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[quote=Anonymous]OP, thanks for this post.  I'm one of the PP's with a bipolar mom and an alcoholic dad and I struggle with depression myself, and I had nearly given up on being a parent until I became pregnant unexpectedly last year.  For years as I approached menopause, I told myself that it was probably a good thing that I remain childless - my genes have lots of mental illnesses in them and I never ever ever want to hurt a child the way I was hurt.  Worse, my brother, who was an incredibly good person and the best father I know, died from bipolar disorder by suicide.  I just thought it was safer for me to opt out of motherhood.

Really, truly, though, I desperately hoped to become a mother.  And now that I have been blessed with a baby, I am even more determined and committed to staying healthy and to developing a plan to protect my child if my illness comes back.  Like one of the PP's above, I found that motherhood has brought back a lot of pain and grief - looking at my helpless, trusting, sweet baby has made me so sad for the little child I was and how much I suffered.

But I have tools that my mother never had.  and you have a lot of tools at your disposal.  One of the themes I keep reading repeated here is that the parents did not acknowledge their illnesses and that the partners similarly kept heads in the sand.  Naming the illness will help.  Not ignoring the symptoms will help.  Make sure that the child knows that the parent's symptoms are the parent's fault, not the child's.[/quote]

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