I was at an industry conference (Blogworld Expo), coming down with the flu, when I was confronted by someone who didn’t like something I had blogged about on one of my personal blogs. The person accused me of lying, but then kept asking me for more “evidence” and examples to prove I wasn’t lying. Finally, in what was most likely a moment of anger on their part, they asked:

“Aren’t you on medication?”

“Yes, I replied evenly. “Of course, you know I am. I blog about it openly.”

“Well, it must not be working. You obviously have a problem,” they said. After that, I tuned them out. The conversation had disintegrated into petty meanness.

I couldn’t believe it. Someone actually used the fact that I was on a low dosage of an anti-anxiety medication for treating post partum depression against me because they didn’t like or agree with the things I was saying on my blog. And they said this to me at an industry conference, no less.

That’s when it hit me: Post partum depression is still grossly misunderstood and - like any form of depression or mental imbalance - is regarded as shameful and the “root of evil.” So I thought I’d blog again about my year of silent screaming - and loud screaming. The year after my daughter was born.

I had a good pregnancy, my 5th in 2 years and the only one that held on for 9 months.

I had a horrible labor where the highlight was being given Ambien after over 30 hours of laboring to “help me sleep.”  Despite my concern that it might not be a good thing for me, I was told it was fine and safe. Then I proceeded to hallucinate for hours in the middle of the night, hitting myself and talking about the many people standing in my room, watching me. My husband had to hold me down to keep me from hurting myself. Scenes from the movie “The Sixth Sense” come to mind as I retell this.

I had a horrible breastfeeding experience after the first night in the hospital when a nurse gripped and twisted my breast so callously, causing swelling. I ended up with double mastitis (infection of milk ducts) within a week of giving birth. Nobody believed I could have double mastitis so early into attempting to breastfeed so it went untreated. When I eventually sought help from a lactation consultant, she actually took photographs of my breasts because she couldn’t believe how bad the infection had gotten.

My daughter refused to breastfeed. To her, breastfeeding meant pain, blood, mommy crying and near starvation. I was devastated. I pumped breast milk for my daughter for almost a year after that.

I knew I’d have sleepless nights in the first week after giving birth, but I was so exhausted a month later that I was starting to hallucinate, this time without sleeping aids.

Then the anger started.

I screamed. I ran around the house screaming. I cursed. I threw plates full of food into the air or at the walls.

Once, I ran out of the house screaming with car keys in my hand, and my husband had to chase after me and carry me back in the house.

Another time, my husband took our infant daughter into another room while I was freaking out, and I proceed to follow him screaming that he can’t keep her away from me, that he can’t take her from me.

Looking back, I can’t imagine what my husband was thinking or feeling. To this day, I try to get him to talk about it so we can keep working on healing all those deeply-placed wounds. The fact that he stayed with me is a true testament of the power of love.

Six months into this hell, my mother finally told me something I had never heard her talk about before: she thought she might have had “something like this” when she gave birth to my sister.

She told me that she felt like she was screaming inside, but nothing would come out.

I asked my dad about this. Did he remember?

He said that he used to say my mom was “climbing the walls.” So he would take me and my baby sister out of the house to give my mom some “quiet time.”

My mother also revealed that her mother may have had “something like this.” Apparently my grandmother used to scream. Just scream and scream.

I vowed that when my daughter grew up and contemplated a family, I would tell her to keep an eye out for signs of “something like this.”

This. Post Partum Depression.

After nearly a year pumping breast milk, I decided I had done what I could and stopped. My health practitioner was relieved.

“Now we can finally treat you,” she said then referred me to another practioner who said she wanted to put me on medication.

No way, I said. I was in the Tom Cruise camp that this stuff could be treated with vitamins, natural remedies, exercise.

I cried. I pleaded. I said I feared for my life and my sanity if I were to go on medication.

“That’s the depression talking,” she said simply.

I eventually agreed to try the lowest dose of the medication that day.

That night, I finally really slept for the first time in almost a year.

That next week, I could no longer feel the screams inside.

That next month, I realized how much pain I had caused my family and how much I had to make up to them.

It took me a year to warm up to my daughter who was so distant from me at first that I couldn’t even believe I was her mother. I had to admit that during her first year of life, I wasn’t really her mother. I was a jumbled mess with an out-of-whack hormone cocktail surging through me. I was red hot lava. I was anger.

I think it took my daughter an entire year to forgive me in her own instinctive child’s way.

It took me even longer to forgive myself or actually to realize that I wasn’t to blame in the first place.

I’ve stayed on the medication - still at the lowest dose - and feel “normal” again, whatever that means. In my life, it means that I can think straight, be productive in my work, and bond deeply with my husband and daughter.

And I no longer feel the screaming inside.

What more can we do to break the taboos around post partum depression so women can seek help without shame and more readily support one another?

