Forty percent of women with postnatal depression have never had depression before, but may go on to have it again. Many, if not most, new mothers I know have had a significant systemic response to childbirth and becoming a parent, including the most life-threatening conditions: psychosis, sepsis, severe depression. I think of the woman with the clitoral tear, and the one with the bladder prolapse, and the rectal prolapse, and the fistula, and the suicidal ideation, and the bowel perforation, and the PTSD, and the psychiatric stays, and the one whose intestines fell out days after birth, and
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