Six years ago, a Cape Girardeau woman battling a debilitating mental illness found herself pregnant and unmarried. Today, she credits motherhood and the daughter no one believed she should keep with saving her life.

Kimberly Dunning, 26, says Mother's Day is another year's proof that such battles are winnable.

"I think she's the reason I'm doing so well. I know I can't let myself get depressed and get down into a slump," she said.

It has been a long road, though. Dunning began seeing a counselor at the age of 11. Erratic emotionally, she experienced major highs and lows in her moods.

"It was sort of like I was experiencing being a teenager, but I had it double. And I didn't know why it was so much more for me than for my friends," she said.

Zoe Dunning put a seashell up to her ear while playing with her shell collection while her mother, Kimberly Dunning, and her mother's boyfriend, Lowell Milner, talked about their struggles with their disorders in the living room of their Cape Girardeau home. (Diane L. Wilson)

As she grew older, the mood swings worsened. One week she would be riding high, buying expensive gifts for friends and sleeping only a couple of hours per night, and the next week she would crash into deep, dark bouts of depression and could barely be roused from bed.

At 19 she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed mood-stabilizing medication. Years passed, she said, before doctors determined the correct balance of drugs for her. During those years, she often felt so depressed that she cut her arms and legs.

In 2001, while living in a residential care facility in Cape Girardeau, Dunning discovered she was pregnant by a man she was then dating.

"We were planning on getting married. We really thought we were going to get married, but that never happened," she said.

One night during the pregnancy and after a fight with the father, Dunning felt herself spiraling down. Off her medications due to concerns for the baby's health, she had a strong impulse to begin cutting herself again. She said it was the only remedy she could imagine to ease the pain.

Zoe Dunning talked with her parents, Kimberly Dunning and her boyfriend, Lowell Milner, in the living room of their Cape Girardeau home. (Diane L. Wilson)

"But I just decided I wasn't going to do that anymore. I didn't want to hurt myself and have Zoe when she got older see the scars and have her wonder what made me do that," she said.

Instead, Dunning checked herself into the stress center at Southeast Missouri Hospital. She said it was the first of many times her daughter would help her make the right choice.

"Even before I had her, she was helping me," Dunning said.

Dunning was moody and sick throughout the pregnancy and seriously contemplated giving her daughter up for adoption.

But when her daughter was born, she said, all those thoughts disappeared.

Zoe, now 5, came into the world not breathing. Doctors had to resuscitate her. Zoe also suffered from a muscular problem, Erb's palsy, as well as jaundice and brain hemorrhaging. She was hospitalized for a week after birth.

Dunning said the realization that all of a sudden she was responsible for someone so helpless forever changed her.

"That just kind of snapped me out of everything else. From then on, it was just us," she said.

Dunning's routine began to revolve around hours of physical therapy and trips to see specialists for Zoe. She pushed her mood swings onto the back burner.

"There were days where I thought, 'I could just lay in bed all day long and be depressed and not do anything,' but then I would look over at her and realize, 'I've got to get up and go take a shower,'" she said.

Dunning has also fought off repeated legal efforts by people close to her daughter wanting to gain custody, though she declined to offer details. She said her history of mental illness was used against her in those cases.

Today, Dunning said, she draws much of her strength from the Community Counseling Center's "Someone's Treasure Clubhouse." The rehabilitation center serves its "consumers," all of whom have mental illnesses, by helping them learn life skills and responsibility.

Consumers cook meals, write a newsletter and do clerical and accounting work at the clubhouse.

Consumers there say they fight a daily battle against the stigma of mental illness.

"The story here is: Treatment works. Just because you are suffering from an illness, you're not branded with it for life. These are not the days of asylums or sanitariums, and we're all proof of that," said Dan Dunlap, 52, a longtime consumer at the Clubhouse.

While attending events at the clubhouse, Dunning met Lowell Milner, 25, who suffered from similar mental illnesses. The two began dating and now live together.

Zoe will enter first grade this year. Dunning plans to go back to school and become a certified nursing assistant.

"She makes my life, she's my world," Dunning said of her daughter. "Really, I don't know what I'd do without her. She's challenging, but I think she makes me a better person."

tgreaney@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245