Even though it's been eleven years since I battled postpartum depression, at times I still feel like I carry its remnants around with me. And sometimes I wonder if my daughter does too. Maybe deep down, on some subconscious level, a part of her remembers the beginning of her life when I wasn't there for her. I wonder if she would be at all different if my postpartum had been different. One thing I do know is that I will do everything I can to ensure that neither of my daughters go through that insidious kind of depression. Because it is completely preventable. That's the tragedy of it -- with something like 40% (and I suspect that percentage is way low) of new mother's experiencing postpartum depression, the reality is that they didn't even need to suffer from it in the first place. That's enough to make one totally depressed.