Postpartum Psychosis: Is It Real?

“I don’t remember too clearly,” says Sarah, 40, now divorced. “There was a rat. It was black and silky, the size of a cat, and it ran across the closet from one side to the other. I was terrified it would bite the baby if it had burrowed into the walls, so I pulled all the shoes out to the center of the closet, searching for it, or for the hole where it had to be hiding. It had to be there — I had seen it, and I could smell it: like damp and oily rags.” She loses the thread of her broken memory, recounting her then husband’s confusion at her behavior, irritated, telling her to come back to bed, there wasn’t a rat, it was a dream, turn off the damn light. So she did, and though the baby woke several times that night, as he always did, she got up, and cared for him as she had done since the day she brought him home. A bright, blue-eyed boy, a lightning bolt of infant activity. When he grew sleepy the next morning, she laid him in his crib, and returned to bed, restless and unwell. Through the monitor, she heard him scream. Agonizing, a sound of pain that took her back to the videos of babies born addicted to drugs and their haunting cries of withdrawals. She leapt from the bed, down the hall to the crib. He slept, peacefully, the little back rising and falling with easy breath. She stared at him, waiting for him to stir, but he slept on. “It was strange,” she says, “But there were children playing outside. I thought maybe it had been one of them. I ju...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Motivation and Inspiration Personal Stories Postpartum Depression Pregnancy PTSD Women's Issues Delusions Hallucinations Motherhood Paranoia Postpartum Psychosis Source Type: news