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I chose to solely breastfeed baby boy. No surprise there- I have an underlying belief I’m not good enough, so I strived to anything that made me look and feel a good enough mother. Not breastfeeding would be not good enough. Problem was I didn’t enjoy it.

Problem was I had become a breastfeeding machine and that was it. I no longer felt human and my sole purpose in life was to feed this little person. I was still their lifeline and it was exhausting. Little did I know then that the connection during pregnancy never truly breaks. Placenta may no longer connect us but now there was an invisible cord that would thankfully become a bond.

The bonding process was difficult and I was going through the motions- pick up baby, feed baby, put baby back down to sleep. I instinctively reacted to his crying but I still didn’t believe he was mine. He didn’t look like either of us but then one day mother-in-law sent a photo of husband as a baby. It took just a photograph to convince me that baby boy was mine.

I was home one night after being discharged from hospital. In the morning I woke up but didn’t….I was not fully conscious and I was in a state of confusion. All I can recall is saying random words like spaghetti and mummy. Something was wrong and we were scared. My husband was concerned and called the hospital. We went in later that day and they ran all sort of tests on me as they queried an infection. It was all clear but they prescribed antibiotics as a precautionary measure. Husband took the prescription slip and headed for the hospital pharmacy as I waited somewhere along a hospital corridor Right on cue baby boy decides he’s hungry. Problem is I can’t breastfeed him where I am. He starts to scream and scream. I start to panic and sweat. What do I do? People are looking at me thinking I’m a horrible mother not comforting my baby.

Thankfully for what seems like ages a lady comes along and asks if I need any help. She kindly takes me to a room to breastfeed but then I realise I don’t know where I am and nor does my husband. I start to panic as I finish off feeding baby boy and start roaming the corridors trying to give my husband over the phone descriptions of the corridor I’m in. I burst into tears and eventually meet my husband outside the hospital. Never leave me again I say.

Back at home, I’m in the toilet feeling at loss….I’m sleep deprived. What have I done having a baby? Can I put it up for adoption?

Later when family are over sitting in the garden, I am indoors on a the verge of a panic attack. This world isn’t real. I’m dreaming this.

Weeks later I sit with my mother in a park with baby boy asleep in his pram. At that moment I want to crawl into a corner and uncontrollably cry. I couldn’t do this anymore….

He was not mine. He was somebody else’s baby.

I said I love you to baby boy but didn’t mean it. I didn’t feel it. How was I supposed to believe this baby wheeled over to me all neatly wrapped in a blanket was mine. Slowly my grip on reality began to slip. I stared at him next to me and I thought he didn’t look right. Something was wrong with him. He has Downs Syndrome. His toes don’t look right. I consult Dr Google.

I start to think the nurses on the ward hate me and blame me for the birth going wrong. The nurse who told me off for eating something- she hated me. The doctor who was sat at the foot of the bed when I was in labour waiting to take blood from my baby boy inside of me, she hated me. I remember her stern face looking at me.

All these thoughts swirled around in my head but I kept quiet. I didn’t mention it to anyone, not even my husband. Why? I don’t know.

On my medical notes that we sneaked a peep at, it was circled how much blood I lost (they kept the IV line in incase I needed a blood transfusion) and traumatic birth was circled. Reflecting back now, I was anaemic, still had anaesthetic in me, had post-pregnancy hormones ravaging my blood and I had just been through a traumatic birth. Thinking clearly was not possible. My birth experience was now fragmented pieces of pain and trauma. The baby was mine but not mine.

When I was pregnant I couldn’t wait for that emotional moment, you see on One Born Every Minute of baby being born, where you hold your baby with your partner and quite possibly cry with happiness…

I awake in immense pain and feel like I’m going to be sick. I’m given more pain killers and water to drink through a straw. After a while of slipping in and out of consciousness, I ask…”what did I have?”. The nurse asks someone in the background and she comes back to tell me I had a boy. I felt glad but I also felt worried for my husband. He really wanted a girl and so I hoped he was ok with baby being a boy. Husband wanted to come and see me but the nurse said not quite yet. Eventually I became more conscious and pain was under control for him to come to my bedside. I could barely make out my husbands face but he was there and I was pleased. We chatted for a while as I asked how baby boy was doing. The nurse kept saying that my husband was a good painkiller, as I no longer was focussed on the pain below. She was right- I was just glad to see my husband again and know baby boy was ok.

I was eventually wheeled to the ward to be with other mother’s who had their babies with them. It didn’t register with me that I had yet to see my baby boy. I was still in the mindset- I’m not a mother yet. I gladly munched on a double decker chocolate bar knowing I didn’t have to stab my finger to check my blood sugar levels anymore. A nurse passes by and sees me enjoying this chocolate and says I shouldn’t be eating. I ask why and she says I wouldn’t want to know….What did she mean!?

I don’t know how much time passed before they wheeled baby boy to me. One minute I was baby-less and then all of sudden I had possession of a little human being. Even though I did not feel it, I acted all happy to see him. This is when things began to go wrong….

