Anyone had severe postnatal anxiety and depression after a baby in mid-40s?

[Jennifer48]

Has anyone else had a baby in their mid-40s and experienced mental imbalance and severe anxiety and depression afterwards that did not respond to treatment? I don't enjoy anything. Neither being with the baby, nor being away from him. I am six months post-partum and have been in touch with a perinatal mental health team including a psychiatrist, psychologist and taking anti-depressants for a while but nothing has worked. I do wonder if it might have to do with my age - or breastfeeding.

I did struggle with my mental health prior to pregnancy but how I'm feeling now doesn't feel like the depression I experienced previously - before, I felt like myself when I was depressed, just a depressed me, if that makes sense. Since baby was born, I don't even feel like myself at all. It's like a very intense panic mixed, oddly, with depression, and a feeling that my life is over.

I remember feeling like this. I do have a supportive husband and mostly we have been a team - but we live in London with absolutely no family support.

I will DM you this evening after my son is in bed @Jennifer48. It’s tough but you are doing absolutely amazingly. I binned breast feeding after like a week despite excellent support for me in the private maternity unit in which my son was born! So you’re a hero to stick at it for 6 months!

And it gets easier, I promise. Hard to see it right now but it does.

@Jennifer48I’m so very sorry that you’re having such an awful time.
when I had my desperately wanted son (I had lost a baby previously) I thought my life was over and I would never be happy again.
You’ve said a couple of times that you worry things won’t get better. I promise you they do.
Breastfeeding, co-sleeping babies when you are this unwell are insanely tough. You have to literally do everything for them round the clock when in an ideal world you’d just be looking after yourself when you feel like this. You’ve done so well to manage thus far and on your own, too. But there will come a day when your son is walking, talking, can entertain himself, does not have to be carried around or fed by you all of the time - and in reaching those milestones things get better incrementally. Your recovery is possible and you can feel better without giving up your child. You’ve had some good advice here (maybe consider giving up breastfeeding, stop co-sleeping, sleep train, treatments for you) and hope you might be able to catch a break when he goes to nursery. I do hope things improve for you very soon

@MrsBigglesworth - you described eerily accurately exactly why I found motherhood (specifically early motherhood) so hard. I didn’t have this insight into myself all those years ago. I don’t know if understanding myself better and looking at things through the lens of ADHD would have made it any easier, but it certainly would’ve avoided years of me thinking there was something really seriously mentally wrong with me, which makes me sad.

@Jennifer48 I would never tell a co-sleeping, breastfeeding mother to stop. That’s nobody’s decision but yours. But I’d like to say you don’t need any permission to stop with either, and you’ve no reason to feel guilty if you do decide to stop.

I only managed to breastfeed my first child for 6 weeks, for different reasons (severe, recurring mastitis and eventually a septic abscess) and I never co-slept because I was too paranoid of falling into a deep sleep and squashing my baby.

I didn’t successfully sleep train him - he was not a great sleeper until much later - but the benefits for me of not co-sleeping /breastfeeding for very long were that a) someone else could have him for a few hours and b) I didn’t feel so overwhelmed and ‘touched out’.

Thats quite taboo to admit because the dream is you feel blissfully close to your baby when you feed them - the most natural, maternal thing in the world etc. But that is not how I felt.

There does come a point when you have to do what is actually, practically going to make you feel in some way better. Not what you should be doing, or imagined you would do, or other people think you should do.

Someone I knew was attempting to hold the hospital they gave birth at accountable for their alleged negligent treatment of her by not treating her as high risk for Perinatal Psychosis directly due to her advanced maternal age.

I don't know how that all went, but there was apparently enough evidence that women of her age (early 40s) are at increased risk of serious mental illness around pregnancy and should have had her on a high risk pathway for that reason alone. So I think there are women who have had your experience for sure. With and without a history of mental illness before pregnancy.

@Lexibletheflexible I would never hold the hospital accountable, but I was very discouraged to hear the psychiatrist of the perinatal mental health team tell me she doesn't know which direction my treatment can go as multiple anti-depressants pre-pregnancy didn't work when I had depression, and the one I have been taking for the past seven weeks hasn't worked (not to my surprise). It's hard to hold on to hope when the psychiatrist of the specialised service doesn't seem to have much.

@Piglet89 Please do DM me, that would be lovely.

@Indaloo The mother of two older kids who said she is still in the thick of it wasn't even having a good old moan at a mother and baby group -she's a friend of mine, to whom I asked "When does it get better??", to which she replied "You're asking me, I'm still in the thick of it I reckon!" And she is a lot more together and organised than I am!

I was more telling you that because her legal team seemed to think she had a point and that she was at increased risk of perinatal mental illness due to her age so I think data exists that supports that.

Ok well that’s nonsense and she clearly wasn’t thinking when she said that.

You’re in the part when the sleep deprivation has gone on for too long now and your Adrenalin has run off. For me this was the worst part. And I didn’t have PND or any other mental health issue. You’re in the most trench period imo. All the shine was worn off and you wonder whether it ever ends. It does. I promise it does. And when the baby starts to sleep, and goes to nursery you will get part of your life back and will have the chance to feel better.

