"In the middle of one night eight years ago, when my daughter was an infant, I was nursing her on our living-room sofa when a hulking blur loomed in the corner of my eye."

"I turned toward the nursery, adjacent to the living room, and saw, for a single billowing moment, a giant floating baby—a kind of Mylar-balloon version of my own baby—hovering in the doorframe. I knew it wasn’t real, yet there it was. Two years later... holding my infant son, I felt a hard yet yielding pressure just below my shoulder blades.... A few nights later in that room, I sensed a hand on my shoulder that wasn’t there. A ghost, or something like a ghost, was in the room with us. I felt this to be true, and I knew it was not true.... When both of my children were infants, the same image flashed inside my eyes several times a day: that by some spasm or seizure or uncontrollable urge I would throw the baby against a wall. The image was blurry, monochrome, sped-up, a squiggly pencil animation that instantly erased itself. Outside of the flash, I felt no fear that I would actually hurt my child. But I was frightened and ashamed.... The vast majority of new mothers have unwanted thoughts about their infant being harmed...."

 
Writes Jessica Winter in "What We Still Don’t Understand About Postpartum Psychosis/The recent tragedy surrounding Lindsay Clancy and her children underscores popular misconceptions about a grave and mysterious disorder" (The New Yorker).