Surrogate Mom Suffers Crushing Postpartum Depression: ‘I Didn’t Care Whether I Existed’

Elizabeth Schreiber never imagined the depth of love she could feel for another human being until she gave birth to her son in November 2018.

Now 35, the family nurse practitioner from Wheeling, West Virginia, remembers the joy she and her husband, Jeremy Schreiber, 49, felt as they welcomed their newborn. The couple had always planned to have just one child; Jeremy has two adult children from a previous marriage.

“After we got married, Jeremy and I agreed to have just one child. He’s older than me and said, ‘I don’t want to be in a wheelchair at my kid’s high school graduation,’ ” she recalls. “I was fine with that.”

But after becoming a mother, she found herself wanting to help someone else experience the same life-changing happiness.

“After I held my son for the first time, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what real love is,’ ” says Elizabeth. “I thought, ‘I want to help somebody else have that.’ ”

Five years later, as her son was preparing to start kindergarten, she began exploring surrogacy.

She connected with a surrogacy agency and completed paperwork in July 2023. Just two weeks later, the agency told her they had found a match.

“It was so fast,” she says. “I read through the couple’s profile and thought instantly, ‘Oh my gosh, this is perfect.’ ”

She and Jeremy soon met the intended parents, and the connection felt immediate.

“My husband and I, we both fell in love with them, and they are amazing,” she says. “They liked us too.”

To help her son understand, she explained it with humor, telling him, “Mommy’s just renting out her uterus.”

Friends and strangers often asked whether she worried she’d struggle to hand the baby over after birth.

“People would always ask me, ‘Are you worried that you’re going to have problems giving it to them?’ And I was like, ‘No, absolutely not. It’s not mine. It’s not mine at all.’ ”

The pregnancy, she says, was “super easy.” She delivered in spring 2025, and the baby arrived just 90 minutes after she got to the hospital.

“I loved seeing the parents hold their baby for the first time,” she says. “That was the best feeling ever. I can’t even describe how amazing it was to watch them have the feeling that I cherished so much.”

When the sadness didn’t make sense

In the weeks after delivery, she felt emotionally steady. She pumped milk for the newborn and carried the lingering high of having helped another family begin.

But about a month later, something changed.

“People were confused. They kept thinking, ‘Well, she’s sad because she doesn’t have a baby.’ That’s not it,” she says. “I was sad for no reason, which was really weird to me.”

She had felt anxiety after giving birth to her son — including sleeping on the floor next to his crib — and she had been told that kind of worry could be common for new mothers. This, she says, was nothing like that.

“It was almost like this heavy, weighted blanket was on top of me, and it got heavier each day,” she says. “I’ve not known depression before. Anxiety, yes, I live that every single day — but depression, no, I’ve never known what that felt like.”

She remembers sitting in bed while pumping and trying to wean, breaking down into sobs that felt uncontrollable.

“It’s ugly crying, snot bubbles and tears,” she says. “And I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ Because I was fine. Everybody was fine. I hear my son laughing with my husband. I’m like, ‘Why do I feel like I’m falling to pieces?’ ”

The episodes continued, even during routine moments at home.

“In the mornings when I’m getting my son ready for school, everything’s going fine,” she says. “But I’d be sitting at our kitchen table giving him breakfast, and I’m just sobbing.”

When her son asked if she was okay, she tried to reassure him as best she could.

“Mommy’s just sad right now,” she told him — and when he asked why, she admitted she didn’t know.

Over time, he stopped asking questions and simply tried to comfort her.

“It started happening so frequently that he wouldn’t even ask me if I was okay. He would just come over and sit on my lap and hold me,” she says. “I felt like garbage when he did that because I was like, ‘This isn’t his job. He’s not responsible for making me feel better. It’s my job to take care of him.’ ”

Dark thoughts and asking for help

As the depression intensified, she says she began to feel defeated and frightened by thoughts she didn’t recognize as her own.

“I started to feel really defeated. I didn’t care whether I existed, which scared me more than anything,” she says. “And honestly, I had some moments where I thought, everybody would be so much better off if I were not here.”

She kept going to work and caring for patients, but internally felt detached.

“She continued to work and take care of patients but felt like “an empty shell.””

She also describes moments when her thinking felt dangerously impulsive.

“I had moments when my son wasn’t in the car and I was like, ‘Maybe I should just drive off the side of the hill,’ ” she says. “I felt like my brain was being hijacked.”

At her six-week postpartum appointment, she says she began crying while completing the postpartum depression screening.

“My ob asked if I wanted to talk about medication. I said, ‘Yes please. Anything. Just make it go away,’ ” she recalls.

Her doctor prescribed Zurzuvae, and because she was no longer providing breast milk for the baby, she didn’t worry about the medication reaching the infant.

“I started taking it, and I felt less like garbage,” she says. “It’s really cool because you only take it once a day in the evening for two weeks, and then you never have to take it ever again.”

Zurzuvae is a fact-acting medication that starts working immediately, and the effects can last up to 45 days. Some people use it as a “bridge” to other antidepressants that can take longer to begin working. Schreiber says she improved after starting it but still felt “a little funky,” so her provider added an SSRI.

“Slowly, over several months, I started feeling like myself again,” she says. “If I was smiling, it was because I felt like it. I wasn’t forcing it.”

What she tells patients now

Today, when her own patients struggle with postpartum depression, she urges them to seek help and reminds them they’re not broken.

“Listen, this has nothing to do with you as a person,” she tells them. “This is chemicals in your brain and your hormones are hijacking your system.”

She emphasizes that there is support — and relief.

“I tell them, ‘There is light, and you don’t have to feel this way. It’s okay. You’re not crazy. There is nothing wrong with you.’ ”

And she urges mothers, especially those battling intrusive or frightening thoughts, to speak honestly and reach out.

“I want to let moms know it’s okay not to be happy all the time,” she says. “You can allow yourself to sit and cry, and it just means that maybe you do need some temporary help with medication and counseling. But you have to reach out to somebody.”