The moment your baby, the one you have longed for and fought for and suffered for, is placed in your arms there are many emotions in which you would expect to feel: joy, thrill, happiness, contentment, bliss, warmth. I felt those feelings when I held Baby J for the first time and looked down at his wide blue eyes looking around at this new world...but I also felt something else.
It was an unknown feeling, one that I struggled to explain to my family for weeks and months afterwards. I couldn't explain it, it was just a bad feeling - but it filled me with confusion, fear and a sense of guilt. Only months down the track when my mother was praying for me that she gave my feeling a word: foreboding. It is the closest word in the English language that can describe the heavy cloud that weighed heavily over me at a time when I didn't need it.
Postnatal-Depression comes in various forms. By God's grace, I did not have depression. Of course, I cried a lot. Daily. What I felt was more than "baby blues". I was referred by the health authorities to a postnatal adjustment group for women struggling with PND. But when they talked to me and I tried to explain how I was feeling, every single health person, my midwife and doctor all agreed that I wasn't depressed. I was highly anxious.
Now this kind of anxiety isn't like the butterflies you feel when you're nervous about going on stage or even when you've had money problems and you've worried about them. This anxiety was triggered by all the hormones that had built up during my pregnancy, that were released during labour/birth, and which were struggling to gain an even footing in my recovery. My hormones caused this anxiety to be an all-consuming beast that filled my head with noise. Just so much noise...Noise about a million different thoughts and fears and "what if's" and false guilt.
At my worst, around the time Baby J was 2-3 months, I could not think clearly or feel stable emotions. My husband would try and help me do things to keep my mind occupied, but nothing worked.
I could not stop worrying.
Baby J was not a good night sleeper and because of my anxiety I couldn't sleep in the day, so I was just exhausted. I was so tired I would just cry. Cry and cry and cry. I would start the day feeling like the walking dead and as the day went on the more tense I would become because the night would arrive soon. I just wanted sleep. I was filled with an enormous sense of dread - of foreboding - that something bad was going to happen to me...That I would get to a point of no-return and die or something.
One weekend I had the worst anxiety attack I have ever had. I slept about 6 hours over 48. Ironically, Baby J had only woken once in the night both times, but me? I just lay awake unable to stop thinking. My brain buzzed with noise. I was so tired the next day, I went to an after-hours clinic and got a sleeping pill. I was that desperate.
Every day my moods would swing from feeling happy-ish to very weepy. Something just wasn't right and it needed to change. I was sick and I couldn't help myself.
That's the difference between feeling a bit moody after birth and PND: you cannot help yourself. It wasn't as if I could just talk to myself, give myself a talking to and get on with things. Biologically speaking, my anxiety and extreme mood swings were caused by my hormones. I couldn't just "pull my socks up" and make myself better.
So I went on Prozac and it changed my life. It took a few weeks and in those few weeks I despaired a few times that I would ever feel "myself" again. But once they started working, I could have wept for joy and thankfulness. I felt okay. The noise went away. So did all the fears. This time, when a bad thought came into my mind, I could talk to it and force it away. My fears weren't large and looming shadows trying to hurt me - they got progressively smaller and more manageable.
I have no qualms about taking medication, it was absolutely right for me. I can say, in all honesty, that I have never - in my entire life - felt so stable, so emotionally secure, so mentally capable of dealing with my thoughts and feelings. PMS is like blips in the radar as opposed to large waves on a Richter scale. My husband has seen a strong difference. I am still on them now pregnant and will be on them after Baby Girl is born.
My experience will be different from others. There are women far worse than I was {which I cannot imagine and my heart goes out to them}. And there are women who would not choose to take medication, which they have every right not to take. My hope in sharing my experience is to give other women in that pit right now hope.
You will get better.
You will be yourself again.
You are not a bad mother.
If you doubt you love your baby, you're not evil.
If you struggle with the thought of wanting your old life back, when you had less responsibility, you're not a bad mother.
It is totally normal and if any woman tells you otherwise, fight to shut your ears on them. Not all women will think these things and even those who do, not all will feel them as we do in the extreme. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does.
Depression/anxiety is not you. It is not your new identity as a mother and wife or Christian. It is just like diabetes or asthma or epilepsy. It is a sickness. You can get better, you can live with it, you can make it. And even if you struggle with it for the rest of your life, God has not abandoned you. He is with you and has and will make ways for you to manage.
Am I scared I will feel the same this time round? Absolutely. Terrified, sometimes. BUT, I have learned so much and I hope to share with you in this series some of the lessons I have learned, some of the techniques I have discovered and some of the truths I have stored up in my heart to help me if there is a next time.