My daughter is three years old. I have no idea how to respond when we are in public and she starts asking about body parts. Maybe you have some advice for me. Here’s an example.

We’re in a diner in the middle of Alaska. We are standing by the counter waiting for our to go box. There are a number of people sitting at the counter and a few men in their 20s standing nearby.

“He’s a man,” announces my daughter, pointing to one of the men.

“Yes, honey, he is a man,” I reply.

“He’s a man because he has a penis,” she says loudly.

“Yes, honey, that’s true,” I respond.

“He has a penis because he’s a man,” she says again, louder and pointing.

“Uh huh,” I respond and try to act like nothing is out of the ordinary.

Because I don’t want her to be alarmed. I don’t want her to think she is doing something evil or dirty or wrong. I don’t want her to be hung up about parts of the body. But I don’t know what to say or do in those situations. Smile. Wince. Grin again. Roll eyes. Stay calm.

I don’t want her be ashamed of her own body. I’ve told her the correct names for everything, but when she kept referring to “my magina,” I decided to give her a cuter, easier-to-pronounce name for her parts. We call them “Girly Parts.” She likes that. And she likes to talk about them, too.

We’re in public again. She points between her legs.

“Are these my girly parts, mommy?”

“Yes, honey, those are.”

She turns and looks behind her.

“Is that my butt?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

“Are those your girly parts, mommy?” Point point point.

“Uh huh.”

“I saw your girly parts are furry,” she announces.

“Yours will be someday, too, baby” I say, and lead her gently but quickly to another aisle in Wal-Mart.

Am I doing something wrong here? Should I be shushing her? Scolding her? Swatting her? Ignoring her?

I’m afraid that if I make a big deal, she might start bringing up body parts on purpose to see is she can get a wild reaction from me. I don’t want to overreact. So I just keep an even tone, acknowledge her accurate statements, and hope that people don’t think I’m some kind of weird, bad mother.

I have spoken to her a few times about when and where it is okay to talk about our body. Home? Yes. Diner? No. Doctor’s office? Yes. Wal-Mart? Please no. When she brings these things up, it just seems like a spontaneous realization that there are penises and vaginas hidden behind every pair of pants, skirt or dress.

What is the proper way of handling this kind of thing? Is there one?

I’m an inadequate mother. There, I said it. And I have to say that I feel a sense of relief saying it out loud or at least out in the open on a very public blog. I’ve felt this deep, burning inadequacy often in the last three years since my daughter was born, but I feel it more and more as I fail to properly navigate the twisted paths through parenthood.

Tonight, my husband is out of town, and my daughter refused to go to sleep. I decided to make things fun for her and to let her snuggle in “mommy and daddy’s bed” for a while, maybe even sleep there with me. I even let her watch a little movie in bed after her regular bedtime to make it extra special. I thought that would be a cool mommy thing to do.

The whole thing backfired on me. When I said it was time to go to sleep, instead of a compliant child, I had a toddler meltdown on my hands. What was I thinking? Of course she’d be overtired if I let her stay up past her bedtime. Why hadn’t I anticipated the errors of my ways? And why did I think my idea of cool mommy was even remotely suitable for a three year old? But what the hell do I know?

I don’t know, and there’s the rub. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, a devastating realization for an overachiever who has been good at just about everything I’ve put my mind to do. But not motherhood. I throw my heart, soul and brainpower into being a good mom, but it always seems to backfire on me.

For some reason, I’m not getting the memos on what to do when she refuses to go potty, refuses to eat her dinner, refuses to go to bed. Intellectually, I know she is testing the waters, testing her power as a little individual. I don’t know how much is too much discipline or how little is too little. I don’t want to crush her feisty little spirit, but I can see how this could happen all too easily.

Tonight, after carrying her kicking and screaming into her bedroom when she utterly refused to go to sleep in my bed, I listened to her screeching and howling. Then she came out of her bedroom and back into mine.

“Go…to…bed,” I said in measured tones.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” she sobbed.

“Go…to…bed…now…or I’ll carry you back in your room and shut the door.”

“I don’t want to go to bed in my bed. I don’t want to go to bed in your bed. I want to go to bed in the living room. On the sofa,” she told me.

The living room? Was that okay to do? Was I giving in too easily, I wondered, as I followed her to the living room and tucked her blanket around her as she curled up on the sofa. She wanted to go to sleep in the living room. I returned to my bedroom exhausted, overwhelmed, feeling like I didn’t know what just happened or why. Certain that I just committed Mommy Sin #1285 and creating some new problem by not making her sleep in her own bed tonight.

Then I had to laugh through my own tears tonight as I read Steve Woodruff’s post about Father’s Day, and how men can feel inadequate about being fathers. Who are the parents who don’t feel inadequate most of the time? Or what I really want to know is who are the ones who do, and what denial pill or happy sauce are they slugging down? I want some.

Am I the only one who feels at any moment I might get fired from this mommy gig?