What’s the difference between depression and PPD

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I’m pregnant at the moment and have had depression most of my life, I’m not a danger to myself or others, I’ve just had a rough time of life and get regular therapy. Generally people don’t notice and comment on how happy I am all the time. I have pregnancy anxiety too as this is my rainbow baby. I was wondering how ppd is different from regular depression as I know I’m more likely to get it and want to be watchful. I’m definitely more annoyed by things now I’m pregnant for example anything grazing my nipple will annoy me or having people disrespect my parenting choices. Both I think are reasonable but just wanna know what to watch out for. I am also going through difficult circumstances and have no support other than my husband for the time being so want to be vigilant.

I'm bipolar and have had depression on and off since I was 8.
I had a 50% chance of severe depression and/or Psychosis and I got both.
Before hand I was a bit blaze about the risk as I had lived through stressful periods before with severe depression but it unfortunately was like no episode I had had before. The usual medication didn't help. I had a very demanding and difficult baby who was in my arms for 23h a day and screamed for 16-20h a day. I got very poor sleep. I had a poor diet because she had lots of allergies to figure out. I didn't appreciate how the demands of depression would butt against the demands of motherhood in a compounding way. My depression turned treatment resistant and I needed an admission to hospital.

That said. My daughter was off the scale difficult and not like most babies. It was during covid and my parents were looking after 3 85+yos my partners father had recently been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer so we had 0 family support and didn't even get social visits to have someone else just hold the baby. My partner had a difficult commute as we hadn't been able to move closer due to covid. The depression was different yes but I think the difficulty of managing it came from it being a particularly shitty time which was completely unrelated to the pnd

I had a lot of support from the perinatal team and my HV who arranged bonding therapy and a baby massage course. Do look into baby massage it's brilliant for mums mental health and all the nursery nurses in the mother and baby unit were being trained in it whilst I was there as it's been found to be very beneficial

I had a cft course based on the book CFT for pnd by Michelle Cree if you want some bed time reading

It took 2 year to recover but my daughter is now 3.5 and we now weighing up the pros and cons of doing it a second time.

Thank you for an honest and informative reply. I am entering what seems like an easy time, if it all goes to plan, in relation to the rest of my life outside of parenting so I’m hoping that having more resources available to help parent will be beneficial to the management. I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that at once.

Timing. That’s all: it’s a depressive episode in the first year post partum. It can be triggered by hormones/ life changes/ stress/ omega 3&6 depletion (start taking them now at the highest recommended dose and don’t stop- get pregnancy safe ones) as can any depression really.
If you know your warning signs, look out for them; if you know what helps, do that proactively now.
I’ve had depression and PPD. I’ve also had births without PPD and I put that down to recognising what I needed and doing it (including the omegas, which also helped me get back on track during PPD)

Okay thank you! That’s comforting as I’m still high functioning in my depressive state. I’ve been on all the vitamins and omegas since TTC but I did not know that so thank you so much.