Ok so I don’t want anyone to be put off having children, but I feel that I need to talk about the time when it all went really wrong for me!
Being pregnant apart from the usual pregnancy pains, I felt amazing, the best I had ever been! I felt I was able to deal with my husband Sam’s weird sense of humour, laugh at his jokes and not get stressed, angry or frustrated at the usual things like I had done before.
I had Austin and again I felt fine, I was lucky that he took to breast feeding and I believe that because I was feeding my periods or hormones didn’t come back.
Now don’t get me wrong I didn’t have the best start with Austin, he developed viral meningitis and was very poorly. For 4 weeks I had no sleep as he would never lie down on his back, he was always screaming and I felt a bit like a failure! Everyone else’s kids were sleeping and I felt I was a part of the cast for walking dead!
I was able to manage myself better than I ever had done before, id didn’t feel exhausted or having the feelings of waves of emotions coming over again and again like I had before! I just felt exhausted!
When you become a parent it’s amazing how well you can function with just a few hours’ sleep or no sleep!
When I was pregnant everyone used to say that your body is preparing you for no sleep…. Well that’s horse shit people! Nothing prepares you for parenthood, nothing!
I naively had this vision inside my head of what it would be like when I bought Austin home, and I expected that there would be a few times there would be sleepless nights! Luckily there is this magic drug that comes when you have a baby, it’s a drug that means you can function on no sleep, have lots of energy and end up just staring at your child when they sleep! It’s called motherhood, love and adrenaline!
Yes, there was lots of advice of sleep like ‘when the baby sleeps, you sleep’ but it’s hard when all you do is stare at your baby when they are sleeping, constantly saying ‘I made this, he’s all mine, isn’t he amazing’ and before you know it they are awake and you’ve had no rest!
Austin being ill was one of the hardest things any parent should go through, I sat in that hospital room, so calm it scared all the hospital staff, I felt in control, I knew if my son sensed I was panic then he would be worse, until I know the outcome there was no need to panic.
He got better and things moved on, I felt great as a mum, engaging, playing and being a mum. I enjoyed going out to groups, socialising and having fun with my son.
Austin was 5 months old and after having mastitis in the breast twice, worse pain ever and Austin ripping my nipple, he clamped down and it bled. It hurt so much! I decided I was done with breast feeding!
What I didn’t realise then was what was about to come in my journey of motherhood! I was fearless and confident as a mother, never doubted myself! But I honestly had no idea what was coming, the waves of emotion that was going to crash into me!
When my periods came back, I was exhausted all the time, not from motherhood, this exhaustion was something else! The things I seemed to managed with ease, started to become the biggest hurdle I ever faced and it all became really difficult.
I felt distant from my friends, myself and I began questioning who I was, I had black circles round my eyes and I wasn’t coping. I used to wait for Sam at the door with Austin, just to hand him over, so I could go back to bed and pull the blanket up over my head and shut the world and the self-loath thoughts out!
I started to make excuses to not go out places, I felt like if my son was crying or I burst into tears, or got angry that people would judge me! Give me that disapproving look like I was the worst mother in the world, I became paranoid that everyone was judging me and I was a bad mother.
It is true, when you have children you really know who your friends are! Some friends don’t bother with you when you have kids, it’s like they think if they hang around you, they will catch being pregnant! Some of my friends stepped away from me when I started to become unwell, which I found very cold and made me angry at the time, but now I’m happy they done that because clearly they were not true friends anyway or were they supportive!
It felt like as soon as I started talking about periods certain people ran a mile!
The worst part of when I came unwell, I started to lose control and I felt scared. I promised from day one that I would protect and look after Austin, but I felt that my moods where all over the place that I needed to protect my baby from me! I also felt that the only person that could calm me was my baby!
I started to really struggle, it felt amazing living next door to my mum and having my sister close by, they helped me but they too like others became worried. I started to spiral and I felt like I had nothing to catch me, my support networks were amazing but I felt like no one really understood what I was going through!
My frustrations and guilt started to really get the best of me, I felt guilty I wasn’t being this ‘perfect’ mum, I put too much pressure on myself, I began to become frustrated that I couldn’t even do the basic tasks! These emotions quickly turned to anger, the rage started to take a hold! Sam would say that he felt like he was walking on egg shells around me, he felt scared to say anything even “Hello” because I would take it the wrong way and snap.
I hated losing my temper, it made me feel worse about myself and it became a cycle of emotions, like waves crashing into me. There is nothing scarier than when you don’t have a hold of yourself and you are caring for a small child!
Everything became too much. I was drowning and I wanted to scream, but when I did no one was listening to me, I felt people just judged me for speaking out.
The only other time I felt like this, was when I was a teenager and my periods came, but this time it felt worse.
Then the time came when I had to return to work, one-part of me was looking forward to returning to work, being someone that wasn’t mum, but this is basically a no-winner. If you return to work after having a baby you worry you are not spending enough time with them.
