My Parenting Story So Far
{traumatic birth.PND.recovery.love}
It all started with the decision to have a baby.
We were going to do this the "right way" we thought
step one. go off the pill
step two. get married (not necessary - we had it planned anyways)
step three. move back to our hometown for our family's support
step four. the fun part
In the end it didn't take much trying for us to conceive....and the story begins!
My pregnancy was really quite normal other than the morning sickness that i had EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR NINE MONTHS!!
It all started with the decision to have a baby.
We were going to do this the "right way" we thought
step one. go off the pill
step two. get married (not necessary - we had it planned anyways)
step three. move back to our hometown for our family's support
step four. the fun part
In the end it didn't take much trying for us to conceive....and the story begins!
My pregnancy was really quite normal other than the morning sickness that i had EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR NINE MONTHS!!
The Nine months went along as normal until the "big day" came.I went into labour at home and was going to stay there until things really started happening. After my contractions became closer and stronger i went to Maternity. Only 2cm dilated - off home i went. After another 24 hours at home with excruciating contractions i went back to Maternity, and hadn't dilated any further!! After a internal by the OBGYN i was told that my waters had broken (I'm sure i would of noticed that!!) and i was put on IV anti biotics and also Syntocin to hurry my dilation up (because my Waters has broken). This meant that my main source of pain relief was about to end - no more hot showers, walking or being in the bath.
So begins 24 hours of laying flat on my back on the labour room bed....the most disempowered 24 hours of my life. Something in me clicked over and decided that these midwives/doctors knew my body better than i did and whatever they said is what id do...that will never happen again!! I know that there are foetal monitors that enable the woman to walk around and get into positions that relieve her pain naturally - seems that GBH didn't have one of these available for me (although i was told about it at Anti natal class) and that the one i could have would would only work with me laying flat on my back on the bed. This position increased my pain to an unbearable level. During the next 24 hours i had gas, morphine, and eventually an epidural. When the Doctor did an internal before my epidural, nearly 18 hours after i was admitted, he announced my waters had not broken! Despite him saying at my first internal that he could feel my babies hair and my waters were definitely broken! My waters were then broken after my epidural was put in and within minutes my contractions increased - i could feel them through the epidural. 18 hours of laboring with syntocin without broken waters, what a waste of time and energy. By this stage we hadn't slept or eaten in 40 hours. I kept asking them why wasn't i dilating? No one could answer me, they just kept stating the baby was fine so i was to keep labouring until i could dilate to 10cm. I know the baby's health is paramount - but i cant help thinking what about the mother? what use is a totally exhausted mother to a newborn baby?
as you can see from this i was completley out of it.
It was about the time of my epidural that the Doctor asked the midwife to see if i would consent to a C-Section - due to my failure to dilate. I learnt later from the Dr that when the Dr asked the midwife this she stated i did not want a C-section and that i was happy to continue trying for a natural birth. She never consulted me. I was never even told this was an option. I did not want a C-section going into things, it was not in my birth plan - but if the Dr knew i was not progressing and was unlikely too why wasn't this passed onto me - after 30 something hours of labour if i was told i was failing to dilate and i was not going to deliver naturally of course i would of consented!
In the end i laboured another 8 hours with contractions full strength and dilated to 4cm. 4cm!! in nearly 48 hours with syntocin full ball how ridiculous! I had 2 great midwives assist me throughout my labour but unfortunately the midwife that was around for the important decisions did me no favours and in my opinion acted to support her own ideas and values of labour- not what was in my best interest. In the end because Alex had started to show signs of distress i was taken for a C-section.
That's when the Dr asked my why i had rejected the idea of a c-section last night.He said he was very surprised i had "battled on" for so long considering my situation. What situation i thought to myself? I couldn't answer him because i hadn't been told about it. I was drugged to the eyeballs, had been vomiting constantly due to the epidural medication and my arms were strapped to the operating table.I couldn't breathe properly due to the meds and spent the entire operation in a exhausted drug addled daze more concerned with my inability to breathe than with anything else. Alex was born and they wrapped him up so just his little face was showing and shoved him in the gap between my face and the green surgical curtain. He was so close to me that i couldn't see him properly and i couldn't breathe - the fist thing i said after he was born wasn't any words of happiness - it was "take him, get him out of my face" to my husband. What a way to start the bonding process.
