BABY DOOM SHIELDS TELLS OF HELLISH POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION

WE’VE seen her as an Ivory Snow baby, a child prostitute, a teen with nothing between her and her Calvins.

But we’ve never seen Brooke Shields like this – swollen, blank-eyed and bereft, plagued by fear and self-loathing following the birth two years ago of her daughter, Rowan.

And she wasn’t acting:

“Rowan kept crying, and I began to dread the moment when Chris [husband Chris Henchy] would bring her back to me,” writes the sprightly star of “Suddenly Susan,” in her heartfelt if occasionally clunky memoir out today, “Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression.”

“I hardly moved. Sitting on my bed, I let out a deep, slow, guttural wail . . . This was sadness of a shockingly different magnitude. It felt as if it would never go away.”

With medication, therapy and time, it did go away.

But until it did, she fantasized about her baby flying through the air and smacking into the wall, and thought about jumping out a window herself (“I concluded that it wouldn’t be too effective, because we weren’t high enough. This upset me even more”).

She frightened her husband, cursed her mother and – driving home one day on the freeway, her months-old baby in the back seat – got “the terrible feeling that I was going to ram my car into a wall.”

Mostly, she cried – and wished she’d never had the baby she’d thought she so desperately wanted.

She’s not the only one. Though we hear only about the truly awful, extreme cases – like Susan Smith’s drowning of her children – about 15 to 20 percent of women suffer from postpartum depression, says psychologist Shoshana Bennett, president of Postpartum Support International.

The number may even be higher, says Ann Spector, another psychologist specializing in the subject: “Probably many women who have this don’t even come into the system to be measured.”

Unlike the “baby blues” – the teary state in which 80 percent of new mothers find themselves, and which typically dissipates, untreated, after two or three weeks – postpartum depression (PPD) grinds on.

With it comes insomnia, loss of appetite, agitation and feelings of hopelessness and guilt.

Often the cause is hormonal. Women most at risk for PPD have had a personal or family history of depression, infertility treatment, mood swings and what therapists call “major life changes,” like a recent divorce or death in the family.

In retrospect, the 39-year-old Shields would seem a prime candidate. She came from a family of alcoholics, broke up with Andre Agassi before marrying comedy writer Chris Henchy, and just before Rowan’s birth lost both a friend (her “Suddenly Susan” co-star, David Strickland) and her father.

She’d also suffered a miscarriage, endured months of fertility treatments, and had a prolonged and traumatic delivery and C- section.

Nevertheless, the Princeton University grad says, she hadn’t a clue what was plaguing her.

“Postpartum depression was an affliction I associated only with people who harmed their kids by driving into a lake. I had no intention of ever harming my baby. I was simply a woman who shouldn’t have had a child.”

Luckily, Shields had resources many women don’t. Her supportive husband and friends urged her to seek treatment and – after antidepressants and therapy – she was soon delighting in her baby, and relishing the role of mother. She even hopes to have another child.

And while her circumstances are unusual, Bennett says, “It’s important to know that no one is immune.

“Women should not suffer in silence. There is help, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Shields urges women who think they may be suffering from any kind of postpartum stress to reach out and get help. “Down Came the Rain” cites a wealth of references, including two dozen books and Web sites and three emergency hot lines, including (800) PPD-MOMS.

She will hold a Q&A session on the subject at a talk and book-signing Monday at 7 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square.

—

“I concluded that [jumping out a window] wouldn’t be too effective, because we weren’t high enough. This upset me even more.” -BROOKE SHIELDS

ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2JlfXZ7j25maWtfl66jxYydpqilXai1qrHLnapmrJWhubR5zp9koZ2coba0tIyppqysoJa%2FtcHMZpueqKKawLS1zqdm