Melanie Blocker-Stokes and worrying yourself into a depression.

Melanie Blocker-Stokes had just given birth a month ago.

So she stopped sleeping. She stopped eating. She convinced herself that she was inadequate, that she had already failed as a mother, and that everyone else thought so, too.

Blocker-Stockes was hospitalized repeatedly for postpartum psychosis over the next few months, given a potent cocktail of antipsychotic, antianxiety and antidepressant drugs, even treated with electroshock therapy.

When her daughter turned 3 and a half months old, Blocker-Stokes leaped to her death from the 12th story of a Chicago hotel. She'd had enough.

I have no frame of reference for such a depression. I don't know--yet--what it feels like to have the immense pressure of being a mother thrown at you; I only know the immense pressure of the prospect. But I know that something has sent me on a not-so-fun roller coaster thus far, and I don't really know what to do about it.

At first, I was legitimately depressed. I cried every hour on the hour, never sure how to explain to my fiancé what I was feeling. I did (and still have) withdrawn from friends.

I just don't know how to publicly express what's going on in my head without sounding incredibly selfish and ungrateful--not to mention like a future horrible mother who's growing baby can't even seem to snap her out of it.

In the week after the big fat positive, Jason and I tried to maintain some level of normalcy. The first time we went out to eat post-baby apocalypse, it only took ten minutes until I was struggling to hold back tears.

It took Jason telling me that I was "acting like he gave me cancer" for it to really hit me. I was acting like a baby and certainly not like someone who was confident about having a child.

I blame the hormones. And fear. Crazy, intense fear. Of being a mother, of giving up the life I'm used to, of being looked at as accomplishing nothing more than baby-making. Complete fear of the unknown.

I hadn't told my parents or friends yet, and a part of me felt like a 16 year old on the verge of confessing that she'd just thrown her life away.

I--luckily--have never had real problems with mental health.

When I was about 15, I was hospitalized for two weeks because of a Crohn's flare up. They sent a psychiatrist up to see me. And, you know what? I was 15. I was bored. I was starving. The rest of my friends were giggling about boys and my face becoming more and more chipmunk-like with each new Prednisone prescription. I was tired of being sick. I was depressed.

But that man walked into my room, and I remember turning the smile on. Chatting him up like the cheeriest kid in a hospital bed ever. There's nothing wrong with me! I was telling him. Look how amazingly normal I am! And it worked. In fact, I remember him telling me that I was the happiest kid with a chronic illness he'd ever met. I wore that title like a badge of honor.

And then he left the room, and I went back to being pissed off because of how unlucky I was to be in the hospital on a feeding tube while the rest of the world ate whatever they wanted and did whatever they pleased.

I've gotten a lot better about this whole having-a-baby thing. In fact, now, I'm downright excited. But the nagging depression hasn't completely gone away.

Here's hoping it doesn't come back Brooke Shields-style.