He was then taken back to the nursery and i was put in a room to sleep. I didn't get to give him his first bath. I didn't get to change or dress him. Sad to remember this time as i look back - but i also recognise things rarely ever go to plan and after all that i ended up with a healthy baby....things could of strayed from "the plan" in much worse ways for both me and my boy. I try to remember this but sometimes its hard to stop the envy of seeing women deliver their babies naturally and hold them naked and crying straight away and have that skin to skin contact and put that baby onto their breast and know they delivered their greatest creation. That's what i think i regret the most - i had no opportunity to bond with him in the first couple of days. i was never encouraged to have skin to skin contact with him. I am so mad at the way my entire birthing experience was handled. I feel i was made to comply to what was easiest for them and also feel that if the Dr had not mistaken my waters as broken he would of broken them at the start of my syntocin and at least if i had failed to dilate it would of been diagnosed earlier!
Six hours after his birth - im still out of it
The final kick in the pants was the realisation after my c-section that my Alex was unable to get through my pelvis to my cervix, so there was no chance i would of ever birthed him vaginally. I know there was no way anyone could of known but surely common sense would dictate that there would be some guidelines that say if after a certain amount of time with syntocin at full ball if there is no dilation a failure to progress would be considered? From all the research i have done after this event it seems that failure to progress is diagnosed when a woman is not dilating 1.2cm per hour or a has not dilated at all in the previous 2 hours - especially if contractions have been augmented with Syntocin. So why did i labour for 24 hours with Syntocin only dilating 3cms in this time without intervention?
What have i learnt from this experience? i have learnt that i am not a piece of meat admitted to Maternity to be treated when and how they see fit. That i know what is happening with my own body. That i have a right to have interventions explained to me and then i have the right to make decisions for or against and that in future my health is as important as the babies (within reason) a physically exhausted, mentally exhausted overwhelmed and unempowered mother is not what a newborn needs.
What a story - I hate to remember it with so many negative points. On a good note i did recover amazingly quickly from my Cesar and probably could of gone home on day 2 or 3, had my breast milk come in.....but that's the second part of this story..............
In short I didn't get any breast milk. The two things i hadn't bothered to research before my birth were c-sections (why would i need one?) and bottle feeding (ill be breast feeding...breast is best!!) All i knew is in the first few days i had been told i was a breast feeding natural! i was feeling great - finally my body was following "the plan"....then Alex started screaming...i was feeding him, changing him, loving him...what was going on?
Finally after days of this a midwife weighed him and he has lost more than 10% of his body weight and would need comp feeding. I had to sign a form for this!! stating that breast is best and not to hold GBH responsible for any problems bottle feeding causes....so my choices were let him starve to death or sign a form which insinuates i am providing a dis service to my baby? And the barrage of guilt commences. I was also not allowed to bottle feed my baby as "he would associate the bottle with me and would reject breastfeeding" did they not realise i HAD NO MILK!!! This precious time of feeding was now being taken from me too. I was hooked up to breast pumps day and night and after 5 days in hospital i fell into a deep depression. I told myself it was just the baby blues.
I wanted to be back in my home with support from my husband and family not sitting alone in a room with a screaming baby with which i had had no opportunity to bond with.i felt completely and utterly alone, more so than i had ever felt before. What was i good for? I felt i was incapable of meeting the requirements of being a mother - I couldn't birth him myself, i couldn't feed him myself, and i was unsure if i felt any connection to him....what use was i? he would be better off without me i thought - anyone could take care of him better than me.
