PND

I don't have PND, but I was diagnosed with clinical depression when I was 18 and have spent the past 8 years on and off medication depending on how I am doing at any given time.

When we were TTC I had a relapse, which I thought was entirely because I wasn't pregnant and I wanted to be. I remember my GP saying to me that I should maybe give TTC a break and get the depression sorted, and thinking to myself "you stupid woman, if I get pregnant that WILL FIX the depression".

It didn't work out like that tho, instead I had a m/c, then launched myself straight into another pregnancy which in hindsight was a bad, bad idea.

I became very fatalistic, when I found out I was having twins I was excited for all of about five minutes until I realise how many more risks there were, and I started convincing myself the babies were going to get TTTS or be stillborn, or born too early to survive. I hired a doppler to hear their heartbeats, but instead of reassuring me it made me even more anxious coz at times I couldn't tell if it was two different babies heartbeats, or just the one from a different angle, and then I'd worry that they were bradycardic... it just went on and on.

Then they were born, and I had the best delivery I could ever have hoped for, no complications to speak of (except Sienna taking a long time to come down the birth canal), no stitches, no pain relief, it was a really empowering experience. But at the same time it was like an anticlimax - all of a sudden everything I had been stressing about vanished and I was feeling quite shellshocked.

Brought them home on day 4 unable to breastfeed, Maya had bronchitis so was sick and grouchy, ended up expressing to feed them, every 4 hours night and day for 10 weeks, got a staph infection in one nipple, retained products of conception, Mercedes had two apnoeas and was diagnosed with gastric reflux, Sienna had an MCU and ended up needing surgery at 8 weeks, and they were both terrible sleepers who screamed for up to 20 out of 24 hours. I was literally living on adrenalin, a doctor in the ED at Starship on what must have been about the 10th trip in two months asked me if I thought I had PND and I told him all I wanted to do was get some sleep. At that point I could have left the babies in the hospital, I had absolutely no attachment to them.

By three months, the babies had settled, we'd addressed their multiple health issues, bonding was finally starting to come together and they were almost sleeping thru the night, and life was able to regain some sense of normality. But I was still having problems sleeping, and had started having severe panic attacks. One night I went to the supermarket and there was a roadworks detour on the way home so it took 15 minutes longer than usual. I got myself so worked up about it that I convinced myself the gremlins apnoea monitors were going off and Willie was asleep and couldn't hear them and I was going to lose them. Of course I got home and they were fine, but I had literally overdosed on adrenalin to the point where it made me vomit.

So I went to see my GP, who is very sensible (not the same one that told me to stop TTC) and she agrees that it is probably not PND but rather a flare up of preexisting depression and anxiety issues. She has an interesting theory on the insomnia too - she said she thinks my body was making surplus adrenalin just to get thru the day with no sleep when the gremlins were tiny/sick and now that it hasn't recognised that I don't need the extra adrenalin anymore so is making me quite manic and making it hard to shut down.

So I am back on medication, it's helped with the anxiety, and I don't feel at all depressed (but then I never actually did) but the sleep thing is still an issue. Am working on it tho by forcing myself to get up at 7.30am every morning and go to bed at 11pm at the latest, that way my body should eventually get the message.

Whew, big novel. Congrats if you're still awake!

Some of the older ladies here might know a fair amount about me.. but will still share here.

In Real life, lol, i am a very quiet shy person. On here yes i talk away, but that's cos it's like another world. I also set myself completely unrealistic goals and beat myself up at the first sign of not meeting them. That's how i have always been.

In high school iused to have panic attacks at the thought of public speaking. During my nanny course i came out of my shell a bit because i had to go into other people's houses, complete strangers, for placements etc. I got over that a little. In my 1st yr of nursing i finally realised that no-one likes public speaking and everyone was just as shy in some way or another as i felt.   I was doing great, till i fel pregnant at the end of that year. Me and Mike hadn't been going so well for months, first he cheated on me on a random night out with his mates. Then he met another chick on the internet who lived in the same city as us, he broke up with me, but neither of us could afford to move so he moved into the spare room of our flat. as soon as we broke up the other chick decided that no, she didn't actually want him after all. so we were both down and out, and still looking to each other for comfort.. ahem

So hello, i find out a few weeks later that I am pregnant. we talked heaps, and after a month or so he decided that yes, he was in it for the long haul, for me, for us.. not just cos of the baby. (I am so grateful for that, cos here we are now.. ) but after having sucha great pregnancy, and really doing well in my nursing studies. Actually having Paris.. was a huge shock.

