To be annoyed with my younger childless sister for preaching to me about PND!!

[Dragonfly74]

My sister has been to visit today and as you do when you visit people she asked how everyone was, So I told her that recently i've not been great.

I have a ds 2.9yrs and a dd 9mths and have had PND with both, most of the time i'm ok but over the last few weeks ds has turned into a demanding monster and dd has started to cut her first teeth so instead of her waking once in the night she now wakes 3-4 times and i'm really tired which has added to my already low feeling.

Anyway when I told her how I was feeling she sat there and told me PND is in the mind and that basically I should get off my arse and get on with life
And then she went on to slagging off my dh saying that he doesn't help out enough. I don't expect dh to help much with the dc's because he works 6 days a week, he leaves at 11am and gets home at 11.30pm he works hard to keep a roof over our heads and he is exhausted too.

Her attitude has really wound me up, she still lives at home and has no children what does she know about stress and responsibilty..

I feel even more of a failiure now thanks to her.

I hope for your sister's sake that the day she has Dcs she will not go through PND. Taste of own medicine is really not nice to swallow.

Glad you had a better day today Dragonfly.

PND can range from mild to extremely severe so you are probably somewhere in the middle and how you feel is 'normal' for PND. IYSWIM.

I think that anxiety about what seem (logically) like normal things - panicking about where your DCs are - is part of that.

Do have a sympathetic HV or GP?

Janos I used to have a really nice HV but she was relocated and the new HV is pretty useless.

The GP that I saw when dd was 4mths just seemed like he wanted to rush me out of the room as quickly as possible, he prescribed fluoxetine which I refused to take because it can pass into breastmilk but he didn't offer an alternative medication or counselling.

I'm going to get an appointment with a female GP next time hopefully she will be more understanding.

That's a good idea, seeing a female GP. I was very lucky to to have an excellent HV and sympathetic GPs, otherwise I wouldn't have come through.

My XP's attitude was much the same as your sisters, which is one of the reasons why we split. So I know how corrosive that sort of attitude can be.

I had fluoxetine as well, but had stopped BF by that point, I'm sure there are ADs that are compatible with BF but don't have enough knowledge to say what those are.

Is your DH supportive and helpful when he's around/able?

DH is great when he's around especially with our ds.
When DH is off work he takes Ds out so that I can have some time alone with dd which is nice because I think ds craves one on one attention and I just can't give him that at the minute.

And its lovely when they've been out for a couple of hours doing "boys stuff" because I appreciate ds so much more after some time away from him, he really is a handful recently.

Boys can be a real handful...DS is just 4 and I swear he must be battery operated, he has so much energy.

It's really great your DH is supportive, that makes a huge difference.

Dragonfly - have you had your thyroid levels checked as they can crash badly after childbirth and one of the symptoms is depression.

I get a bit evangelical about this as I think a lot of people aren't aware of it and it was a major contributing factor to my own PND.

Worth looking into, and the meds you'd need would not effect BF as they are basically just replacing your hormones that should be occuring naturally.

Mollycherry that happened to me and I read somewhere that it effects 10% of women after having a baby. I think thyroid should be tested as standard at the 6 week check.

fluxotene is my best freind lol