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Yup. Considered getting on meds a couple of times, but decided to wait it out a bit. I battled depression as a teen and anxiety in my early 20's, so I kind of knew where my cutoff was to get on meds. It started getting better around 3 months, and then went away almost immediately at 4 months when I quit nursing. It was like a fog lifted within days.

Yes. Although I had other stuff going on like having left a career to SAHM. I think it lasted two years. At two years I went back to work. Worked great. With LO2 I am back at home and decided at 3 months pp that I needed help. I've been seeing a therapist. Began feeling better by 5 or 6 months pp. I go to therapy and practice self care religiously. I also worked hard on mom/dad housework balance. Having my husband take over with some housework has helped immensely.

I experienced some anxiety, mostly centering around LO's health. I reached out to my OB's office first and met with a psychiatric resident. She didn't feel that the anxiety was at a point that medication would be needed. At that point I reached out to my pastor and met with a trained counselor through my church. We met for several months. Being able to talk with someone with an outside perspective was really helpful to me.

Yes, I had PPD and PPA. It started pretty early on, like 6-8 weeks or so. I sought counseling and started meds but they made me really sick and I didn't seek an alternative med. I continued counseling for a few months. I will say that the PPA was much stronger than the PPD, though.

Yes, very badly, and I didn't realize the true scope of it until close to the year mark PP. The second time I was suicidal and needed medication, therapy, and sold my business to take some pressure out of my life, and threw myself into a new passion that made me feel happy.

It's now been 2 years since I had my second daughter, and I'd say even now I have bad days, but I felt like me again, last Summer, around 1.5 years PP.

Yep. PPD/PPA - I found out ~ 6months pp. I was at a consultation for a new family doctor and ended up having a nervous breakdown before he even introduced himself.

He sent me to a counsellor. I felt a little better for a while but it's never really gone away and my life just seems to keep spiralling. I'm seeing a new psychologist now and I hope that helps. I would rather not go on meds, but I am open to them if it seems like that's the only thing that may help.

I'm also going to be looking into taking stress leave from work, if I can ever get the strength to book an appt. with my new doctor again. Not sure if what I have now is still ppd/ppa but I am dealing with depression & anxiety in a very bad way, regardless.

Sending lots of love your way. You know if you ever need to vent/talk, I'm only a message away.

Yes, with LO1 I had very bad anxiety and a bad case of baby blues that never went away. I kept thinking they were normal feelings and that they would get better but they never did. It took me until LO1 was 18 months before I got help and even then my then Dr wouldn't put me on any medication without getting counseling, but I was too busy to get counseling, so I was just kind of stuck. I never wanted to feel the same way again after LO2, so my new doctor put me on a low dose of Zoloft pretty soon after having DS and I do feel loads better this time. Hugs!

@BananaPancakes: do you think your symptoms were tied to your nursing? I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed and think a lot of it is tied to breastfeeding. I suspect I might feel better if I give myself permission to just go all formula, but I hate to give it up if that's not actually the cause.

@yellowbeach: I absolutely think it was tied to breastfeeding, but that's because of how quickly the feeling went away. I mean I was still exhausted and not exactly loving the infant stage, but it didn't feel hopeless anymore. I also could not lose the baby belly until I stopped breastfeeding...I still looked 6 months pregnant at that point. So I had a weird breastfeeding experience, since most people lose weight. But I had other reasons for stopping, and can't say I would have stopped solely for mental health, since there are medicinal options to handle that. If I hadn't had other circumstances come up, and I was super dedicated to nursing, I would have sucked it up for a while or gotten help. But my son just turned 5 and I can now say that I have zero guilt for stopping when I did. I felt awful about it for years, but life goes on and it was such a little blip in the big scheme of things, so you do what you need to do to be happy! All those things that seemed so big then seem so small now. I hope you feel better soon!