2008 in review.
We had a baby this year, and we bought a house. I transitioned from being employed in a church and studying part time to being a full-time stay at home wife and mum. I went from a world of people to the world of an infant.
I’ve done my best to be honest with you about my experience of this but I guess it’s time for me to confess. No it’s not time for me to confess, it’s that I am now ready to confess. I haven’t been completely honest with you. I couldn’t. It was too hard to talk about, to hard to admit, to hard to really know how to deal with it.
I love my daughter to bits and am so incredibly thankful that I am able to be home with her to raise her but there was a time when I really struggled.
Before LP was born I was told by countless midwives that 80% of new mums experience some form of post-natal depression. Ok, the ‘some form of’ is my words. They just told me 80% get PND.
Not me I thought. I’m not the depressed type.
Though I did get depression last year when the beautiful Amy died and work was crap, and I did spend a few months seeing an psychologist, it was circumstances…not chemicals.
Well, hello? What’s having a baby if not ‘circumstances’!
Yes folks, this is my confession. I got a bit down during the year and struggled with reconciling my conflicting emotions – loving my baby, loving being a mum & being so thankful for the chance to be at home with my girl, at the same time as feeling completely isolated, lonely and sad. I found it very hard to acknowledge to any person (except the wonderful HH) but I did find my own form of therapy in writing it down.
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to take a break from the blog-world and concentrate on having a holiday with my beautiful family. During that time I will be posting my reflections on this darker side of 2008 with you.
Please be kind to me, it’s just another part of this journey. A side I am now ready to share.
Happy New Year.
God Bless,
P.S. I have returned to these posts a few months after the fact and hesitated about posting them. This season was short lived for me but for the couple of months that I experienced it was very real. I don’t claim to have really suffered from PND though I do realise it rears its ugly head in many different forms. That said for the months of August, September and some of October I experienced feelings of lonliness, exhaustion and isolation like never before. It was a dark and scary place to be as it was so contrary to my normal disposition, such unfamiliar territory. To not share about it here would be to deny a very real part of becoming a Mum for many women. The very big upside is…I’m all good now!
Mummble
Stitch Baby + Kids