Her birth was fine, up until a few mins after she was born when i remember having htis feeling of dread come over me, M/W started rubbing tummy furiously and PAris was taken away from me and given to mike, i remember looking at him and just seeing this white shaky guy with a look of sheer terror on his face. No one said anything till after - but i had had a big bleed..   Still i had my baby.

Breastfeeding was.. interesting, really i got little help, but bluffed my way through it, i thought nothing was wrong.. but then i knew nothing really, i didn't leave the room at the hospital until i went home, not even to make a phone call. I do remember one midwife int he P/Natal ward saying to me when i couldn't get paris to latch on one side "oh, just feed her off the same one" and walking out.. that was the only time i ever asked for help.

I get home, and it all starts turning to custard. I was exhausted, i tried to be super-mum, my mum would come round and instead of accepting her offers for help so i could sleep, i thought she must think i wasn't capable of doing it, so would stay up and do the washing/cleaning etc.. i didn't sleep. By the end of the first week, i swear sometimes i had something similar to hallucinations.. i was so tired. I remember looking up one night while feeding paris int he lounge, and we have a large black and white picture of me and mike.. i looked up and thought the people on there were moving. My mind was just sooooooo tired.

Add to that the complete loss of interaction with all my classmates, who by now had gone on to the next semester.. and here i was stuck at home with a baby, who wouldn't latch, would scream at the breast, and who didn't settle well, cos well, she was hungry! But each time the midwife came around i said "yes she's fine" "feeding's going well" and my house was pristine.. I was keeping up appearances.

I didn't leave the house much, and i hated when i did, I stopped going up town or out anywhere cos Paris wouldn't feed, she'd scream at me instead, i remember sittingup town in the mother's room, with a screaming hungry baby, who would not feed, and just bawling my eyes out in there. Just give her the bottle each person kept saying.. how could i.. i just felt like a failure. the 1st plunket visit i had a fill in nurse, who told me that Paris was only just over the very bottom line for the weight centiles.. "and i don't want to see her go any lower" she snapped. great, now even she thought i was a failure too.

In all that time, i wasn't bonding with Paris. I did what i had to do, went throught he motions of a caring loving mum, but sadly i didn't feel much of anything most of the time. I didn't feel capable of showing emotion, i just felt numb and blank. Most of the time i describe it as it you are looking out those windows that have snow all around the edges.. but instead of glowy white, i felt like i was looking out of a window that was black and dim.. I felt like everything was just stacking on top of me.. like a tower of blocks and i was just waiting for it to all fall down.     

My sisters have all had PND.. i spent so long in deinal that i didn't see it. my older sister stayed with us and knew straight away. Actually acknowledging that it wasn't because i was a bad mum was a start. but still i struggled with feeding her, the final straw came when paris began to loose weight instead of putting it on.. and i saw how stupidly stubborn i was and if she wouldn't take a feed, i'd give her that bottle of formula instead. i still felt like a failure, but even more i felt like i'd failed my baby by not feeding her enough because i was so hung up on being the perfect mum.. another high expectation i had placed on myself.   

I also realised that the panic attacks i had, were related to things.. i would have them when i went to feed Paris. well, no wonder, i knew each feed was going to turn into a screaming match.. of course my body would react that way. I also realised that each and every time i read my birth story, or one where something similar to what had happened after i had paris had happened - i would get panic attacks too. I had never dealt with the fact that really, everything had spun out of control for me in those first few minutes after i had her. I had never dealt with that.

Once all these realisations started to surface, i think it all started coming back together very slowly. this was when paris was 6 mths by then. and all that time, mike had had no idea. When paris was 11 mths, she went to daycare and i went back to study.. and it was the best thing i did, i am shy but i have now realised, i need that adult interaction. i found out a month later that i was pregnant again, and spent the whole pregnancy terrified of getting PND again.   

