To be unsurprised that so many women get post natal depression?

[toptramp]

My late mum had post natal depression after a horrendous birth during which she almost died. Couple that with the shock of becoming a new mum and the general lack of staus that society offers mums (especially single mums like me) and I am not surprised that so many of us get so down. It is a wonderful time but it also so tough. What can be done about it?
My birth wasn't great (I had a c-section)and I did it without a dp yet I didn't get pnd like my mum did. I did get the shock of my life mixed with a lot of love!

Maryz - the doctor told me today something very similar to what leQueen said, that the reason it had hit me now was because while it was all going on and I was getting up and keeping on my brain wasn't processing it properly and now when it's not so bad my brain is so used to the level of chemicals when the stressy crap was happening that it is unbalanced.

She didn't say stressy crap though

Yes I agree Maryz. As I said, it's someone's different, if possibly not the most effective in the long term, way of coping.

I still "cope". I know that I could benefit from the right counselling and have the joys of impending menopause to battle with and all the raging hormones it will bring. Medication didn't work for me, It had the adverse effect and simply will not chance going through that again.

I feel ok at the moment, am coping. I do go through spells of denial, I know that. But for the moment it's working.

the way i think about PND is, is that the hormones surrounding birth can make you very high indeed .....and every high comes with a low.

The post-natal hormones are like a voice telling you to be unhappy. That you aren't good enough. That you are a wretched, unwanted bag who does everything wrong. Usually this fades after a few days - if you are in the wrong place mentally already, or if your environment is difficult (and, lets face it, having a new baby with attendant physical soreness, tiredness, emotional upheaval is a difficult place to be happy in) - it can triger something longer lasting.

I think this is why no-one should have to have visitors in the immediate post-natal period.

I believe I had pnd too.
I was never diagnosed with it as i think the health visitor assumed, quite wrongly, that I was the type to cope.
I do remember going to the doctors because I couldn't sleep, dd was up most of the night every night, and again nothing was ever picked up on. I told the midwife and health visitor that I wasn't sleeping and again no help was forthcoming.
I felt awful when I tried to breasrfeed and a total failure for thinking of ff.
Yet when I eventually packed bf in I felt relief.

When I was expecting ds my midwife referred me to a therapist of some kind and she was an amazing help, although I still had negative thoughts about dd which I hated myself for.

One thing I did find useful was taking control of the situation by telling dh that I was to have no visitors at all after the birth of ds without my prior consent. When I had dd he allowed people to come without asking me and it all got on my nerves.

I think you raise a good point Beer, we could all ignore it. I didn't call her all the names I wanted to because I still have a little bit of the old me left inside somewhere and that part of me wants to rise above comments like hers the rest of me wants to be much, much harsher

For my part, I wish I could let what she said go, but I am now beating myself up about it and questioning whether I am weak to be in this position and what I can do to snap out of it. I shouldn't be, and part of me knows that, but I can't help it. I feel like a total failure, and until I read that comment by Trois I was actually feeling good about myself today. I got to a baby group today. I know that sounds like nothing, but for me it was a really, really big deal. I was proud of myself. Being told people who get PND are weak has made me feel like shite. If I'd read it even just a few weeks ago, I'd have been in pieces. I wish people would think before posting comments like that.

