Telling the truth

A lot can be said for honesty. But being honest is hard, or rather finding the words to be so is. I've learned that it's difficult to articulate your thoughts and feelings effectively when in the throws of depression. For many of us, the talking needs to come after the storm passes.

I feel like my storm is beginning to die down, my journey of recovery hasn't been an easy start to finish. I've had to ride new storms when others have died down; feeling like it's over, then discovering it's not. If I could create a graph showing my PND journey, the highest point of depression would climax somewhere in the middle, when I'd started to recover. The beginning of my line would be a mediocre straight one to represent numbness and detachment. Dealing with feelings related to my depression came further down the line.

Now that things are clearer, the truth is also clear, especially now that I've dealt with the anger, disappointment and frustration that goes hand in hand with the truth. For me, telling the truth is easier now because I can see it, but I can also detach myself from it.

The truth of PND can be difficult to face, but giving it a voice can help too. This even reaches out to telling other people the truth, letting them know what is ok and what isn't. Creating boundaries that make you feel safe is perfectly reasonable in order to protect your mental well being. It's easy to forget your boundaries when you're lost and it's easy to forget to do what's right for you. Be honest with yourself and then be honest with everyone else. I realise the content of this entry could come across cryptic, but hopefully a fellow sufferer will be able to relate to my thoughts.

On a lighter note, the weight loss graph is still on the decline... a slow decline headed in the right direction! My current loss stands at 1st 4.5lb. I've never been this big before, but I've also never lost this much weight before. I guess it's an achievement! Maybe slow and steady wins the race afterall?

8 sessions in

This week marked my 8th session at Mind and my impending return to work became the topic of the session.

In many ways, I am looking forward to going back to work. Illness during pregnancy inhibited me from doing my job to the best of my ability and in some ways, disabled me from doing my job at all. For this reason, I feel like I've been on maternity leave forever! I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into my work again, achieving something other than being Mum for a few days a week, whilst proving that I'm still capable of doing my job well.

You may wonder why I haven't returned to work sooner if I've been missing it; I haven't been ready mentally to return. It's a fast paced, high pressure environment and I'm aware that some people felt let down by my inability to perform my duties well when I was pregnant. I felt like I'd let myself down for a good while and shortly after Baby H was born, my mind kept on wandering back to all those I'd 'let down' when I was pregnant. It's only very recently that I've made peace with myself and my pregnancy, I'm a hard working person the rest of the time, what happened was not my fault and in fact, I deserved support, I didn't deserve to feel the way I did. It's a sensitive subject for me, so returning to work too early could undo the work I've put into getting better.

I confessed to Zoe that, had I been better supported in the work place, I think I could have possibly battled through the pregnancy related illnesses and continued doing my job. For a long time, thoughts of this made me feel ashamed, "I should have just carried on doing my job regardless, I should have forced myself to do this and  that."

Zoe asked me if I felt ashamed now. My answer was 'no.' Having said my thoughts out loud, they suddenly didn't seem so bad anymore. Of course I couldn't perform my job properly, battling ongoing sickness, anaemia, and consecutive infections; lacking support and alienation was only going to magnify my illness and make it impossible to face my already high pressured work load. I felt sorry for me as I looked back and the more I think about it, the more I'm determined to not allow myself to feel that level of shame and inferiority again.

This week, I've learned that bad experiences will make you more sensitive to the things going on around you and subsequent criticism and negativity will automatically flick on bad feelings or defence mechanisms, but time and support are great healers.

Buy yourself a big present

Talking therapy has opened many half-open doors for me over the last couple of months. As a result, I've been swept into feeling many bewildering and intense emotions, even after the days and weeks where I've begun to feel much better.

Dealing with the anger, frustration and sadness of not protecting myself better or being kinder to myself during such a monumental time in my life has been really hard. I'm now striving to be kinder to myself- allowing breathing space, time to enjoy my interests and hobbies, letting myself achieve in roles other than my role of 'mum.'

I've treated myself to a proper break, which I shall be enjoying at a lovely spa in a couple of weeks time with a lady I thoroughly enjoy spending time with. We have treated ourselves to 4 treatments during our day, if I'm going to do this, well, I'm going to do it properly!


