In the months after my second baby was born, I would often look back at the photos from the first time I held him. The nurse had just placed his warm, wriggly, wet body on my chest. I wasn?t scrolling through my phone because I wanted to relive the moment I laid eyes on him, but because I needed to look at his face and make sure it was the same baby I?d just put to bed.
Yes, I?d reassure myself, there are his big, soft, squishy lips?the same ones the technicians cooed over in all my late-term ultrasounds. There are his slender fingers curled around the hospital blanket?the same fingers that now push his toy trucks across the floor. There?s his fair hair, his friendly eyes, his chubby cheeks.
?And you?re positive,? I?d ask my husband for the umpteenth time, ?that the baby and I were never separated"? ?You were never apart,? he?d reply, even though I already knew my son was never out of my sight at the hospital. Then I?d take a deep breath, and try to stop worrying that maybe my baby was switched at birth.
Almost a quarter of new moms in Canada experience symptoms of postpartum depression and anxiety. I?m well-versed in the symptoms of anxiety, having lived with the condition for years, including after the birth of my first son. So, I felt prepared to recognize the warning signs as I was pregnant with my second, and I had armed myself with the tools and supports to cope. 
The fact that I didn?t feel like my own baby?s mother?more like I?d been given a sweet, chubby litt...