I am feeling very pleased with myself. I have now kept up the running for two months or so - three times a week. I can run for a good 30 minutes without stopping and am getting all prepared to enter some races next year!
It's so nice to do - not only because it is getting me fit again, helping shift a few pounds (though I keep eating macarons and cake so not sure it's helping as much as it could!), it's also giving me a little time to myself. I have to be quite organised to get out there and do it, especially now it's dark, but it's doable. And it gives me the space I need to clear my head and just think about....well, nothing a lot of the time! I have found that I have had the time to think about my experience with PND. For example, I was thinking about the guilt I felt - I always thought that to have PND meant that you were always crying and didn't want to go out. I had had two healthy, happy babies. I have a lovely husband, a lovely home. I have great friends etc etc. What did I have to be depressed about? I've never been depressed before. It can't be depression.
A good friend had a baby a year ago. Her baby is lovely, she is now one and she has overcome a whole host of challenges, open heart surgery, blindness etc and her mother has been really quite remarkable. I don't know how she has done it. And I must say that this type of experience made me feel guilty - here is someone who has to face a whole host of challenges and is doing it with such strength and here am I who hasn't got these challenges and who has had depression. It just felt so wrong.
After Isobel was born I had insomnia - the doctor told me to get Peter to make me a cup of tea. I thought it was just a normal part of having children. Perhaps it is. What I do know is that I was also incredibly stressed and anxious about this - I would be in such a state I would scream and shout. I was also very irritable in a way which I had never been before. I felt tense all the time - Peter felt he was treading on egg shells. But I just thought it was part of the normal process. It never really went away. The insomnia did, but the irritability didn't.
Being told by the Health Visitor and the doctor that I have PND after Arthur was born was a massive relief. It was like someone saying - it's alright, you're not mad, you have an illness but it will get better. They both felt that the combination of the insomnia, the irritability, anxiety attacks in the night and with Arthur, the crying, ....and the wanting to just keep driving the car into the bend.....were symptoms. And so I have had treatment and it's working (so far so good!).
However, I feel that there is still such a stigma attached to it. Is it because it's a mental health issue and people have views about that? I don't know. I do know that the statistics indicate that 1 in 4 / 5 women have it and yet no one admitted to it or talked about it until quite recently. It makes me wonder how many people are suffering in silence?
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