They insisted i stay 7 days waiting for my milk to come in...and when it didn't insisted i buy a breast pump and show them i had it, buy bottles and show them what ones i bought, make formula up under supervision from them and promise to keep using the breast pump every 2 hours to encourage my milk to come in. I stated to the midwife when we were being inspected for readiness to go home that i had had no breast changes while pregnant...only to be told "oh well that probably indicates you weren't going to get any milk" so why had i been trying for 7 days to make it come in? why when i said to my midwife when pregnant that i hadn't had breast changes didn't she tell me i was at risk of having no milk, and WHY was i expected to pump every 2 hours to encourage milk that was never going to come in?
All these things make no sense to me - it seems we are governed by ideals not realities. I was a pro breastfeeding Nazi pre-Alex i wanted nothing more than to connect with him that way but if its not possible why put a woman through hell trying to make it happen? Karma is a bitch sometimes.
I used the breast pump for weeks and weeks sleeping around 40 minutes in between feeding Alex, then pumping, then sleeping a bit before he got up again to feed. All the time copping criticism for bottle feeding....what was i meant to do? let him starve to death while i waited for the elusive breast milk to grace me with its presence. I wish someone had said to me "you really have tried your best! So you have no breast milk, its not the end of the world!" why didn't someone say that and then praise me for all the other things i was doing right? Instead i was told i had given up too early. I was shattered, i was going to bottle feed my baby - the guilt was immense. A insecurity that has plagued me since childhood greeted me once again - my father had always told me i was lazy and that i would do anything to get the easy way out - i thought "well Roslyn you've done it again - you've obviously wished your breast milk away so you can be lazy and feed him out of a bottle - that way you don't even have to do it yourself!!" clearly looking back this thought pattern makes no sense but i was depressed and ashamed.
By this stage i was back at home. I remember the first day i was at home laying in bed with Ben thinking "this is the happiest Ive ever been" - that was the first and only time in the first 4 months of Alex's life that i thought that way. I also remember laying in bed with Ben again another day and crumbling into a mess of tears anxiety and total desperation. it passed and i said to Ben....I hope I'm not getting Post Natal Depression......Pity all the hope in the world doesn't change reality!
My PND started in episodes. The nights in hospital feeling desperately depressed...then it was the afternoons...everything was OK until the afternoon when i would crumble into a state where i could not function, stand, talk or do anything but curl up in a ball clutch my chest and cry and cry and feel the hole that had opened up in my chest grow deeper and wider and threaten to swallow me up (anyone who has had depression knows what this feels like - it is an actual physiological effect of depression - a great big hole in your chest that is the center of all your pain)
The episodes then extended to my every day. I would wake up manic with anxiety. I lived every day in fear of Alex. I could not be alone with him in the dark. I didn't ever want to be alone with him. He had become the source of all my pain. Before him i was happy, surely if i could give him away things would go back to normal. Many days were spent on the floor at my mothers feet begging her to take Alex away. I never wanted to harm him but i wanted him gone. Bathing him became someone else's job - like i said i didn't want to harm him but i didn't want to chance anything. Also all the medications that were being offered me prior to antidepressants were never picked up from the chemist, the idea of having a tonne of sedatives in the house was too tempting. Harming Alex wasn't an option but killing myself was a very attractive idea allot of the time. I was sane enough to do things to prevent it becoming an easy thing to achieve though.
If you haven't been through it i can never explain it. I couldn't feel anything towards him, and the slightest whimper from him would send me into a panic. I knew i could not soothe him. I know now he must of picked up on my pain sadness and hostility towards him and must of felt so unsafe. I hope now that this doesn't affect him. Ben was great through this time and took on most of the duties, my mother was also there whenever i needed her practically moving in with us for a time. I became manic with cleaning and would clean for hours a day - again my fathers voice was echoing in my head saying - "that's right convince everyone your not well and they will let you clean all day that way you wont have to have anything to do with the baby!" ah the damage childhood leaves you with.
After a visit to the Child Health Clinic they realised the problems i was having and made me an appointment with a Doctor - i wont go into this appointment to much as it still makes me so angry - this Dr basically tells me to get over it, parenting is hard and i should learn to deal with it. Well this threw my guilt into overdrive. So i AM being lazy? i just cant deal with things? This woman set my depression spiraling into further depths. Of course i wasn't just having trouble being a new parent - i wanted to kill myself. It was weeks before i could find a DR that would help me - and even then it was weeks before i was put on medication. Those weeks for someone with severe PND feel like an eternity. i could of killed myself or my baby in that time. If i had turned up with a spurting artery that threatened my life i would of been treated straight away - just because you cant see mental illness doesn't mean it cant be lethal.
