staff and put on medication and my boss helped me find a therapist, which was just phenomenal. And everything just began to come together and I started healing and recovering after what had happened. It wasn’t just medication, I needed to learn to cope what was going on with me, but I needed to forgive myself, not that I have, but I needed someone to help me figure out why this happened, which we really don’t know, other than the hormones, probably a predisposition. I asked my mother, which I knew she did because she was crying all the time, which was part environmental because her husband was abusive, but I knew she had, but she said no, I’ve never been depressed, even though I could count the times I could see my mother just crying and crying and crying. So I don’t know if people define it differently, or just deny it, but I know, I will never deny it, not only to myself but I do believe unfortunately my daughter may be at risk for clinical or PPD, so I’m very wary of it, so I can help her for the future.

Even after I came out, I told very little people about it, my therapist, my husband, the hospital, the Division of Youth and Family Services, but when I went in to the hospital because I had hit my daughter they opened a case, so a case worker had to come to my house and got involved. I believed things had changed considerably, but it was no help at all for me, because I begged for a therapist and she never gave me a name, never referred me, that I had to go to someone who wasn’t even family, she was my boss, and asked her. And she was the one who found someone for me.

Even the psychiatrist I saw at the hospital wasn’t very willing or supportive to see me as a regular patient or even refer a therapist for me, and I couldn’t believe that. And even now I think there are people who have received training about PPD, because even my therapist at the time had no training about it, and she had to read along as I read about it just so she could help me.

But one thing that really led me to telling my story was that I realized I wasn’t alone, but I was listening on the radio that Mary Jo Cody had gone through postpartum depression, I just started crying in the car, I felt such relief, I felt now I know I’m not alone, and there’s no reason to have shame and really I felt, if this happened to me I have to help other women not experience what I went through because they don’t have to. To see the courage it took Mary Jo, I thought I have to do it too. If I had experienced it now, it would be so different.

After I experienced it, I had told our pediatrician, and when I’d go back asking about me before my kids, which was phenomenal. And when I went to my private doctor he said to me, you bring Michael in next time you come in, we’re going to talk about it, and I want us all to be on the same page. He was so proactive about being supporting, to know that what I was going through isn’t normal, but that I’m not the only one, that I’m not this horrible person that I personally felt for so long, it was amazing the people who were truly there for me.

I think one he was concerned for the children, as well as not knowing how to help me, what do you do with someone who has kept something from you? I mean we’re best friends, how can we best friends and how can I hide something so personal and so tragic from someone whose my best friend? They put me on loads of medications -- antipsychotic, anti-obsessive compulsive, a sleeping pill, anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, I mean, can you put me on anymore?

Oh my gosh, I think he found it hard to try and understand. We found another therapist, and we went for six months, and it so helped our relationship. He needed to express certain relationships, I can only imagine what he felt when I told him everything, and the need to build up that trust again that I would never hold something like that back again. And there’s always this fear that I might experience PPD again, even though we only wanted two children, there’s always this thought, there is no way I could have another child again, and other women do, even when they’ve had PPD, and there are some great gynecologists/obstetricians, who will see women who’ve experienced PPD and want children again.

I have no interest in making sure I don’t experience PPD again. I know for sure.

The minute I started getting into therapy the relief was just unbelievable. The thoughts were still coming from day to day and the meds were starting to kick in, but it was like loads of bricks were being taken off my shoulder. It was like I could breathe again, like I could take this mask off and I could show people who I am and realize I don’t need to apologize. I didn’t make this happen, I’d have to say maybe two to three months afterwards I really started feeling so much better but I also changed a couple of things.

I took off time from grad school, I needed to re-evaluate my life. I had to take time to focus on myself, I thought I was focusing on myself, I wanted to get my doctorate I wanted to work full time, but I needed to take off some time. I still worked full time, but I made sure I took some time off, made time for therapy, it started off two times a week. I always took my medication, I took off almost a year from grad school.

I needed to take time for me, but really seeing how my children were and letting them really get to know who their mom was. There were other things that could wait, they really could, and they did. I mean, I have my doctorate now, I’m a college professor, I have my dream job. It just happened a little later, but that’s OK. In the long run everything worked out better, even though I regret waiting as long as I did.

I really did think throughout the 15 months everything would go away by itself. Oh my gosh, after a few weeks I should’ve realized, OK it’s not going away I have to do something, it’s just denial.

It’s interesting that I breastfed my son the whole time and that was the only thing I felt I could give my son truly, which was interesting because I felt I knew at that time if I go on medication I will have to stop breastfeeding which I did. So I felt given that I can’t give anything to my son, at least I could give him breast milk.

And Michael stayed home. Nikos could’ve cared less who I was. He was with a parent, he was with someone who loved him, and even though I would carry him, he would look around the room for his father. His head would be back looking at his father the whole time, that’s how bonded they were, which was phenomenal. He just wanted me for milk, that’s all he wanted from me, but that’s all I could give him, so I was OK with that because I couldn’t give him more. He was such a loving baby, and I really lucked out that I had such a loving partner who was a father who loved his son so much to quit his job and take care of him full time. It was just amazing. I couldn’t have asked for better circumstances given what I went through, I can’t imagine.

