Postpartum Depression

Down Came The Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression by Brooke Shields is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.

I read it after I had Gracie and it was very comforting to me. I also read a similar book by Marie Osmond, but I related to Brooke Sheilds much more. She explains her story and her feelings toward her daughter and it was so comforting to know someone else felt the same way I did.

Brooke Shields also had to deal with infertility before she became pregnant which made her feel even worse once her postpartum depression hit. I want to add a few excerpts from the book that were especially meaningful to me when I was read it:

". . .At first I thought what I was feeling was just exhaustion, but with it came an overriding sense of panic that I had never felt before. Rowan [her daughter] kept crying, and I began to dread the moment when Chris [her husband] would bring her back to me. . .it was as if a vise were tightening around my chest. Instead of the nervous anxiety that often accompanies panic, a feeling of devastation overcame me. I hardly moved. Sitting on my bed, I let out a deep, slow guttural wail. I wasn't simply emotional or weepy, like I had been told I might be. This was something quite different. . .this was a sadness of a shockingly different magnitude. It felt as if it would never go away."

"In general I have always loved babies, and Rowan was not only amazing and alert but also quite beautiful. . .I just felt no desire to picker her up. Every time I have ever been near a baby, any baby, I have always wanted to hold the child. It shocked me that I didn't want to hold my own daughter."

"I watched as Chris finished the diapering, and felt like a beached whale. I was failing at things that, according to popular belief, we supposed to be the most natural in a woman's life. . .but I didn't have any desire to power through and care for this baby. I got hit with a wave of self-defeat and self-loathing and had an urge to smash my head against the wall repeatedly. . .I starting strongly believing that I couldn't be a mother. I was already proving to be incompetent, and we hadn't been home a day! What had I done? Why didn't I want to be near my baby? . .I sat up with my huge legs stretched out in front of me and, slowly rocking back and forth with my face up toward the ceiling, my arms limp at my sides, I sobbed. I couldn't stop. What was I going to do? Was I ever going to stop feeling like this? Misery enveloped me."

This book gives such great detail of how it feels to experience such a horrible depression. If you want me to, I can gather more uplifting excerpts that talk about how she slowly recovered. It's such a great book and opens understanding to something awful that I've dealt with myself. It gets a huge recommendation from me.