Oh my. I've never seen this articulated so clearly! Thank you for laying out what is really the most logical explanation, cutting through the crap we've been told for so long. My PPD got worse with each childbirth - I'll never forget laying next to my sleeping partner after giving up finishing my PhD and moving across the country for his job, with a toddler and newborn. Laying there bawling at who knows what hour of the morning, after getting up for at least the third time already, crying because I knew I'd be hearing a crying baby within an hour, crying harder because I was crying instead of sleeping. I told him the next day that I'd keep doing what I had to do to take care of the children, but there was absolutely going to be a cost for it someday. After #3, I remember seeing him walk out the door all shiny and dressed for work, while I sat crumpled on the floor staring at three children and weeping. He punished me for a year for putting off having #4 because I needed to recover. When we went before the judge years later for temporary custody orders for the divorce, he tried to get full custody because of my "mental breakdown at the end of graduate school." Thankfully the judge saw right through that nonsense.