considering mum and baby unit - please help

[narmada]

hi everyone, am hoping for some advice.

i have a new son aged 7 weeks, and a daughter aged 2.5. my son has reflux which means he has been unsettled and cried a lot since birth. he needs to be held for all daytime naps and/ or paced around the house to prevent screaming. he is on meds and we are awaiting paed appointment.

i have been feeling totally unable to cope and just want to run away. currently my partner is doing every night shift with the baby, my 70 year old (but fit and active) mum sleeps in with my DD and is basically caring for her. i have been staying at a local hotel on the advice of local mental health team, who are heavily involved with us. they presented this as an alternative to going into acute care because i felt totally unable to stay at home and was saying i needed to get away and couldn't cope at home, the idea being to give me some space for a few days and chance to rest.

i am on citalopram but having horible anxiety and panic symptoms,which i know are normal on this med,am on zopiclone at night to help me sleep but averaging about 5 hours before waking up totally unable to get back to sleep in a state of sheer panic.

by going to the hotel i feel i am becoming less and less involved with my kids each day - i can't wait to escape in the evening, but in the morning i semi-dread coming home and am feeling less able to cope as the days go by.

last week i was pleading for inpatient treatment of some kind but don't want to go into local psych ward as nightmarish mixed sex place and my kids won't be allowed to visit and i fear i would never come out. i would just spiral lower and lower and how would it help me feel i copuld cope with the kids? in any case they wouldn't admit me as say i am basically not ill enough as not suicidal or psychotic. there are no local nhs mum and baby units - the local one has closed. and again they say they will not refer out of area because am not ill enough.

i keep thinking it is for the best to go to a private mum and baby unit and pay. it would wipe out all our savings, meant for a house, but i feel the alternative is our family falling completely apart. my mum and partner cannot look after the two kids forever on their own and i am worried they will both collapse from sheer exhaustion and then where would we be? i am also puttying myself under real pressure to get better quickly because they are dealing with the burden of everything at home.

does anyone have similar experience or any thoughts? please?

sorry if this is a bit rambly and long but unsurprisingly finding it hard to concentrate at the mo.

I thought I would post an update to all those people who were kind enough to post on my thread when I was down in the depths of despair.

Well...... it's 5 months on and I have only good news to report. Reading back through my initial posts, it feels like I'm reading about someone else's life. I am now pretty much totally recovered from my PND, which is saying something because I was suicidal at points. Still taking meds and will be for the forseeable future, but that is the least of my worries. I am really, really enjoying family life again and we are now in the process of moving house .

DS is now 6 months old and for the most part a complete delight. He's had his fair share of health, feeding and sleeping issues and we had a horrible few months of him undergoing tests for horrid terminal diseases but he is basically fit and well and we're all enormously relieved. DD loves her little brother and says he's her best friend. She cries when he has to stay home and she is going somewhere without him.

To anyone who is currently going through PND, please do take heart that it does get better. There were many weeks when I thought I would never recover but with the right support (the local NHS services were fab and friends and relatives amazing, as were people on here) I did.

Hi Narmada
Just found this, I am so happy for you that you are feeling so much better, I remember this thread. Sounds like you are getting more sleep now as well?
strawberry

Thank you for updating us, it is so encouraging to think that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Hi Strawberry, thanks - and yes! Through some sort of miracle DS actually sleeps through the night. We have done nothing at all to encourage this and given his digestive issues, it really shouldn't be happening but it is. I have ditched the zopiclone ( I ended up being on them for quite a while) and now have no problems dropping off and staying asleep all night long.

willdo there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. If you're currently going through PND and want to PM me, I am happy to chat. It's horrendous but in a few months' time everything you're going through now will seem like a bad dream.

So amazing, wow thanks for such a positive update, bet you all feel so much better with the sleep, poor little one must have been feeling so poorly when he was tiny.

strawberry yes, we really don't know what's hit us. We are both thinking 'ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this is what parenthood can be like!' - DD was a terrible sleeper so we were fully expecting another one too.