This is not an easy story for me to tell - but I do actually tell people parts of it regularly because people need to know the truth. Before I became ill I had no idea about what could happen to women’s mental health during and after pregnancy and by that point, I had a tiny baby to look after. Far too late.

Anyway, I digress slightly. Before my pregnancy, I counted myself very lucky. I had supportive parents, in-laws, family and a great husband. I had lived with anxiety and mild depression for most of my life, but I think the support of people around me carried me through. GPs weren’t very helpful and I went mostly unmedicated for many years.

I married my husband in early 2013 and we started trying for a baby. I am a teacher and I can remember wanting a baby since I was a child! When nothing happened and nothing happened, I was devastated and, being quite badly overweight, assumed it never would.

I suffered a quite traumatic miscarriage in September 2014. I hadn’t even realised I was pregnant and thought my awful bleeding was my menstrual cycle. The Early Pregnancy Unit were absolutely awful and after a scan told me to go into a room and get some bloods done. I tried to get some information from a midwife about it all and she wouldn’t tell me anything, even about what the blood tests were for. I walked out of the door and she said: “Oh, congratulations!” and off we went, completely clueless about anything.The next day, I miscarried in a supermarket toilet. The EPU didn’t answer the phone (26 phone calls; I still remember) and when they eventually did, they said: “Go home and put a pad in. Call again in two hours.” I did and they didn’t answer. I lost count of the number of calls I made that night and didn’t sleep a wink, not knowing what was going to happen.

Eventually they called me in and gave me the results of the blood tests. They took more blood and then, in front of two other families in the waiting room, told us very loudly and cheerily that we’d ‘lost the baby’ and that we should just ‘move on.’ I ran out with my mum, husband and a midwife running after me.

I appreciate this is a long story, but looking back, it set the scene. We started to try again and still nothing happened, until I lost quite a lot of weight, and started to feel strange in December 2015. I drank my way through Christmas(!) because ‘I couldn’t possibly be pregnant’ until I fainted in a toilet and thought I’d better take a test.

It was positive. We were over the moon, but it set off something in my brain. I lived the next nine months, certain that I would lose this baby. I suffered five chest infections and my asthma worsened to the point that it made it impossible to walk down the road to the shop. I was pretty miserable. I would check I wasn’t bleeding every hour or so and became obsessive. I convinced myself that my baby wasn’t moving and was in the Day Assessment Unit almost every week for a few months. One midwife did say: “I think you’re anxious. Get some help.” I refused the help and didn’t want medication in fear of it harming the baby. My lovely community midwife (she was such a great support to me!) told me I wouldn’t get PND as I was just anxious. This isn’t sarcasm; she was amazing, but just didn’t have the experience or knowledge of this part of pregnancy and beyond.

Eventually at 40+4 I went in to the hospital at 2am, again worried my baby wasn’t moving. I was admitted and induced. My hospital experience was pretty dismal, sadly, but I’m not sure it’s helpful to go into that in detail. I wasn’t treated well. It affected my mental state greatly and I did not sleep. At all. Eventually after three days, I was put on a drip and given a c-section.

My little boy was born and my husband and I had a name straight away. We knew he was a Rowan. And yet, about two minutes after he was born, and being refused skin to skin, I realised something was going wrong in my head. I began to call him Leo in my head, even though I knew he wasn’t called Leo. When I started to call him Leo out loud too, my husband started to worry, I think, but he just assumed I was tired.

Oddly, I felt an immediate bond with Rowan, but I also felt like I was an imposter mother at the same time. When I started screaming at the health assistant because she refused to take off my son’s tag (as his foot was going purple) things got worse from there on in, with very little support from the staff. I removed my stockings and swelled up like a balloon and no-one told me not to. I was existing, trying to interact with people, but I was so exhausted, I couldn’t stay awake, but I couldn’t sleep either. It was a very weird experience.

Eventually, after various awful experiences with staff, including a plumber being admitted to my room to fix the shower whilst I was completely naked and trying to breastfeed(!) I decided to discharge myself. As I left the ward, the midwife called: “You’re at huge risk of mental health difficulties. If you get any mania, let someone know.” I was so sick of it all, that I didn’t question it, nor did my husband, and certainly not that she should have done this in this way.

We went home and I had two weeks of no sleep. Breastfeeding wasn’t working and Rowan was on me 24/7. Nothing was working. I had panic attacks and called the ambulance one night, thinking I was dying. I had conversations with people, but I could just see myself above my own body, talking but taking nothing in. My anxiety was sky high and I just knew I was the worst mother in the world and that I couldn’t do what I needed to do for my baby. I was hopeless and useless and I reached rock bottom. I stopped eating; I stopped wanting to feed my son.

