Fighting Postpartum Depression - Fighting Postpartum Mood Disorders

Written by Louise Kiernan

She thought God was punishing her and, in her journal, made a list of her sins in an attempt to figure out why. She had lied once as a child about being kicked in the head. She had thrown a dissected frog at someone in high school.

"Hurt people who were trying to be kind," she wrote.

Every night, Melanie's father, Walter Blocker, sat with her in her room. He massaged her feet, whispering to her as if she were still an infant.

You'll get better, he told her. This will end.

You'll get better. It's all right.

Trying to be a mom

Melanie spent 19 days at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. The day after she was released, she asked her neighbor for a gun.

It's for Sam, she said. He likes to hunt and I'm thinking about buying him a gun for his birthday. The neighbor demurred, then called Sam at work. Sam told him that he had never gone hunting a day in his life. Not long after that, she visited her aunt Grace, who lives on the 22nd floor of a high-rise, and sat for hours, looking out her windows. After her mother learned that she had been wandering near the lake again, she told Melanie that the doctors were concerned about her blood pressure and took her back to the hospital.

UIC was full and sent her to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. When she arrived on May 27, she had already been through four different combinations of anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs, as well as the electroconvulsive therapy.

Twice, Melanie had stopped the ECT treatment and she refused to start up again at Lutheran General. At the hospital, she was suspected of spitting out her medication at least once.

She wanted to get out and, her mother thought, was trying to fool people to do it. At one point, her records show, she described her mood as "calm," even though she sat with her hands clenched. When she was asked what she needed to get back to her old self, she answered, "Organization."

To that end, she drew up a timetable of her plans to integrate herself into Sommer's life. When she was released after five days, she took it with her.

Almost every day, Melanie visited her daughter, who was staying with one of her aunts, Joyce Oates. Melanie always plucked at Sommer's clothes or fussed with her hair, tics that never quite masked the fact that she rarely held or cuddled her.

Her family could see that her smiles were forced and her arms stiff. Sometimes, the only physical attention she could give Sommer was to clip her fingernails.

If Melanie ever had thoughts of hurting her daughter, she didn't tell anyone, but her aunt Joyce was concerned enough that she didn't leave Melanie alone with the baby.

On June 6, five days after Melanie came home from the hospital, she told Joyce she wanted to learn her daughter's bedtime routine. She watched as her aunt fed and bathed Sommer.

Joyce lay the baby's nightgown on the bed and asked Melanie to put it on her. Melanie picked it up and stared at it. Then, she put the nightgown back on the bed.

"I can't do it," Joyce remembers her saying.

She turned around and went back to the living room.

It was the last time her daughter saw her.

Goodbyes to all

Melanie tried to say goodbye.

Early the next morning, she called her mother and told her she had been a good parent. Her father got a telephone call, too, while he was shaving. She said she loved him.

For Sam, there was a note tucked under a corner of a photo album she placed on the kitchen table.