Looking back at photos of me my eyes are empty and dead and all my expressions are forced. I lost all interest in food. Looking back this was one of the first signs i was mentally unwell. We had soft drink with dinner and i asked Ben to taste it, he said it tasted fine. It tasted like poison to me. Everything tasted like poison to me. On the upside i lost allot of weight on the PND diet. I don't recommend it though.
I saw a a phsycologist who prescribed me Prozac - coming back from this appointment was such a joy - finally someone was going to help me. Well Prozac didn't help me at all - it made me worse. Totally manic to the point of an all mighty anxiety attack where i had such severe muscle tightness in my chest i was taken to hospital. After this my depression worsened again. Medication isn't helping me, I'm going to feel like this forever. How can i have a baby and feel like this forever. Ill just kill myself...Alex would be better off without me anyways. I also had many times that i was very close to walking out of the house and just leaving. After i admitted to this it was decided i needed to go to a mental health facility. This scared the hell out of me and was the worse day of my life.
I had to go home and say goodbye to my baby who i had been unable to care for although i desperately wanted to. i had to leave him not knowing when i would be back and knowing i was going to be hours away from him. Leave him knowing part of me was happy that i would be away from him, and hating myself for feeling like that. I cried the entire drive and begged Ben the entire way to take me home. The poor man had had to deal with being a new father, a carer to a mentally ill new mother, carer to the newborn and now had to take his wife against her will to a mental health facility.
Looking back to could tell he was torn up and ruined inside. He had to watch me hold our son with no love in my eyes. Watch me scream at the baby at night to shut up because i just could not cope with his noise for one second longer and i just couldn't take it. Have the baby screaming in one hand and me in the other falling to pieces and looking to him to hold me together until the wave of desperation to disappear left me. Not all men would stay to deal with that - or understand mental illness enough to forgive me for it in the end. PND not only affects you and your baby it can ruin everything around you. I'm very lucky to have people that stuck by me and helped me if they hadn't been there i wouldn't be here now either. its not easy to admit you wanted to kill yourself - its not like many people understand it. But that's why I'm talking about all this - i know I'm not alone in what I've been thought i just know not allot of people talk about it.
Grafton Mental Health Service were pathetic in their care of me. They were meant to have arranged a bed for me in the Lismore MHU - turns out the person left for the day and didn't bother to do it - leaving me to sit in emergency for 9 hours waiting to be seen because they didn't know anything about me. I stayed strong for the first while but after hours of sitting in a small room with a baby screaming next door i cracked and became hysterical and Ben shut down. He couldn't deal with it anymore and i thought there i go, the only thing I'm living for has just checked out.
Finally a nurse came and told me the only bed they had was in the unit with all the criminals "you don't want to go in there" he said "its not a place for a young woman like you". not 5 minutes later another nurse came and old me they had found me a suitable bed and walked me to the unit....as soon as i walked in the doors i knew where i was....the criminal unit. I looked to Ben and my cousin who was with me knowing that i was about to be left without any support surrounded my criminal men with mental illness. I was terrified. I begged and begged for them to not leave me there. Ben was still shut down, he later told me he didn't know what to do, he knew i needed help but he didn't want to leave me there either. My bags were taken and gone through and my phone confiscated, i was to have limited contact with my family and Alex was not allowed into the unit - and i wasn't allowed out. I became hysterical again with desperation. there was no way i could stay here. I knew if they left my here i would try and kill myself i had no doubt about it.
Then i met Harry. Harry is a psychiatrist at Lismore Mental Health. He was wearing maroon shirt pants and shoes and had a women's type handbag and grey hair. he sure looked strange but i didn't care. i begged him to let me go home and come back for treatment every day - he knew they would be liable for what would happen to me if he made me stay in that unit - so he agreed to let me go home and be treated as an outpatient. there are no women and baby units in this area - i don't know if people living in cities realise how lucky they are. i am lucky again that i had the support to let me go back to my cousins in Alstonville - if i hadn't had someone to watch me 24/7 i would of been left there. I was still away from Alex but at least i wasn't locked up and i had my support system with me.
