PND Story 5

Posted by Anonymous

My story begins with the birth of my son. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I left having children until much later in life - I was almost 36 when he was born. Regretfully I found that I was having a baby whilst I was in a destructive, abusive relationship and felt there was no way out. i also had the stress of a battery of tests whilst pregnant, as I was concerned that my age would have a factor in my unborn baby's health. thankfully, all the tests came back positive but it was a stressful time.

I do not like hospitals and planned to have a water birth at home; my son had other ideas! he was in a back to back position (unbeknown to me) and my labour did not progress sufficiently at home. I was devastated to have to transfer to hospital and had to endure a number of interventions. Almost two and a half days after my waters had broken, I gave birth to my son. I knew that I was exhausted after his delivery and had no chance to recover, especially in the ward (four or five other babies crying, as well as my own didn't aid rest!) and when the time came to take him home, I recall that I cried all through the journey.

The first eight months of his life seem to be a blur now... I knew that many things in my life were not right and felt constantly anxious that something terrible was going to happen to my dear little boy. I would have terrible visions. For example; cruel experiments being carried out on him and I was viewing them as if I was a passive cinema-goer. These visions would happen at any given moment and come without warning. I would be left very distraught after them as they felt so real.

Suffice to say that when my little boy reached eight months, I eventually found the courage to be own my own and found myself as a single mother. I had lots of personal obstacles to overcome - mainly surviving on my own and also facing up to my situation, as I did not ever want to have my family on my own. My own family were hundreds of miles away so the usual support of family was not an option. However, I was lucky to have a wonderful health visitor, GP and community psychiatric nurse who all went the extra mile to support me throughout my illness.

Some years later and in very different circumstances, I was delighted to find that I was pregnant with my daughter. Regretfully, I suffered from ante-natal as well as post-natal depression. I found that I was experiencing what I termed as 'ghosts' from my previous pregnancy - all the old feelings of not being good enough etc came flooding back. As I had experienced post-natal depression before, my medical advisors were vigilant in my health care and the illness was monitored closely. A combination of counselling and medication helped considerably. My daughters birth also brought with it great healing, as she was born very peacefully, in water, at home beside our Christmas tree!

The tools which helped get me through both bouts of illness were getting out of the house every day, talking to people whom I trusted and to remember that the good days DO come... no matter how elusive they may seem at the time.