There's an article that ran recently in The Santa Clarita Valley Signal that I think everyone should read about a mom named Tracy who went through PPD and successfully came out the other side.

Here's an excerpt that I especially found valuable:

Prevention is Key
Since screening for depression is rarely done on pregnant women, knowing your own risk factors and taking care of yourself both before and after your baby is born are key ingredients to avoiding PPD in the first place.

I continue to be amazed at the backlash that has generated in response to the much-needed, ground-breaking Mother's Act that is currently before the US Senate. Apparently just a handful of women are behind this backlash, however they're raising quite a stink. And they appear not to have actually read the bill. Rather, they obviously have their own agenda regarding SSRI's and thus have twisted the actual intent of the bill to fuel their agenda.

There's an extremely comprehensive article on PPD on the Scientific American web site, including data from a number of current PPD-related studies from around the world. The article, written by Katja Gaschler, includes an in-depth look at the impact of PPD on the nascent bond between a mother and her baby. (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mise...) Here's an excerpt: ---------------------

Andrea Yates' case was an especially gripping one for me personally because of the timing of it. I gave birth to my fourth baby on June 18, 2001 (see my beautiful baby in the photo to the right giving me a big smooch). She was born just two days before Andrea Yates killed her five children. Having barely survived PPD with my third baby, and knowing well the grim statistics of having it reoccur, I was slightly nervous, to put it mildly, that I would experience it again. Being bombarded with the Yates’ case on the news shortly after giving birth didn’t help my nerves to say the least…

I decided to write this because it seems that the majority of autobiographies and biographies regarding postpartum depression have been written by celebrities, and you know most of “us” don’t fit into this category, so here I am not a celebrity just a regular woman sharing my battle with postpartum depression.