Anti-choice campaigners might leap on my story or the notion of prenatal depression as an argument against abortion, pointing out that women who experience this can’t trust their emotions — that if they terminate their pregnancies when they’re suffering from a temporary bout of depression, they will regret it later. But not every woman who is depressed wants an abortion, nor does every woman who wants an abortion feel depressed. An unwanted pregnancy is one thing — and I support a woman’s right to choose how to handle that, if it happens. A very much wanted pregnancy that leads to a sudden and extreme change in emotional state and behavior demands examination — and for that, we need awareness. I found very little information online. The majority of what I did find was on parenting sites, which a depressed pregnant woman may be inclined to avoid. We hear a lot about postnatal depression, and medical professionals are trained to spot it, but even when I asked my doctor whether I might be suffering from prenatal depression, it was basically met with a shrug. (That said, I was living in England at the time, where standards of care may be slightly different — Europe is known to have a significant “treatment gap” when it comes to mental health.) I chose not to press the point with him or seek another opinion, still hoping the condition would resolve itself. There’s no single explanation as to why this happens, or to whom, and the causes may range from hormonal changes to stress to other prenatal health issues, with varying severity and duration. In a perfect world, all pregnant women would be routinely screened for depression and anxiety. In fact, a 2015 opinion from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that clinicians should screen all pregnant patients for depression and anxiety symptoms at least once, partly because the fallout from this problem can be dead-serious: maternal suicide is a bigger cause of maternal mortality than hemorrhage or hypertensive disorders, ACOG notes. While taking antidepressants may not be 100% safe for pregnant women (they should weigh the risks and benefits with their doctors, especially if they took the drugs before becoming pregnant), psychotherapy can be helpful — but only if the problem is detected, of course. My depression lasted 13 weeks — until one day, for no obvious reason, I just felt better. Unfortunately, this was not before depression had stolen another milestone: I went for my 12-week scan, trying to ignore the hormonally induced hope for either a phantom pregnancy or one that couldn't proceed. Luckily, the screen showed what it was supposed to: a black-and-white moving thing with a recognizable skull. If anybody noticed I wasn't feeling what I was supposed to, they didn’t say. Once I began to feel like myself again, the rest of my pregnancy went well, and I made up for my “missed” scans with a 3D scan at 29 weeks. I watched the baby open his mouth and blink, and seem to smile and wave in utero, and I felt overwhelmed by joy. All the happy emotions I had been unable to summon during that first trimester had finally arrived. Sitting here now, next to a perfect, sleeping angel of a baby boy, writing about how I once hoped for a mother-to-be's worst nightmare, I feel sickened by the ingratitude. But it wasn't me; it was an illness. The same hormones that were helping my body create a life were trying to kill it in my mind.