Postpartum depression chronicled in ‘Rain’

A couple of years ago, everyone in the slow line at the grocery store got a good look at a photo of Brooke Shields and her new baby girl, Rowan, on the cover of People magazine. Near the picture, the headline blabbed about Brooke’s miscarriage and her multiple in-vitro treatments.

Shields disappeared for a while after the initial baby news. As those pausing in front of magazine racks more recently already know, it was because she was crippled by postpartum depression.

If there is a category of books aimed at certain kinds of women – call it Mommy Lit – Shields’ new book, “Down Came the Rain,” can go in the celebrity-ridden and growing subcategory of Blindsided New Mommy Lit.

Obnoxious model/actress Jenny McCarthy has two books telling us things she alone can impart about pregnancy and child rearing.

The Princeton-educated Shields’ work is more serious than McCarthy’s stupid potty humor.

After years of trying to conceive, Shields assumed her troubles were over once she grew into maternity clothes. Then she went through 24 hours of labor and an emergency Caesarean section. The baby had to wear a harness briefly because of hip problems. Shields’ father died three weeks before the birth.

Two years and many therapy sessions and doses of Paxil later, Shields better understands why she contemplated running away – and worse – in the weeks after her baby’s birth. “Down Came the Rain” is an honest but overpolished account of her struggle.

The author uses hindsight to smooth out her memories of the rough early days, the days when she sat dead-eyed holding her baby and picturing Rowan hitting a wall.

Shields’ measured tone, inadvertently showing all the progress she’s made, takes away some rawness. We get details – perhaps more than we deserve – about this famous person’s health and personal life. But we don’t get nearly the emotion this subject should bring.