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As I pushed my four-month-old daughter, Evangeline, in her pram through the heavy rain one afternoon in January, a car sped through a puddle, soaking me from head to foot.
Tears cascaded down my face and despair flooded through me. My clothes were drenched and muddy, so I would have to go home to change, rather than continue on to the park. I might as well have been returning to a jail cell.
As traffic snaked past us in the gathering gloom, I felt dizzy with misery. For a moment, I thought about launching Evangeline and myself under the wheels of a passing bus. Terrible, I know, but that was how hopeless I felt.
I didn't realise it then, but I was suffering from a bout of postnatal depression that started when Evangeline was about two weeks old and which held me in its miserable clutches for six months.
I should have been blissfully happy. After all, I had everything I'd ever wanted - a beautiful, healthy baby, two other wonderful children, a loving husband, gorgeous home and interesting work as a freelance journalist.
But dark thoughts gathered in my head and anxiety overwhelmed me.
Sometimes I tried to imagine what death would feel like, and occasionally I even contemplated the unimaginable - killing my darling baby. I'd visualise myself jumping out of a window or throwing myself and Evangeline off a bridge.
I recalled those impulses with horror last week when I read how soldier Robert Kopicki had returned home from the frontline to find the dead body of his fiancee, who had hanged herself without warning while suffering postnatal depression after the birth of their daughter.
And the tragic story of 37-year-old GP Elizabeth Kinston, who was missing for two weeks before her body was found last week in Nottinghamshire, filled me with a profound sympathy for her and her family. Said to be suffering from postnatal depression, Elizabeth clearly found herself in a darker world than I did.
However, there were parallels between our struggles.
Now 38, I was Elizabeth's age when my battle with postnatal depression was at its worst.
Tragic: The recently-deceased GP Elizabeth Kinston, pictured with her second child, is said to have been suffering from postnatal depression
More than 15 per cent of new mothers suffer from this condition. My symptoms felt all the more confusing because this wasn't my first baby.
Evangeline is my third child and I'd sailed through my elder children's early years - Jimmy is 13 and Dolly is ten - despite my life being much less stable then.
I married their father at 24 and had Jimmy when I was 25. Dolly was born three years later, but by then my marriage was over. Our youthful love hadn't stood up to adult responsibilities. We separated when Dolly was just two weeks old.
As a newly single mother with a baby and toddler to take care of, I might have been an obvious candidate for postnatal depression. But it didn't happen, which made me even more confused about the way I felt after Evangeline was born.
She is the child of my second marriage, to Pete, a communications manager. Life was secure when I became pregnant and the conditions for Evangeline's arrival seemed ideal.
I was ten years older and, I hoped, ten years wiser, and my marriage to Pete has made me incredibly happy.We decorated a bedroom for her, hanging a colourful mobile over her cot, and I dug out Jimmy and Dolly's baby clothes, eagerly anticipating what I assumed would be a contented new chapter in our lives.
'Occasionally I even contemplated the unimaginable - killing my darling baby. I'd visualise myself jumping out of a window or throwing myself and Evangeline off a bridge.'
For two weeks, we had a constant stream of visitors arriving with flowers and gifts. My only sadness was that my mother, who was profoundly brain damaged in a horse-riding accident when I was a teenager, could not share in the joy of my new baby.
She lives in a nursing home, cannot speak or communicate, and I have no idea whether she recognises me when I visit.
We were very close before the accident and Mum always looked forward to becoming a grandmother. She talked about buying nappies together and all the fun we'd have when I was a mother.
Though I had managed through my two older children's infancy without my mother's support, I felt her absence more keenly this time around.
I tried to push away my sadness, as everyone kept telling me how happy I must be.
'You're an old hand,' a friend said enviously as she bounced her fractious first-born in her arms. 'Another baby will be a doddle for you.'
I nodded, wanting to agree with her. Evangeline wasn't difficult. She breast-fed without an issue and slept well, so even the nights were easy.
Why, then, did I find myself trapped by a growing sense of despair, as if I were separated from the rest of the world by a pane of glass?
Horrifying: Linzi Mannion, pictured with fiance Lance Sgt Robert Kopicki, hanged herself while suffering from postnatal depression after the birth of their daughter
Normal life was going on at the other side of the glass, but I wasn't part of it.
After Pete and the older children left every morning, I felt a mounting sense of panic at the prospect of spending the day in an empty house with a new baby. I felt anxious about work, despite the fact I had intended to take time off after Evangeline was born.
Hating to turn down commissions, I agreed to take on a major project when Evangeline was only a week old, then kept saying 'yes' as more work rolled in.
I'd look at my daughter in her Moses basket beside my desk, staring up at me with her dark eyes, and felt stricken with guilt that I was on my computer.
When she was a month old, I became aware of a voice in my head telling me I was a bad mother, that I was letting Evangeline down and neglecting her by missing out on these precious early days.
I tried to ignore the voice, but it grew louder. I heard it when I was feeding Evangeline and when I was cooking supper. I heard it all day every day, taunting me for my many failings.