Well one, hearing someone’s story makes it more real, makes me realize that other people went through and to realize most people don’t just go through it and it ends. There has to be some intervention, therapy or medication or both, it doesn’t get better, it really doesn’t. The lies are just packed with more lies and more deception, you’re keeping so much inside. It takes so much energy that you don’t have enough for a newborn, for anything else. I really do believe that if women are experiencing this believing that it will just go away because they can handle it, and I did handle it, but horribly and it was so unhealthy not just for me but for my family. And I’m not trying to put on any guilt in the sense that you want to be there for your family, but you also need to do it for yourself, for your health, you have to realize this is a mental illness and I’m OK with that. I’m OK that it happened, no one’s at fault, but I think I am at fault in the sense that I could’ve gotten help sooner, if not for my family but for myself, because it helps everyone in the end.

But to realize you can only deny so much and sooner or later it’s going to catch up to us, and the regrets that will happen when you don’t get help.

I’m sure people were thinking that. I don’t blame them, it was a terrible thing for me to have done, I truly do believe that. And I’m not trying to make excuses because there is no excuse, but the shame, the fear, the guilt, they were so overwhelming and also part of me truly thinking I can handle this, like I can handle anything else, I can handle it on my own. And it didn’t work out the way everything was supposed to happen, and I’m sure people think that, and they always will, but to realize, I have regrets of what I do.

As hurtful as it is, and as painful as it is to tell people my experience, I really don’t care if people judge me, and I’m sure people do, but for me it has more to do with, I don’t want women to experience what I did and wait such a long time to get help. So judge me all you want, you know what, it doesn’t faze me, so long as I can reach women and they don’t have to go through what I went through.

One thing that I was always unsure where I should go, I’d have to call someone but then I’d have to give my name, I don’t have to give my name now if I don’t want to, there’s a phone number, I can go on the Web site, I can actually look things up, so there are certain things available that are not available to me. And also I think it’s phenomenal that all women in New Jersey after they give birth, receive information. That was another fear I had, if I ask for information on PPD, they know I’m going through it, so I’m not asking for it. So giving it to everyone and you read it when they gave it to me, along with everything else in the welcome packet I think that’s just fantastic because there’s going to be women like me who don’t want other people to know their business. But if you give it to everyone, everyone’s going to have the same thing.

So I just think that’s just one of the greatest thing they could’ve done, so many resources available now that weren’t available when I gave birth to my son.

Sylvia

My name is Sylvia and I’m married to Michael, and we reside in Franklin Lakes. We’ve been married for, its going to be 16 years this October.

When I had my daughter, and I was suffering from PPD, no one had ever mentioned those words, maybe once after. A few months after I went to go a psychiatrist who was pregnant herself, about seven-and-a-half months pregnant, and she maybe mentioned it once. But it was never mentioned in the hospital when I gave birth.

In fact, I still have the handbook that when they discharged me. It spoke in this handbook about how to care for your child, the umbilical cord wound, how to feed, how to change its diapers, you know, when to call a doctor, but it never mentioned anything about baby blues or postpartum depression, and that was eight years ago, so we’ve come a long way.

But the first time I ever heard of postpartum depression was probably a few months after birth, where someone would say, maybe what you're going through is called postpartum depression. And then things started to come in to fruition. I started to do my homework on the Internet, but there wasn’t much there. There were a few Web sites, but no resource centers or support groups I could contact. And I also, I was still in denial, there was a lot of shame for me, so it was tough.

I found out when I was going through postpartum and I was starting to heal, my mother had a nice conversation with me and told me that she had suffered postpartum depression with one of my younger brothers John, but they diagnosed it years ago in the '60s as a nervous breakdown. And I couldn’t understand why she didn’t tell me that, because she still felt that shame.

And to this day there's still a special bond between John and my mother because you feel like you need to make up for it. But as for depression, no, before I gave birth to Melina I was, my husband and I were both running two restaurants, well, we were running the first restaurant and in the works to open our second. So things were working very well, we were married seven years at the time and the birth was planned. So there was no depression or serious depression as I was growing up, no.

The doctor visits were all fine, I had a scheduled C-section, because I was a little small so the doctor was concerned. But Melina, my daughter, arrived two weeks early. But the pregnancy was fine, I worked all through the entire pregnancy. I was in the middle of painting our wine cellar in our new restaurant we were opening up, barefoot, I was literally barefoot and pregnant and tired, and I came home and my water broke. I never had the opportunity to nest.

I mean there were a couple times during the pregnancy where I was a little edgy or stressed but I always associated it with working too much. I still kept the same hours. But the pregnancy went well, thank goodness I didn’t have morning sickness. I felt tired the first trimester, but I knew when I finally gave birth to her it was about 2 in the morning and I was concerned because I didn’t hear her cry, but once I heard her cry and Michael had taken her and given her to me and I was just lying there and I looked at her and that was the first and last time I looked at my daughter, and looked into her eyes and after that I knew something was wrong.

I felt like, oh my God, what did I just do? I made the biggest mistake of my life. I was in the hospital for about five days and I did talk to a couple of the nurses and they said, ohhh, you’ll feel fine after the first week, its just the baby blues. And I talked to the nurses about actually giving her up for adoption.

