All week we have asked bloggers to share their experiences of post natal depression with us to raise awareness of how many mums are affected and the impact it has on women and their families. Do check back each day to read all the guest blogs in our special Post Natal Depression Awareness Week.
Today’s honest and moving post comes from Annie at Mammasaurus. She writes about her experience of post natal depression and how it made her act and feel.
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PND – The Unwanted Vistor
Image: Netmums
Post natal depression is jolly impolite. Much like an ageing Aunt that smells a little too much like pee and mothballs, it doesn’t announce it’s impending arrival, nor does it leave when you ask it to. Of course it’s far more than impolite, it’s debilitating, life-changing, all-consuming and generally crap. It’s something you are informed of when pregnant but can never be prepared for and it can happen at any time. For me it introduced itself 5 months after the birth of my eighth child. Yup, that’s right, when I say ‘it can come at any time’ it really can come at any time – even after several pnd-free births.
I can remember the afternoon clearly, I can almost smell the casserole cooking, I open the oven door, lean in to check that it’s not crisping up on top, I close the oven door, walk out of the front door and I’m gone.
Several hours later I hear the whirr of a Police helicopter and a car pulls up beside me. A female officer gets out of the car and holds up a photograph, her eyes flicking between it and me.
“Annie?”
Why I walked out of my home, in the rain, with no coat, no money, no mobile phone and into the New Forest I did not know. In hindsight it was the beginning, the onset of rather extreme post-natal depression, at the time though, I didn’t know what was happening to me – all I knew was that I was scared.
The next month saw me go from scared, to convinced that my baby had been swapped at birth to ringing the doctor to tell her that I wanted to smother my child. I cut off my hair, with blunt kitchen scissors and left my family and started medication prescribed to me.
Three weeks later and the medication had made me feel worse, I despaired –medication wasn’t helping me, I just wanted everything to be over. And so I had made a plan – a self-help plan, a list of things that might help, the theory being that I should try everything I could, no matter how ‘silly’ I seemed to me (sleep hygiene is one of those things I deemed daft at the time) . Things like ‘take up swimming, put my child in nursery, start writing my feelings down’. I moved back home and actioned everything on my list. Within a fortnight I was completely back to ‘normal’ and felt empowered as a result.
Whilst my experience is was terrifying, brief and extreme it really does help illustrate just how vast and differing pnd can be from person to person. For me the most frightening thing was the knowing that how I felt was really very wrong but yet not being able to change how I felt.
Unless you are unlucky enough to have suffered from PND it’s hard to understand and know how to deal with a sufferer. For example, the well-intentioned…
‘But you have beautiful children and a loving husband who need you’
…did nothing to help me whilst I was suffering. I knew that already and pointing it out to me only piled on unnecessary feelings of guilt. And how the guilt piles up! The guilt I felt was mainly three key things:
- How can my husband still love me now?
- My son is going to grow up with such issues, and it’ll all be my fault.
- Everyone thinks I am a terrible mother. I AM a terrible mother.
Three and a half years on and my son is about to turn four. He’s a happy child, we have a close and loving relationship and I find myself more able to talk about my experience but that guilt still lurks but now it’s diluted with relief that it’s over and everyone is OK.
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Find out more about the new Mums Maternal Mental Health report and 
funded by the Boots Family Trust with Tommy’s, Netmums, Royal College of Midwives and the Institute of Health Visiting.
You can find out more about and download a Well Being Plan here.
Read the most common myths and facts about PND.
Find out more about PND and depression in pregnancy here – with loads of support and advice as well as where to find help and support locally.
All next week we will be featuring guest blogs from mums who share their own experiences of post natal depression and how it affected their lives. We hope you will pop by each day next week to read our guest blogs.
