That's how Sarah Puckett said she felt during the first of two bouts with postpartum depression. Her first experience followed the birth of her second child in 1990, and the second in 1999 after her third child was born.
The first time, the symptoms began a month after her child was born and lasted for several months, said Puckett, 44, a mother from Urbandale. No one, including the counselor she was seeing at the time, questioned the changes in her behavior or diagnosed her with the condition.
"I just felt depressed and in this dark hole all the time, and guilty because I had these beautiful children, and what was wrong with me?" said Puckett, who several months later began taking antidepressants. "I cried all the time, and I couldn't cope with anything."
So Puckett, a registered nurse working in Iowa Methodist's maternity ward, is especially excited about the new pamphlet about postpartum depression being distributed to mothers in Des Moines.
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