So I knew immediately, hey, this isn't just going to pass, this was the baby blues. I knew that something was seriously wrong. And I didn’t have that bond, I didn’t feel anything. I felt sad, there was a little bit of anger, a lot of sadness, a heavy weight on my heart. At that time I had regrets, here we are we’re married, we’re happily married, what did I just do. So immediately I knew, something was off, and it hurt.

I did not try breastfeeding, because at the time, I didn’t want her near me. The first few days I didn’t sleep, I didn’t look at her, Michael was home, and my aunt who helped us at the restaurant came and helped me, she was going to help me out for the first couple weeks and then my mother would come.

I came home, and from the moment I got out of that car when I was leaving the hospital and my parents were outside with their video camera and my mother was holding her cappuccino, trying to capture every moment on video camera. I just started to cry, handed her the baby, and ran upstairs and shut the door and sobbed.

It was very, very difficult, and when Michael was leaving for work and I was screaming at him, here he was, just going to work and he always has been, and I was just so angry because nothing changed for him, and everything changed for me. And here I am, I’m so depressed, and he doesn’t know ... I just gave birth, maybe my hormones are a little off balance, but I was angry and sad. And I just put her in a bassinet and my Aunt Lina had gone to work with him and it was a struggle, it was very difficult for me the first three days, and things started to fall apart.

I was in denial, the stigma in any depression is heavy, but to have that associated with a mother not wanting her child, thestigma is just so heavy and so severe. What had happened was I had taken a nap, and Melina was in her bassinet in my room, and I had a nightmare which seemed so real. I had a nightmare I had gone over to the bassinet and smothered her. So in the middle of that I woke up and was literally wet with sweat and I was so afraid to walk over to the bassinet and see what I had done because it had felt so real.

When I finally walked over and saw she was OK, I ran over to my bed and there was some sleeping pills that I had and I emptied all the contents on the bed and I was about to swallow the pills, handfulls of pills and at that moment Melina just sighed and I just cried.

I couldn’t believe that I was going to do the unthinkable. So at that point I called my mom who lived about 15 minutes away, and she heard it in my voice. I said Ma, I just can't do this, and she said immediately, where's the baby, and I said she’s sleeping. Is she OK? Yes, and she was like, don’t you do anything stupid, promise me. And before she hung up she made me promise her, because it’s a bond my mother and I have, my word is everything, and I promised her.

And she arrived in about eight minutes, she was flying. A little Sicilian lady, I can only imagine her going down Skyline Drive with all its turns, and she ran up the staircase, picked up Melina, held my hand, and we all just cried. About 10 minutes later, I heard Michael’s footsteps come up, my mother had called Michael, and he had all his chef clothes, and she just grabbed his hands and said, everything's OK, Melina’s OK, Silivia’s OK, and she looked at Michael and said, I’m going to take the baby home with me as long as she needs to be with me and I trust you with my daughter's life. Someone needs to be with Sylvia, basically 24/7. Which is what happened, it was family, friends, brothers, cousins, always around me.

So that was a very touching moment and a scary moment, at that point I felt like, I couldn’t care for her. I couldn’t care for myself. Prior to that, I didn’t shower, I didn’t bathe, just the thought of getting up and brushing my teeth was so strenuous. I would sit there and lay in bed for hours, for two hours talking to myself, OK, I have to get up, I have to brush my teeth, I have to go to the bathroom. I felt like a failure. What kind of mother, what type of monster, that’s the way I felt. So it was very very traumatic for that week.

At that time, Michael couldn’t understand, I couldn’t understand, nobody really understood. My mother knew I was going through some type of depression, she knew in the hospital that something was wrong, but not this severe. And friends and family just knew immediately. I never held her; I never went to functions, and like I said, everybody orchestrated my recovery process very well. My brothers and my friends would come to visit. At the time I had a doctor who was a friend of mine, she’s still a friend of mine, and who's actually a psychologist who knew what was going on but because we were friends couldn’t treat me with the postpartum depression.

So she helped Michael and helped my family deal and help with me, but the baby stayed with my parents for the first nine months. I was only allowed family supervision, if I was in the bathroom for more than 5 minutes, somebody would be at the door knocking, and if I was at my mothers house in the bathroom for more than 5 minutes she’d knock or literally break in. Because her fear is, what are you doing, it was a very, very tough period. I didn’t know, I was like a child myself, and all the guilt walking past the bassinet even at my mother's house I would almost scurry past it so I didn’t have to look at her. So it was very difficult.

Right around that point I had to, but I went through a few, the first psychiatrist was leaving because she was in the middle of her final trimester. Then she set me up with a colleague of hers, which didn’t work out for me. In fact, the first time I saw her I saw her with my mother, and she just basically looked at me and looked at my mother and said, your daughter needs to take her baby home and bond. And my mother basically leaped from her chair, that was the first time I laughed I think, she leaped from her chair, shes 4'8" and went after the psychiatrist in her Sicilian slang, WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY? She wanted to see her credentials, that was a scene in itself. Because she couldn’t understand how this woman was telling me to not only take my baby home and bond with her but after everything I had been through, and she knew that I had tried taking my own life and she knew about the intrusive thoughts that I had to harm my baby, so my mother couldn’t get it.

