To have lied about PND?

[HoorahHenrietta]

My son is 20 months old and I'm 36 weeks pregnant with dc2. Shortly after I had my son I felt out of my depth.

A slight God send is that my husband was made redundant at around that time, offering support and help. I just started to sink lower and lower and became really irrational about things (sleep routine, feeding routine, ironing, cleaning etc). That died down and I relaxed. I finished my MA in July and we moved and bought our "forever" home (outright, luckily) and also have a holiday home we are refurbishing to bring in an income. While it's a good income, the real reason is because I am petrified of being left alone with my son. It's hard now because I'm heavily pregnant, but a sense of panic creeps over my if there's no help at hand. The odd two/three hours I'm fine but it's daunting that it could be longer.

I am excited about dc 2 (completely unplanned) but am again, scared. My health visitor made me fill out the form to test for "PND" which was easily avoidable, but I now feel I've cheated no one but myself. My mother has bipolar and my sister claims to have depression...and I am desperate to not be associated with her (long story we don't get on). She palms her two children (both over the age of 10) on to anyone who'll have them...and I'm finding myself struggling emotionally and mentally because I'm desperate to not be like her (where people talk about what a bad parent she is behind her back). My husband is fantastic but I take everything out of him, and I feel it could be PND that wasn't dealt with combined with hormones. I'm starting to loathe myself...I don't want to go out and work (not just due to pregnancy) but because I don't want to abandon my children and be tarred with the same brush as my sister (no offence to those of you who work full time).

I feel I've rambled, desperate not to drip feed information.

Not too sure what to do. I feel so trapped in the life I've made for myself and the more pressure I put on myself to make it perfect, the more I'm struggling.

I'm hands on and my son doesn't see anything he shouldn't...it's literally when I'm alone. My sister now has a drink problem and my mother is always molly coddling her and I just don't want to be a victim of my own misery like she is. I don't want sympathy I just want to get on with things. Hazey-it is overwhelming, that is the right word. I am overwhelmed some days by the smallest of things.

Your son is 20 months now - he won't be oblivious to your mood for a lot longer. All the more reason to try and get yourself back on track now.
At the end of the day it's up to you though.

Thanks for all your advices :) Will report back once I have discussed it with my husband and have a plan of action.

With respect, it doesn't sound like your dh is best placed to offer the right kind of support. The person you need to be discussign this with is your GP.

Don't worry about the questionnaire. Just make sure you have the HV's contact details - if you do feel low or any symptoms of PND later on (whether it's during the pregnancy, after the birth, or even when your child is a toddler) then get in touch with them straightaway so that you can be referred to a support group and a counsellor quickly.
Are you getting enough support from friends and family? Also enough time out of the house for fresh air and a change of scene. And try to do lots of things with your DH. (sometimes without kids, other times with). Don't be put in the position of always being at home with the baby or kids while DH goes out, or on your own while he takes the kids (unless it's to catch up on sleep!).
Why not sign up for baby classes, groups and stuff (eg baby massage, baby signing, mum and baby groups) so that you have something to break up your time at home? The best groups will be happy for you to just turn up and not insist that you always participate, if you feel that's what you prefer. But if you feel it's all getting too, too much, seeking help sooner rather than later is advisable.

I had PND after having DS, also now 20mo. I hate hate hate counselling so I said to my GP outright that I didn't want it; it wasn't a problem. I went on meds for good year and was still myself, even more so than before I went on them. Don't discount them based on what seems to be a very extreme experience.

I had been taking everything out on DH and he was so fed up of it that taking it outside our family to someone completely uninvolved was an immense relief. The GP you spoke to sounds a bit uneducated on PND if you told him what you've told us here. I'm guessing that you put on a brave face and minimised everything though...

Mental illness isn't usually anything to do with self harm or crying all the time. I felt like a failure all the time, wanted to pick the baby up and run away to somewhere no one would know me or find me, couldn't stand being left alone with DS, had to get out of the house all day, was unable to handle anything unexpected, hated having visitors, hated having any sort of responsibility beyond baby care. I remember one time I was asked if someone could follow me in their car from one place to another and I just flipped because it was 'too much'. That was PND.