What I also would like to do is to buy myself a big present. Something tangible, something I can look at everyday and be reminded that I'm important too, that I've done ok during my first year as a Mum and here is a gift from me to me that says so. Sure, I've bought myself the odd magazine here and there, a candle, nail varnish, bar of chocolate, pairs of leggings, floaty tops since baby H was born. But I want a treat substantial enough to mark how far I've come and besides, some of my 'treats' perhaps fall under the category of 'necessity' anyway.

Money is tight. My maternity pay has come to an end and I'm perhaps about to do something a little frivolous, a bit foreign. I wouldn't think twice about buying necessary clothes for my daughter, I regularly treat her to books, toys, baby classes, swimming along with the compulsory baby buys throughout the year. I rarely feel guilty. It's time I made allowances for a present for me.

I haven't decided what my present will be yet, but it will be something lovely that reminds me how far I've come. If your income or savings (like in my case) will allow for a one off splurge to buy yourself a well deserved present- do it! Join me in this mission in being frivolous- buy yourself a lovely, big present. I think we deserve it.

The cyber-bullying world of Mumsnet

I really must be growing more assertive to write such a controversial post as this, but I feel it's necessary. Put your babies sleep problems, teething troubles, pooing disasters into Google search and much of the time, you will be greeted by a list of posts from Mumsnet users. Click on the threads and you'll find a lot of helpful advice and anecdotes you can relate to, written by other mums. However, you will also find replies from a bunch of critical women, waiting to take a pop at the next vulnerable, helpless mummy.

In the thick of PND, I'd relate back to the poster seeking help, then read the critical posts pointing out everything the poster was doing 'wrong' and use their comments as a stick for punishing myself. I must do better. These are 'supportive' mums, the experts, posting here to help other mums, they have the answers right? Wrong.

The day came that I published my own thread to ask for advice on managing finances once my maternity pay came to an end. I was met, no I was hounded with negativity pretty much straight away.  Firstly, one woman wanted to know why I hadnt returned to work yet if I was worrying about finances and also wanted to know why I was planning on returning to work part-time, surely it was a 'bad idea'. Being in a better place than I was 6months ago, I was able to step back and realise that this question was irrelevant and none of her business, I didn't respond.

I was then questioned as to why my partner and I weren't married by another poster who then went on to describe the awful foundations we had laid for our child having not have gotten married before she was born. I politely asked her to post elsewhere and explained I found such comments unhelpful. Soon came similar comments made by other posters, possibly made by the same poster in different guises as I've since discovered that it's possible to change your username and post as a different poster on the same thread.

Some women warned that I had put myself in a very vulnerable position by putting my career on hold whilst living happily un-married to the father of my child, fears that had never even crossed my mind. Women that knew very little about my circumstances or background to my relationship divulged all sorts of sinister conclusions on my personal life, which left me feeling lost, alone and scared. I cried myself to sleep that night as my partner lay next to me, oblivious to the frightening thoughts that were running through my head.

Mumsnet is supposed to be a supportive forum, a place to seek advice from other expert mummies. You will find women you can reach out to on Mumsnet, however you will also discover nasty women who will pick apart every last discrepancy in your problem or story; I've witnessed women pounce on posters' grammar, on the words they choose, on the way they personally choose to live their lives. I am very fortunate to be surrounded by many supportive mummies in the real world, but the cyber world is a platform for the competitive, bitter, nasty women who wait for vulnerable bait behind the comfort of a computer screen. As parents, we spend our time protecting our children from adversity, inequality and evil in the world; the media tells us about the dangers of cyber bullying and encourages us to teach our children to use the Internet respectively.

Go to Mumsnet and you will find grown-up cyber bullies prowling for vulnerable people like you. It saddens me that we can't rely on support from the networks with the expertise and knowledge to support us. It saddens me that some women are so sad about their own lives that they pick apart, scrutinise and trample on the lives and feelings of other women. So much for female solidarity.

My advice: Stay away from Mumsnet.