So it was a few doctors I saw, and basically it was me and my family and their understanding of postpartum depression and the medication that helped me through it. But it was mostly family and friends, like I said, Maryanne helped in that sense because she was a doctor and explained what I was going through with the PPD, I didn’t know. It was so archaic, even though it was 8 years ago, but going 8 years ago, we’ve come such a long way that it was just a matter of time, and things started to turn around.

I wanted to be able to go visit my baby at my mother's house. Still, when I picked her up it was always in full view of my parents because they were always afraid if I would drop her, if I would do something, I couldn’t walk into the living room, I remember one time walking into the dining room and my mother is in her house coat drinking her espresso and she’s following me, and I turned around and said, Ma I just want to be alone with Melina, and she’s like, not yet.

In hindsight, I thank her for it, because I still wasn’t well. So it was just clockwork precision, my brothers spending time with me, my husband, my friends Kelly, Donna and Janey, Karen. I just had such a great support group, I was just so blessed, and I’m grateful. You look back and I just don’t think, well, I know I wouldn’t be here today. You look back and you think, wow, how truly honored and humbled and grateful I feel having that network that many women don’t have that and I feel for that. 800,000 women alone in the United States suffer from this and it’s a disgusting dark illness. A lot of them are suffering in shame, and blaming themselves and it's an illness, nobody wishes this upon themselves, just like nobody wishes to have breast cancer. So we have to treat it like an illness. I look back and think how people sacrificed for me, and I remember going down the shore with Maryanne and her husband, Chip, and they sacrificed weekends for me just to care for me to watch over me.

So there was a lot of things going on behind the scenes which I'm so grateful for. And my husband who stood behind me and I remember sitting at dinner one time in Florida and barely able to speak and I said to him, you know, I think you’re better off finding a new wife because I’m not going to get better and you deserve the best and Melina deserves the best, and he stuck with me.

So there was that undying support and love from my mother, my father, my Aunt Lina, my Cousin Anna, who all shared the responsibiliy of caring for an infant. My mother was in her 70s, she had raised 5 children, so they put their lives on hold. So I was truly blessed, for all my brothers John, David, Jim, and Nick, who were there, always at the right time. My sister-in-law Kim who would always just check up and see how I was doing. My mother-in-law who would call up to see how I was doing. So I just had this support group, but not many people have what I had, it’s rare. So many people are mothers who have family that are in different states, or further away, or husbands who have to work, but I was allowed the time to heal and acclimate my child.

And I remember when I was recovering I never wanted to speak about it again, I was so embarrassed, but I would never do that to someone else because if I can help one person, one mother, I can help a family, I'm helping a husband a child, a grandparent, an uncle, the siblings so I would not, for me to never talk about postpartum depression is turning my back on these women, and I won't, I refuse to turn my back on women who are suffering like this. To embrace them and say hey, it’s going to be OK, I know what you're going through and you will be OK, that means everything to me.

I remember sitting on the couch with my brother because he had a newborn as well, Lara, who was a month old, she was born in July and Melina was born in August and we were both sitting there, and my mother plopped the baby on me and we're watching TV, me and john, and Melina is on my chest, And my mother's standing there and I could see her from the corner of my eye and she's standing at the end of the couch, at the other end, and we're watching TVat my mother's house, we had like 25 TVs and none of the TVs were less than 70 inches big so it was like a cineplex in every room and Melina is just fussing, she’s probably about 2 months old, and she's trying to pull her shirt and fussing, not crying but just to do something, and I knew she wanted me to look at her, and I just wouldn't give in. So finally, she kind of pushed her little neck and I looked at her and we just made that eye contact and I looked at her, and she sighed, she just went, siighhh, and put her head on my shoulder and she just slept, it was like a small miracle, but every miracle's a miracle.

And I remember looking over to my mother and she's crying and I look over at my brother John and he's emotional and I kissed her forehead and said, Mommy's here, I hear you, I feel you, and I see you and it was like the gates just opened, and it was like, this child with as much love as she was receiving from her grandparents, her uncles, her friends, she wanted to be loved by her mother, she wanted to know, hey Mommy are you here, because I’m here, and it was just a beautiful feeling. And I will never, ever forget that feeling. Her smell, what she was wearing, her little fingers, how everything in her body just released, as well as mine, and that was I think, the road to recovery.

The next week I started walking her. My parents lived in Ridgewood at the time at the end of a cul-de-sac and I'd walk her in the stroller, it was my mother and my Aunt Lina and we'd all walk around the cul-de-sac and I'd notice a few days later it was just me and her walking, and I realized, oh my god, my mother trusts me with Melina. And she would just sigh and make all these sounds just to be with her mother, and that's what a child wants, to be loved, it's truly God's gift. It's just an amazing gift having a child.

There's no better relationship, she's the lifeline to my heart. She's the air that I breathe, to hear her laugh, to hear her breathe, to hear her play outside or with her friends, there's no better feeling, it's priceless. You've acquired all the wealth, me and my husband have done it together, but nothing compares to your child's laugh or her hug, or her smile, she's truly a happy child, and a lot of that has to do with all the love she got when I couldn't be there for her. And she doesn't care about the first 9 months or being at my mom's house, or me not picking her up or changing her, or me not feeding her for the first 5 days in the hospital, because the most important thing is that she has her mommy.

