Publish date: 5 May 2023
Older People’s Mental Health Services
Suhana Ahmed suffered from post-natal depression after the birth of her son.
Here, she shares her personal experience as part of Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week to help raise awareness of mental health problems during and after pregnancy, and the care and support available to women affected by it. She says:
"I always knew I was at high risk of antenatal and postnatal depression. Having had a severe depressive episode in the past and working in Psychiatry as a trainee for a number of years, I was well aware of the implications.
I fell pregnant quickly and experienced a surprisingly good pregnancy. Perinatal services were scarce at this point, and I never saw a perinatal service until I was admitted to a mother and baby unit.
I went into labour 3 weeks early. A catalogue of failures ensued – my failure – a prolonged labour, C-section, special care baby unit, inability to breastfeed and they went on.
I was exhausted, physically, and emotionally, and totally unprepared.
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the exhaustion, the normal struggles of being a first-time mother to an unsettled baby with reflux evolved into the depression that would darken my first year of motherhood. I would look at my son and know that he was mine and that he had been longed for, but I felt no joy.
The symptoms crept up on me slowly. Somewhere in the blur of time, I progressed from the classic symptoms of depression (low and tearful) to what I describe as ‘survival’ mode. I extracted myself from everyone emotionally and cut myself off from life. I spent hours on the internet scouring adoption sites in a bid to give my son a better life, one he deserved. In the late hours of the night, in between feeds, I would be researching intently the most successful methods of suicide. I made plans obsessively factoring in any eventuality, writing letters for those I left behind (including my son) justifying my actions.
Due to the limited perinatal care available at the time, I was unable to see a perinatal psychiatrist when my depression eventually came to light.
I saw a general adult psychiatrist and options were limited – home treatment team or admission. No real option for care and support at home which is what I was desperate for.
I was admitted to a mother and baby unit for 3 weeks. My husband left me sobbing with our 6-month-old son on the first night there. I can’t recall my first week on the unit.
By the start of my second week, the cloud started to lift. I ventured out of my room, and I would take my little boy into the garden on the sunny days and watch him smile, oblivious to my situation.
I became more aware of the very unwell women around me; the psychotic mother who believed her child was being poisoned and refused to put him down, the manic mother who could not help but interfere with everyone else’s baby and a depressed mother, very similar to myself, who had come very close to ending her life. Over those 3 weeks in the unit, I began feeling like a mother and by the end of them was desperate to be discharged.
I’d like to say that this is where my story ends, but in fact the next 6 months were equally hard but with different challenges. What remained were the threads of a bond starting with my little boy and the overwhelming guilt at not having been the mother he deserved. I had to learn to interact with my son, to smile with him, to meet his emotional needs all while being wracked with the unbearable knowledge that I had failed to do exactly this in the first 6 months, a time which I knew to be critical.
I often wonder whether the outcome would have been the same if the services available now were present then (10 years ago). If I had seen a specialist immediately after his birth, would they have picked up on my descent into postnatal depression sooner? Would they have treated me sooner?
Would their input have meant feeling less guilty for not being the mother I could have been in those first few months?
Would it have avoided an inpatient admission which my husband and I have never recovered from?
And finally, would I have gone on to have that second child that I always longed for knowing that support was there?
I suspect the answer to all those questions is yes.
However, with the right care at the right time, it is possible to recover. So, to anyone going through a similar experience, I encourage you to reach out for professional mental health support as early as possible.
If you need support, our perinatal mental health service is here for you.