This may be one of the hardest and most personal posts I will ever write, to truly admit to myself and others the depths of despair I felt with post natal depression after having my son 2 years ago, and facing up to potentially having to deal with the same challenge again imminently with my soon to be daughter. I’m 37 weeks pregnant and optimistic about the future but I can’t hide the fact I’m also nervous and frightened by the prospect of going through what I faced when my son was born.
I have never been particularly maternal, I enjoyed the care free attitude and career focus of the days pre kids but I made the decision that having a family was the ‘right’ thing to do, I was onboard I thought. I could handle this. When my son was born it felt like I had birthed an alien, the immediate rush of love that I’d read should instantly come was smothered in numbness. Ok there is a baby here errmmm what has that to do with me- I felt disconnected.
I gave birth abroad in a country where having children was the ultimate accolade of success, yet I didn’t feel that, I felt like grieving for a freedom that I no longer had. I struggled with breastfeeding, we tried all the tricks in the book, we had a nanny, hired a private midwife, ate all the foods that were meant to help but none of them worked. I would feed and pump but would be lucky if I saw a few drops in the pumping bottles my baby was loosing weight and starving so I supplemented with formula.
At 6 weeks I had my post natal check up, I knew I was depressed. I had shared it with my husband but he was doing his best to keep us together as by this point I had fallen apart. In hindsight I can see what stress he was under to keep going but at the time I felt so alone and just felt it was his responsibility to march me to the doctor and fix me.
As I waited in the doctors office I worked up the courage to let someone else in on the weight of depression that engulfed me. As part of the check up they ask you how you are feeling and I said “bad, very bad, terrible, I have made a massive mistake I can’t do this”. A few years later I requested my medical records, the only comment she had written under feelings was ‘blue’. She asked me about breastfeeding and said that was probably the cause of my feeling down, suggested I sit in the waiting room for an hour to see a breastfeeding support worker. I was numb so just followed orders. At the same time I had also lost a dear relative and had to leave my baby in the next few days to fly back briefly for the funeral (the baby’s paper work for travel had not come through yet). The advice I got was that I must pump on the plane and through the wake at the funeral, it is your responsibility to feed your baby and it will be your fault if you have no milk. That is how it felt and what I heard, to be fair to the support worker I’m sure she was trying her best but when a woman with severe depression who needs a psychologist walks into your office and you give her advice on breastfeeding, it’s unlikely she will be thinking straight. The doctor also gave me a card for a psychologist, one that I never called. I didn’t have the courage or the fight within me to be able to put myself out there again and seek help, I just went home and the feeling of helplessness continued.
I returned to work after 8 weeks, I asked to go back early. Work and a career was my thing, something I excelled at, something that gave me meaning. It was great to be back, it hid my symptoms to the outside world wonderfully. To anyone else I was a working mum who had it all, but on the inside the sadness and the disconnect to this new family I had created continued to cloud out any joy I had.
I continued to tell my husband how negatively I felt about everything, it was draining for him but a cry of help for me. I wanted him to march me to a doctor and fill me with antidepressants so I could be the vibrant sexy woman who he had fallen in love with and not a shell of a human which is how I felt. He was very much against taking medication, having seen friends who had been treated this way he didn’t feel it would be beneficial for me in the long run. With time I’m grateful for that, but it took me a long time to recover without any medical intervention. I read a very powerful book ‘A mind of your own‘ which really educated me on antidepressants and helped inform me of the potential side effects. To caveat this I really do think drugs can help, I’m sure I would have recovered much more quickly had I taken them but I feel I may have faced another battle eventually coming off them so I remain confident that a drug free approach was right for me.
It took me around 14 months for me to start to feel like myself again, sadly I didn’t have the support network physically around me to talk too which could have helped. The mummy group abroad could be transient and fickle, when I told a ‘friend’ how I felt, they later described me as the ‘broken girl’ I was crushed and lost trust in telling anyone around me how I felt. I confided in some friends back home through messenger which helped but it still felt like they were at a distance.
My recovery coincided with my son starting to have his own personality and becoming less physically reliant on me. I started to find him funny and was awestruck at the new skills he would surprise me with. I feel a sadness as I’m sure there were hundreds of wonderful experiences before this time that I missed out on. Yes I was there but many of the experiences feel faded, like I was in the background or surrounded by fog. I recently talked to my husband who remembers those months clearly yet I have little recollection of many of the things I said or how I behaved. I think it’s self preservation as I know many of the words were horrible and heartbreaking but it was like I was another person back then.
With my due date fast approaching I wonder how I will handle the feelings if they start to come again, I do have a strategy which I’ll share in Part 2 based on practical things that helped me. They may sound simple but exercise, meditation, good food, journaling were key. Most of all I will hang on to the feeling of how much I love my son now and how he is the most wonderful and vibrant human I know. How good things can be when you come out of the other side of such an experience. The love when your child climbs on you and gives you a hug and the elation I feel when he laughs. The demands of playing toy trucks at 5am don’t get easier but they seem full of joy and effortless compared to the early days.
I’m so grateful to my husband for having the patience and the grit to get us through this and to love me unconditionally, and to my son for loving me when I couldn’t love myself. For anyone who is facing feelings of depression you are not alone, many of us have faced aspects of this with varying degrees. Please reach out and find a supportive ear to share the weight with, it will be ok, you will love your child, they will love you and you will be a wonderful mother, you just have to believe in yourself and put the work in that you will come through this.