We take our walks, we laugh together, we joke together, we get our nails done. She doesn't care about anything other than having her mother around and that's what mothers need to know that your child just wants you around, your child wants you healthy, and you will get better, so there's no better accomplishment I've done in life than having Melina. I couldn't imagine a day without her. And at times when I speak, or when I travel around, when I travel out to Washington, I miss her, she's a funny little kid, full of life, so it's wonderful having her.

I feel blessed I was part of that (change in awareness) with Mary Jo Codey who I'm dear friends with, we've traveled a lot together as we spoke a lot. And Susan Stone, who is a past former president of postpartum support international, who's now with Perinatal Pro. I feel totally blessed and so relieved that these women, anytime, anywhere, could go on the Internet, make a phone call and get the support and help they need.

We've come a long way, and a lot of people have plowed the way, and I'm just a part of the ride. I wasn't the entire force, but former Governor Richard Codey, Senator Menendez. I mean, there's so many support groups out there.

You're right, I think about wow, it's a lot more easier for a woman to navigate and get the right help, and search for the right help. Or even for the families, if they feel that their daughter, or their niece, or their wife is suffering, they can go on the Internet and there's 1-800 phone numbers that you can call to receive the right help.

There's so much more than 8 years ago, but still there's so much more that needs to be done. Theres so much more that needs to be done, legislation still hasn't passed, the Mothers Act, we have to pass the Mothers Act, and New Jersey is truly blessed, we have paved the way. We are in the forefront, we’re the pioneers, but we need everyone else to join on board now, and we will not stop until everyone women in the United States can get the help, or before they're released or discharged from the hospital, it will be in that handbook that wasn't in my handbook.

A nurse will say to you, if you don't feel right or you feel depressed don't hesitate to call, here are the numbers, they'll talk to the husbands, there's so much more work that needs to be done. I don't want to sit here and gloat and say OK, everything's done, let's sit here and sit back and relax, nah uh, I’m not going to sit here and relax until every woman can speak about postpartum depression and come clean without the shame or the embarrassment and I will not stop until that happens.

So there's still a lot more work that needs to be done. I'm very proud in the state that I live that we're knocking out PPD. Everybody knows that if you click on postpartum depression, even in South Dakota, it will lead you back to New Jersey, because we are so ahead of its time. But we still have more room to grow also, so I think we have come a long way but there's still a lot more work that needs to be done.

If there was a screening tool available and if someone did talk about postpartum depression before I was discharged absolutely I would've reached out for help sooner. I didn't know what I was dealing with, my family didn't know, my husband didn't know. But we need to let these women know, they're not to blame. Don't feel any shame, when we're depressed or we're feeling sick about something else, we reach out for help. If we have diabetes or our cholestrol is high, we're put on the right medication. We should not feel ashamed to ask for help and if those tools were planted there when I had given birth, yes, I think the recovery process would've been a lot quicker, or my family wouldn't have endured the pain I went through.

Yeah, I wish, but I'm not going to look back, I'm not going to be angry. I still go to the same OBGYN who at the time said, don't worry about Sylvia, you're going to be fine. You can't blame the hospital, you can't blame the nurses. It takes so much negative energy to do that, let's move forward, let's instill, let's add these screening tools, let's talk to the mothers, let's talk to the families, prior to the birth, or when she gives birth, say hey, if you're experiencing this, this is where you can reach out, here's a number where you can call.

Let's not be ashamed. So I'’m not going to look back and say, oh, I wish, or I should've, or they could've, or would've, let's just move forward and offer this, what I didn't have and what a lot of women didn't have prior to Melina, and a lot of women, Mary Jo Codey and all the owmen who suffered, let's offer this to all the women who suffer now. It's not too late.

My advice is to not be ashamed, you're not alone, you're not to blame, and with help you will be well, I promise you. Postpartum Depression is 100 percent treatable, but you first have to ask for help. And that includes the family, some women sleep too much, some women don't sleep enough, they cry, they're agitated, it's different for everyone, but if you feel that you're not right, and your husband knows that something's wrong, do not be afraid to reach out for help.

Michael
My name is Michael Fratella and I’m married to Sylvia Lasalandra Fratella and we’ve been married for 16 years, and born and raised in New Jersey, both of us.

I had never heard about it, when it was introduced to me I actually had to write it down, because it was postpartum depression, and words that were very unfamiliar to me. With regards to if I said it, which was very rarely if I did, people would look at me with a little bit of a tilted head with no understanding at all. Nor did I have any understanding of postpartum depression.

I think the first time I did hear about it was when an office psychologist, or at a psychiatrist’s office and it was myself, Sylvia, my in-laws were present, and we were all in a room and after an interview with Sylvia they took us up to a room and after several visits to different doctors this one doctor said she felt that Sylvia may have postpartum depression.

Even at that point, as a professional she was not able to depict whether it was or not, and obviously it was a severe depression. She was incapable of doing many basic things around the house and even personally. There was definitely something wrong and that was the first time I had heard of it.

Even though I was very busy with the restaurant, we had a very busy restaurant, I used to work 12-16 hour days, I always made time to go to the doctors and visit. We actually had a very good rapport with the OBGYN, and I guess there was never really an issue with the pregnancy. We felt like we were going through a very normal pregnancy.