Baby came a week early. I had tunnel vision and the focus was getting through the pain whilst everything around me was just a blur. You’re vulnerable as a pregnant woman, but vulnerability is even greater when you’re in labour. As has been said many times before, you lose your dignity as you lay there legs spread open as various heads peep down there and hands explore your insides. But when you’re in that moment you don’t give a monkey shit. You just want the pain to end and to be holding your baby.

Labour was progressing for a while but then slowed down. Nearly there but not quite there. The midwife disappeared every so often I think. Shift changes happened and I pleaded with the first midwife to not leave me. The second one did not look as friendly. We were then told that the baby was getting distressed at each contraction. Foetal distress. I vaguely registered this but was not quite sure what that meant for the birth. I had reached the pushing stage but was being told not to push because I wasn’t fully dilated. How does one not push?! I couldn’t not push. I was failing again… Then all of a sudden there was a flurry of activity and my husband is told to change into scrubs. The midwife starts getting instruments ready for delivery but this is promptly stopped by the doctor who tells her off for making the assumption it would happen there and then and not in theatre. Later a lady, I assume a doctor, appears at the foot of my bed and she watches me as I go through a contraction. Next thing she says is she’s going to take blood from the baby’s head. I find out later this is to measure how much oxygen is getting to baby and when the nurse returns with the results on a slip of paper holding it up for the doctor there’s a look of shock on her face. I don’t see this of course as I am delirious on the gas and air.

I am told to give my husband my wedding ring. He wasn’t coming with me. Before I know it I’m being wheeled quickly out of the room to the theatre. As I’m wheeled along a midwife reads out the consent form…. I’m still contracting and can barely hear her words. I shout out “just get it out!”. As I arrive in the operating theatre I am quickly prepped and just before being transferred onto the operating table I’m asked to sign the consent form, the consent form I could barely see and had barely heard moments ago. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, I manage a near perfect signature. I feel cold liquid splashed on my legs, someone inserts something into my IV line in my arm (I had it previously inserted at the start to administer antibiotics as I was told I was a Strep B carrier- another sign to me that I was failing my baby). Then a face hovers above me and its the midwife I had in the delivery suite and she says “Don’t worry I’m here”. I didn’t care if she was there or not. Then all of a sudden another face appears and a mask is placed over my mouth. A male voice says it is oxygen which will help with the pain. Next comes another person who says this will help before placing her fingers firmly on my neck. This was what happens in an emergency category 1 c-section (risk of life to mother or baby). I start to have another contraction and I bend my leg up in pain. Promptly someone grabs my leg back down and says to keep my legs straight. Soon after a voice asks is the midwife here. A voice behind asks that voice if they were ready. Then all went black…..

I don’t know how people will react to what they are about to read and the decision whether or not to keep anonymous or not has played heavily on my mind. Reasons for this include professionalism but also being exposed. I am not even certain whether this will be published or not but for now I will write my journey from being a Psychologist to a mental health patient in the very system I worked in. I have changed the identities of those involved for reasons of confidentiality.

I qualified in 2012 as a Psychologist and this was one of my proudest moments in life. I had achieved my dream and had become a Doctor of Psychology. I worked in primary and secondary care settings for a few years but becoming a mother was the next life goal I was working towards.

I was desperate for it to happen but unlike completing a doctorate where you work hard and put in the hours, falling pregnant did not fall in line with this. The monthly cycle of hope to disappointment was exhausting. I had a rather rose tinted view of becoming a mother and the focus on getting pregnant meant I was perhaps not realistic of what was to come once the baby arrived.

With a bit of medical intervention I fell pregnant and the excitement and joy came but then quickly went away. I have always been someone sensitive to hormones and gosh was I sensitive to the changes pregnancy was bringing. Already prone to depression my mood significantly dipped and what I had hoped would be a pleasurable experience began to turn into an epic challenge of mental distress combined with constant nausea and sickness. The first trimester was plagued with this. The second trimester said goodbye to the nausea and sickness, but welcomed gastritis and eating anything though would now firmly stay in the stomach rather than be vomited was causing immense pain. The third trimester then said goodbye to gastritis and said hello to gestational diabetes (GD).

I ticked most of the risk factors for GD; ethnicity, PCOS and family history. I however thought my healthy BMI would trump these and I would get the all clear. Getting told I had diabetes was like a punch to the stomach. As a pregnant woman you want to do right by your unborn baby. You do all the right things like stop drinking, eat healthily, avoid certain foods, avoid certain animals, take vitamins….those things are in your control and you feel you are doing good for your baby. This diagnosis for someone who already feels not good enough, confirms that everything they have done has not been good enough. “You have failed”. I was damaging my baby and it was my fault. Already struggling with low mood and the emotional rollercoaster pregnancy hormones give, I went even deeper into my depression. I self-flagellated and went to the extreme to ensure I stayed diet controlled and avoided ending up on insulin. That to me would have been the ultimate failure. You may question why a Psychologist cannot therapise themselves out of this and we should know better. The term “wounded healer” plays a big role here. I had and was wounded still and those wounds were being exposed in the vulnerability of pregnancy. One thing that kept me going was meeting my baby.