Been on and off ads since my early 20's and had a period of about 3 years before ds was born (now 2.4) when I didn't take any meds at all and 'managed' my condition by being very disciplined about keeping a journal every day, where i worked through how i was feeling, kind of in the 3rd person. i.e. just let all the crap flow out of my head and on to the page, and then 'spoke' to myself on the page as though my best friend had just said all of that to me, iyswim. This stopped all the horrible, nasty berating and telling off that I would usually do to myself when acknowledging my feelings.
Seeing it all on the page really helped me to do this, also it made it more real somehow, as though I was reading about something awful someone else was experiencing. It really helped, and if I'm really struggling with something now I will break off from what I'm doing if I can, and do this. However, it is very hard work and very time consuming, hence when ds was born, it all went out the window. Suffered an awful recurrence of depression, and after about 5 months decided to go back on ads as I had no time to do all of the above, and was hanging by a thread. My mother suffered on and off with terrible depressions all through my childhood and adolesence and I decided that if there was anything I could do to prevent inflicting this awful thing on my son I would, even if that meant accepting taking ads, maybe even for the forseeable future, which was extremely distasteful to me; echoing Miaou's post about resisting the idea of having to take ads for many, many years.
They aren't a miracle cure, it's true, but I recognise that I am a more relaxed, happier mummy (and person, too!!!) when I take them and so I do it for my son. In fact, it has been a real revelation to me just this week as I had to do without them after a mix up with my prescription, and it isn't until I started to feel really dire again that I realised just how much they help.