to tell those currently struggling with PND...

[clemetteattlee]

That it will get better.
When my son was a baby I was so desperately unhappy and would repeatedly tell my husband that I wish we had never had him. I found him very challenging and often found myself dragging myself out of bed to respond to him, muttering to myself "why are you so difficult to love?"
When the depression passed I beat myself up constantly that our bond would be affected and he would somehow know that I had felt this way.
Now, at almost five, he is the most loving, demonstrative and happy child and fills my life with joy, kisses and cuddles.

It has been a roller-coaster recovery for me but I think if someone had told me that I wasn't damaging him irrevocably then it would have helped, so I am telling you...

It does make sense...but my symptoms are so transient I wonder if they would help. I mean I end up on a cycle of meltdown and one day in the dumps, one day okay but washed out and then next day fine. There are specific triggers - but they only produce an episode if something else is wrong in the background (ie. the same trigger won't have the same affect twice in a row).

hmm reading this I realise it is the background level that is the problem and that's the actual depression isn't it? So if I could buck that up I would stop having so many episodes...by raising the baseline?

I think I have fallen into the trap of thinking I am fine in between dark patches when in reality I am not.

Well at least that proposes some practical solutions. It means I should be on it with the CBT even when it isn't a dark patch as a preventative measure for one thing.

Or maybe I'm talking crap?

I'm not sure if I have PND, I don't think I do but DH thinks I do sometimes. I'm coping ok but I snap at DH lots.
After DS1 I remember holding him at a few days old and part of me thinking he was an evil old man in a baby's body (have never told anyone this) but there was a rational part of me that knew it was just hormones making me think strange things, I stopped breastfeeding after two weeks (for various reasons) and that feeling went completely, I bonded with him and felt great.
DS2 is 7.5 months old and has been way more challenging, he still wakes 2hrly, is breastfed almost exclusively as he won't take solids (a few mouthfuls and then stops), fights sleep so hardly naps and ends up screaming for ages everynight before bed, he co-sleeps aswell as he won't sleep without me. I am very slowly bonding with him but I still don't love him as much as my firstborn, I feel shit admitting this :( I hate breastfeeding, I think that for me breastfeeding actually makes it harder to bond but I don't know why. I sometimes wish I'd never had ds2 :( but I'm glad I have him really, he's just so hard!
Most of the time I do cope fine yet I'm currently upstairs on my bed having burst into tears the second DH walked in from work and legged it upstairs, I've been out with them all afternoon, ds2 hasn't napped today and has screamed most of the afternoon. I barely got any sleep and I'm just exhausted. I keep telling myself its just sleep deprivation

slankety There is no law that says that BFing makes it easier to bond (or if there is one then the babies haven't read it). I think it makes sense in a way...I have sometimes felt in the early days like my DD was quite literally stealing my energy (that I needed for me! to recover from the after effects of her giant head tmi). I resented it a lot at the time. Presumably you have tried bottles?

I just went up for tea at work and admitted to some people that I hate my toddler at the moment. It was somewhat liberating but tbh I think they thought I was joking more than I actually was.

Slankety, I think it is really hard to distinguish between sleep deprivation and PND because being exhausted makes EVERYTHING harder to deal with.
Can you sleep when you get the chance? Do you feel consistently low? Can you take any pleasure in anything?

Fantastic, brave posts from so many people here

YANBU, obviously.

There is SUCH a massive stigma around it. I am perfectly open with all my pre-baby friends about my history of mental health issues - they knew I'd even been in a psychiatric hospital, they saw my self harm scars because I've not hidden them. And yet, when I had my babies, I couldn't possibly admit I was depressed again. Because how can you admit that you are anything but over the moon with being a mum? Coupled with the fact I chose to have babies young, it meant I felt a massive pressure to prove I hadn't made a mistake.

No I think you're right ICBINEG. You won't necessarily feel awful every day - some days you'll feel pretty much ok although I think if you were honest with yourself you would probably find you don't feel ok as such just not terrible. I was depressed for a loooong time before I realised it. I thought I stressed, tired, everything but depressed until one day I just collapsed completely and couldn't get out of bed for two months.

IMO the thing to look out for with depression is not your mood or how you feel as such but how you think. It's when your thinking enters that negative cycle that things are starting to spiral downwards. Thoughts like "their lives would be better if I were dead," "if I crashed the car now I'd get a lovely rest in hospital," "I'll never feel normal again," - those are not normal thoughts. You can have those thoughts in quite a matter of fact way even when you feel "ok." The ADs help you to come out of that spiral and start to just be able to face the day again, which is such a relief.

Great thread OP and thank you.

I didn't realise I had PND after DS was born. Tbh I didn't know much about it but thought that because I was managing to function and not, as someone's DH mentioned upthread, rocking in a corner that I'd just made a terrible mistake in becoming a mother. I could not for the life of me understnad why people kept telling me I was so lucky and wasn't motherhood the most amazing thing? Because it wasn't, it was awful.

I didn't have MN then, but I wish I had.

