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Mental health

Consequence of PND

4 replies

SabineJ · 28/05/2006 21:47

I had PND after DS1 birth. It wasn't diagnosed until I got pregant with DS2 and asked my GP if the sysmptoms I experienced were PND.... and they were.
I made my way trhough but found very difficult to "bound" with DS1 and not to see him as a "problem child". That's getting better slowly but I think that I also put into the mind of DH that he is a diffcult child (And to be honest, I don't think he is at all ...).
Have some of you experienced problems like this after PND ? Did you managed to get any help from hv or GP ? Is it worth trying ?
Just really worried that I am creating problems for DS1 that really have nothing to do with him.

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toadstool · 29/05/2006 20:48

Have you tried telling your DH that you think your early months with DS1 may affect you and your DS' feelings for a long time? If your DH had to take over a lot because it was difficult, he may blame him for having made you ill, when in fact it's the PND that was affecting your health. It sounds as if things are better with DS1 now, so enjoy this stage, as it's probably more healing than anything the GP or HV could come up with.

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Donbean · 29/05/2006 20:57

Good God yes!
Totally negative about my son and all aspects of his development.
2 years on i went to my GP in bits and sobbed that i wasnt coping. Got ADs after much much MUCH persuasion and im feeling great and feel so much better equipt to deal with my little boy.
It DEFINITELY affected my relationship with my son. i can only see that now that i am feeling more like myself.

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PrettyCandles · 29/05/2006 21:00

A good idea to talk this over with your dh. Both you and toadstool make very good points about how it can affect your relationship with your ds - and also with your dh.

It was only when we were preparing for our dd's birth, and discussing the PND I had had after ds and putting strategies in place to prevent it recurring and to help deal with it if it did recurr, that dh admitted feeling deeply guilty about my PND, that maybe he was a factor causing it, that he must have done something to make things so bad for us, and most of all that he ought to have done something to make it better. None of which could have been further from the truth - he was my rock and I couldn't have coped without him. But perhaps if this hadn't come out in the open, things would have been even rougher for him the second time around. But I didn't get PND the second time, and I'm sure that our preparation and our honesty with each other was what prevented it.

Nonetheless, despite bonding deeply with our ds, my relationship with him just crashed through the floor as a result of the stress of the whole business, and I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn't a problem child, but that I was giving him problems. What resolved the issue and rebuilt our relationship (and improved his behaviour wonderfully) was my dedicating time to him. When dd started nursery I arranged their days to overlap, so that I had one morning every week when it was just ds and me, and I made that mornign 'sacred' to him - no housework or chores. The one-to-one attention, and the time to listen to him, made a world of a difference to ds.

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SabineJ · 30/05/2006 13:11

Thanks a lot to all of you. In a sense, i is nice to know that I am not imagining things and it happens to other people too.
Thanks for your comment PrettyCandles. It probaly explains why DH seems to be so sure that he is not a good dad when he actually has been my rock and I would have never been able to go through withot his support. He also related to DS1 much better than I do. In effect, I must have given him a pretty bad image of himself ...
I will try to talk to him - even if is not very good at talking.