Baby love

Kiwi journalist tells the story of her postnatal descent into serious mental trauma with humour and brutal honesty.

- BY JOSIE SHAPIRO

New motherhood is a subject rich for memoir, with writers such as Rachel Cusk, Anne Lamott and Meaghan O'Connell reflecting on this significant time. Local journalist Sinead Corcoran Dye's first book moves in similar territory, though it has more in common with Australian psychologist Ariane Beeston's Because I'm Not Myself, You See, because soon after the birth of daughter Vivie, Corcoran Dye was admitted to what she jokingly refers to as the "clinky linky". Better known as Starship Hospital's specialist Mother and Baby Unit, it is a ward "with only three beds for the mums with the most critical cases of PND [postnatal depression] in the northern regions".

It Nearly Killed Me But I Love You is raw and unflinching, moving through Corcoran Dye's diagnosis with depersonalisation/derealisation disorder (DPDR), the loss of her mother when she was 22, plus her marriage to an older man who was her boss and their struggles with fertility, followed by severe morning sickness over the course of her pregnancy.

The first part of the book focuses mostly on Corcoran Dye's pregnancy and subsequent hospitalisation. It reads like a storyline on the television show