PND/ baby blues/ over tired/ normal?

[Whenisitmysleepytime]

i'm worrying i might have pnd.

with ds i think i had it - although mildly. this is with hind sight though, at the time i felt awful but plodded along and it wasn't till i came out the other side i realised how bad i was.

ds is now 2 and dd is 9 weeks old.
i love her to bits, don't want to run away (unlike last time) and some of it is easier than last time.
however i don't feel i'm coping. i cry very easily, i get really wound up and frustrated and i constantly worry i'm not doing enough for ds or dd because i'm split between them.
dd isn't a great sleeper, she's up twice normally but grunts through the night (colic i think) so i get very little sleep. ds is teething too so i'm often up with him but he does settle quickly.

i've just done the edinburgh pnd test and scored 15. it says i have a depressive illness as my score is over 9. i do feel less awful than last time but i'm worrying i'm depressed and i want to do something about it sooner rather than later if i am.

what do you think?

sometimes i feel i can do this but other times i feel WAY out of my depth.

TIA :)

Hi, I think you should have a chat with your health visitor or gp and tell them how you feel.

thanks choc

i'm not really comfortable with my hv - i think she's a well meaning loon tbh.

i feel loads better today - amazing how only getting up once in the night changes everything!

guess i'll see how i go and hope i have more :) days than :(

Hi there,

congrats on your new baby. 9 weeks is pretty early days as you'll know from your fist. You're adjusting to a new member of the family and sleep is a distant memory. I found this tends to magnify weepiness and the general feeling of being unable to cope.

I've had severe PND with my DS and am now (finally) out of the woods, 11 months later so I know exactly what you're going through.

It sounds like you're pretty self aware but don't feel you have to 'cope' alone as there is support out there than can help reduce your symptoms if you start to feel worse. I was lucky enough to have an incredibly supportive and switched on GP who was able to recognise my symptoms and refer me for CBT.

The difficulty with PND is, aside from the Edinburgh Test (which has its place but is pretty arbitrary in some ways) there is little means of actually 'measuring' how bad you feel. Get all the physical support you need at home to enable you to rest when you can - I was too proud to do that and regret asking for hands on help when I needed it most.

Look after yourself and seek help if things get worse.

Good luck x

First and not fist, of course. oops.

I'm feeling really low. My baby has never been 'happy', I know she is only 6 weeks old but she is still feeding 2hrly day and night and in between she cries and cries. I feel like she hates me. I don't know what else I can do, I sing to her, I go out for long walks with her, I feed her whenever she wants and her nappy is always changed. I feel like there is something else I should be doing, but I don't know what. Any suggestions?

Whenisitmysleepytime I was like you - with hindsight I probably had mild PND with DC1, I used to have fantasies about having a road accident which would hospitalise / injure me enough to make someone else look after the baby without threatening my life - bizarre. I really wanted some debilitating illness to give me a rest

With DC2, I thought I wasn't as bad because I didn't have those thoughts, although he was a massively worse baby because he never stopped bloody crying. Then when he was about 9 months old it all caught up with me and I ended up very obviously depressed in a classic way - constant tears, thoughts of suicide, nothing positive in my life at all. Looking back, I wished I'd got help before it got that bad - because you've got 2 kids this time the workload you are carrying out with mild depression is doubled... so imho your chances of getting to a period of calmness / relative stability so you can recover yourself are reduced.

Worth getting to a GP / talking over on the phone to MIND or someone I reckon.

Hindsight is very helpful. ds was 2.5 by the time i went to the GP.
Like you, i put it down to loads of things and plodded along.

Wish i had gone sooner and got medicated. It turned me around.