OP to answer your question, I think in my case it was a combination of things. I had an horrendous delivery with DS. I ended up with a section (which failed) and was followed by a forceps delivery resulting in a 4th degree tear, other vaginal tears and tears to my womb, and a lot of blood loss. My son and I almost died. He had to be resuscitated and was in SCBU for a week. The combination of the birth, the knowledge that we almost died, and my son's illness made me feel awful. I didn't see my son for days after he was born and when I did it was under odd circumstances where I woke up to find himn being pushed into my breast by someone I had never spoken to. I didn't even know he was my baby. I had some bad experiences with the breastfeeding experts in hospital. My son would not latch on and they made me feel that I was being lazy and failing at something natural, when in reality it was most likely a combination of my body not producing enough milk due to the trauma of the delivery and blood loss and my son being unable to comfortably latch-on because of his head injuries. I then had a midwife tell me to get over myself on my first day home and subsequently spent months refusing to admit how I was feeling in case someone else said the same thing to me. I was determined to be seen to be "coping". DH and I were very much on our own as his family live on the other side of the country and mine are overseas, so I felt a little isolated. My DH was amazing but there's something about it all that made me need a 'mother' around more - it didn't have to be my mother, just someone motherly and neither of our mum's are really like that in these situations! I had almost weekly appointments at the hospital where DS was born for the first couple of months and I would be crippled with fear about going back, I would have awful flashbacks getting there and would then have to explain to people why I was there, because noone seemed able to read my notes. Constantly having to go over it made it worse. I felt 'bullied' by the midwife who came to see me and unsupported by people around me (DH) included. I also found that being unable to breastfeed was a big issue for me. I was heartbroken at not being able to. And for a good 3 months after DS was born I could do bugger all because I was in so much pain, I am lucky that he spent most of the day asleep. Some days it still hurts and I'm 8 months down the line. I think all these things added up to my PTSD/PND and caused meltdown 5 months after DS was born. I also think people not believing in PND/PTSD making comments like that add to the situation - it's because of views like that that my family don't know - having to hide it and pretend to be fine adds to it. I'm being treated now and sometimes I feel better.

I'm sorry to hear of so many others going through this.

"No one is going to convince me I was or am 'weak'.

I totally agree with you there BTP.

My PND was so severe I had to hospitalised. I'm not trying to play PND top trumps mine-was-worse-than-yours so please don't think that; just an illustration of how bad it can get. Now, I know I'm not a weak person; but I'm also a few years down the line so I look back with a bit of detachment and think about it rationally.

What helped me was a combination of wonderful support from my doctors/HV, the hospital, antid's and some incredibly helpful counselling. (The less said about XP the better, quite frankly).

Someone who is smack bang in the middle of it...well, they don't have the luxury of looking back and knowing that it's illness they can recover from. And what if you're surrounded by people who think you just need to pull yourself together? What if your partner thinks you're just making it up? What if you don't have a sympathetic support network, or even worse, you reach out for help and end up seeing a doctor or other HP who doesn't believe in PND and effectively tells you to pull yourself together? Reading a comment like that in all it's smug, dismissive, callous glory...well, you can imagine.

Did I seriously seriously read Trois correctly? My God.

I think having a supportive partner can make a huge difference; mine wasn't at all.

He actually went as far as to tell my CPN that he thought I was 'putting it on' so I didn't have to look after DS...!

Luckily I got excellent support elsewhere.

X posts

"I feel this thread has opened up a lot of experiences and feelings. I hope that anyone reading it who may be experiencing PND/PTSD takes heart at the warmth, understanding and support within it."

I agree :).

BeerTricks I totally get you on the "not much help now"

When DS was 10 months old, the whole family went on holiday. Me, DH, DS, my Mum, my Dad, my sister, my BIL, my older niece, my older step daughter. An absolute nightmare of a fucking holiday for me. I did absolutely everything for DS and NOBODY, not ONE member of my family noticed I was screaming inside. Including DH. I was crossed between exhaustion, utterly, utterly sad, and wanting to walk into the sea and keep bloody going.

I used to disappear with DS in the puschair and sob my heart out. Ridiculously, I didn't want to spoil anyone else's holiday. It wasn't until DH and I were watching parts of the holiday video, months afterwards, that he spotted me (hadn't realised at the time) struggling in the background while he was laying out his towel on the sunbed, beer in one hand, book in the other. And so began a MASSIVE tirade from me, with EVERYTHING unleashed. I pointed out that, not once, did he or anyone offer to feed DS, take him for a walk, change him, jeez just HOLD him for 5 minutes while I had a break. He was horrified and suitably ashamed, cried. The next holiday was completely different. We took it in turns to get up with DS, I had a proper, proper rest and was obviously, happier for it.

I've just read the whole thread, and may I just say that even though the infamous trois post is still standing, if anybody gets past that they'll read some of the most inspiring posts I've seen on Mumsnet. I sincerely hope that anybody who has PND carries on reading - although based on the rubbish in the first post, I wonder how many who feel wretched have turned away feeling worse than before.

