Michelle1 later understood that the depression after giving birth stemmed from the anxiety she felt during pregnancy.

Transcript

I knew post partum depression existed and I was on the outlook for that. I knew that if I had feelings of no joy in life or suicidal feelings or anything like that that that’s a big huge red flag. But what I didn’t know was that post partum anxiety was also a disease that could affect new mothers and affect them in pregnancy.

“So, the first time I knew something wasn’t right was about five, six weeks after my son was born and every day seemed so long. My husband was coming home and I was basically crying and saying I couldn’t do this anymore, it’s too hard. I just want to leave, I don’t want to do this. And I had had some feelings like that before, you know, like I want to run away, oh my gosh what have we gotten ourselves into? This is a permanent decision.

But there was nothing that sort of delineated it from possible normal feelings. ‘Cause I had talked to my mom friends and at some point it seemed like new moms get that kind of feeling of being overwhelmed but this was happening day after day after day. And by the time I realized something was wrong I had sunk into a depression. And that had stemmed from my anxiety which started during my pregnancy and made me behave in ways that isolated me and kept me from getting the help I needed to prevent the depression from occurring.

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