Psychiatrists have a name for the desperate situation that Berit and countless women experience after the birth of their children: postpartum depression. It can strike any new mother without warning and, in the worst cases, can have fatal consequences — the suicide of the mother or the killing of her child. But even without such a tragic outcome, postpartum depression is an ordeal for new mothers. They suffer not only because they cannot feel love for their newborn, but because they feel guilty for failing to be ‘a good mother.’

Baby Blues accompanies 26-year-old Berit and her three-month-old son Finn, and 25-year-old Lena and her daughter Emilia, as they work through their depression — and learn to love their own children. Both women are being treated in the mother-and-child unit at the Westfälisches Zentrum für Psychiatrie in Herne, under the care of Dr Luc Turmes and his team.

Lena had tried to take her own life. Her partner Marc found her just in time. She had been consumed by guilt after forgetting, just once, to feed her daughter Emilia.

Lena and Berit bravely speak out about their illness. Postpartum depression carries a heavy stigma and remains painfully underreported. Experts believe that around 15 percent of German mothers experience some form of postpartum depression — between 80,000 and 120,000 women per year.  Susanne is 40 years old and a gynaecologist. She has helped hundreds of women through pregnancy and childbirth — until she had her first child and fell into depression herself. When her husband left the house, she would panic at the thought of being alone with her newborn daughter Clara. Susanne has come through the nightmare. Berit and Lena are still fighting to put the shame and guilt behind them. Baby Blues shows that life is not an advertising campaign — and that our understanding of maternal love needs to be reexamined

When health insurance covers only the mothers’ treatment costs, Dr Luc Turmes’s association Bei aller Liebe steps in to cover the care of the babies.”