Postnatal depression convinced me I'd never be able to have another child
After my son turned one, I noticed that people started asking me about a second baby.
I became very skilled at changing the subject because I was too embarrassed to admit that the idea of having another child – which is both such a privilege to even be able to consider and almost universally accepted as one of life’s greatest gifts — had turned into a phobia for me.
Every time I considered it, I would break into a sweat. The subject had already dominated hours and hours of postnatal therapy. How or when would I ever feel ready to have another child?
In fact, my most-searched phrase on Google became: ‘How likely am I to get postnatal depression (PND) twice?’.
For those not familiar with PND, it is a condition causing low mood and often anxiety in the postpartum period. Estimates from the NHS put the number of new mothers and those expecting a baby experiencing mental health difficulties at 27%.
I thought I’d never be able to overcome this fear, but I’m now seven months pregnant – and really excited.
Before I had my son, I spent my whole life dreaming of him. In this imagined future, there’d be a troop! A squad! A gang of kids that each knew me as Mum.
So when I met my partner in the Covid-19 lockdowns, I was so relieved to learn that he shared my vision, which shifted from dream to reality in June 2022 with the birth of our first son.
He was genuinely the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. There was so much joy in the room, and I felt a profound love for him immediately.
But from the moment he was placed in my arms, I started to worry about whether I would (or could) be enough of a mother for him.
Very soon after delivery, I began to cry and asked the midwife if there was something wrong with me. I was shocked and exhausted, and very much not on the post-birth ‘high’ that I had been told was a given.
The midwife assured me this was completely normal and I put it to the back of my mind, assuming it was just a fleeting worry. We muddled through our first day and night, before being discharged and allowed to go home.
As the first few blurry days passed, we were struck by numerous challenges. He wanted to be held all of the time, which put an abrupt stop to the idea we both had to catch up on sleep after a long few days of labour.
Breastfeeding was truly impossible too, and didn’t get any easier as the days wore on. As a result, he was jaundiced and dropping weight.
The little thread I’d found unpicked on the day I birthed him began to unravel more and more as I pulled it – until soon, huge seams began to burst. The idea that I was not capable of looking after him took hold.
I would spend all day ruminating on all my perceived failures as a mother and on how to fix them, obsessively scrolling Google for ‘magical solutions’. At night I would lie in my bed, between my sleeping husband and baby drenched in sweat, panicking and completely unable to drift off.
I became convinced I was a defective mother and always would be. I felt profound guilt towards my son for the fact I struggled so much, when others – I presumed – were finding things much easier. I also felt as though I’d let my husband down.
There were many twists and turns but to keep it brief: I was diagnosed with postnatal depression and anxiety (PND/A) in August 2022.
In the darkest moments, I thought I would never recover. That the beautiful family my husband and I had dreamed of together was just that: a dream.
Under the weight of all of this, one of the most confronting feelings I experienced was a sense of grief for the other children we were supposed to have together. I felt certain that because I had buckled so easily under the weight of the transition to motherhood that I could never have another child. How would I survive it?
After such a tough year – in which my partner had been such a huge emotional support for me as I recovered, alongside managing the transition himself into new parenthood – how could we survive it?
But despite this crippling fear, things around me had started to move and shift. We’d left London and my nervous system had exhaled so deeply I felt peaceful for the first time in years.
Thanks to medication and therapy, the dark clouds became fewer and further between – which was around a year after my PND diagnosis.
I was finding myself in motherhood and really enjoying it. We finally all felt like we’d hit our rhythm.
Until one day in September 2023, my husband let me know that he was ready to have another child if I ever changed my mind. He reassured me that if I really felt I couldn’t, he would accept it. ‘We do make good babies though,’ was his closing statement.
We went to bed and my brain went into overdrive. But in the space where anxiety had once been crippling, I started to imagine our life as a family of four.
I let myself think of our son as a big brother. I thought about future holidays, of my children bickering in the back of the car as we came home from the beach, covered in sand and full of love. I felt the flutters of excitement build until, the next morning, I announced that I was ready.
I am now 30 weeks pregnant with our second son.
In so many ways, we are so privileged to have had access to the support we did that helped me through that almost impossible first year. Over time, I was able to see that my difficult experience, and recovery – rather than deeming me unqualified to do it all again – were actually the perfect training for the job.
I am under no illusion that it will be hard and I know that my mental health may struggle. But I’ve also seen the other side now; I know that it really does get easier. And I am confident that whatever happens, we can handle it.
In the darkest days of my depression, I would search the internet desperately for stories of women who had PND but who had still gone on to have more children.
I found so much strength in learning that though the condition had robbed me of a lot of my mental peace during my son’s first year of life, it was not a reflection on my success as a mother. Nor did it disqualify me from having more children.
If anyone is in the thick of it now and stumbles across this article engaged in the very same search as me, here’s your evidence that not only can you recover from PND, but you can get to a place of acceptance where you feel capable of having another child.
And even excited. There is so much life beyond fear – and you can get there in time.
If you or anyone else you know is struggling with their mental health postnatally, please do get in touch with PaNDAS either via their website or their helpline on 0808 1961 776.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
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