Postpartum Psychosis: A Mother's Descent and Return

Within hours, she told her husband she needed to go to the hospital or she would die. In the emergency room, visual hallucinations began: doctors and nurses looked strange and cartoonish. She was transferred to a psych ward and stayed 17 days.

When her husband picked her up, she rode home in the backseat with their daughter. Heavily medicated, she remembers thinking maybe she could still have a normal life. She was a mother with her baby – how it should be.

Four years later, after recovery and with her medical team's oversight, Lage had a son. Her psychiatrist and a high-risk OB managed the pregnancy. Her family watched for signs. She experienced some postpartum anxiety with her son, but nothing like the first time. She remembers feeding him a bottle, grateful for those ordinary moments.

"Too often, moms with postpartum psychosis are vilified," Lage said. "Before it happened to me, I would have assumed there was some way to bring myself back to reality or maintain some control. It was very scary and humbling to experience being entirely disconnected from reality, with no way to bring myself back."

Her memoir, "Missing Me: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis and the Long Road Back," details the experience.