Tag Archives: antidepressants

Stocktaking

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It might not be New Year’s Eve, but I have the time and inclination to do a little precis of what I have found worked for me this year, in terms of improving my mood and general happiness levels, and what has not. My son will be one in a week, and it’s been an incredibly full-on year, spending a lot of his early weeks in hospital due to his severe reflux (and time at home managing it), but also the more prosaic aspects of juggling life with a toddler and a newborn.

Fortunately, I was able to identify my PND in the first half of the year, (thanks, in part, to having experienced it exactly two years before) and seek medical help straightaway. The rest, however, has been an effort on my part to seek out practical and enjoyable ways to help myself. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…

What’s helped

  • Anti depressant medication. Sertraline is my particular poison, and it’s been invaluable in giving me the energy and resilience to connect with my children and get through the days intact.
  • Short, relaxing exercise breaks. I realised I needed to find something quick and effective to slot into my day. A lot of people swear by the 30 Day Shred, and I gave it a whirl, but I only had the energy to do it on holiday. It definitely worked from a purely physical point of view, but was too hard work to be enjoyable, so got sent back to Love Film pdq. I found Erin O’Brien’s 15 min Postnatal Rescue suited me much better, and I was still able to do it after an exhausting day and see the effects.
  • Short breaks in the day – I downloaded the 20 and 40 min “energiser” tracks from Pzizz. The voice is a little irritating, but it’s been useful when I’ve been too wired to sleep, but have the odd half hour to switch off.
  • Having a project – i.e this blog. While I’ve not been working, it’s been great to have something that has a sense of purpose, that I get a sense of achievement from (and connection with those who read it). I’m not currently keeping a journal and it’s very helpful both in terms of having a “brain dump” but also clarifying my own thoughts and feelings.
  • Staying in the present. I got halfway through The Power of Now before giving up, but want to look more into mindfulness. Would welcome suggestions of good books on the subject.
  • Connecting with old friends and not talking about children.
  • Various exercises from specific self-help books (see previous posts).There are loads more I’m sure, but these are the main ones that spring to mind.

What hasn’t worked for me

  • Attending to my personal appearance. Of course, I follow basic hygiene rules, I mean more wearing make up or getting my hair done, or buying new clothes. I know this works for many people, but I’d rather spend the precious minutes in other ways.
  • Denying myself particular indulgences, such as coffee, Diet Coke, sweets, choc, wine etc. I realise that all the research points to Diet Coke and booze being depressants in themselves, but I find depriving myself when my world is so small even more depressing.
  • Sleep! Or rather, I had hoped the kids would be sleeping better by now, so I’m not feeling any benefits yet. But on my list for the New Year is sleep training for the baby now he’s 1, so I hope this can move up into the first list soon.

Looking forward to trying out some new stuff in the New Year, thanks for reading this year, Happy Christmas!

Health visitors performing CBT? Please no…

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I’ve had a read of the recommendations that the charity 4Children makes to improve prevention, diagnosis of and treatment of ante and postnatal depression. They identify roles of health visitors in providing practical support before the birth – something I wholeheartedly support, but also recommend training health visitors in CBT, which I think needs a lot more consideration. Health visitors are not trained therapists, and a short CBT course could, potentially, do more harm than good if they suddenly became the ‘experts’ in PND.

The charity is also calling for talking therapies to be better funded and more widely available. Realistically, a lot of women with new babies simply don’t have the time, and can’t access the childcare required to attend regular counselling sessions. The only way I can see this working is by providing some sort of helper or creche facility, which would immediately increase costs. I would also hope that antidepressants aren’t demonised too much. The report notes, in a somewhat horrified tone, that 70% of mothers with PND are taking medication. For me, no amount of talking therapy would have taken the place of my ADs, and in fact only when they started to kick in was I in a calm enough place to examine my thoughts, or speak the truth about my feelings.

I support the idea of a national campaign to raise awareness, and remove some of the stigma associated with the condition. Much as I loathe the deification of celebrities in general, I do think it would be helpful for some well-known women who have suffered from PND to acknowledge their situation. Motherhood is so exalted within the media, that I doubt any celebrity struggling to cope, not bonding with her child, feeling lost and tearful etc, would be keen to admit to it. That, in turn, would require a shift in society in recognising that bringing up babies is tough, and not every woman is a natural. And that we need support – social, emotional, and financial.

Some thoughts…

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When I went to see my GP in June I began with a very rambling and stream of consciousness rant about how I was feeling. I was tearful, I explained, and exhausted. Anxious too – and even when my children did give me a chance to sleep, I was too wound up to drop off. I felt angry, irritable and pretty fed up with my life.

‘The thing is’, I said, ‘I am extremely sleep deprived, my baby has been an inpatient in hospital for a month, he cries all the time, my toddler is very jealous – it’s no surprise I’m feeling rubbish. Maybe it’s not depression after all. Just a reasonable response to circumstances’.

‘Does it matter?’ he replied. ‘Your symptoms exist, regardless of what you want to label it.’

He was right. I had been in this situation before, almost two years to the day, when my first son was 6 months old. I went to the GP, feeling a failure for not dealing with motherhood as well as I should. For not being grateful enough to have a child at all, when so many women struggle with their fertility.

On both occasions I was prescribed the anti-depressant, Sertraline. And both times, after about a week, I began to feel much better, more human. I remember the first time being terrified of what might happen to me. I was afraid I would be unable to feel anything, or turn into someone else.

As it happened, I just ended up feeling strong enough to start looking at my situation and trying to do something about it. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about medicating PND, or are very anti, but I can safely say that both times I have hugely benefitted. As the doctor said, ‘they won’t change your situation, but they’ll make you a bit more resilient’.

Although the ADs have been fantastic, they are only part of the picture. So much about my feelings is mixed in with other issues: my identity, my child’s health, sleeplessness (of lack of it), work, and the very fact of being a mother in 2011, and what that means for my role in society.

I want to use this blog to explore these different issues, and to see where I can help myself. Some are existential, and can’t be altered (such as the fact of my being a mother) but others may be more practical.

I love solutions, lists, exercises – doing things. That’s why I subtitled this blog ‘doing something about postnatal depression’. Because I want to help myself through it, and hopefully others too.