Postnatal Depression
This will probably be my most personal and upfront post to date. When I decided to write about the topic of depression and post partum depression it was a week after Mental Health Awareness week. However I put off writing about it, asI didn't know how to get the words out and explain how I was truly feeling.
Post partum depression is a type of depression that can affect both men and women. PPD is unlike the baby blues as it goes on for a longer period of time - usually longer than a couple of months. After giving birth to my son, I experienced the baby blues which was completely common, however as the months went on I noticed I was still feeling extremely low in myself. This included: not wanting to go out and losing interest in things I would usually enjoy.
Every month, my health visitor would come round and check up on myself and my son and see how we were getting on. Usually I am the type of person that does not like to admit when I am down or struggling, however my health visitor helped me open up to admit how I was feeling. Every single visit she would make me fill out a questionnaire called the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, which had ten questions and I had to pick how I was feeling over the last seven days. Now there isn't a right or wrong answer, it's just used to determine how the parent is feeling that week. Every week was different, some weeks I would be feeling on cloud nine and other weeks I would be extremely low not wanting to leave the house. The first time I did the EPDS, my health visitor sat down with me and asked me what was making me feel this way. Personally, I felt I went back to work way too early, I was missing my son whilst I was at work, I hated where we moved to - as much Chelmsford was a lovely area, I was too far from family and friends and felt isolated, and lastly as much as I love my partner and he is the world's best dad to our son, he wasn't being as supportive and helpful as I would have liked him to be.
Currently at the moment I am feeling good in myself, I got a conditional offer from an university in Essex and I recently passed my assistant swim coach qualification. However over the last few weeks, my son has been teething really badly and having nappy rash and not being his overall normal self and its killing me ( I wish someone would have told me how bad a parent feels when their child is teething) and also we've now moved from Chelmsford to Hornchurch, I am now considerably closer to family and friends however the moving process with a baby is something I don't plan to go through again until my son is older!