First it was Brooke Shields, now Gwyneth Paltrow has come out with her bout with postpartum depression in a recent interview. It doesn’t seem she suffered an extreme case, but probably a more common type of episode.

It sounds a lot like the funk I went through after my first son where you don’t even know it was related to the baby until you’re out of it. For me it took quite a few years and I’m possibly still only recognizing it for what it was. You think the baby’s out of my body, how could it still be affecting it? Even a year after birth, I still didn’t feel like my old self. You think of the extreme cases where women are overly emotional, cry all the time or want to kill themselves or their kids. You think I’m not like that, so it can’t be postpartum.

It’s probably these less extreme cases of depression that happen the most and are most often undiagnosed.

I don’t think as women we realize how much our bodies change and are affected by pregnancy. It’s like puberty and getting your period. No one talks about it. You just hear a few things here or there and before you know it, you’re in the store buying bras and pads. Even in homes with mom’s like mine who mentioned it here and there, even they often remain clueless as to what it all is about. The same can be said about pregnancy, and some of the negative side effects. Most of the time we think to ourselves, it’s not that common, it won’t happen to me. Then that brings about a sort of denial and explains another reason why someone wouldn’t recognize it.

The fact is, we as women need to be more in tune with our bodies, aware of the changes they go through with pregnancy and have healthy ways of dealing with them. We shouldn’t be scared to go to the doctor, ask for help or fear medication. It doesn’t make us weak, it doesn’t make us less than the perfect mother who is happy to be one, it just makes us human.