'I was afraid that they would call Children's Aid:' Sudbury woman opens up about postpartum depression

Andréa Desjardins was terrified that someone would take her children away. 

"I didn't want people to know. I was afraid that they would call Children's Aid."

Her secret: Dejardins was struggling with common symptoms of postpartum depression — she just didn't know it. 

"The intrusive thoughts I think were the hardest part of it. Thoughts of harming my baby. Thoughts of every conceivable type of harm happening to my baby and not being able to to save them," she said. 

"They just come out of nowhere."

Desjardins said she was tortured by those horrifying thoughts for months, until she finally decided to tell someone what was going on. 

Guilt

"It was a couple months of that after my first child, and after my second child, it was even more months just because... I was afraid." 

"I was afraid that I'd be seen as a terrible mother," she continued. "I really wanted to do well at being a mother, and I felt like if I shared this then I'd be admitting that perhaps I wasn't a good mom."

"There was a lot of guilt that... maybe I should have never had kids." 

Desjardins said in the end, she was lucky: when she did finally tell her family, they stepped in to help. 

She is far from an unusual case. According to a recent study from Statistics Canada, postpartum depression affects nearly a quarter of Canadian women.

'Reach in and offer the help'

Now, some 15 years later, Desjardins works with women who are struggling like she did. She's a facilitator of the MOMS/Mothers Offering Mutual Support group, a peer-based group at NISA in Sudbury for local mothers who are experiencing postpartum and mood challenges around pregnancy and birth.

"We offer a safe, judgment free space...  where you can be really honest about the experiences you're having," she said. 

The group talks about everything from the pressures of returning to work, to judgement from others, to the impact of social media on perceptions of success in motherhood. 

Desjardins acknowledges that despite advances in understanding around postpartum depression, it's still profoundly personal. 

"I think I want people to know how scary and isolating it can be," she said. "A lot of people aren't really speaking about their experiences even though a lot of us are experiencing it. There's a lot of judgment that we place on ourselves."

"What I want people to know," she said, "is that if you can create space for someone to talk about [postpartum depression], and if you can take some of the responsibility off of a mom who's experiencing it, that would be incredibly helpful."

"You have to just sort of go in there and offer: reach in and offer the help, because a lot of us are are afraid to ask."