G&A, I've just been alerted to this thread, and I'm glad I was.
Let me tell you a little about what happened to me. I'd just gotten married, the world was my oyster, I'd finished my degree and we were going to go travelling, perhaps living in different countries, we could do what the hell we wanted to! Just 3 months later, due to a single, single accident, I found myself pregnant. I cannot describe to you the horror I felt! I did a lot of soul-searching. I didn't want the baby, yet I knew I couldn't go ahead with an abortion, the only way forward seemed to be adoption. Yet my dh wouldn't hear of this.
My life seemed to be taken out of my hands. Before I knew it we were getting a mortgage and buying a house, something I never wanted to do but found myself just going along with it. I felt isolated from my friends, who now looked upon me as 'different' as none of them were even married let alone with children. I knew nothing of children, neither did I particularly want to. I found myself getting more and more depressed. I would shut myself off from family and friends, I couldn't talk to dh about how I felt as I knew it made him angry and upset. I found myself loathing the baby, and then I had this tremendous guilt inside me about feeling this way towards the baby inside me. I thought I would make a terrible mother, I was already hating my child and it wasn't even born! All the more reason, in my eyes, to give the baby to a family who did want it.
I tried to get help for the way I felt. The doctor asked me if I wanted an abortion, I said no, so he just told me that it was my hormones and that I'd get over it. A work colleague who did have kids seemed to be a better person to talk to, but she just told me that if I felt this way I should have had an abortion. i became increasingly confused, unhappy and depressed.
Because I thought I was such a bad person, and because of all the turmoil inside me that had no release, I began to harm myself. I would thump my thighs until they left bruises, I would scratch my arms until they bled. I began to have delusions about this time. I honestly thought that everything that was happening to me was because I was possessed, and the baby inside me was in fact a demon. So one night, when dh was out, I thought I heard voices, I thought I felt a prescence in the house and I could have sworn I saw faces pressed up against the glass of the back door. Somehow I thought that if I cut the baby out, all this would stop. I went for the knives, but took a good glug of wine on my way past. Perhaps it was this that actually saved me. I suddenly realised that I needed urgent help, so I phoned NHS Direct (the number was stuck on the phone so it was the first thing I saw!). I wasn't coherent, I remember telling him that I had really bad hayfever and couldn't take anything for it. Luckily the guy sussed that something was terribly wrong and he sent an ambulance.
I was assessed by various psychologists and psychatrists and they concluded that I had pre-natal depression. I gave birth soon after to a beautiful baby girl, I was numb that I had given birth at all! The thing that helped me the most was being referred to a Community Psychiatric Nurse, just being able to pour all my feelings out to someone really helped! She encouraged me to write everything down and hand it to her every session.
I got pregnant again, and the same thing started happening. Luckily this time the relevant people were forewarned and I got help very quickly.
You are not alone and you are not a bad person. Depression is a disease and it needs treatment, just as any other illness does. Please CAT me if you need more help. I'm a good listener!