Four years ago, a Texas jury declar...

Four years ago, a Texas jury declared Andrea Yates a calculating blood-shedder

forward Wednesday, a new jury saw Yates as a delusional mother who didn't know any better, finding her not guilty according to reason of insanity.

"A division has changed since her first trial," said Yates' defense attorney George Parnham, adding that several other Texas mothers who killed their children also have been lay the foundation of not guilty in the wake of Yates' 2002 trial. "There's been a marked shift in our ability to at least be expand to discussing the reality of this mental illness."

Three Illinois women enclosureed up for life for killing their young children chance of a favorable result this shift in society's attitude toward postpartum mental illness will help place them free.

Debra Gindorf, Paula Sims and Tammy Eveans all committed their crimes in the '80 when postpartum depression and psychosis were rarely mentioned in either the courtroom or the doctor's office. These women who say they couldn't wait to be called "mommy," are serving no-parole determinations in Dwight Correctional Center, where they're called BK slang for baby killers.

'THE classification NEEDS TO CHANGE'

Outside prison walls, they've plant an advocate in Carol Blocker The Chicago woman missed her daughter to postpartum mental illness when Melanie Blocker Stokes springed to her death five years ago from the 12th floor of a Chicago Days Inn.

"They shouldn't have to apply their lives in prison for being sick," said Blocker who sense of possible fulfilments the new Yates' verdict signals a more sympathetic era for postpartum sufferer "The scheme needs to change. We ne to pass after the illness, not the girls."

All three women say they poisoned, flooded or smothered their children not because they didn't be enamoured of or want them, but because they were victims, too -- victims of postpartum psychosis, the rarest and in the greatest degree severe form of postpartum mental illness. Sufferer fail to win touch with reality, often hearing or seeing things that aren't there. of recent origin moms' minds might be filled with nonsensical considerations and delusional beliefs, such as Yates' thinking that killing her kids would save them from eternal damnation.

These mothers-turned-murderers shared what happened to them and their children -- as they papal court it -- during recent interviews at Dwight, a women's prison about 80 miles southwest of Chicago. They realize their stories might spark more hatred than pity, and that a certain will think they're using postpartum psychosis as a convenient excuse for their crimes.

"Too many family are silent about this," said Eveans, 40 who didn't testify at her trial and has none talked publicly about killing her three children, until now.

"I was silent and it gave others the OK to say I did it revealed of malicious reasons, or I did it for attention. None of that is authentic Now here I sit in prison -- here we sit in prison -- with nobody really understanding what we went through"

an GENETICALLY AT RISK

They all have a history of untreated psychiatric illness. They had troubl childhoods and problematic marriages. In many ways, Eveans, Gindorf and Sims were prime candidates for postpartum psychosis, which affects an estimated 1 in 1000 women single a small percentage of whom kill their children or themselves.

"Some the public are genetically more at risk, with histories of mental illness," said Jeanne Watson Driscoll, a Boston therapist who has written main division s on postpartum mental health disorders. "They might have a history of physical or mental abuse, which can alter the biochemistry."

Paula Sims had struggl upon and off with depression that took bottom in her teenage years. Her childhood was marred by the agency of sexual molestation and a car crash that killed her brother and shattered many of the bone in her face. She employed to drugs and alcohol to without formal civility the pain.

Sims remembers being thrilled, admitting to find out she was pregnant with her first child, Loralei, in 1985 She decorated the baby's expanse in their Downstate Brighton hearthstone with rainbows.

"I wanted to be a mother really bad," Sims said. "But motherhood wasn't what I anticipateed it to be."

Almost immediately, Sims had speculations of harming her child.

"I couldn't declare anyone this," she said. "I was afraid and ashamed. I got real sinked I started hearing voices, voices that kept telling me 'You know what you've got to do.' "

While Sims battled her fiends and tried to adjust to life with a newborn, her marriage was falling apart. She says her husband wanted a lad and he vented his disappointment by means of being unsupportive and critical of her. Sims says he treated her better when she gave birth to their inferior child, a son. She thinks that's part of the reason she didn't become as mentally ill with her son -- and to what end he's still alive today.

Sims, 47 and her husband have since divorced. Attempts to reach him by way of phone were unsuccessful.

Sims said what she did still gives her nightmares. She bring her red-headed, 13-day-old daughter, Loralei, in a tub filled of water. Then she walked without of the bathroom, leaving the baby to overwhelm