Ayja's pregnancy was full of a host of medical probs and all sorts of interesting stuff, but her birth was fast, i had no problems with her, and she fed like a dream.. far too well in fact and i got no sleep because she would cluster feed 45 mins out of every hour all through the night.. but i had my sister stay with us for 2 weeks that time, and paris went to daycare in the mornings. I went into it thinking well, if she won't feed, then there's the bottle. we never needed it until she went back to daycare and even then it was only when i went on clinical placements because she fed wonderfully from me. I had been determined this time it would work and had found out everything i needed to know, asked for help if i needed it and if i didn't like their advice i asked someone else!. she gained weight in leaps and bounds.

i did have a time when she was 6 days old, where i was so exhausted i went to wind her in the middle of the night, and fell asleep/blacked out, with her over my shoulder. I came to in time to see her hit the ground head first, and thought i had killed her. she was in hospital overnight, where they did neurological observations every hour, and she came home with ahuge blodo filled lump covering one side of her head, and black and blue eyes from them prying them open every hour to check her pupil sizes. If anything was going to bring the PND back, i was sure that would. but it didn't, because i reliased that these things happen. I wasn't a bad mum, i was a very very tired one. AS the doctor said, it happens alot, and mostly the babies are fine.. they have to patch up the parents more than they have to the babies.

In all that though, it was mike that became depressed instead. i had to deal with the fact that he never wanted a 2nd child,and the enormous guilt because, we had had one. he couldn't see how he could fit 2 into his heart, him and paris were so close as he had pretty much taken over and done everything with her when i was going through PND. he resented ayja. This time, he didn't have to be strong for me, i had to be strong for him. Add to the fact that ayja hated the bottle and wouldn't take it for him when i was on placements, and was, (and still is) a screamer tantrum child. he couldn't handle that.

We sat down when ayja was a few months old and talked through everything that i had gone through and everything he was going through, and both had a good cry.. he hadn't realised i had gone through so much after having paris. I didnt realise how much having a 2nd child had affected him.

We both sometimes have days where the kids just drive us nuts, but we can recgonise our signs now that things might be getting a bit much, and we take over from one another, to keep ourselves sane, we work as a team. We have come out the other side stronger and more together than i could ever have imagined back in the dark days after having Paris.

Ayja, now that she is older, is completely in love with her daddy, and daddys in love with her, however i still think he will always have that stronger bond with Paris, and i can relate, as i have a stronger bond with ayja. After having her i felt that whole instant love thing everyone had talked about when i had paris.. i had thought they were lying as i never got that with her.

And now here we are, after all that's gone on in the last month. it has been a rollercoaster ride, from me having to accept that we wouldn't have any more kids, due to mikes decision to have a vasectomy, and my standing by him on that, as neither of us wanted to go through either of us having depression ever again. to finding out we were having a surprise 3rd child. which i had somehow been longing for despite the vasectomy. to then finding out our baby had died.. I am sad and grieving for the loss. I think mike is secretely releived because he was so scared of what a 3rd child would do to our family. we talk, but i think he is finding it hard to relate. That's fine, i know where he's at, and mostly he is stil there to give me a big hug just because.

Anyways what a novel of a novel, i have probably filled up this post. But that is our journey... a long and intersting one.    I hope that it has helped anyone else to relate..

no matter what, just remember you aren't a bad mother, you are a good one for realising that something isn't right.   You don't have to feel the way you do and you don't have to be super mum. Noboddy's perfect.

Edited by mum2paris

 

Edited by amy

 

Edited by amy

And Deb, who's to say you'll need them for too long.. of course whatever works.. but if you go through, and read your post.. have a think.. look at all the terrible terrible things you had to cope with around the times of having your babies, those things are enough to send anyone into depression. I don't know how you coped as long as you did.

I seriously think that's what changed things for me with Ayja, is that the second time around, i had that support, i knew what i was in for, it wasn't a sudden social isolation, i knew i was going back to tech, i had my sister there to stay, so no mum coming round. and mike expressly has told mum a long time ago that if she was going to ring and talk to me about carrie then she was not to ring me at all. Mike and my big sis did all they could to make sure that i did not have any crap to deal with so i could just focus on coping as a mum of two. i am so very thankful for that.

In my experience, just getting it out there helps. I find it hugely cathartic to just sit down and write down all the things that have happened/are happening, even if I repeat the same things over and over again. There's a line from a song that says something along the lines of "if I write it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me threating the life it belongs to" and that is so true for me. Mind you, I am a writer. That's my 'therapy'.

Willie just goes to sleep. Real supportive audience he is

See, I'm just a genius! (They do say all of the classic geniuses in history have been mad as hatters, so I guess that explains my crazy side )

Amy, Willie surprises me. He pretty much leaves me to get on with it, and I'm never sure whether or not he actually knows whats going on, but the times when I have really lost it and not been able to cope he's just picked up the pieces and put them back together for me. During the now-infamous driveway screaming incident he put all three kids to bed while I sat outside and howled for an hour and a half

 

Edited by amy

oh Emma.... to you!....