It’s Maternal Mental Health Week this week, a week dedicated to raising awareness about the mental health of both pre and post natal mums. With this in mind I decided to post today, about my mental health and the journey I’ve gone on since Frey was born.
Now I’ll be honest I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to post this (I wrote this post weeks ago) but after finding the amazing Nofiltermum and her #thereforher campaign, I finally plucked up the courage to post it.
My mental health throughout the pregnancy was pretty normal, the occasional bout of crying over pizza or a sad movie normal. It was after Frey was born that the my mental health took a bit of a beating.
His birth and first week were traumatic, with an emergency c-section due to fetal distress and then there were several health issues following the birth, meant we didn’t have an easy time of it.
I found my self constantly anxious and beating myself up over every little thing, thinking that I was a terrible mother and that everyone was judging me. I, at first put this down to the baby blues (and subsequently choose to down play/ignore how I was feeling), however my husband of course noticed and realised that this wasn’t normal. He spoke to me about it and offered to say something to my health visitors, which he did. Which I am so thankful for ( I have an awesome husband) as I’m one of those people who hates to cause a fuss and would do probably just of tried to carry on on my own.
My health visitors were also amazing, they organise for me to see my local GP straight away (who I saw at least once a month until Frey was six months old) and kept checking in on us. I know that if I do have any issues I can go to them about it.
One of the biggest things that has helped is that I have an amazing support system in place, friends and family who I know will be there if I need help with Frey or just for a chat. It made a big difference to me, letting me know I have people to lean on.
Frey is now nearly 8 months old, and my mental health is better than what it is was 8 months ago. But I won’t lie and say everything is perfect, I have my bad days but I can handle them much better than I could at the beginning and feel in a much better place.
Jo xx
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