I had ante-natal depression and PND for DS1, although only PND for DS2. I was lucky to have support coming out of my ears, but it didn't make a jot of difference. My family seem to be biologically prone to depression, I have suffered though bouts in my late teens/early 20s and it happened after birth both times. I started medication about 10 weeks after DS1 and about 3 after DS2 as I just wasn't functioning even though I had a shed load of support.

The birth of DS1 ended in EMCS after an 18 hour labour and hospital stay before that. I also have Fibromyalgia, so pregnancy is a bit hard going (not always for other people with Fibro). After the CS I had about 2 hours sleep over 3 days as the fibro flared up, I was in pain and couldn't shut down. I never really got back from that. After DS2, an ELCS, I lacked sleep and even though there more control, and we knew the situation, I still became depressed. I could almost feel it covering me, and no amount of sleep, painkillers, being jolly and "pulling myself together" could stop that.

I was, and still am, very open about my depression with friends and family - well with anyone really if it comes up in conversation. I tell them how I considered leaving my family, about getting a bag ready to walk out the door and planning it all done to which hotel I'd stay in because that was what I thought was best for everyone, or how I just wanted to stop 'being' as not existing was what I thought was best. I have nothing to be ashamed about. If me talking to one other woman or man who feels like I did might help them to seek help, then something good has come out of PND.

And trois, you probably won't read this, but I really feel for you. You've been through truly terrible things that I wouldn't wish on anyone. However, please think about how you would talk to someone who was important in your life - a sister, a daughter, a brother, a husband - and who came to you because they were depressed and no longer had the will to go on. Would you say they were weak for that? Would you kick them when they were at their lowest point? Because that's what your words in that first post have done to some people who've seen it.

This thread I think demonstrates clearly that PND affects many women in a vast variety of circumstances. I don't know if it's been done but in a similar way to the recent miscarriage campaign maybe mumsnet could campaign to raise awareness of PND, demonstrate that PND can affect people from every social class, race, religion, first time mum or fifteenth time mum. It might also be helfpul as a research tool to find out what types of support would be most effective.

Hobnobs that sounds a very good idea. I never characterised my mood as being attributable to PND though I had a bucket load of indicators as I see now (Predisposition to depression/ baby critical in ICU/ postpartum haemorrage). Husband told me to start coping because it didn't suit his books, my being 'weak', which in turn led to years of petulant but very serious violence. I see now that I most likely never recovered from PND between or after each child.

Raising awareness would be good. Sometimes it's the sufferers themselves who aren't aware and struggle on, not just those people around them.

SootySweepandSue I totally agree with you about the natural movement set-up... I love the idea of a lot of the attachment parenting stuff, but it's ALL phrased in such black-and-white language, and presented as "if you don't do this, horrible things will happen to your baby!!!omg111!!!" that I couldn't read it without getting really stressed out. Which is a shame, because the approach appealed, it's just the judgey-pants language I couldn't cope with.

That's quite sad pinch, if it's true.

Oh pinch - I'm angry as flames at troisgarcons, but really, outing someone like that? That's not right. I think you meant well to all of us who have been upset by her, but still...

It's not nice, but the word comeuppance springs to mind.

Trois - I opened this thread, as someone who is currently suffering with PND, interested to see people's thoughts and feelings on something that is so taboo and sadly still has stigma attached to it. Then I read your post.

I have had months of feeling inadaquate,ashamed, scared, unable to cope and fucking suicidal because of this horrendous illness. I hid my true thoughts and feelings until one day the overwhelming urge to jump into the 'nice' inviting canal got too much to bare. I was this || close to doing it. If I had of read your post at that time I may have well done so. I read the first line of your post and welled up because you've show that people do believe still that people like me are weak. And that makes me very upset. All of the negativity I feel has been amplified ten fold because of that one venomous post.

I am truely sorry for what you have gone through - noone should have to go through that. It has taken me some time to not just post abuse towards you, no matter how much I am seething and upset inside. I did not manage to get past your post but I can imagine you have upset a great deal of people. I hope you're happy with yourself.