Hi my name is Joanne. I live in
Poynton and I am a mum to two cheeky rascals, Betsy and Jude. Sadly, like so many others, I suffered with
ante-natal anxiety and postnatal anxiety and depression when I had my second
child, Jude. Poynton PANDAS have really
made an unbelievable difference to my life and that of my family. If it wasn’t for speaking to Rhiannon who
runs the group I certainly wouldn’t have sought help when I did. PANDAS also placed me with a counsellor
called Julia Larmer who was amazing and helped me make sense of what was
happening to me and start on the road to becoming ‘me’ again.
Betsy was born in
September 2011. She was, thankfully,
conceived soon after we started trying.
I can’t say I enjoyed pregnancy; it wasn’t really what I expected. I felt like I was hungover for most of the
first 16 weeks (dizzy, sick and tired) and during the pregnancy I had pretty
much every minor symptom you can imagine!
Betsy’s birth was difficult, I was contracting regularly and strongly
from the word go but I didn’t dilate past 6cms.
Eventually she was born by emergency c-section. When I held her though I was very lucky, I
felt immense love and a feeling that I would describe as euphoria. I found being a mum very rewarding and
generally loved it. Betsy wasn’t the
easiest of babies though and as time went on the gloss wore off a little and I
began to wonder if I could manage with 2 children, as we had planned. We decided that perhaps we would start trying
after Betsy was 2.
However fate had other
plans and I unexpectedly got pregnant again when Betsy was 9 months old. I was terrified by the prospect of having
another baby; I wondered how on earth I was going to cope. Those close to me were encouraging but I
didn’t hear them. I felt my life was out
of control, I had just returned to work in a stressful job in Law and we were
in the process of moving house. I
started to feel sudden waves of panic without warning, almost like somebody had
startled me and made me jump. I felt
like I was suffocating and that there were no answers to the issues I felt I
was facing. I kept carrying on spinning
the plates until one weekend I got ill with a flu like illness and fainted
twice. I went to see my GP and I ended
up getting very upset and telling him about my anxiety. He was very understanding and signed me off
work with the intention of me getting some space and hopefully getting to the
best place possible in readiness for the birth.
This was great advice as I gradually did feel better until the point
that I just wanted my baby to be born so I could hold him and have that
‘moment’ that I had with Betsy.
Jude was born in March
2013 by elective c-section. As soon as I
was able, I held him and tried to feed him, as I had with Betsy. He wouldn’t feed but I wasn’t concerned; I
just thought he wasn’t ready yet.
However the midwife queried whether he was breathing properly and ran
some tests. I remember her ringing
someone and then an incubator type cot arrived.
She said Jude had to be seen by a doctor and off he went. I did not want to be separated from him and I
felt very traumatised that we couldn’t be together. I was unable to move though following a
spinal block anaesthetic and I was taken on to a ward with mums and their new
babies. It transpired that Jude had a lung
infection that they thought he had contracted in the womb. Jude was ventilated and cared for in the
intensive care unit of the neonatal unit.
I didn’t hold him again until 6
days after his birth. He spent 12 days
in the neonatal unit in total and I stayed with him either as an in-patient
myself or in a bed on the neo natal unit.
It was awful being apart from Betsy but at the time she was quite a
Daddy’s girl so she seemed to cope well.
When we came home, I
initially felt happy to be home and very grateful that Jude was now well. I felt driven and motivated to begin life as a
family of four and I thought that if I could cope with what had happened
initially then I could cope with anything. I found that my husband and family didn’t
really want to talk about what had happened, it seemed a bit of a taboo subject
and people quickly shut down conversations before they really began.
I can’t be precise
about when I started to experience feelings of anxiety and post-natal
depression, I think it was somewhere around the 6-9 month mark. My symptoms appeared very gradually, with a
drip, drip, drip effect. The symptoms I experienced were not what you might
necessarily expect. I think this was
because I had a toddler too so I just had to keep going and keep going. I became very irritable, negative, frustrated
and angry. My internal voice was so horrible and I used to tell myself I was a
bad person and a bad mother. I felt overwhelmed by things and like I just
couldn’t cope with anything more. If I was alone with the two children all day
I would worry how I would manage; I felt that something would happen that I
couldn’t cope with. I thought I shouldn’t
have had children, I wasn’t deserving of them or good enough for them. I felt it would be best if I left but
thankfully I didn’t have thoughts of suicide. However I could have periods of feeling fine
and when I was in company I was usually quite jovial, I think it took my mind
off things.
When almost everybody close
to me irritated me and most days were bad, it occurred to me that I might have
a problem. Prior to that, I thought it
was usually the fault of somebody else that I felt the way I did. Looking back I felt scared and
bewildered. I didn’t know what was
happening to me. I remember thinking that
it couldn’t be post natal depression as that was something that happened to
people soon after birth. I made contact
with Rhiannon of PANDAS and we met for a coffee. I thought I was wasting her time and that she
would just reassure me I was a stressed mum of two. I
remember telling her my feelings and symptoms and needing constant
reassurance. "Can you tell me if THIS is normal" I asked her repeatedly. It became apparent though as we were talking
that my feelings were familiar to Rhiannon as somebody who had experienced post
natal depression and had also helped people in similar positions. I decided to see my GP who luckily was very
understanding. Rhiannon also gave me
Julia’s details and I started having counselling. It made a huge difference almost immediately
as Julia gave me strategies to help with feelings of anger and being
overwhelmed. Being able to discuss what
happened to Jude also helped me gain the acknowledgement that I needed about
how upsetting that situation was.
However I still had symptoms
of tearfulness and feeling unable to cope with anything further. My GP advised I start anti-depressants. I was very reluctant initially but my GP
explained anti-depressants as having a rebalancing effect on the brain and I
decided to give them a go. I felt that I
really wanted to deal with my symptoms in order to make as full a recovery as
possible. Quite soon after, I started to
feel better. My symptoms started to fade
and the old me began to emerge. I remember being surprised when I did
something that I would associate with my old self.
I think I am well now;
I even feel like some good has come from the whole experience. I am
trying new things such as different forms of exercise, meditation and art and I
feel much more content than I did even before I became ill. I also volunteer for PANDAS in Poynton as I
feel passionate about helping families who suffer with post natal illness and
to try and raise the profile of post-natal depression which occurs later down the
line. Please, please do get in touch if
you are struggling. We really want to
help.