If you opt to become a stay-at-home mum then you fret you’re depriving them financially and worry you aren’t teaching them correctly. For me becoming a SAHM wasn’t an option, I had to return because we couldn’t have finically afforded it.
I love my job and was so pleased to be back to doing what I love, I had an extremely supportive manager, if it wasn’t for my incredible team I might not have had a job! I was displaying signs of bipolar, one minute I was running at full force, the next I was crashing. I sat myself off in a quiet office just so I could concentrate on my work but it was so hard.
The night I lost it, I was meant to be taking Austin to a party I had an argument with Sam and he took Austin, he refused to give him back and stated that he didn’t feel Austin was safe with me! That was a trigger, I can’t really remember much else, apart from the overwhelming feeling of rage! I felt like I was woken up from a foggy mist to destruction around me, I don’t think we had a single glass left in our house.
Sam came home and refused to stay with Austin, he told me that I needed help and he was leaving me!
Everything else became a blur, I knew something was wrong so I sought help from my Doctor. I was told I had Post-natal depression and to look at anti-depressants, I explained that I have had this before and that the depressants didn’t work or help, I felt like screaming ‘I KNOW THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO THIS, WHY ARENT YOU LISTENING TO ME’ but I knew there was no point! Looking back now I start to realise just how much little awareness there is in health services, how would my doctor have known, how would anyone have known.
It’s very hard when everyone else around you starts to tell you that you have post-natal depression, you start to question yourself and everything else, you begin to believe despite knowing there is something else that’s eating away, this was so detrimental to me, to me as a mother and person.
Things really started to escalate with Austin, my mum and sister took him from me for a week, they didn’t feel comfortable leaving him with me, they knew I would never have hurt him, but they thought I needed rest and sleep, to have some time for me.
It didn’t work! The voice of self-loath and feeling so worthless was so strong, I felt like Austin would be so much better off without me in his life.
I made arrangements, I started to drop hints to my friends like ‘”in case I die please can you make sure you finish of Austin’s scrap book”, I felt that Friday was a good day to die, it felt like people had time to process the death and be in a better place by Monday. It’s a strange thought process that you go through when you feel like wanting to commit suicide. I knew that the quickest way to go was to hang myself and I started planning what to do!
It’s amazing to think that an answer, diagnosis or explanation to why you feel this particular way could possibly save a life, but the moment you talk about it and throw a PERIOD into the conversation people switch off. I can understand why 15 % of suffers will attempt to take their own life.
Well my period was so bad, the guilt, emotions was too much and I was ready to leave this world, let my son grow up without me, I felt he was safer. For the first time in months when I tied that belt, I felt at peace with myself. It’s kind of strange to describe what happened next, but something pulled me back, something stopped me that day, I can’t explain it but I am so pleased it did.
I believed my mum sensed something was wrong because she kept ringing me to see if I was ok, but I couldn’t bear to answer the phone! I sort of blanked out and found myself in my dining room, I had this constant voice in my head that said “This isn’t right. You need answers, Google it.” Then “Google it” kept repeating in my head till I got my phone out.
I typed in moods relating to periods that can destroy lives, make you feel trapped in your own body. The words PMDD came up, the more I read the more I saw myself in all of the amazing women that shared their stories.
I knew it must have been true because I had nearly every symptom: Feelings of sadness or hopelessness/ Fatigue or low energy /Anxiety or tension / Extreme moodiness/ Persistent irritability or anger that affects other people.
I cried all night, I rang my mum and gave her reassurance I was ok, I told her I finally knew what was wrong with me, I told her that I had the answers and she didn’t need to worry anymore.
When I went back to my doctors, I was dismissed again! It was so frustrating and so demoralising for me, they advised I had postnatal depression! I knew there was no point in fighting a battle I had been fighting my whole life when talking about my moods.
I started to research specialists and go straight to the source and pay privately if it meant I got help, I asked mum for help and she agreed to help me where she could to go privately.
I told Sam that I wasn’t expecting him to come back to me, but that I believed I had found out what was wrong with me, and as Austin’s father I needed his support. He agreed to help and said to me that if there was a chance of getting my old self back he would be willing to fight for us and be patient.
I made the arrangements to see a specialist, I was surprised how quickly I was given an appointment. The next step was the hardest, I had to start having some honest conversations with people, I reached out to my support networks and spoke about how I believed I was unwell and that I believed I had this disorder and needed their support to help me until I could get answers and what I believed a magic pill to make it go away!
I couldn’t believe the amount of support and help that I received from some of my support networks. They will never understand how much they helped me through those difficult times, how much they gave me in having the strength to manage and be the best mother, wife, friend and work colleague I could be when I was so unwell.
What I found the most difficult with living with PMDD, is dealing with my own self, how hard this is and how hard it has become some days, and watching it play out on the faces of my loved ones is the worst torment. This disorder doesn’t just affect the person it affects everyone that is close to you and those you have around you. It has such an impact on so many people’s lives, living with that guilt that others get hurt is unbearable some days, as a mother I constantly have to remind myself that I am doing the best job I can and that the guilt I feel is the PMDD.