I am talking mild stuff though, and more like, you don’t need antibiotics because you have a cold, and you don’t need antidepressants because motherhood is hard. I just think that doctors are way to quick to drug women up.

Kgirl, I was more referring to the experience of PPD than any diagnosis. However, I don’t think the increase in PPD diagnoses is due so much to the medicalization of childbirth as it is due to the nuclear family and loss of communities. My husband and I are both pretty insular. We don’t really know our neighbours, and even if we did, I can’t imagine feeling comfortable or knowing them well enough to ask for help unless they also had young kids – which they don’t. We only have one friend who we would feel comfortable asking for help, and one person or couple just cannot carry all that. And as helpful as my mother was in the early weeks, she lives two hours away from me – not the kind of distance one can be supported by on a day-to-day basis. And while the intensity of those early weeks waned, it never really got easy, not for years.

This isn’t a complaint – we made our beds and continue to make them every day – more an observation about modern life. Having extended family nearby and close-knit communities reduces PPD.

Thor, I totally agree. (see above)

It was wrenching to watch, and worse still, horrid to realize it was me as well.

Mood disorder steming from childbirth needs to be accepted as par for the course, and dealt with kindly, not on the same floor as people who think they’re Jesus or who run away if you look at them.

This post is genius, Kate. Home, homelessness, the womb, outside the womb, boundaries, lack of boundaries and the complex workings of the mind an emotions to process it all. I was spellbound reading this.