“Anyone who knows me knows that I am not afraid to share. I’ve had four miscarriages and have openly talked about them. I’m happy sharing my struggles with anxiety, talking about a spot on my bottom and anything else that usually comes to mind (and straight out on social media!) One thing I did not share though, in detail, is my experience of PND. 

Most of my friends knew I was suffering, but no-one knew how much. You see, to someone like me PND was the ultimate bad boy. The absolute worst.

When I was 14 my mum had an affair. The aftermath that followed was heartbreaking - so much so that several therapists have tried to unlock my memories from that time and been completely unable to. It ended up with me not having had my mum in my life. I had had an amazing childhood, for the first 14 years. We were a happy family - very loving, confident, chilled and comfortable. So, this was a massive shock to all of us.

Because of this, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the ‘perfect mum’. I set out to be the mum I always wished I’d had, the one I did have. A mum who would put her children above her own needs, no matter what. So, you can imagine what PND did for me…

When my son, Hugo was born in December 2012 I was dreading PND. I had been warned to expect it because I had a very difficult pregnancy and had suffered with prenatal depression, due to severe SPD which had put me on early maternity leave at 29 weeks and in a wheelchair. It was awful, I couldn’t go anywhere or see anyone. My husband would come home for lunch, listen to my tears of pity and go back to work again. However, when my son was born, I wasn’t just in the usual newborn glow, I was elated and on a permanent high.

A high that remained until July 2014 when we started to try for another baby. Having had two previous miscarriages I naively convinced myself I couldn’t be that unlucky again, but I was, twice more. It knocked my confidence a lot, but, in December 2015 I found out I was pregnant again and this one worked. As the pregnancy progressed I realised I was starting to bond with my baby as if she was a girl and I began to panic that if she wasn’t I’d be really upset. We had a private gender scan at 16 weeks - I told the sonographer I was 100% certain it was a girl, she grinned at me and told me I was 100% right. I was crying, my husband was crying and even the sonographer was crying. I didn’t realise that this feeling of sheer joy would soon be replaced with a feeling of sheer dread. 

The Creeping Panic

Not long after, around 20 weeks I started to have panic attacks. I’d had them towards the end of my first pregnancy but these ones were intense. They would creep up on me and floor me. Because of my situation with my mum, I started to worry about being a mum to a girl, after all surely mother/daughter relationships don’t work. 

During one of these panic attacks I desperately phoned my local psychology centre and one of the psychologists who was walking past the receptionist’s desk at the time agreed to take the call. She talked me through the panic attack and signed me up for counselling with her, one on one. She quickly became my super hero and I owe my life to her. I continued counselling once a week for the rest of my pregnancy. During this time one of my best friends broke her relationship off with me, and I withdrew even further into myself and became very depressed - not helped by the dreaded SPD coming back and once again putting me in a wheelchair. It was more manageable, because I had my son with me and help from the friends I had made locally, but the guilt I felt towards my son was dreadful. 

When my daughter was born in August 2015, I once again shot into super-happy, super-mummy mode. I was induced at 38 weeks, but having heard horror stories of being on the hormone drip I decided I would throw every dance and yoga move into getting her out on my own. 

The midwife knew I was on a mission and was amazing at leaving me to it. After plenty of walking around, gyrating to Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’ in time to my contractions, my Martha was born. She shot out, looking like a Japanese sumo wrestler, all chubby and with thick black hair. I was so in love, I couldn’t stop looking at her.

The Perfect Family…

This high continued as I managed to successfully breastfeed her, which hadn’t worked with my son. I sat in the garden with her and watched how completely in love my son was with her. She was the cherry on our family cake, the complete picture and the most calming influence in our stormy house (we’re all quite hot headed). Everything was going perfectly and I was 100% in control until she was about 6 weeks old, then something happened that would completely floor me, then and even now a little, I hate to admit. 

It started with me resenting my daughter when she cried. I felt like I had been through so much to get my dream family of four, one of each, and I just needed to be ‘me’ again for a while. Then I would feel guilty for thinking those thoughts about her. Then my son would need something and I would resent him for needing so much of me. Then everything became overwhelming and suddenly I couldn’t cope. 

But Martha in particular. I convinced myself she didn’t love me and as a form of sub-conscious self preservation I think I stopped loving her. I realise now I didn’t, but I would look at her cute face and know I loved her, but I wouldn’t feel a thing. There was nothing there. 

I would go through the motions; smiling, but not feeling it, talking but not meaning it etc. I began to shut down. I didn’t want to be alone with her. I would beg my husband to work from home and realised from very early on I’d been asking him to tend to her needs for me; changing her nappy, putting her down for a nap etc sub-consciously avoiding doing it myself. 

I couldn’t process everything everyone needed from me, I didn’t care. In fact, I realise now it wasn’t that I didn’t care I just didn’t feel anything. I didn’t even recognise what was happening to me. The moment I realised was probably the darkest I have ever been and hope to ever be! 

I was in the shower one day. Hugo was watching TV and Martha was in the moses basket, asleep and I suddenly felt euphoric. I thought about how I was going to get a knife and go back in the shower and cut myself. I imagined the blood pouring out of me and running down the drain and I was so happy thinking of how the thoughts in my head were all going to stop at last. I’ve self-harmed a lot in the past but this time I realised I didn’t just want to cut myself, I wanted to kill myself. I’d just worked out where I was going to cut to have the most impact and Hugo called up the stairs yelling ‘’Mummy’’ in his sweet little voice. 

I suddenly snapped back into reality and crumpled to the floor, hysterically crying. That little voice made me realise what I was about to do to my children, the one thing I swore I would never repeat from my Mother’s actions, I almost left them without a Mother! How could I? How could I ever do that to them. Well, I couldn’t! 

I called my husband and told him everything and we started to put a plan in motion. I contacted my Psychotherapist and arranged to see her right away. I then did one of the hardest things ever, I went to see my GP. 

I had to sit there, in floods of tears and tell my GP that I don’t feel anything for my daughter, I can’t cope with my son and I need help. I explained that I had already put counselling in place and I was prescribed antidepressants. I felt like a fraud. I’m Wonder Woman, I’m Zen Em who can cope with things, approaches life in the yogic way and is a perfect mummy, yet there I was getting excited about killing myself, sneakily making my husband look after our baby girl and taking antidepressants just to try and cope with it all. 

The journey out of it was long and hard, I’m not going to lie. I ended up having a severe reaction to the medication so had to go it alone. Oddly this empowered me to try even harder, because there was nothing else that was going to get me thought it other than me! 

One of the best things that helped me through it was taking pictures and looking back now I’m so glad that I did. It’s hard to see so many pictures of Martha and hardly remember taking any of them, but now I can re-build my memories by looking through them all. I would dress her up in a nice outfit and take pictures of her looking cute. I knew she was gorgeous, I knew she was cute, I just couldn’t ‘feel’ it. 

I did ‘100 happy days on Facebook’ and whilst it was hard on the days where I struggled to find something, it really helped force me to find the good in my life, even if it was just sitting in bed and looking at the dog lying on it in the sun. Anything that helped ground me and keep it real, I would cling on to back then. 

I also started going out, deliberately so other people would coo over her and I could show her off. This might sound really narcissistic of me, but I would literally feed off people’s comments about how lovely she was and slowly but surely I started to ‘feel’ again. 

There was no official end date to it all. Sometimes I wonder if it will always be with me just much smaller and more controllable. I do know that I feel for her 100% though, now. I love my children so much and whilst I moan and call them arseholes regularly, they bring me more joy and self-worth than anything else ever could. They are my Dudo & Moo and I love them to bits!