My little one is 6 months now (second child) and we’ve come out the other side 🙏🏻 so to start the post with something positive will hopefully help someone here.
I had the most wonderful first few days of his life but it all started to go wrong back at home.
By week 3 I had started anti depressants but I was getting worse and worse in that I felt like I could not look after my children, I wanted to go to a mental unit for mums and babies for them to take care of us, the only reason I didn’t is because I have a 3 year old.
My mind was 24/7 racing with how I couldn’t do this, I had physical shakes almost all the time, I became completely indifferent towards my first child and felt no feelings for her, I was a stranger in my own home looking around feeling like I was trapped and terrified, the only way out of this was to give my baby up and pretend he didn’t exist, I actually googled foster care. I was constantly paranoid that there was something wrong with my baby (self diagnosing him with autism from day 1) the only other option out of this mess was suicide which I thought about often.
I couldn’t go out or do every day normal tasks like eat and I lost weight. I just about fed my kids and gave them the bare minimum but I couldn’t do anything else. If I did go out to an appointment I was under the illusion that everyone was staring right through me and knew that I was mentally ill. I literally could not understand how other mums were being normal because I felt so fucked up.
I am so happy to say that I am through it now with a lot of help but I am still struggling to come to terms with what happened and I look back on it as an awful memory and extremely sad time, a time that felt like it’s defined me as a person. And now I’m wondering if all along I had psychosis and not just depression. Any opinions?
I am still so sad about it. I’m a different person now.