Clare Zeschky sobbed as she pushed the stroller through Vancouver?s Stanley Park in an attempt to get her 18-month-old daughter, Lara, to sleep. She wondered what would happen if she left the pram on the path and vanished into the woods, never to be seen again. Somebody will find her, she thought. She?ll be better off without me.
Zeschky?s husband and their friends, who were visiting from the United Kingdom and had a baby just a month older than Lara, were at the nearby aquarium and they were starting to worry because she had been gone so long?she?d left to try to get Lara to nap. The visit had sent Zeschky spiraling: her friends seemed so happy and their baby actually slept, unlike Lara, even after a transatlantic trip. Since pregnancy, Zeschky had been suffering from untreated depression, which intensified after her daughter was born due in large part to extreme sleep deprivation. On the drive to the park, she had willed the car to crash and end it all. ?I was so envious and so resentful and just so defeated,? she says. ?My friend seemed to be so good at being a mom, whereas I was just this cranky, torn-up ball of anger. I felt as though I was doing something terribly wrong that I couldn?t have what they had. It completely broke me.?
Why pregnant women and new moms contemplate suicide
In Canada, suicide is one of the leading causes of death during pregnancy and the postpartum period, though it?s rare as the maternal death rate overall is low. A study published in 2017 in ...