Then it got scary. I started to have strange, intrusive thoughts about hurting Rowan. It got to the point that one day, I couldn’t hold him or look at him or touch him anymore and I refused to get out of bed. I wouldn’t let anyone bring him near me because everything I saw around me/near me/everything I used or touched was a weapon and on seeing him, my mind would tell me I was going to kill him and that I wanted him dead.

I tried to get help from the GP but she just said, “You’re not going to actually do it, are you because then we’d have to get someone in?” and gave me pills. I of course said no, but in my mind I was thinking, ‘Yes, I think I will do it!’ The thoughts were that strong.

Eventually, when I wouldn’t let anyone leave me alone with Rowan or let me touch him, the crisis team got involved, thanks to a vigilant and wonderful midwife who waited in my room with me until they came, talking it through with me and telling me I was normal and ok.

I started to have hallucinations, although I think I got my medication just in time to stop these in their tracks. I remember having thoughts that my beloved cats were going to kill me and I couldn’t look at them either.

My mum had to have Rowan at night as I was started on medication to help me sleep. I’d wake up wanting to see him and then as soon as I did, I’d immediately have the thoughts and want to run away. I avoided baths (I had repeated images of me drowning him).

My main fear was putting my hand over his mouth and suffocating him. I was so distressed by this thought that my hands were permanently tense and began to be very painful. I was trying to stop myself from doing anything to him. It was the last thing I wanted, but my mind was telling me I wanted to harm him and that I was schizophrenic and had become a wannabe murderer overnight. My career was over, I was convinced. They’d never let someone who had thoughts like this work with children. I began thinking I’d harm my family too and that, ironically, they were planning to kill me too.

It was only when I had some emergency therapy with Lift that things started to change slightly. My six sessions made some difference, although my postnatal anxiety and OCD made it impossible to switch off and to let the thoughts go.

Over time, I grew some inner strength and managed to force myself to take Rowan out on my own, despite my thoughts trying to convince me I was about to push the pram into the road. Three months later, my mum, having been with me 24/7 because I wouldn’t let her go, was allowed to leave our house. I finally felt stable enough to be on my own with Rowan for short periods of time. I still had thoughts that I’d ruined my life and that I shouldn’t have been allowed to have a baby, but I knew I had to do this.

My psychiatric nurse didn’t really help and I was waiting to be referred for NHS therapy. I was desperate to meet someone else who’d experienced what I had. She told me I shouldn’t do this because I would start imagining symptoms that weren’t there if I focused too much on it. This made me stop looking for people and delayed my recovery further.

Skip forward nearly three years, and this is where I am now. My son in three, and only recently have I started to feel like I am just another mum trying her hardest to do her best for her child, as opposed to some imposter mother. I now have Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and general support from a new GP, but I am off medication, working and being a mother in the way I always wanted to. Medication didn’t work for me in the end, but it’s a life saver for some people.

It’s taken a long time to get here, but my little boy has kept me going, as have my family.

I am not cured; however I haven’t had intrusive thoughts about Rowan for a year. This is massive for me. My psychologist helped me to understand that the thoughts were fed by OCD and anxiety and that it this had the complete opposite meaning to what I had thought it had. I had these thoughts because I cared too much. My mind and body couldn’t cope with the fear of something happening to my son, so my mind took me to the furthest and worst places in my fears and tried to make it reality for me. A strange coping mechanism, I always think, but that’s how bad it can be for new mothers.

In July 2018, a friend told me about a new therapy group that was starting. I came along and Shine and its members began to change my life. I’d been craving being able to find people who were like me and here I found them. Realising I was one of many made everything seem a bit better. If only I’d listened to my instincts and found people earlier, some parts of my early motherhood could have been so, so much easier.

Please get help early on. Don’t let people tell you how you feel when you know best. Be honest, because no matter how bad you feel or how bad your thoughts are, so many have gone through it too. Don’t wait; act now. Easier said than done, but try. One thing PND, PNA and PNOCD have done for me is make me realise just how strong I am.

I tell myself now that if I have got through this, I can get through anything. Things can still be hard, but now I know they will pass in time and that I am not alone in finding this the hardest job in the world.

I love my little boy and although I am scarred by experiences, he is my reminder that it was all worth it. Now, if I get to the end of the day and I have managed to keep my child safe and fed and well, I’m happy that I have achieved something.