<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Andrea-Yates1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1072 alignleft" title="Andrea Yates" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Andrea-Yates1-204x300.jpg" alt="" width="135" height="199" /></a>Ten years ago, on June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub, then laid them side by side on the bed.  She had been suffering for a long time from severe postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis.  Her conviction of capital murder and sentence to life in prison was overturned on appeal in 2006 by a jury that found her not guilty by reason of insanity.</span>

<span style="font-size: small;">Is what she did wrong?  Yes.  Is what she had wrong?  No.  No one chooses to have severe depression, and I’m not here to argue the validity of “not guilty by reason of insanity”.  But I know what it feels like to go under in pain and despair.  I remember days when I was so depleted and burned out from living all day with three pre-schoolers that I wished I didn’t have them, wanted to leave, was dying for relief I couldn’t find.</span>

<span style="font-size: small;">Even in those times, I couldn’t imagine killing my children, but sometimes when depression swallowed me alive I wished I could give them back to God.  In that way, I have sympathy for  </span>Andrea Yates, June 20, 2001

<strong> Killer Baby Blues by Joy Wilson</strong>

<em>She was the first one to drown,</em>

<em>married alive in a tub of tears,</em>

<em>buried by babies that dominoed</em>

<em>in a row laid out on the bed.</em>

<em>It was said postpartum depression was to blame –</em>

<em>another name for sleep deprivation</em>

<em>while driving drunk on endless screams</em>

<em>for more of something sapped from her</em>

<em>without a break from giving</em>

<em>until the well was empty,</em>

<em>the tub was full of children</em>

<em>that needed her no more.</em>

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<em>And I understand</em>

<em>she got what she wanted –</em>

<em>the sweet little blessings</em>

<em>that she adored,</em>

<em>the husband, the house</em>

<em>and the home-school room</em>

<em>where she learned the limits</em>

<em>of never enough</em>

<em>for a good-mom-wannabe</em>

<em>trying to fill the bottomless cup</em>

<em>with sweat and blood.</em>

&nbsp;

<em>No one had taught her</em>

<em>that having it all</em>

<em>means kisses and cat puke,</em>

<em>measles times three.</em>

<em>She felt betrayed</em>

<em>by loving and loathing,</em>

<em>felt her sanity drain away</em>

<em>until the day she did</em>

<em>what I've dreamed</em>

<em>and gave her children</em>

<em>back to God in a literal way</em>

<em>that stopped her serving</em>

<em>family and home</em>

<em>as she started serving</em>

<em>time.</em>

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