@Indaloo Thank you for commenting. You menton this stage as being the worst because the novelty and shine have worn off- the shine hasn't come off anything in the sense that, Ive been seized by this deperaton and terror ever since giving birth. I've never felt any joy. It's awful.

Yes I am with you but it’s not just you. The shine of everyone around you too. Oh how is baby, congratulations, checking in, do you need any help. Even if you personally haven’t felt it, it would have been there subliminally if that makes sense.

BTW I do think the whole gush of love thing is just nonsense and never felt that. I didn’t expect that but lots of people do.

But that isn’t love. Love is silent, constant, unconditional and steady. What people talk about imo is akin to lust and it’s not love at all.

I wasn’t really thinking about it because I was too drugged in from my c section but I had the realisation at 2 weeks when my baby stopped breathing and got rushed to hospital. I realised then I loved them more than anything and this was it. My life would never be the same again because even if they went now then I would just be a mother who lost her child. And in the time after there were a few women in our nct group who were panicking they didn’t feel that love bomb and hadn’t bonded and I did just think that’s not love your talking about. You do love them. And you would know that if you were ever faced with losing them.

I think that helped a lot and maybe I would have had PND if it wasn’t for that incident. It was like a line in the sand. My old life and my new and the acceptance of that was processed quite quickly and dramatically.

Is this your first baby? If so I would think it might be more to do with having a baby than being in your 40’s- I found my first baby (early 30’s) turned my life upside down. The massive change was very hard to adjust to - I had PND. My last baby I was aged 42, I also experienced some PND symptoms then, but one of my middle children who I had in my mid 30’s I didn’t get PND. I agree that it felt like a different depression from depression I had experienced before having children.

I really hope you get some good support, the best help for me was having a friend I could be really honest with. Sending 💕

Has your physical health/bloods been checked. Whilst GP was adamant my iron levels weren't affecting me in other areas but when I managed to increase it there was a noticeable difference. I only ask because I wonder if there are other factors affecting your meds having the expected impact.

Just to add, with my last baby (the only one I can remember clearly) the PND was worst around the 5-6 month mark, it was the only time I sought help and was fortunate to be given a ‘buddy’ to talk to who was lovely and a place in a group for mothers with PND and anxiety. I imagine you’ve spoken to your Health Visitor but it was mine who put me in touch with the group which did really help.

I would also add that a close friend of mine felt nothing at all for her son until he was over 6 months old, I have often thought how very very difficult this must be. But she found the feelings did come and he’s a lovely teen now and they have a great relationship.

One more thing, I find babies really hard work but HONESTLY when they get a bit older it HONESTLY gets so much better, they can chat and tell you what’s wrong or what they think about, they are hilarious and honestly if you can find some support now I am certain you will look back and be so happy.

Just like you can’t imagine how different and hard it is having a baby, you cant imagine how lovely it is to have a little person who you can chat to and hang out with. It does truly get easier as time goes on (I am mum of 4, I’d never have had more if the first PND and anxiety hadn’t improved.) Please trust me on this. I also think you should tell your mum (at least a bit more indication) of how you are feeling. Sending so much love and strength to you. ♥️♥️♥️

I had a traumatic birth and had had ptsd and probably pnd and found e m d r very helpful.

also realised after i must have been perimenopausal at the time.

I've had EMDR several times @Stopsnowing it did nothing for me.

I was also going to say hormones / HRT. Take a look at the Balance / Dr Louise Newson websites. Some brilliant resources re PND and hormones, including a podcast or video I remember about a GP with PND who was treated successfully with hormones.

@SourSoppy yes, I've read a lot and sought a lot of support to understand why I hate motherhood. I also thought something was wrong with me. I don't understand why people have multiple children or spend thousands trying to pursue that through IVF. It's so unfortunate when you only realise this about yourself after having a child.

@Jennifer48 I think it's thoughtless of parents of older children to claim it never gets better. I think they forget how terrible infancy can be. Like I have friends whose babies woke every 45 minutes for over a year and now sleep through the night. Of course that's better. Your friend has two children whereas you have one. So the demands on her are doubled. At 6 months I recall my baby wanted to be carried a lot, didn't want to be placed on his back and cried/fussed when that happened, woke multiple times a night and fought sleep so every bedtime was a screamfest. Now my child has 40+ words, can walk independently, can basically communicate needs verbally, quietly goes to sleep in the cot, last night slept through the night, etc. It definitely gets better. But it is also still hard; it is still child-rearing and parenting.

I hear you about the concern about worrying your mother but I have personally found it helpful to communicate the reality of my distress to my friends and family. It may offer opportunities to connect further with people who might have had similar feelings and can offer hope, or activate more support for you. I understand your feelings of anxiety, panic and despair, I feel that way too. I have managed to survive a further 7 months; taking things day by day, one step in front of the other, is possible. I understand you probably don't want to, and neither do I honestly. But as you said, killing yourself would have devastating consequences for your mother and child also, so there have to be alternatives, no matter how unconventional, before you reach that point.

@Jennifer48Are you the lady that used to live in Paris posting under a different name?

Yes I wondered that too.