Me and PPD these days

I have done a lot of thinking lately about how far I've come since 2 weeks after Easton was born. I have to do this often when I start feeling blue. It helps me to know the "blue" won't last. I still have this weird feeling that the antidepressant is a "band-aid", just covering up something dark that's lurking inside me. But I am nowhere near as paralyzed with fear, sadness, emptiness and loneliness everyday. I was giving Easton a bottle this morning before his nap and we went through the same routine we have since he was born. I put a cloth diaper against my chest, he lays his head on it and I drape the top part of it over his eyes, and he drinks. I sat, humming Jesus Loves Me and watching him. Then it hit me. I remembered why I started draping the diaper over his eyes when I fed him to sleep. So he couldn't watch me cry. In those early days if I wasn't crying because I was so destitute I could die sitting right there, I was crying because he wouldn't eat and I was so destitute I could sit there and die. He would watch me. He would watch me with those big blue eyes and it killed me. I just knew he could tell I didn't want to be there with him. I just knew he could see my tears and he knew they meant I was beyond miserable holding him. So I started covering his eyes. It actually helped him go to sleep. Now he does it out of pure comfort. The minute I drape that diaper over his eyes, they shut and he is at peace. Amazing how something that I did out of anquish for so long, has turned into something that makes him feel cozy and safe. That's how I know I've made progress. I don't do it to hide from him, I do it because he loves it. Am I completely out of the woods? No. I can't say that yet. But there is light around me now most of the time, where there only used to be darkness. I read the words of other mom's struggling with this disease and it is so familiar to me that it actually physically hurts. I hurt for these women. I want to be able to sit right in front of the ones that are in the midst of the worst and just hug them. If I can say that it will get better, then trust me, it will get better.