[Click here to get NYT Parenting in your inbox once a week.]

I had prenatal depression when I was expecting my first daughter in 2012 . It’s not something I think about often, seven years after the worst of my symptoms, though I occasionally have a flash of sweaty, humiliating memory. Like when I’m on the A train and I pass Canal Street — the subway stop I used for work during my darkest days — I’m reminded that I was so anxious it took me hours to get on the train because I was irrationally afraid of a terrorist attack or of fainting onto the third rail.

Around that time, I wrote a series on prenatal depression for Slate in which I discussed the difficult decision to go back on antidepressants at the end of my first trimester. In that moment, I hadn’t realized that I’d had two major risk factors for depression during my pregnancy: my previous episodes of clinical depression, and the fact that I went off antidepressants to conceive. When I had my second child in 2016, I decided to stay on my daily dose of 10 milligrams of Prozac throughout that pregnancy and did not relapse.

If you have severe anxiety or depression while you are pregnant, the decision to medicate isn’t a question of risks versus benefits, said Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine. “It’s a risk-risk question, because either side you fall on comes with some risk,” Dr. Lakshmin said. “Untreated depression and anxiety has profound effects on Mom, the baby and the whole family.” Among the risks of untreated prenatal depression are pre-term birth and low birth weight, while among the risks of using S.S.R.I.s during pregnancy are also … pre-term birth and low birth weight. (It’s also worth noting that most studies on pregnant women and medication are observational, which are not the highest quality studies.)

Though both of my children were born healthy and hearty, and have no lasting issues, I still feel embarrassed by what I went through, as if needing psychiatric help during pregnancy is a black mark on my maternal report card. But today is World Maternal Mental Health Day, so it makes sense to talk frankly about what I experienced. As many as one in five women will experience perinatal mood and anxiety disorders; including prenatal and postpartum anxiety, and depression and psychosis. About 8 percent of American women take antidepressants during pregnancy.