He prescribed me 2 types of medication Cipramil and Seroquel. Within a few days of taking these i was returning to myself. I still couldn't handle any parenting but i was getting better. I went back to see him every couple of days - only one more hiccup - the seroquel isn't usually prescribed for depression so he gave me Haloperidol as it was easier to prescribe....turns out I'm allergic to Haloperidol....it gave me Parkinson's like symptoms within hours of taking it. i went partially blind, my jaw started to grind involuntarily and then the bottom jaw went all the way to the left and the top all the way to the right so i couldn't talk or open my mouth.My arms and legs started moving involuntarily. It was terrible. Alex was visiting for the day that day and Ben had to leave him with me while he drove the half hour to the hospital to get the antidote for haloperidol allergic reaction. I hadn't been alone with him in weeks, and i was unable to speak or move and now i was responsible for him again. I prayed he didn't wake up.
Ben returned with a cocktail of medication for me which knocked me unconscious for nearly 24 hours. Ben was scared as hell that i was going to "Heath Ledger" myself - ie die in my sleep from all the medication they had given me. Being an RN he monitored me the best he could but it all got too much for him i was told later and he left my cousins house in Alstonville and disappeared for a few hours. When he came back he had recovered from a break down - all the pain and fear he had been holding in for the last months had overcome him. Who can blame him.
I recovered from the medication incident and went back to the seroquel. it was a life saver literally. Some depression can be treated through counselling etc but severe depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain and when you have a small baby/children/responsibilities/suicidal thoughts you don't have the luxury of time to hope it rebalances itself. Medications are necessary and i wouldn't be where i am today without them. Its not that people are weak when they take them - are people weak that cant fight their cancer off themselves? Obviously not.Severe depression is like a cancer - if you don't treat it it can riddle your body and destroy you. No one would expect a person with cancer to fight their battle alone but with mental illness its just not treated the same.
So the day came to leave Alstonville and head home. I had to ask my mum to move in with us as i had been ordered to take a large dose of seroquel at night which basically leaves you unconscious and as Alex was still a small baby he needed feeding at night so my wonderful mother took up the job of nighttime feeds and also took time off work to help me ease into parenting at a pace that helped me build my confidence back up. Again the voice of my father was telling me how lazy i was and that id made this whole thing up just to get out of looking after Alex. The thought was still there but the medication helped me put it to the back of my mind.
The time came when my mum had to go back to work. This was scary but it was the beginning of the now. I was on my medication for around a year and have no been off it for about 5 months and doing fine. Alex is a happy healthy 19 month old and i have grown to love him as i should of from the start - completely and devoutly.
My PND started in episodes. The nights in hospital feeling desperately depressed...then it was the afternoons...everything was OK until the afternoon when i would crumble into a state where i could not function, stand, talk or do anything but curl up in a ball clutch my chest and cry and cry and feel the hole that had opened up in my chest grow deeper and wider and threaten to swallow me up (anyone who has had depression knows what this feels like - it is an actual physiological effect of depression - a great big hole in your chest that is the center of all your pain)
The episodes then extended to my every day. I would wake up manic with anxiety. I lived every day in fear of Alex. I could not be alone with him in the dark. I didn't ever want to be alone with him. He had become the source of all my pain. Before him i was happy, surely if i could give him away things would go back to normal. Many days were spent on the floor at my mothers feet begging her to take Alex away. I never wanted to harm him but i wanted him gone. Bathing him became someone else's job - like i said i didn't want to harm him but i didn't want to chance anything. Also all the medications that were being offered me prior to antidepressants were never picked up from the chemist, the idea of having a tonne of sedatives in the house was too tempting. Harming Alex wasn't an option but killing myself was a very attractive idea allot of the time. I was sane enough to do things to prevent it becoming an easy thing to achieve though.
