Hello all.
Thanks for the thread Star. I suspect as you have also posted in Mental Health you may have a vague idea of where I've been for the last, oh, nine or ten months.
I have indeed been "incognito" on MN but not on these boards.
It's been a challenging few months. You may remember that I applied for a job in May of last year as Principal SLT for ASD in my area. I didn't get it which was not a massive surprise to me, as I said how I wanted things to be rather than doing the usual "I would do it just as you did it because that is the best way to do it, you can trust me not to change anything" interview spiel. Partially this was because during my preparation, I spoke to a lot of people in the voluntary sector about the state of services in our area and as I suspected there was a lot of anger and upset about the limited lack of support received by parents. With the role being 2.5 days and with most of it (inevitably) about "management" aka going to meetings about meetings about meetings, I felt that the scope for change was very limited.. but the whole thing was, anyway, a bit depressing.
I was indeed having a baby (due around the same time as Star) and for a number of reasons, including a difficult previous birth with Kielland's forceps, I was very anxious about it. I'd also threatened miscarriage through the first two trimesters.
I was deeply suspicious of the people involved in discussing this with me as when I approached the consultant to discuss the best ways to prepare to avoid induction, I was given a litany of "risks" of ELCS, despite having never asked for one. I was then sent to someone else, who repeated these horrors: I would be internally bruised, perhaps infertile, the baby would have breathing difficulties etc etc. Again - I had not asked for an ELCS. Working in the system, my NHS bullshitometer was on high alert: why was I being given this information? Why did they expect I would ask for one? I had a lead consultant sit and explain carefully to me how my induction experience "was not a bad one" and when I explained carefully in return that, well, the experience of people screaming about me as I gave birth and saying "we've lost the heartbeat" was a bit frightening for us as we didn't know what was going on, she said "don't you think you're exaggerating a bit? you had a very normal vaginal delivery" (erm, Kielland's forceps in theatre with spinal block and whole team ready to give cs, if that's a "normal vaginal delivery", there is something wrong!).
And then, as you may remember Starlight, I was breech. Until 37 weeks. So having been loaded up with all these fears of the trauma it would include, and yet not trusting the NHS to provide for a safe normal delivery, my anxiety was SKY HIGH. The laughable thing about all this is that this led to me being "diagnosed" with.... wait for it.. wait for it... OCD.
I was horrified. Absolutely horrified. I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen that I had this serious mental health condition and then I started to read about it and suddenly I felt very, very shaky indeed. And lo and behold, I started to feel down. Really down...
But we kept preparing for our home birth and natural birth and actually, despite me being terrified to the point that I was having constant flashes and "what if's?" of being in pain and ignored and my baby dying, I did go on to have a pain-relief free water birth with no trauma to myself or my baby... but then the community midwife team had a total freak out because he lost a pound of weight and I suddenly found myself again with professionals in my house twice a day telling me that I was doing motherhood wrong until I totally shouted at one of them to get out and made a complaint... which led to them discharging me.
The mental health team were by now involved and of course, they (and to be honest, I at that stage) viewed my difficulties with having people in my house giving me conflicting information every day and often twice a day in the first week of having my son at home as a byproduct of my "anxiety disorder". So an agreement was made that he would have regular HV checks and none of this high-panic intervention as everyone agreed that clinically he was doing absolutely fine - bright shiny eyes, feeding well etc etc.
So I had a 6 week check. And a 12 week check.. and all was well. And then I started to worry he was looking thin, which I said to my CPN (who was visiting me three weekly) and she said it was just my anxiety etc etc....
Except, of course... it wasn't. At 20 weeks, my baby who had been 91st centile at birth had dropped to 0.4 of a centile and was described by the GP as "wasted".... and I couldn't BELIEVE it. Everyone I had told my concerns to had told me not to weigh him, it would "give in to the anxiety" and that it was just a "symptom"... and so I went against my gut, trusting in the "professionals" (though God knows why, I've always been sceptical about them at work, I suppose I just didn't want to believe that this sort of thing was possible!).
And then, in a really cruel twist of irony, I - having been the one who took him to be weighed off my own bat - was told by a member of my mental health care team that "it was good that I had finally realised [that he was so thin] as otherwise "external agencies" would have had to become involved and that would have been really uncomfortable". I said I thought he had a tongue tie (which I had said to HV and GP) and the CPN said in that calm, nicey nice voice that people have: "Working, no one but you is concerned about him having a tongue tie, consider what that means". I said I wanted to keep breastfeeding and she said "you need to follow medical advice now, this is not about your needs".....
Well, a lot of you know what this feels like. I was FLABBERGHASTED. Luckily I saw through it.. and had his tongue tie snipped that weekend. I also took him to A and E so a Paed could check him because I knew it would be at least 3 months until a Paed saw him otherwise and if there was an underlying condition that it needed to be progressed rapidly due to the delay. Just as well, as when the referral came through in January a "mix up" meant I was sent to pre-operative assessment with the GP referral saying that he had a "tongue condition reducing his ability to breathe" 
. Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up!
Luckily, I had a supportive CBT therapist and we arranged a review where the psychiatrist etc literally shouted at me for complaining and when I challenged his nonverbal communication for being aggressive, he started shouting at me to consider mine! Cue another complaint. Sigh.
And in the final stage of "being down the rabbit hole", I was sent to Occupational Health who suggested that I might need to "consider an alternative role" because of my obvious "vulnerability to stress".
Oh dear.
So ladies, right now I really don't know where I am at. I am actually fine in terms of my mood and understanding of all of this - I can see why I distrusted the NHS (!!! ha, I somehow doubt anyone here will question why!) and I know that is not in itself a mental illness (!!!). I am, however, very reluctant to think about returning to work in this system. My own job, as you know, is pretty protected from all of this but it is under serious threat at the moment as the powers that be don't want individual costly therapy for teenagers, they want ever more "training" for school staff on how to do generic "therapy".
I can't work in a system like that, I'm afraid! I have been speaking with colleagues responsible for these care pathways and trying to convince them that this is about creating a market and essentially protectionistic and not what is needed from our profession, but that is not going so well. Again, as lots of you know, that sort of view is highly unpopular within the system and now that I have a "identified mental health condition", I have lost credibility.
I have been looking a lot at things like Mindfulness and ACT though as I have found these helpful in terms of helping me get through this whole nightmare, and I wonder if in the future I might sidestep into this sort of thing and provide a service based on this. ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) is behavioural in basis, based on Relational Frame Theory which I first heard about at Verbal Behaviour training back in 2005 and which I personally think provides a MUCH better account of complex verbal behaviours than anything currently out there. Unfortunately currently there isn't really any professional training on it but I am looking into what I might be able to do to train further in this radically different way of looking at language.
But yes, totally off the speech therapy grid!
Sorry so long.. but it has been nine or ten months and hey, I was never very good at the short posts! 