Ante-natal Depression - your comments please!

[Lisav]

It seems that all the newspapers are picking up on this article written by the British Medical Journal on depression during pregnancy - apparently it is more common than post-natal depression and yet little is know about it.

I suffered from ante-natal depression. My pregnancy was an accident and I was devastated when it happened, but decided against an abortion for personal reasons. I began to get depressed, but the further on I became in my pregnancy, the worse I got. It seemed to follow a cycle, the way my periods would. I felt weepy all the time, isolated, confused, scared, angry, paranoid, to name but a few. I thought people were talking about me, I hated mentioning "my condition" and so would shy away from company, preferring to spend my evenings in at home.
Family were overjoyed and didn't understand they way I felt, they wanted to buy the baby's first things and talk about names and so on, I wanted to bury my head in the sand and deny that it was all happening.
During my worst periods I felt that I was slowly being possessed by this baby, my body was being taken from me. I felt resentful towards it for being there and I often wished that I would miscarry so I would not have to deal with it anymore (no criticism here please - I was VERY depressed).
I told my doctor and midwife but they seemed disinterested and made me feel like a time-waster, so I stopped telling them anything. I found it hard to discuss with anyone really as it seemed such a taboo subject - pregnancy is supposed to be a joyous occasion and people don't want to know if all is not as it should be.
It all peaked at about seven months when my husband was out one night. I had a panic attack and thought that the house was haunted in some way. I cannot describe it even now, but I thought I could hear voices, I felt (or thought I felt) a presence in the room, I imagined faces watching me from the kitchen door behind the glass. I thought that my baby was doing all of this so I headed for the knives. Luckily for me (and the baby) I panicked enough to bring me partly back to my senses and I phoned for an ambulance. After that I was taken seriously for once and got the help I badly needed.
My beloved daughter does not seemed to have suffered from my depression during the pregnancy. I am absolutely fine now and love her to bits, though I cannot quite come to terms with how I felt whilst I was carrying her, and I grieve for the closeness I should have felt with her.
I set up a website to help other women deal with this, and all other aspects of an unplanned pregnancy, it is at unplannedpregnancies.freeservers.com.

I was wondering if anyone else had experienced depression whilst pregnant and how they coped/what help they got, etc. I would like some feedback for my site as I would like to include some real experiences on there. So does anyone want to contribute?

Ante-natal depression can be hard to talk about, especially when everyone is expecting you to be so excited and happy and blooming, and you just feel overwhelmed, miserable and frightened.
It seems as though people don't want to know if you are not utterly delighted about it, but surely most mums-to-be experience some level of anxiety and negativity about all the changes to come, and sadly for some it becomes a more serious problem.
One symptom of any kind of depression is that you loose your sense of perspective, which in turn makes almost impossible to be rational about how you are feeling.
I suffered from depression as a teenager which was successfully treated in the end with drug therapy. This has made me quite well equipped to deal with the ante-natal depression I am verging on at the moment, because I have some old tactics for coping with the worst moods and moments. Having recovered before has taught me the invaluable lesson that depression is just an illness, a state of mind that will get better, and that you can have some control over it.
I welcome media attention on ante-natal depression, it made me realise that it is quite normal, and that it isn't my 'old' depression returning. It also helped explain to my partner why I am being the (strange) way I am being.
I wonder if there are any theories about how likely people with ante-natal depression are to go on to develop post-natal depression.

Thanks for replying Ali72. Have you read the article in the British Medical Journal on the topic? Their site is at www.bmj.com and look for the article titled 'Depression during Pregnancy' by J Evans. I think he concluded that women who suffer from ante-natal depression are less likely to suffer from post-natal depression.
I went onto the Dalton Regime (a progesterone course) straight after birth, and did not suffer from depression at all afterwards, I felt better than I did when I was pregnant - even with the sleepless nights! But this will only work for you if you have a hormonal imbalance - this can be checked out for you at your GP's. If you keep in close contact with your Midwife, GP and HV, there is treatment out there to help you and they should be looking into it for you now.

Do visit my website as I deal in depth with ante-natal depression and there are some good links on there too. Good luck and please don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it. You sound like a pretty strong person so I'm sure you'll be fine!

Would you mind if I posted your comments on my website?

Lisav, please feel free, I know that knowing that other people have had similar experiences can be quite comforting.
I am fortunate in that it is not too serious, and I don't think I've got a hormone imbalance, I'm just bloody hormonal. (This is a lot less bad than my previous depression.)
I am determined that it's not going to get to me or get any worse! I do believe that you can control it to a certain extent by refusing to give in to it, by being determined about your attitude, and by forcing yourself to do things that help even if you don't want to(in my case: excercise, going out of the house, etc.) Easier said than done, specially if you've not experienced getting better before, and can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I am pleased to hear that I am now less likely to develop post-natal depression! Good news.. I'm off to visit your website and the bmj.

I also experienced depression during pregnancy especially the last 3 months. I had a clinical depression in my late teens and recognised the features (In my case agrophobia,intense sadness, fatigue and disassociation with the pregnancy - I insisted that my work colleagues refered to my maternity leave as 'extended holiday'). This was a planned pregnancy for a much-wanted child.
I too, was very worried that this was a precusor of post-natal depression but am happy to say that the depression lifted within 3 days of the birth of my ds. I was so relieved when the report came out and I realised that it was 'normal'.

I suffered from a bout of depression when I was pregnant with my second child. It was a planned pregnancy, and everything was fine until at about 33 weeks the midwife told me the baby was still breech, and that if it didn't turn I would probably have to have a Caesarean. For some reason this threw me totally. I became convinced that I wouldn't be able to cope with two children, and that I wouldn't be able to love the baby because of what it had done to me. I used to lie in the bath at night crying and apologising to the baby because I felt so sorry for it, because it was going to be born to a mother who could'nt love it. I couldn't focus on anything, and I felt dreadful because I wasn't in any fit state to give my son a good last few weeks of attention before this usurper came along and ruined his life. I really frightened my husband by telling him that I thought I wouldn't be able to cope and would hurt one of the children. It really upsets me now to think of how I felt. The local maternity services weren't much help - the community midwife service has been cut back so much that you hardly get to see them at all, especially if you're not a first time mum. In the end my husband talked me into going to see my doctor, who suggested that I go up to the maternity hospital to talk to a specialist about trying to turn the baby. The first thing that happened when I got there was that they did a routine scan, which immediately showed that my daughter was firmly head-down and ready to go - everybody had been feeling her bottom and thinking it was her head (she must have turned quite early on, because I knew it hadn't happened since I was told she was breech). So I went through all that for nothing. In the end I had a very straightforward labour and loved her to bits the minute I laid eyes on her, and have coped very well with two kids. I can see now that my family knew that there was no way I wouldn't love her, but at the time I was in a horrible horrible place and was very very scared, and nobody (other than my husband, who was a rock) seemed to take it at all seriously. A few weeks after the birth I had to fill in the post natal depression rating scale thing for the HV, but it was during the pregnancy that I really needed help and there wasn't really a support structure there, especially since the cuts in our local health service.

Would anyone be interested in talking about antenatal depression for a national Sunday newspaper magazine? I'm doing a story on antenatal depression, and want to speak to a variety of women about their experiences. If so, please contact jane21 on [email protected]