Real Postnatal Illness Stories

Below are personal accounts from mums and dads who experienced postnatal illness first hand. A word of warning - people's personal stories of postnatal illness can be very distressing particularly if you are feeling vulnerable yourself, be aware of how they make you feel and only read them if your feeling OK. Back to index of stories.

Laura's story - Five months into the pregnancy with my first child I stopped sleeping.

That is, It took me several hours after going to bed to fall asleep, only to wake up 3-4 hours later feeling exhausted.

I was still working full-time as a PR executive in London and would have a long commute, followed by a busy day at work.

But a typical night would be going to bed at about 10.30pm, maybe falling asleep by about 2am in the morning and getting up again at about 7am. I was exhausted.

Yet I put it down to the pitfalls, but common symptoms of being pregnant – an unknown territory for me – such as hormones, tiredness and the stresses of anticipation, in addition to the usual demands of work.

However, the lack of sleep got worse and nothing remedies it. It then was accompanied by morbid thoughts, such as being stabbed in the back of the head as I lay in bed, to (when I got to sleep) terrifying dreams of similar tragedies such as plane crashes.

The doctor refused to prescribe anything, because, as I was pregnant: “Ooh you can’t take anything” etc etc.

Then came the panic attacks: shortness of breath, shaking, agitation. One of these was manifested in the waiting room of the doctors’ surgery, yet the doctor could not (or would not…now I think it was actually COULD NOT) help.

And so it progressed until I came to give birth. I put it all down to being pregnant. Yet, I distinctly remember having absolutely no appetite directly after giving birth and a lot less from then on. I had no urge to change nappies or feed my newborn. I still could not sleep or even relax.

I am naturally slim but my weight loss rendered me virtually skeletal.

It took 3 months of hell following the birth, which at one time had me vomitting and shaking uncontrollably, and days of being unable to get out of bed to attend to my son, to seek another doctor’s advice.

He immediately said I could be post-natally depressed and prescribed me anti-depressants. To cut a long story short it took 3 different types to make me feel better, as well as a private shrink, costing £100 per hour (which helped amazingly) to get me thinking I might feel better.

There is more to say, but my point in writing this is ‘post’natal illness ( I refuse to call it depression as it is not strictly so by any means – I was not depressed at all, I had anxiety) can happen before the birth, ie: during pregnancy. And that is not uncommon.

As a journalist I have written articles about the subject nationally and have learned the above facts from my research.

In this knowledge I would urge any woman feeling anything like this to not put it down to hormones or being pregnant, but consider them seriously as potentially being ante-natal illness, and to seek help forcefully.

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