With regards to Sylvia’s demeanour, she seemed fine. We were happy to have a child, and when we found out it was a girl, I think the only issue was that maybe she thought I wanted a boy and it didn’t really matter to me. But that was the only blurb that maybe through the pregnancy she thought that there was an issue, and that probably lasted two hours, it was a conversation in the car and that was the end of it.

But, with regards to the pregnancy, everything went well other than it was a scheduled C-section and she was due a couple of weeks early and it was a combination of me watching the Mets game and her water breaking, and me asking if she was sure her water broke, but other than that it was pretty normal.

When Melina was first born, the doctor gave me the baby because Sylvia was in recovery because of her C-section, and I knew there was something wrong when Melina was three minutes old. I walked into the recovery room, and Sylvia was sedated, but knowing the woman for the 10 years that I knew her, not only were we married but we were great friends and we had a really great relationship, you just know the person. And I said to her, I was holding Melina, and I said, Sylvia look, it’s Melina, it's our daughter. And Sylvia kind of looked over at the child and kind of glanced away.

And I just knew, that wasn't right, I knew something was wrong. It was amazing, the connection, when I finally got Sylvia to say hello, and Melina was only 2 or 3 minutes old, but as soon as Sylvia said her name, Melina's neck just went to her right away. I was just amazed by that, and obviously, she heard the voice within all the time, but obviously she recognized it, but it's just amazing the alertness of a 3-minute-old child to recognize her voice. So I thought even that reaction to her would spark it and having no reaction to that, even sedated somewhat, coming out of sedation, I knew that there was something wrong but it kind of stood inside and didn’t come out.

I'm one of 8 children, Sylvia's one of 5 and our mentality is we work, we raise a family, we go to work every day and we raise kids together. I noticed it in the beginning, obviously in the visits to the hospital, and the first night I slept in the hospital on the sofa in the room. There were some feelings of, I don't want to change the baby, the scar, it hurts, every excuse not to pick up the baby or even connect with it.

Every time somebody came in, there were enough friends or relatives coming in to pick up the baby, so she was able to get away with that. But from afar I was watching and knowing my wife and the love that she has for and the compassion that she has for people, I noticed something that there wasn't a connection.

When I brought Sylvia home from the hospital, she was hoping that I forgot the car seat so they wouldn't release her, and I didn't forget that. On our way home, when we were walking out of the hospital she was crying and I thought it was just hormonal but there was still something.

We got in the car and I put Melina in the carseat, Sylvia was in the passenger side and there was nothing said, not one word. I think I might've said a little bit about the business, I think I might've made a little small talk, but I knew, being with the woman so long that she didn’t want to talk right now, and I gave her that space. When we got home, there was a big reception there, and stork on the lawn, and there was my mother-in-law and my wife's aunt, and a whole bunch of people, and the video camera was out and Sylvia basically just gave the baby to my mother-in-law and ran inside and cried. I didn't know what to say, I was embarrassed to a certain point, there was another part that was protecting my life, saying like, she's not feeling well, you know, and it's, whatever excuse I gave to people.

And the next day I woke up, that night was a tough night, just a lot of anxiety, as one would have on the first night that a baby would be home, and Melina was great through it, I think she woke up once through the first night, and then maybe early morning she did not cry, she was an easy baby.

The next morning I had to go into work, I was building a restaurant as well as running one, and I felt bad for her, I saw her eyes and they were empty. I felt guilty for going to work that day. Did I need to? It was just a responsibility I felt, we had 70 employees I was responsible for, not only for our business, but for our family, you know, we need to pay the bills. It was something I look back on and think, maybe I could've done it a little differently.

So I went to the supermarket and bought some of those easy bottles of formula like they have in the hospital, all you have to do is put on the little nipple and feed her, and I thought that was my idea of, everything's good, you can feed her now, and I left that day.

And I remember this server who used to work for me and my family for years, and when I walked into work everyone was excited for me and I was up pretty much the whole night, and she was like, how is it, how is it. And I looked at her, knowing that we were a little bit more friendly and more of a mother figure for me, and I burst out into tears and I ran up into the office, it was uncontrollable, but I knew it was this pain starting deep inside that I didn’t know how to express, nor did I want to express it.

Part of it was embarrassment and inability to raise a family, and there was failures not only for the mother but for the father too, you have to understand that. I was a person that felt like they were in control of things, together with Sylvia. You try to control things and certain things you can't control, theres those anxieties and depression that you start feeling. But on the most part, it starts there when you start to bury it, and not knowing much about it, you protect it, and because that's what's going to harm you, that's what's going to expose you, so you dig deep and just kind of bury it there for as long as you possibly can.

Listen, I'd like to paint myself as the perfect person, but the point of not understanding it 100 percent, and you're married, and you have your own frustrations in work and trying to handle life's challenges on a professional side.

Then there's the home side, and you're trying to balance it. With regards to how I treated Sylvia, you know, there was a point of feeling robbed a little bit because you come home every day and you'’re working and you want to come home every night and just say hi to your daughter and kiss her or hug her, or go to sleep with her on your belly. All those things that you see on TV that happens.

And I think with regards to, there's a feel for normalcy, so I think that although you dig deep and you know that, listen, my wife has to get better, and the only way for her to get better is, A, appease her, and give her whatever she needs, whatever she asks for, you try to appease to the best of your ability.