Looking at my daughter asleep in her cot made my heart ache with love and longing to be a better mother, but I also knew that work connected me to the happy, confident woman I had been just weeks before I'd had my baby.
I was trapped in an impossible place, feeling terrible if I worked and even worse if I didn't.
I took Evangeline to baby groups, thinking that was what good mothers did, and hoped to make new friends.
In reality, I had never felt so lonely or lost as I did sitting on a play mat surrounded by toddlers crashing around in bits of plastic, trying to locate a new best friend in a sea of other mothers.
'I was trapped in an impossible place, feeling terrible if I worked and even worse if I didn't.'
One day, a smiling grandmother arrived at baby group, planting a kiss on her daughter's cheek and hugging her before they fussed over the new grandchild.
I was overcome with jealousy and yearned for my mother to walk in and give me a hug.
When Evangeline reached two months, I realised I had spent weeks locked in a haze of anxiety rather than enjoying that precious time with her.
Holding her tiny hand in mine, I sat on the sofa and sobbed. I wanted to go to the top of a high building and throw myself off. I wanted to do whatever it took to ease the despair and self-hatred dragging me down.
I could no longer even appreciate the everyday pleasures that had once meant so much to me, such as walking Dolly home from her school bus, having supper with Pete and the children, or snuggling up on the sofa with them to watch a film.
I was lucky to have a sympathetic health visitor, who reassured me that juggling work and a newborn baby was difficult, with the addition of confused hormones making a recipe for emotional turmoil.
Vital support: Clover with her husband Pete on their wedding day
On the worst days, my thoughts galloped away from me into dark and violent places. Slicing onions for risotto before the children came home, I suddenly imagined stabbing Evangeline and then myself to death.
I tried to imagine how Pete might react to the scene and became so distraught by that thought that I had to put the knife down and take myself off into another room.
Walking past an open upstairs window felt reckless since the urge to jump out of it was so great, and when I was driving I'd imagine steering the car into the path of an oncoming lorry.
In my heart of hearts, I knew I would never actually act on these imaginings, but my brain was out of control, and so I fantasised that dying would bring me the peace I craved.
'You must be blissfully happy!' a friend said, and I felt too ashamed to tell her I'd never felt worse in my life. I might have smiled when I picked up Dolly from school, but when I was on my own, I cried all the time.
I was very lucky to have Pete's support. He never once told me to 'snap out of it' or 'cheer up'. Instead, he was enormously understanding and patient, even when I must have been a nightmare to live with.
He always had time to go for a walk with me before work, to help me face the day or sit up late with me while we unpicked the reasons I felt such despair.
'Friends told me I must be blissfully happy. I was too ashamed to admit the awful truth'
Virginia explained that the violent thoughts I'd had were common in depressed people. I started to see that maybe I wasn't going mad, and that what I was feeling wasn't wrong or even unusual.
Our conversation felt like a lifebelt flung to a drowning woman. I went to the doctor, though I was reluctant to take anti-depressants because I didn't want to mask my feelings, awful as they were. However, I can see for other women they could be lifesavers. I instead started a course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
Therapy helped to silence that negative internal monologue, replacing the self-criticism with a gentler awareness of why I felt so low.
I became more aware of my feelings. I practised slowing down my thoughts when they threatened to spin out of control with anxiety and focusing on enjoying the moment: the cup of tea I was drinking, the smell of Evangeline's neck after her bath or the hue of the grass as I strolled through the park.
CBT also helped me work through some of the sadness I feel about my mother.
Nothing can take away the tragedy of what happened to her and to us, but CBT helped me to be gentle to myself during the times when I missed her most.
Healing: Clover, pictured with her three children, had therapy to help her with her depression
I also came to realise the guilt that had plagued me wasn't just about work. Giving birth had also stirred complex feelings of failure about my divorce, which I had never really faced or dealt with.
I had CBT for nine months and came to realise my pain stemmed in large part from the loss of my relationship with my mother.
I was lucky that therapy like this was available to me and I wish every new mother had the chance to talk through her feelings. If this were the case, I'm sure that many women would find that vulnerable time after childbirth less challenging.
As winter turned to spring last year, Evangeline reached six months old. The afternoons grew lighter and we spent more time outdoors. Until then, I've never appreciated how powerful a painkiller sunshine is.
Snowdrops and then daffodils nudged upwards in the garden, and by Easter I felt I had emerged from that dark place that had seemed so inescapable.
Evangeline is 14 months old, just taking her first steps and forming her first words, and a delight in every way.
I am pregnant again and my fourth child is due in May. This time, I'll be gentler with myself. I won't be worrying about how quickly I can fit back into my jeans, and I will be trying to say 'no' to any work for the first few weeks of my new baby's life.
Of course, I worry that postnatal depression might rear its ugly head again, but I'll be more vigilant to the early signs. CBT has given me tools to cope.
Childbirth and motherhood are a privilege, and I'm going to try to treat them with the reverence they deserve.
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