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Diary Of A New Mum - Week 2

Post-Natal Something

Feeling very tearful today. Tearful and emotional and flat. Paul is being amazing, as always, and we have talked about him going back to work and how we’ll cope. Because the thing is – I don’t think I can! Paul is so strong and calm, and I’m all over the place – happy one minute, crying the next, then laughing, then sobbing… 

Jessica-Ann is incredible, with her perfect, pinched little face and tiny rosebud mouth. I just wish (and I hate myself for saying this), I just wish she was sleeping a bit more and not quite so grumbly and windy. Of course, I know it’s not her fault – she’s a baby, for goodness sake, and Paul says she is an easy baby compared to some. I haven’t spent much time around other babies so I’ve no idea. It’s just that I think I’d be coping a lot better if I could only get some sleep.

The problem is me, not Jessica-Ann. My expectations of myself and what I thought I would be like. I thought I’d breeze it! I thought I’d adapt and carry on like I did when I was pregnant, with a smile and a shrug, playing up the good bits and playing down the bad.

A few nights ago I was up with Jess for the umpteenth time and she was screaming her head off and I couldn’t settle her. Paul found me clutching her to my chest, tears rolling down my face, crying, ‘I can’t do this, I’m so useless.’ The next day he carted me off to the doctors. It was so embarrassing. I had to sit there and answer loads of questions – Did I have thoughts of hurting myself or the baby? Had I ever suffered from depression before? I felt like a total failure.

But the doctor was brilliant, and in the end it wasn’t all that bad. She diagnosed Post-natal Depression (no, really?), and sent me home with some anti-depressants. (Secretly I was quite pleased, I’d always wanted to be on anti-depressants – thought the idea that you could take a little tablet and make all the nasty stuff go away was fantastic!)

Unfortunately the tablets didn’t agree with me at all! I took one after my dinner, and about half an hour later started to feel really funny. Not funny laughing – funny weird. I went to bed feeling very sick – my mom was staying over, thank goodness – and didn’t wake up for twelve hours. Twelve hours! The longest I’d slept in months. And, bizarrely, my general mood was much improved. Who knew they could work so quickly?

Actually, I think it was the sleep not the pill that helped me. And I haven’t taken any more. I have a two-week-old baby, I can’t afford to be knocked out for hours at a time. Maybe I’ll go back to the doctor in a few months and see if she can give me a different type of anti-depressant –Paul says you sometimes have to keep trying to find one that suits you.

For now we’ve figured out a plan to get through the nights while Jess’s feeding every three hours – one of us will do the 10.00pm and the 7.00am feeds and sleep through the middle of the night, while the other does the 1.00am and the 4.00am feeds but goes to bed earlier and sleeps in late in the morning. Then we’ll swap over. Sounds good – we’ll have to see how it goes…

Diary of A New Mum - Week 3

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