Then there's the other piece where you have to be an actor, where you know you have hurt inside and you know your wife's hurt, but you have to be the stronger one, knowing that you're not the one dealing with depression, not from a medical standpoint, but the reality is you do, and when things aren't well at home, you feel depressed and you feel trapped and now where do you go.

Not only is it at this point, we're starting to understand somewhat of what Sylvia has, meanwhile you're balancing things, and you feel, almost a feeling like, what about me? And you don't want to, because it's so selfish, and you don't want to feel that, but it's human nature, and you start feeling like, well, I'm feeling it, I'm feeling depressed. But, at the same time, you have to show your strength to support your wife and support everything that you feel and it's a rollercoaster and what you really have to do is, I remember one point we went down to Florida for a week thinking with the craziness of everything happening, the restaurants, at this point my mother-in-law took Melina and we went down to Florida, and it was the first time I was able to read a book in a very long time, because there was really not a lot of conversation, Sylvia was sleeping a lot, and when we did find time to go out to dinner, there was one time when Sylvia said to me, why don't you find somebody and we can't have this baby, we need to put the baby up for adoption and inside I knew that would never happen.

But there was one point when, well it was two parts, but first I had to make sure I wasn't going anywhere and I wasn't going to leave her to give her that confidence, but then the second part of it is, I almost had to appease her and tell her whatever it takes, if it takes that, to do that, which you never want to do, which I knew would never happen, you almost have to say it, just to appease her and make her feel better, so she comes out of that dark hole that she's in, like sending a rope down so you can pull her out, just a little bit, so you can see a little light at the end of the tunnel.

And that's probably one of the hardest things I've had to do, in trying to do the appeasement of getting her back out of that dark hole where you don't want anyone to be.

With regards to exactly day to day, there's so much that I could go on and on and say that every day had a different occurrence and the tension that you feel when she looks at you in the morning, and your wife looks at you and says, I know you want Melina home, what do you say? Do you say yes, I definitely want my daughter home, the obvious answer, or you go down deeper in your soul and you say, whatever it takes, my daughter will be home soon, or however long it takes, and when that time comes that's the right time.

I wasn't that keen to always say that, I will tell you. I eventually got it, that is the right answer, that's definitely the right answer, when it's time, our life will come back together again. But until that time comes we'll wait and be patient because I will be honest with you and say I wasn't savvy enough to say that from the start.

When she says, I know you want your baby home, and I was like, yes, I know, that's the wrong thing because it's just like letting go of that rope and letting her go deeper. And I didn't get it at the time, but I eventually got it. It was hard, the first couple weeks and first couple of months there was so much going on, forget about going in to work and the craziness of seeing a thousand people, and answering questions, that's the hardest part.

Answering questions about how is it, how is it at home, how's the baby, yeah, the baby's fine. I think the one time, and I think I learned by mistake, a couple that I knew well and they didn't have a baby, the woman couldn't have any children, and the man did have a couple children, and she said, oh, how great is it, and I was at the end of the night and I was just ready to go home, and he goes, have a drink with me at the bar and I said OK, I'll have a drink. He goes, how is it, and I go, to tell you the truth we're having a lot of problems and Sylvia's depressed. She wants to give the baby up for adoption. Well, that didn't go over too well, he looked at me like I had three heads, and I learned from that to be careful and choose your words. That's kind of what the feeling of the day to day and what you go through to try to cope.

What we started to do as an exercise was to, I had to take more responsible in the role, and it was something I wanted to do and it was a chance for us to spend time with our daughter alone. On our day off, we closed the restaurants on Sunday. I used to pick up Melina either before or after church, I'd pick her up from church and I'd bring her home after and we'd spend the day together. And we'd do things, we'd go to family functions if we needed to, or go out, or even just stay home and spend some time watching TV on the sofa. I tried to keep every responsibility away from Sylvia, washing the baby, changing the baby, even feeding the baby, and then she would pick up and say, hey, let me do it.

Sometimes I'd see her face and it becomes challenging because there's almost this disconnect to a point of, it's a chemical imbalance, and I think that was the start to turn, picking up the baby and doing those things on a slower pace. Remember our lives weren't like everyone else'’s, we didn’t have 9-5 jobs, it was a very demanding life that we had that we were used to, and it changed. And I don't know if that was part of it, but anyone I know that I see who has it, there's no same scenario, like it has to be this and that's why it happens, but that doesn't happen, it can happen to anybody at any given time. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

Of course, you try to rationalize with yourself and say, well this is why it happens because we have crazy lives and we're always so busy, but the reality is that everyone has it in their own way. We live in a very busy area and we feel like that's the reason, but it happens in Nebraska, it happens in Europe, it happens in the cafes in Paris, it happens everywhere. So I think that's kind of the feel of every day, that was when she started to feel closer, and we started to have a few days together, and then it starts feeling like the confidence, the wholeness of what you feel. It's hard to explain, because so many people ask me, how long does it take. I don’t know, it could happen in a month, in a year, in two years. It doesn’t have a path, and that’s the craziness to it. But I think in regards to Sylvia, she knew she wanted to be a mother. She fought it to a certain extent, and then it started to feel better to her.