If you haven't been through it i can never explain it. I couldn't feel anything towards him, and the slightest whimper from him would send me into a panic. I knew i could not soothe him. I know now he must of picked up on my pain sadness and hostility towards him and must of felt so unsafe. I hope now that this doesn't affect him. Ben was great through this time and took on most of the duties, my mother was also there whenever i needed her practically moving in with us for a time. I became manic with cleaning and would clean for hours a day - again my fathers voice was echoing in my head saying - "that's right convince everyone your not well and they will let you clean all day that way you wont have to have anything to do with the baby!" ah the damage childhood leaves you with.
After a visit to the Child Health Clinic they realised the problems i was having and made me an appointment with a Doctor - i wont go into this appointment to much as it still makes me so angry - this Dr basically tells me to get over it, parenting is hard and i should learn to deal with it. Well this threw my guilt into overdrive. So i AM being lazy? i just cant deal with things? This woman set my depression spiraling into further depths. Of course i wasn't just having trouble being a new parent - i wanted to kill myself. It was weeks before i could find a DR that would help me - and even then it was weeks before i was put on medication. Those weeks for someone with severe PND feel like an eternity. i could of killed myself or my baby in that time. If i had turned up with a spurting artery that threatened my life i would of been treated straight away - just because you cant see mental illness doesn't mean it cant be lethal.
Looking back at photos of me my eyes are empty and dead and all my expressions are forced. I lost all interest in food. Looking back this was one of the first signs i was mentally unwell. We had soft drink with dinner and i asked Ben to taste it, he said it tasted fine. It tasted like poison to me. Everything tasted like poison to me. On the upside i lost allot of weight on the PND diet. I don't recommend it though.
I saw a a phsycologist who prescribed me Prozac - coming back from this appointment was such a joy - finally someone was going to help me. Well Prozac didn't help me at all - it made me worse. Totally manic to the point of an all mighty anxiety attack where i had such severe muscle tightness in my chest i was taken to hospital. After this my depression worsened again. Medication isn't helping me, I'm going to feel like this forever. How can i have a baby and feel like this forever. Ill just kill myself...Alex would be better off without me anyways. I also had many times that i was very close to walking out of the house and just leaving. After i admitted to this it was decided i needed to go to a mental health facility. This scared the hell out of me and was the worse day of my life.
I had to go home and say goodbye to my baby who i had been unable to care for although i desperately wanted to. i had to leave him not knowing when i would be back and knowing i was going to be hours away from him. Leave him knowing part of me was happy that i would be away from him, and hating myself for feeling like that. I cried the entire drive and begged Ben the entire way to take me home. The poor man had had to deal with being a new father, a carer to a mentally ill new mother, carer to the newborn and now had to take his wife against her will to a mental health facility.
Looking back to could tell he was torn up and ruined inside. He had to watch me hold our son with no love in my eyes. Watch me scream at the baby at night to shut up because i just could not cope with his noise for one second longer and i just couldn't take it. Have the baby screaming in one hand and me in the other falling to pieces and looking to him to hold me together until the wave of desperation to disappear left me. Not all men would stay to deal with that - or understand mental illness enough to forgive me for it in the end. PND not only affects you and your baby it can ruin everything around you. I'm very lucky to have people that stuck by me and helped me if they hadn't been there i wouldn't be here now either. its not easy to admit you wanted to kill yourself - its not like many people understand it. But that's why I'm talking about all this - i know I'm not alone in what I've been thought i just know not allot of people talk about it.
Grafton Mental Health Service were pathetic in their care of me. They were meant to have arranged a bed for me in the Lismore MHU - turns out the person left for the day and didn't bother to do it - leaving me to sit in emergency for 9 hours waiting to be seen because they didn't know anything about me. I stayed strong for the first while but after hours of sitting in a small room with a baby screaming next door i cracked and became hysterical and Ben shut down. He couldn't deal with it anymore and i thought there i go, the only thing I'm living for has just checked out.