PS - OP can I ask if you've given up a full time career to be a stay at home mum? Sometimes women who have had pressurised or demanding careers can transfer the expectations, standards and targets that they used to have to meet at work onto their home life. And it's impossible because home, family and child care don't work like that .....you've heard the saying "the best parent is the good enough parent, not the parent who wants everything to be perfect". For some women in this situation, sometimes the only effective therapy has been to get a full time nursery place (or nanny) and go back to full time work, while support and counselling were really only stop gaps. Just asking in case that was relevant.

I echo the other posters who have talked about CBT, I found it hugely helpful with my PND and is a world away from the type of counselling where you just talk to a therapist. It can give you real practical skills to help yourself.

Kipper-No, just sorted funding to begin my phd...until I found out I was expecting at the beginning on summer...so a career is on hold. I don't feel "wasted" being at home, I feel overwhelmed by not being "enough" for my son and soon to be the baby.

AKMD- Sounds familiar, things just are "too much" for the sake of being "too much". I'm scared of putting pressure on my dh. I drove off and left him at the beach the other day because I flipped at him undermining my discipline methods with ds...people who are normal don't do that.

Kipper part 1- I don't go out often- I do the shopping but I avoid going to friends houses with ds, and the idea of a mother and baby group really turns my stomach as the women that go to them nearest to where I live are 17 with 3 children. I am under 30 and over 24 so still young, but would rather not be out all the time. I don't know. Cue: rambling again.

I'm a similar age to you and find that I'm usually the youngest at any baby activity I go to, sometimes by quite a lot! It might be worth shopping around to find one you like, just for the sake of being able to offload child talk with people who are actually interested.

No, driving off for that reason doesn't sound normal. I really think you should ask for help. You think that too. You are absolutely not a failure for asking the appropriate people for support; all too many women feel like this and put up with it - why on earth should you when it can be fixed so easily?

I'm not sure that I ever had the same thing as PND but there was some overlap with the feeling of losing my career in the same way that you've temporarily "lost" your PhD (or rather, lost the chance to get on with doing it right now).
And DH was not terribly supportive at the time, and would react negatively to any sort of disagreement about childcare (like DH believed washing hands was entirely optional, even after changing nappies!!) and we didn't have any other family or social support full stop - just the two of us newly moved to a new area knowing no-one.

But the feelings of being "enough" as you say, for your child/ren I was familiar with too. And the weird thing was that I'd chosen to be at home for the baby when I knew (and many people observed) I could quite easily do the fulltime work/nursery or nanny route that many colleagues followed.

Doing/starting a PhD is certainly a high powered career move in my book.

Maybe it's because we've chosen to buck the trend by being SAHM that the expectations are overly intensified ("I must prove that I can do it") and then things snowball. So the solution is either, get help to deal with your new circumstances, or go back to full time work (in your case the PhD) so that you go back to familiar surroundings. Yes, I remember the same obsessions with the ironing and bedlinen . Nothing wrong with being diligent about the housework, but the fact that things become unbearable if not done by a certain time suggests maybe you need help with letting go - whether that's a M&B group, going back to the PhD, going out more or the CBT......

I was quite lucky because my HV "read" me quite well and found a mother and baby group with mums quite similar to my background, with a mix of first time mums and those with other kids, so that we could ask them for advice if needed. Maybe you could ask your HV if there is another mother and baby further out with different mums? We only met once a week, so that's not much. Being out at first felt like a crazy idea ("surely i have enough to do, and not enough sleep") but getting out of the house did help, because the "flipping" and "too much" were sometimes intensified or encouraged by being at home and staring at the same jobs to do, same goals to accomplish. Just getting out into the fresh air helped me to leave the rubbish and tension at home behind, at least for a few hours!

PND does not make you a bad mother. There may be some idiots who try and claim it does but they are being idiots.

It is normal to feel scared of AD and avoiding professional help can be part of the symptoms of depression. ADs are not addictive. Lithium is not an AD so don't worry about being prescribed that.