Post Natal Depression: My Story of Drowning in the Darkest of Water

Imagine you’ve been given the most miraculous of gifts. You’ve done the hard yards, you’ve endured months and months of nausea, extreme fatigue, backache, headache, general all over body-ache, not to mention the obliteration of your size 10 body and any chance of your ta-ta’s resembling perky tennis balls ever again. You’ve read all the books, you’ve done all the prep. You’ve managed to make a perfect little person from a clump of cells and you’ve managed to get it out of your own body. You’ve returned home to a plethora of flowers and gifts, well-wishers and do-gooders all giving you a pat on the back.

Your baby is beautiful, perfect, gorgeous, this is when that lovely warm feeling of love takes over and everything is wonderful, right? So what happens when you’ve shut the door on your final visitor and you’re faced with the realisation that it’s not all warm and fuzzy sunshine, but more like your drowning in something heavier and darker than the murkiest of water?

My own battle with PND came very unexpectedly. The birth of my first child had come and gone with all the fanfare a little one demands. I had battled with anxiety and depression for years beforehand and was well prepared for any lapses that may come my way. In between coffee dates, gym classes and dozing in the sun with my contented little girl, we were the definition of those cliché nappy ads. When I fell pregnant with my son 15 months later, I was blissfully unaware of the nightmare that was to disrupt my perfect parenting bubble. My husband had been made redundant only 8 weeks before I was due and the stress of moving house and financial pressure surely took its toll. The fact that he was finally delivered a very dark shade of blue with an umbilical cord cutting off all signs of life and a hasty resuscitation by the doctor did not help either. But the catalyst, I was to find out after months and months of PND counselling later, was that my beautiful, big boy was born on his older sister’s 2^nd birthday. Weeks, even months later, I would look at my son with completely unreasonable resentment and anger.

“Who do you think you are? You spoilt her day. You come in here with your whingeing and crying and all you want is me? I don’t want you. That was her day.”

It makes me teary to think I ever thought that way towards my boy, who grew up to be the most gentle, sweet and mischievous little man. It still hurts me to remember the three times I actually left him behind, asleep in his cot or in his rocker, and then wondering if I really had to turn around and go back and get him! The times I would sit in the farthest corner of the backyard so I couldn’t hear him cry. “He’s a Daddy’s boy!” I would tell everyone, but the truth was my husband had to be there for our son, because I was not. I went back to work 2 weeks after he was born, just to escape the guilt I felt, to try and claw myself out of the suffocating quicksand that I associated with being around him. I cried, alot. I cried because I couldn’t be the same mother I had been to our daughter, I cried because I didn’t understand how it could’ve all been so much easier the first time around. I cried because I so desperately wanted to love him, but I couldn’t because he made me feel so bad. I was so engulfed in this dark, murky water, I couldn’t see my way out.

I’d love to say there was a lightbulb moment for me, an instant where someone, either myself or someone around me, saw that I needed help and I got it. But I kept it very well hidden. Admitting to not coping was like admitting to being a bad parent, and I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t. It wasn’t until the birth of my 3^rd child and I suffered the same desperation and depression all over again that I knew that something had been wrong, and that that something  had been out of my control. When doctors diagnosed me with PND,  I had sat rocking my child for 24 hours straight, crying and apologising profusely, before bursting into tears yet again in the doctors waiting room, only to explain that I hadn’t slept in days and that I thought  maybe, just a little, that I might need some help.

The diagnosis gave me relief. Not only did it open my eyes to see that what was happening inside my head was not my fault, but it forced me to admit to my family that I was not coping. It made me break down the facade of the “perfect” parent, and realise that hardly any of us ever are.

The chemical and hormonal imbalances that caused my Post Natal Depression may have robbed me of precious time when my babies were small, but you can bet I’m more than making up for it now!