Leading up to my diagnosis
Leading up to my diagnosis –
When my son was born, I had an easy 3 hour birth with no pain relief other than gas and air, I say easy, it was far from easy lol, it was hard, really hard but it went as smoothly as I could have asked for it to go. What happened next is what changed everything for me, I think this is where my postnatal depression really began. I retained the placenta after the birth and the midwife and I tried everything to encourage it to come out, yet it decided it would be just like me, a stubborn little thing and it point blankly refused… it then proceeded to break up inside… yes gross I know. Not only was it gross it was scary, I was losing a lot of blood and in the end as I started drifting in and out of consciousness and I was rushed to theatre and my newborn baby was taken away from me as I was put under general anaesthetic.
Mainly I remember the fear, the fear I felt when the nurse put a mask over my face and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, where was my baby, was my baby ok, was I going to be ok and then nothing… the next thing I remember is waking up. It is funny now some of what I remember, as I had eyelash extensions on, the nurse was telling me how careful he was with them when he had to tape my eyes shut, I remember thinking how lovely of him, my poor eyelashes, I hope they stayed on. I did not ask for my baby when I woke, I asked for my partner, I asked if he was ok, it was like I had forgotten I had a baby for a moment. What kind of a mother does that? What kind of mother does not think of their baby first? I still to this day do not understand why, but I have learnt what I went through was traumatic and there is no point beating myself up about that anymore. The surgery went well and after a blood transfusion through the night, the following day I could take my baby home. I was so relieved but so exhausted at the same time and once I got home it was not what I thought it would be. I had done this before, I had had a baby before, so I knew what to expect right? Wrong, it turns out every baby is different, and every experience is different too.
I chose to breastfeed this time, that was one thing I did differently to my first baby, although I didn’t see that at first, I just couldn’t understand why I had found my first child so easy and my second so hard. I had so many thoughts in my head that I kept bottled up because how could I be struggling second time round? Charlie could not latch properly, and I spent days with midwives coming to the house and a screaming hungry baby, my then 7 year old was also upset because I had no time for her and she could see how upset I was getting. I persevered for 5 days, by which point the pain was unbearable and I felt like my baby was starving, it was affecting us bonding as a family and I just could not go on that way any longer. I was sat on my bed in the middle of the night crying my eyes out and so my partner went out to get formula for me. I felt like a failure, I felt like it was my fault, I was not good enough. I promised myself when I decided to breastfeed that I would not put pressure on myself and if it did not work then that was fine, but that is not how I really felt inside. I had 2 midwives and a health visitor look in his mouth to see if he had a tongue tie, they all said not, so why wouldn’t he latch? Obviously, it was my fault. I told everyone I was ok with it, because it meant I didn’t have him latched to my all the time, but inside I didn’t feel that way, inside I hated myself for not being able to feed my child. I think with postnatal depression it is easy to tell people your ok on the outside and make it sound real and that is how we hide how we really feel on the inside. I will end todays blog here – turns out my baby did have a lip tie which I didn’t find out until he was around 9 months old, I wish I had stuck to my gut feeling now but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I look forward to sharing my next blog with you all to continue telling my story. If you have got this far, I want to thank you so much for reading, following and supporting my journey.
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