Motherhood: Owls and daffodils and my experience of postpartum psychosis

This is my experience of the first year of motherhood. I want to tell the story as I thought it might help me to write things down but I also hope it helps others who may be going through similar things.

I had a very happy childhood, growing up in Birmingham with my Mum, Dad, and two younger brothers. I went away to university at the age of 18 to study Sport Science and went on to further my studies with a Masters degree and a PhD. I became a lecturer and researcher a few years ago, where I have enjoyed teaching and researching about physical activity and health. My Mum passed away whilst I was at university, which to be honest, I will never get over, but I have adjusted to life without her and try to live life to the full. I met my husband at university and we got married a few years ago. We enjoy travelling together and particularly enjoy climbing, cycling and mountain walking together. The decision to have children took us a while, as we were very much career focused and into our outdoor activities, which we knew would have to go on hold for a while! Nevertheless we embraced our pregnancy and were very excited about the times ahead.

My pregnancy was great! I felt healthy and carried on exercising and worked quite late into it. I was a week overdue when I started to show signs of pre-eclampsia, so I was admitted to hospital to be monitored and it was decided that I should be induced. Although it was not quite how I imagined the birth to be, I took it in my stride and was pleased that the baby would be on its way! I developed a temperature and started showing signs of an infection, so I was put on an IV antibiotic drip as a precaution to stop any infection. I went into labour on the Monday evening and started to have contractions throughout the night. To cut a long story short as I’m sure you don’t need to hear about the labour! after 36 hours, it was decided that the induction had failed and the baby was in distress. I had an emergency c-section under general anaesthetic (I couldn’t have a spinal as there was a risk of infection). 

At 6.23 am on the Wednesday 4th March 2015, our baby daughter was born.

I woke up from the general anaesthetic quite confused. This is probably quite normal, but the confusion got worse and was prolonged. I couldn’t work out what had happened to me. I had no concept of time and I couldn’t really work out where our daughter had come from. The doctors reversed the morphine pump (which I had for the pain from the c-section), incase I was reacting badly to it (this didn’t change anything). They did a CT scan on my brain to see if I had had a stroke from the pre-eclampsia (it came back negative). They continued to monitor me. By 6pm that evening we realised that we hadn’t even told anyone that our daughter had been born, as so much had been going on. I started to breastfeed, but my milk hadn’t come in. I didn’t sleep that night, or for the next few nights as time was taken up trying to comfort our new baby daughter and trying to breastfeed, but also for some reason, I just couldn’t sleep. My brain was on overdrive, I was manic. As I was quite ill and the doctors and midwives couldn’t work out what was wrong with me, I stayed on the labour ward and my husband was allowed to stay too (on a camp bed that the kind midwives had made up for him!).

The next few days are a blur. I was still in hospital, but was moved to the postnatal ward. My parents visited, I tried to breastfeed but failed. Our daughter started formula feeding. The midwives took our daughter in the night to give us a break, but I still couldn’t sleep. My husband left on the Saturday night so that he could get some sleep at home. I was awake during the night, and I became increasingly anxious and started to hear babies crying everywhere. I was convinced the midwives were talking about me outside my room, I heard chains being jangled outside my room as if someone was coming to lock me up. I asked one of the midwives what I had done and why people were coming to get me to take me away (they weren’t).

The next morning (Sunday), my husband came back and the midwives told him they were quite concerned about me, that I was very anxious and had been up all night. That morning, I was walking to the toilet across the way from my room and I collapsed. In my medical notes it says that I collapsed for a few minutes and refused to get up. In my mind it was very different…. My husband was asking me ‘why did you do it?’ and I turned round to see the midwives taking our baby daughter away to be resuscitated. I suddenly had a realisation about what I had done – I had killed our baby daughter and I was going to have to face everyone I knew and tell them.

I was lifted onto the bed and I eventually came round. My whole reality and perception of the world had shifted. I thought I was living in an afterlife and was being punished for what I had done to our daughter. My husband and best friend were there with me, but I had this tormenting feeling within me that I was going to have to admit to them what I had done. In reality, our daughter was fine and was being looked after by the midwives whilst all this was going on. Eventually when she came back into the room I didn’t believe she was mine.

