Josephine and Lucas were admitted to a specialized mother and baby unit. The doctor insisted they needed urgent, medical support.
“For the first few weeks, I let the nurses look after Lucas. Then, the new low dose of antidepressants I’d been given started working. With lots of coaxing, I began to look after my son, and myself.”
It was a slow process. Josephine left the unit two months later. Lucas was half a year old. “I’d fallen in love with him again by then,” she says.
With Maisie, the bonding took far longer. Her breakthrough came after two lonely years in torment, when she decided to join a gym. “I thought it’d get me out the house,” she says.
In fact exercise turned out to be much more than that. She put Lucas in the crèche then pounded on the machines for forty minutes before going swimming. “That night, I actually slept well,” she remembers.
After two weeks working out everyday, Maisie’s terrible dreams stopped. She describes it as emerging from a “dark hole.” From then on, she started to see Josh for the lovely little boy he is.
“I really think exercise lifted me out of depression,” she says. “I realized how much I’d missed out on. I didn’t want to miss out on anymore.”
Despite being such a common problem, not enough is known about postnatal depression. There just hasn’t been thorough widespread research.
But on one issue experts agree—the sooner treatment is started, the better.
Without treatment, women with postnatal depression have a 50:50 chance of being completely better before their child’s first birthday.
Postnatal depression is no one’s fault. It’s an illness. The advice is to seek help and share your feelings.