I really pray this series is a blessing, even to just one woman. I hated, and still hate, how alone I felt - like I was a crazy woman, the only one in my circle of family and friends to feel the way I was. But one thing I have learnt, we are not alone.
It was an unknown feeling, one that I struggled to explain to my family for weeks and months afterwards. I couldn't explain it, it was just a bad feeling - but it filled me with confusion, fear and a sense of guilt. Only months down the track when my mother was praying for me that she gave my feeling a word: foreboding. It is the closest word in the English language that can describe the heavy cloud that weighed heavily over me at a time when I didn't need it.
Postnatal-Depression comes in various forms. By God's grace, I did not have depression. Of course, I cried a lot. Daily. What I felt was more than "baby blues". I was referred by the health authorities to a postnatal adjustment group for women struggling with PND. But when they talked to me and I tried to explain how I was feeling, every single health person, my midwife and doctor all agreed that I wasn't depressed. I was highly anxious.
Now this kind of anxiety isn't like the butterflies you feel when you're nervous about going on stage or even when you've had money problems and you've worried about them. This anxiety was triggered by all the hormones that had built up during my pregnancy, that were released during labour/birth, and which were struggling to gain an even footing in my recovery. My hormones caused this anxiety to be an all-consuming beast that filled my head with noise. Just so much noise...Noise about a million different thoughts and fears and "what if's" and false guilt.
At my worst, around the time Baby J was 2-3 months, I could not think clearly or feel stable emotions. My husband would try and help me do things to keep my mind occupied, but nothing worked.
I could not stop worrying.
Baby J was not a good night sleeper and because of my anxiety I couldn't sleep in the day, so I was just exhausted. I was so tired I would just cry. Cry and cry and cry. I would start the day feeling like the walking dead and as the day went on the more tense I would become because the night would arrive soon. I just wanted sleep. I was filled with an enormous sense of dread - of foreboding - that something bad was going to happen to me...That I would get to a point of no-return and die or something.
One weekend I had the worst anxiety attack I have ever had. I slept about 6 hours over 48. Ironically, Baby J had only woken once in the night both times, but me? I just lay awake unable to stop thinking. My brain buzzed with noise. I was so tired the next day, I went to an after-hours clinic and got a sleeping pill. I was that desperate.
Every day my moods would swing from feeling happy-ish to very weepy. Something just wasn't right and it needed to change. I was sick and I couldn't help myself.
That's the difference between feeling a bit moody after birth and PND: you cannot help yourself. It wasn't as if I could just talk to myself, give myself a talking to and get on with things. Biologically speaking, my anxiety and extreme mood swings were caused by my hormones. I couldn't just "pull my socks up" and make myself better.
So I went on Prozac and it changed my life. It took a few weeks and in those few weeks I despaired a few times that I would ever feel "myself" again. But once they started working, I could have wept for joy and thankfulness. I felt okay. The noise went away. So did all the fears. This time, when a bad thought came into my mind, I could talk to it and force it away. My fears weren't large and looming shadows trying to hurt me - they got progressively smaller and more manageable.
I have no qualms about taking medication, it was absolutely right for me. I can say, in all honesty, that I have never - in my entire life - felt so stable, so emotionally secure, so mentally capable of dealing with my thoughts and feelings. PMS is like blips in the radar as opposed to large waves on a Richter scale. My husband has seen a strong difference. I am still on them now pregnant and will be on them after Baby Girl is born.
My experience will be different from others. There are women far worse than I was {which I cannot imagine and my heart goes out to them}. And there are women who would not choose to take medication, which they have every right not to take. My hope in sharing my experience is to give other women in that pit right now hope.
You will get better.
You will be yourself again.
You are not a bad mother.
If you doubt you love your baby, you're not evil.
If you struggle with the thought of wanting your old life back, when you had less responsibility, you're not a bad mother.
It is totally normal and if any woman tells you otherwise, fight to shut your ears on them. Not all women will think these things and even those who do, not all will feel them as we do in the extreme. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does.
Depression/anxiety is not you. It is not your new identity as a mother and wife or Christian. It is just like diabetes or asthma or epilepsy. It is a sickness. You can get better, you can live with it, you can make it. And even if you struggle with it for the rest of your life, God has not abandoned you. He is with you and has and will make ways for you to manage.
Am I scared I will feel the same this time round? Absolutely. Terrified, sometimes. BUT, I have learned so much and I hope to share with you in this series some of the lessons I have learned, some of the techniques I have discovered and some of the truths I have stored up in my heart to help me if there is a next time.
I really pray this series is a blessing, even to just one woman. I hated, and still hate, how alone I felt - like I was a crazy woman, the only one in my circle of family and friends to feel the way I was. But one thing I have learnt, we are not alone.
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