I was admitted to a general psychiatric ward after telling a nurse everything that had happened whilst I had collapsed. Our daughter went home with my husband. After a week of monitoring and not believing I was still alive, I was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. A rare psychiatric emergency that can happen to anyone after childbirth. The reasons for it are still largely unknown, but can be a combination of a traumatic birth, lack of sleep, influx of hormones related to childbirth and underlying psychological issues, although it can happen to anyone with no previous history of mental health issues.

Again the rest of things are a bit of a blur, I was discharged from the psychiatric unit and monitored at home. I still believed that I was living in an afterlife, and my friends and family became stranger like. I was prescribed anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety medication. My husband took time off work to look after our daughter and me. Day to day life was spent going through the motions of feeding and nappy changing, together with appointments with mental health teams, health visitors, GPs and clinical psychologists. I had delusions, I was paranoid, and I still didn’t believe I was ill. I just couldn’t make sense of the world. Certain things were very loud and in my face. The clock in our kitchen was so loud I had to take the batteries out. Birds and animals were so loud they were almost in my head. Owls and daffodils seemed to pop up everywhere! They stood out to me, almost jumped out at me and I found hidden meanings in all of these. In reality however, owls were becoming very fashionable and were on everything from socks to pencil cases and it was St Davids day in Wales where I live, so the daffodils just happened to be out in bloom! I felt as though everything was being controlled by a higher being and that something or someone was tormenting me (I have no idea who, as I am not a religious person).

Eventually I started to come round to the idea that I might be ill. But I started thinking that there was no way I was going to get better and I just couldn’t see a way out. I began to get very depressed. My mood was very low and I couldn’t see how I could get out of the mess I was in. I had intrusive thoughts about our daughter. I didn’t want to harm her, but I was scared I was going to, almost a panic and fear that I was going to do something to her. I guess this was all related to the psychotic episode that I had in hospital, I was scared that I could have another episode and what was to stop me from harming her?  I had no positive feelings towards my daughter or husband, or for anyone else for that matter and I just thought things would be better if I wasn’t here. I had no control over my thoughts. I would constantly flit between needing to get better, but not knowing how, to getting images of how I could end things. I was in a very dark place. I refused to go back into the general psychiatric ward as I was so scared of it, so I was monitored every day at home and was not allowed to be by myself. My diagnosis changed slightly to ‘severe depression with psychotic symptoms’.

Things got so bad that my husband was forced to push for more treatment. In December 2015 I started electro-convulsive therapy. I had 10 sessions. I’m not really sure how it works, but I think it kick starts the brain into working again. It is quite drastic and used as a last resort and something that was under debate a lot between my psychiatrist and my husband for quite a while. It is not something to enter lightly. It was horrible and something I never want to go through again, but it quite literally saved my life. I finished treatment mid-January 2016.

I am not psychotic anymore, but I am still recovering from the shock and realisation about what happened. My memory of the last year is so poor that I have to be constantly reminded of situations by family and friends. I see a clinical psychologist who is helping me with all this and also with my lack of feelings towards my daughter. I am so much better than I was, but it is something that will shadow the first few years of my daughter’s life. It was certainly not the happy time I thought having a child would be. I feel sad and grieve for the lost times with my daughter. However, I sometimes can’t believe how much better I feel and I get excited by the fact that I can feel excited about things! I am beginning to get some special moments with my daughter where I feel love towards her and I hang on to these knowing that there will be more to come. I have learned quite a few things over the last year…. Becoming mentally ill can happen to anyone and it is such a dark and lonely place. It is so hard to describe to someone just what you are going through and without sounding patronising, I don’t think people can really understand unless they have been through it themselves. I have also learned that I have an amazing network of family and friends, my husband is my rock, I am pretty strong, and life’s too short!

Today our baby daughter, who we named Ella Jo, is nearly 16 months old! Not that I am biased or anything, but she really is the cutest thing I have ever seen….!

Thank-you Rhiannon (Poynton PANDAS) for being there when I needed some support and for giving me the opportunity to share my story.

Sally