oakleythoughtso

How can you not notice you are depressed? It's fairly easy, for a time.

When you have two children under two, life is very, very tiring. All of the time. For the first year or so. When you're in the thick of that, you don't see the end. You don't know whether things will ever settle down again. The 'now' becomes your life, and you might just lose the ability to believe that things will ever change.

After the birth of my second daughter, I was on a complete high for two weeks. I didn't get the usual baby-blues. The labour and birth had gone quite well, really. My recovery was quick. The baby was gorgeous. We had bonded. That seemed to me to be a crucial indicator of how things were going. If you were going to get post-natal depression, you were going to be one of those mothers with a) a difficult baby, b) no support, c) a traumatic delivery to recover from, or d) an inability to form a bond with your baby. None of those boxes was ticked for me. I had: a) a fairly easy-going baby, b) very good support - my husband James took about 5 weeks off work, c) smooth delivery, and d) instantaneous bonding. Even the breastfeeding was going well. (And breastfeeding is NOT a piece of cake.)

I was, however, tired. I'd been mildly anaemic during the pregnancy, and also extremely nauseous. My beloved grandmother had also died very early in the pregnancy. I had had to telephone my parents, who were in Alaska at the time, to tell them. It was 4am their time. It was the most terrible phone call I have ever had to make. Although I went to the funeral, I think the grieving was somewhat muted; my mind and body were busy dealing with the next generation. I did miss my Nana terribly. I still do. But I was comforted by knowing that my lovely Dad had seen her before flying to Alaska, and had told her about the baby I was carrying.

And now that the baby was here, I was tired. Have I mentioned tired? And exhausted? Ok. So I was very tired.

One night my husband put his hands on my shoulders, hoping a hug might ease some of my burden of weariness. I jumped and shrugged him off with terrifying rapidity. It was an unconscious reaction, and one which shocked both of us. For James, it confirmed some suspicions. He brought me a large book, and opened it to the Post-Natal Depression pages. He gently said that he thought I might have PND. I looked at him blankly, furious at I-didn't-know-what. Then I determinedly read the pages he had referred to.

I had read these pages before. Kaz Cooke's KidWrangling is an amusing and enjoyable read. Like all well-prepared mothers, I had read the PND material so that I could be ready to spot any warning signs. But that had been months ago. Now, when I read the checklist, I cried.

Only two tears squeezed themselves out and landed on my cheeks. They didn't even have the momentum to roll downwards. They just stopped there in their tracks. Inside, it felt like I was sobbing. But nothing much was coming out. There was a dam wall of anger and confusion blocking it. James knew, though. The lack of protest on my part was disconcerting for him.

One of the things I'm grateful for is that Kaz Cooke's book had a wide range of possible symptoms of PND in it. It actually made me feel a bit better to realise that there could be something deeper going on than just being desperately tired all the time, and quite possibly a terrible person - or worse: a bad mother. Because, for me, the single biggest symptom of depression was anger. I don't mean hormonal grumpiness, either. I mean full-on rage. Mostly inside my head, but sometimes, dangerously, leaking out into my dealings with my beautiful daughters. And making me shrug off the love of my life.

to be continued...

What has happened to me is by no means uncommon. My story is not all that simple, although nobody's ever is. At least to me, it was nowhere near predictable. Maybe wiser people saw it coming. but no-one likes to cast doubt, or to wear the doom-sayer's mantle. So there was no real warning that I could hear buzzing on the airwaves.

I'm writing it. I hope it will help others. Sometimes we must learn by doing. At other times, we may dodge a bullet if someone has handed us a little piece of Kevlar just at the right time.

Backstory? Yes. There should be some. At the risk of skimping, I'm going to rush through this bit. I may come back to it later. Just picture me as an idealistic young woman for whom first pregnancy and early motherhood went fairly smoothly. Note the loving, supportive, actively-involved and fully-employed young lawyer who is my husband, standing just next to me. The cute little mini-version of him toddling around is our first daughter. We think she's fairly easy at this stage, because she sleeps fairly well at night. And isn't that what people talk about most?

We buy our first house, just as we embark on 'trying for' another baby. The day we move I don't feel very well. I'm dizzy. A few weeks later we realise we didn't have to try very hard for another baby. We are blessed.

The second pregnancy is nauseating. It is virtually impossible to describe how bad 'morning sickness' (VERY insulting name for it!) can be. You know that queasy feeling when you have gastro? Imagine that not really going away for months on end. That's some kind of approximation anyway.

But I cope. It's hard, because the one-year-old is demanding, and not at all good at daytime naps. (I'm very good at daytime naps. It's my gifting.) We live far away from family, although we have some very good friends. We get there.

I can tell you the exact moment it all began to unravel. I was at my Mums' Group. [Whatever bad press such groups have received, let me tell you that mine was a stellar bunch of completely wonderful, warm, genuine and real friends. We met for six years and still keep in touch.] Ok, so I was at Mums' Group having a cuppa. The toddlers (approaching two years of age) were playing nearby and I was breastfeeding my second daughter; she was a perfect little two-week old.

A friend of the host dropped in, and marvelled that I was 'out and about' by myself with two children under two, a couple of weeks after giving birth. I basked in this admiration. I considered myself a strong person, and able to cope with a lot. This was the kind of affirmation that sustained me, and to some extent contributed to my identity. Not good.

The friend asked about the labour - four and a half hours, I told her. "Yeah, Sal coughs them out!" someone said. I laughed, but a penny dropped. Perhaps my front - the one I wasn't actually aware of until that moment - worked so well that it even persuaded my friends that I was finding all of this easy. People were talking about labour being easy for me. I would concede to 'uncomplicated' and 'relatively short'. But NOT, emphatically NOT EASY.

Nor was having two kids. I'd always imagined that two wasn't many. But when my husband went back to work, I realised I was out-numbered. And that could be dangerous.

That very afternoon my toddler ran onto the road while I stood on the footpath helplessly holding my new baby. I was distraught, and overwhelmed suddenly with feelings of failure. The 'what-if's were quite insistent. That morning, my eldest hadn't wanted me to buckle her into her car seat, and suddenly that mattered too, and the feeling of rejection stung. Now I sort of shrivelled up inside a brain of rage. I was all contained within a blanked face. And I didn't really notice.

to be continued