My husband, Rich, returned to his long lawyer hours and two-hour daily commute a few days after Hope was born.
Eventually I could name it - postpartum depression - and begin to recover, but for a while it just felt like all the good parts of me had slipped away the day I gave birth. Yet because my lead-up to motherhood had been nearly picture-perfect - a happy marriage, a wanted pregnancy, a birth so smooth my OB had said I should have a whole football team of kids - it took me several weeks to understand that while Hope was healthy, I was not.
Instead of love or joy, I felt panicked, worried we were already nursing failures two minutes in. Looking back eight years later, I can see that something was wrong just moments after my daughter, Hope, was placed, pink and new, on my chest.