Finally a nurse came and told me the only bed they had was in the unit with all the criminals "you don't want to go in there" he said "its not a place for a young woman like you". not 5 minutes later another nurse came and old me they had found me a suitable bed and walked me to the unit....as soon as i walked in the doors i knew where i was....the criminal unit. I looked to Ben and my cousin who was with me knowing that i was about to be left without any support surrounded my criminal men with mental illness. I was terrified. I begged and begged for them to not leave me there. Ben was still shut down, he later told me he didn't know what to do, he knew i needed help but he didn't want to leave me there either. My bags were taken and gone through and my phone confiscated, i was to have limited contact with my family and Alex was not allowed into the unit - and i wasn't allowed out. I became hysterical again with desperation. there was no way i could stay here. I knew if they left my here i would try and kill myself i had no doubt about it.
Then i met Harry. Harry is a psychiatrist at Lismore Mental Health. He was wearing maroon shirt pants and shoes and had a women's type handbag and grey hair. he sure looked strange but i didn't care. i begged him to let me go home and come back for treatment every day - he knew they would be liable for what would happen to me if he made me stay in that unit - so he agreed to let me go home and be treated as an outpatient. there are no women and baby units in this area - i don't know if people living in cities realise how lucky they are. i am lucky again that i had the support to let me go back to my cousins in Alstonville - if i hadn't had someone to watch me 24/7 i would of been left there. I was still away from Alex but at least i wasn't locked up and i had my support system with me.
He prescribed me 2 types of medication Cipramil and Seroquel. Within a few days of taking these i was returning to myself. I still couldn't handle any parenting but i was getting better. I went back to see him every couple of days - only one more hiccup - the seroquel isn't usually prescribed for depression so he gave me Haloperidol as it was easier to prescribe....turns out I'm allergic to Haloperidol....it gave me Parkinson's like symptoms within hours of taking it. i went partially blind, my jaw started to grind involuntarily and then the bottom jaw went all the way to the left and the top all the way to the right so i couldn't talk or open my mouth.My arms and legs started moving involuntarily. It was terrible. Alex was visiting for the day that day and Ben had to leave him with me while he drove the half hour to the hospital to get the antidote for haloperidol allergic reaction. I hadn't been alone with him in weeks, and i was unable to speak or move and now i was responsible for him again. I prayed he didn't wake up.
Ben returned with a cocktail of medication for me which knocked me unconscious for nearly 24 hours. Ben was scared as hell that i was going to "Heath Ledger" myself - ie die in my sleep from all the medication they had given me. Being an RN he monitored me the best he could but it all got too much for him i was told later and he left my cousins house in Alstonville and disappeared for a few hours. When he came back he had recovered from a break down - all the pain and fear he had been holding in for the last months had overcome him. Who can blame him.
I recovered from the medication incident and went back to the seroquel. it was a life saver literally. Some depression can be treated through counselling etc but severe depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain and when you have a small baby/children/responsibilities/suicidal thoughts you don't have the luxury of time to hope it rebalances itself. Medications are necessary and i wouldn't be where i am today without them. Its not that people are weak when they take them - are people weak that cant fight their cancer off themselves? Obviously not.Severe depression is like a cancer - if you don't treat it it can riddle your body and destroy you. No one would expect a person with cancer to fight their battle alone but with mental illness its just not treated the same.
So the day came to leave Alstonville and head home. I had to ask my mum to move in with us as i had been ordered to take a large dose of seroquel at night which basically leaves you unconscious and as Alex was still a small baby he needed feeding at night so my wonderful mother took up the job of nighttime feeds and also took time off work to help me ease into parenting at a pace that helped me build my confidence back up. Again the voice of my father was telling me how lazy i was and that id made this whole thing up just to get out of looking after Alex. The thought was still there but the medication helped me put it to the back of my mind.
The time came when my mum had to go back to work. This was scary but it was the beginning of the now. I was on my medication for around a year and have no been off it for about 5 months and doing fine. Alex is a happy healthy 19 month old and i have grown to love him as i should of from the start - completely and devoutly.
What an amazing and heart-wrenching story, Ros. You are so strong! Thank you for sharing.
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