Fast forward and my DS is almost 3 and is utterly wonderful. The guilt I feel from all the resentment I bore him in the first few months of his life is terrible, but in some ways I think it makes me a better mother in that I'm always trying my hardest to make up for it. I couldn't imagine my life without him.

It does get better, I promise.

Thank you :-) I had/have extreme postnatal anxiety after DS who is 18 months and am pregnant again. It was a surprise but we're thrilled. Just hoping and praying it doesn't happen again.

DS - breastfeeding was crap - infective mastitis, breast abscess - worst 8 weeks of my life and when he was five days old I remember thinking if I hit you against the bedroom wall you might stop crying and I might sleep. If BF isn't working for you and affecting relationship with your baby then stop it. FF is fine (not perfect but overall if you are happier baby will be happier). As soon as I stopped I also started Prozac and started climbing back up again. Then I had two more pgs (11 weeks and 27 weeks) and DS 2 died and part of me died and I was pg again almost instantly. I can't remember much of that year but it resulted in dd 51 weeks later - and a lot of very high risk care. I was fine - bf was fine and ds was fine. That first boy who didn't get breast fed for long enough turned into a 6'2" rugby player with 10 A*s (we've forgiven him the A).

If things had happened differently I wouldn't have dd; looking at a beautiful girl of 14 wrapped in two feet of long blonde hair who is the light of my life I thank God every day for giving me the two children I have and in spite of a dreadful early start for all of us all has ended up well. They are loved; they love; and they remember nothing of those first years.

Good luck. You will get through the start of your journeys and your children will remember the important things. They will remember you being there at the gate, they will remember you screaming from the touch line, they will remember their first nativity, they will remember their first grazed knee and you being there and hugging them, the will remember their favourite dinner, and the specialness of Xmas, collecting conkers in the rain, their first trip to a&e for gluing together. They will giggle with you and cry with you and one day an age away from now they will put their arms round you and look down at you and say "alright mum?".

God bless - with love and prayers - they don't remember but you do and eventually it makes you love them and adore them even more because they, like you, came through and survived and succeeded. (And out there - no-one knows and doesn't guess and may even envy you a bit because they don't know and you might have what they want).

calin goodness...the resting in hospital thought is so very often in my head - I almost startled to see it written down. You are totally right about the thinking not the mood being the issue. I think this will hopefully make some movement for me. It hadn't really occurred to me to be vigilant about my negative thought patterns when I was feeling okay mood wise.

I thought I was having a great time at badminton tonight and then the coach told me that i really needed to stop being so down on myself all the time.....I hadn't even noticed anything.

married Thank you so much for the list of great times ahead. I can certainly always use the reminder that there is so very much to live for...I just wish my DD would hurry up and be old enough for that stuff!

The next person who tells me not to wish away my DD's baby years because 'they are only little for such a short space of time' is going to get a resounding 'thank fuck' from me....

I had PND too and a relapse (like ICBINEG) when my ds was about 15months because we had moved a loooong way from home. I had also had periods of depression/ anxiety before children. At first i wanted to believe that it was a one-off but I am starting to see now that I have depressive tendencies and am likely to relapse again.

But...... I find that each period of depressive is shorter and shallower and I can deal it with better each time. And I can definitely appreciate the happy times in between.

I tended to have anxiety more than depression, which is less talked about. When my baby was tiny, i used to stay awake all night sometimes worrying about what would happen if he died. So much so, that i started to hope he would just die so that i didn't have to worry about him dying. Crazy eh? Then i wanted to give him up for adoption because i was such a terrible mum and he deserved better.

I take citalopram which helps. And i took it while bfing, on the advice of my GP who could see much more clearly than i could, that the risks of not taking it were much more real than the risks of harm through bm.

I have also had cbt, and written a sort of letter to myself, from nondepressed me to depressed me saying all the sorts of things on this thread. It helps even more than it comes from me, i find.

But you definitely,definitely come through it. And you are a better, more appreciative person afterwards.

Despite all of that, I still want to have more children. :-)

Great posts LaQueen

LaQueen are you LeQueen?

Hi I had some time off! Without flouncing!

My housework doesn't share your sentiment!

Sorry for not being back ICBINEG I lost the thread

How are you doing?

Hello,

I thought I'd come and re-read this thread as I am obviously not getting better like I thought. I have had a massive text row with DH. I have had severe depression in the past. I didn't sleep for god knows how long with DD2 who was an even worse sleeper than DD1. So tbh I don't know if it is PND, general loopiness, still too tired, fallen into bad depressive habits...or just the fact that I'm not actually a very nice person. Oh & DD2 is 2 on Saturday so if it was PND then surely I'd be over it. I think it is general anxiety/depression/bad attitude/selfish personality.

marriedinwhite I cried at your post. I really hope that is true for me. I don't want to fuck my girls up.

Just from that post I'd guess depression Cyborg. Does it really matter whether it's PND or not? It's all the same thing in the end.

What sort of thoughts are you having at the moment?

Probably not. But I guess if it is PND then it is less 'my fault'. If it depression again then I feel like something in me is broken.

Mostly thoughts of how pointless and useless I am. Overwhelming anxiety that whatever decisions I make will be the wrong ones.