I mean, is it overwhelming, no, because I think it still has a certain stigma still tied to it. I'm sure people have wanted to ask me about it and maybe didn't. But yes, because of Sylvia's outreach, I've had a couple of instances when people have called me. There was one actually when I was running a club, a private club, and I spotted her and I knew her, and I realized even before she had the baby, she told me that knowing that I went through it, she started confiding in me, I'm feeling depressed. And that was actually before, so it was a different issue, so I gave her materials to read. She's still getting help.

And then another person called me who I knew, a friend through a friend, and was diagnosed for postpartum, his sister had a daughter, and she actually started coming up to New Jersey for treatment and living with her parents just to get through it. And that was so far a quick success rate because she was able to get better rather quickly, I think it took her maybe two or three months as opposed to the other situation which was probably over a year.

Yes people do come, I’ve had some interview with Sylvia, and it's something that I don't mind speaking out, because to help other men and women to cope with it and try and get through it. I don't think enough men come out and speak about so other men can relate to how to treat them, and how to be a husband while your whole family life is going crazy and how to deal with that. But yes, people do come to me and I try to help.
I think the best advice is that you would have to come face-to-face and basically have full disclosure with every virtue you have, as a person, man or woman, I think you really need to get in touch with that from love and compassion to humility and every virtue that you don't like showing, you have to come to grips with that to get better, for your wife to get better, to be from a state of psyche, your own psyche.

You'd have to understand that to bury it, because the more you bury it the more you feel trapped. And for any person, for any man or woman, or from the husband's side because I can probably relate more is that you really just have to embrace your wife and your child as much as possible. Appease your wife, there might be some demands that she might say, and understand that whatever she says she doesn't mean to a certain extent.

I remember there was a point where she didn't want to be married or she said I should move on and I couldn't imagine A, if I listened to her, or B, what her life would be or what my life would be or even what my daughter's life might be. That's really when you understand the true meaning of family life . When an illness hits the family, any illness, and someone's needed to deal with it before, you know that life changes to a certain extent and its life changing, you look at things differently. When you go outside, instead of that run and run and run, you tend to look at the trees and smell the roses and let me understand that. And to avoid collapse, you never want to look back and say I coulda shoulda woulda, and it's time to really tighten your belt and understand that your wife is very sick, and whatever you do, you have to rescue her, because the worst scenario is looking back and saying I could've done things differently.

We all have regrets and we all understand that there are things in life that we should've decided to do differently. This is one that you really just have to take hold of and embrace and tell her that you love her and that you're behind her and that whatever it takes to make her better that you’re going to do and that you’re there and that she has your support implicity, because she will never get better unless you give her the support.

It's a shame if just because of PPD that can break a relationship a family, it has ill effects, shocking waves throughout the family if it takes hold, but don't let it take hold of that. Don’t let that control you, you control it, and the way to control that is through love and compassion and patience. And every virtue that you need to take hold of and everything you can say, and sometimes you have to say things that you may not even truly believe in yourself, but remember supposedly you're the one that has total sanity at this point, and that chemical reaction that kicks in with PPD, women and mothers cant make rational decisions.

To go to the bathroom might be a huge decision to go or not, believe it or not, it sounds crazy, but should I take a shower today. Should I shave my legs, I mean, all these pieces are like huge decisions and you're just looking at it like get a grip, come on.

I think the mentality of men is, not to say that I wasn't one of them, is come on, people have been raising kids for thousands of years and what makes you so different. And it's just this mentality, and the public eye that doesn't look at PPD as an illness, and there are people still out there like that unfortunately. They look at it that way, and just because a mother was fortunate enough not to experience PPD, well God bless that person. But don't look down upon woman who have, because you don’t know. Some women told me they had a perfect pregnancy and I could wait, and I loved it so much and I'm just like, you know what, God blessed you. But don't down others who haven't had that ability to or the pleasure of, because we have to live with knowing that we missed some treasured years, or months, or moments.

And that is the key to understanding, don't judge others and I've never heard, I don't know of any illness out there that people have an opinion on, whether its real or not, but I will tell you, it is real. When people don't know its real, I think Brooke Shields said it the best, she said, well grow some ovaries and figure it out. It was a great quote, and I giggled when I heard it because you can't condemn, you shouldn'’t condemn yourself, you shouldn't condemn what's happening, just embrace it. In short, embrace it, try to understand it, and really just give the love and compassion that your family needs.

And don't worry about anything else because it'll all work itself out. Just get help, Google postpartum, there is help out there, we need a lot more, and I can't believe that with the trillion this country spending on the bailout that we can not afford ourselves for the Mothers Act Bill to pass it and get some much needed support and dollars to every state in the union that can help mothers who are out west and don't have what we have.

We’re in the Mecca of hospitals and help, what about that person or mother who's out in farmland and cant get help, and can't even speak about it because her neighbor lives 5 miles away. There are so many pieces of it, but I just think embrace, and that's the best piece of advice I can give.

You're Not Alone - Transcripts

Perinatal mood disorders are treatable. But first you have to ask for help.

call the helpline 24/7 at

1-800-328-3838

Department of Health and Senior Services P. O. Box 360, Trenton, NJ 08625-0360 Our Locations
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