Post-natal depression - your experience in a few words please

[malaleche]

Hello,
Having just come into the realisation that the months of utter despair that i experienced after dd2 was born was PND and not 'just me' i would like to know what it felt like for those of you who suffered it too, diagnosed or not.
I felt like a black cloud of despair had come down over my head, all my joy was gone and i wanted to kill myself and both my dds. I spent time planning this in detail. I could go into my symptoms in more detail but i would like your experience in a few words. I believe that my PND was mostly due to hormonal changes but also the upheavals of the 2 years previous to dd2s birth: We had to move from a house we liked and had lived in for over 10 years because the owner put it up for sale, we moved to a spacious but gloomy flat, we had to relocate my business as the building was unsafe, my father, with whom i had many unresolved issues, died 5 wks before dd2 was born. i coped very well with dd1 so wasnt prepared for the feeings of utter hopelessness and misery that started about a month after dd2s birth. i also had 2 bouts of depression during the pregnancy.

Hello malaeche,
I think for me it was the was the despair and feeling on the verge of tears for no particular reason. It wasnt constant, some times i would good days and think I just need a 'kick up the but' and stop feeling so sorry for myself. I also felt anxious a lot of the time and would snap at my DH for the tiniest thing. Always angry, it wasnt until starting to take ADs that could see how much an effect this was having on me.

I had ante natal depression during my second pregnancy, which I was too ashamed to talk to midwives etc about, because I felt pregnancy was a time you should feel happy.
The pregnancy was unplanned & H didn't take to it well. I didn't want it to be happening, but I couldn't bring myself think about termination, so I just got through the pregnancy in a state of denial.
I had no support from H during the birth & he didn't show any interest in his new DS after he was born. He described the day he brought us home from hospital as the second worst day of his life (the first being the death of his father) & as a result of all this I spiralled into further depression.
I had trouble accepting in my head that DS2 was my DS (due to the pregnancy being spent in a strange denial type state) & would feed him, change him & then put him down. He had nowhere near as many cuddles as DS1 did in the early months.
My sister recalls a time when she visited around a week after his birth & I was holding him facing me & just staring in a trance like way at him.
I found it hard to cope with his crying & I am ashamed to admit that I sometimes put him in the conservotary in his baby chair when he wouldn't stop crying, because I couldn't bear the noise.
My stomach would be constantly churning & I would randomly burst into tears & not really know what I was crying about.
My HV put me on ADs & organised counselling for me, and slowly I got better & began to love my baby the way I should have from the start.
He is a very happy confident little boy of 3 years old now, who is adored by both myself & his father, but the guilt I feel when thinking about his start in life will never leave me.

Sorry, that was far more than a few words!

Hi malaleche. Sorry you're feeling this way.

I too suffered pnd after my 2nd (I have a dd nearly 2 and a ds 4). Like cori, I felt despair for a large part of the time and cried most days, otherwise sometimes just felt numb and detached. I was also very over-sensitive and felt judged at every level by even my close friends and family so felt it difficult to really open up to them. Just kept coping because I thought this was just the exhaustion of being a working mum. I think I secretly hoped I would have some kind of breakdown so that I wouldn't have to cope any more because as long as I could cope, I would - that's what mums do. I too felt suicidal at times but knew I would never have done it because of the kids. I would be almost stepford wife like in front of them and my friends, then break down and rage at my poor dh about the smallest things. I couldn't face compromising on anything - the house had to be clean NOW, I HAD to stay up all night to make Ds's birthday cake, I WOULDN'T cancel dinner with friends even though I was exhausted. It was a horrible time. Mine was def. a chemical thing, I am sure of it now. When I finally acknowledged it was pnd (when DD was about 15 months) I saw my GP and she prescribed ADs. Was v cynical about taking these but they worked very well for me. I feel like me again.

Phew - not such a short answer but even now it helps to share it. Do CAT me if you want to talk. Hope you're ok.

This is an interesting thread as I have often considered writing down how I felt- - but how to do it in a few words.

Sitting on the sofa every evening in the foetal position staring at the wall, sometimes crying knowing I should be getting off my lazy backside and doing something, but I couldn't quite work out what it was I was supposed to do.

Hiding in my bedroom during the day (away from the DDs) crying and digging my nails into my arms to stop me going to the kitchen and putting a knife through my arm. I really wanted to feel some physical pain to get away from the emotional turmoil in my brain. The only reason I didn't throw myself down the stairs was that I was normally holding dd2.

Other times I was so stressed I couldn't sit down at all and just wandered round the house in a daze. The next day I wouldn't even have the energy to go up the stairs.

It was all so weird I felt I was going mad.

I am convinced it is a hormonal thing as within a few days of starting AD's I started to feel better and my migraines went from 3 a week to about one a month.

If all goes according to plan hopfully I will be starting to reduce my AD's in April.

Thanks everyone for your stories. I think i partly wanted to check what it felt like as my pnd went undiagnosed and i wasnt sure if it was just me not coping in a general way or actual pnd. I'm fine now, full of new projects and energy as always (well, maybe not today as dd2 5.5 mo was up 5 times last night with a blocked nose and sticky eyes, first time she would not be consoled with tit either ) I also wonder what the effect of having your sleep constantly interrupted has on the brain, chemically speaking? My mum told me that when we were little she was listening to a programme on the radio about torture techniques which included being woken repeatedly from sleep and forced to get up, having loud meaningless (ok, i know a baby's crying is not meaningless as such but you know what i mean)noise played at full volumn, not being able to talk to other people or have contact... she said 'it all seemed terriby familiar' - this was torture techniques - but was very like what new parents go through. Maybe we're all suffering a form of post-traumatic stress disorder?