Sara E. Rosenquist

I chose the topic of my dissertation long before I became pregnant. It just made sense to me that postpartum depression should be a couple issue and not a hormonal issue. By the time I finished interviewing all my subjects and running the statistical analyses for the final draft, I had my own big belly. Only I ended up spending the last months of my pregnancy in the hospital, on my left side, praying that the premature labor would stop and the baby would wait to arrive a little closer to her due date. I spent 52 days in that hospital, and crashed into postpartum depression soon after she was born. Many years later, when she was all grown up and out of college, I resurrected that dissertation and wrote this book. Not much has changed. People still think postpartum depression is hormonal and just affects women. Men are still overlooked. And so are adoptive parents. Medications prevail as the first line of treatment without having any effect whatsoever on the overall incidence rates of PPD, and yet the evidence has grown that my original hypothesis is correct. Postpartum depression affects men almost as often as it does women, and it affects adoptive couples just as often as it does birth parents. Postpartum depression is a couple issue whether the couple is straight, gay, conventional, unconventional, or adoptive. And because postpartum depression can have such a profound effect on children, it’s high time we started to understand it accurately and treat it strategically. This book is written for that purpose. So, if you’re expecting a baby, grab a pencil and notebook and empower yourself. Parenthood is the journey of a lifetime—and it can really be great!