Bonkers Page 14

  I’ve always wanted to write about my postpartum psychosis. I’ve always been passionate about sharing all of my experiences of mental health and being as honest as possible in order to give the illness and those who go through it a voice. However, I will be honest with you: even now, during the final edit of the book and two years after starting writing, I am struggling to find a place for this section. I’m struggling thinking about how you will perceive me after reading about it. I’m worried you will read it and judge me for choosing to have another baby and for not fully realising what the illness was or the danger I was in. I’m worried that I’m opening a box that is better left firmly locked and stored deep inside my mind.

  However, therein lies one of the largest and most dangerous problems of this illness. Not only that it is an illness most people have never heard about, but that it silences its victims so completely that it cruelly enables the illness to remain undetected, creating an incredibly dangerous and vicious cycle.

  So, with your help and patience, I’m going to break this vicious cycle, share my story and fully expose the demons that were once a part of my everyday life as a mum.

  Here goes …

  I will never forget the day postpartum psychosis barged its way into my life …

  DEMONS

  ‘Hun, there are demons flying around the house trying to kill Éva.’ Not the usual words you expect to hear on a phonecall from your wife whilst you’re out watching the footie with your mates. In fact, even as the words formed and came off my tongue, they felt so foreign, left so disgusting a taste in my mouth that I was already desperately wishing I could snatch them in mid-air and claw them back, before any damage was done. But it was too late – not just to stop the words from bringing my husband’s world crashing down, but to bring my mind back from the edge it had been peering over, eyes half shut, for the past few months.

  My illness had soaked through my brain matter, taken hold of my thoughts, my senses and my vision to the point that what I was seeing and feeling was incredibly and unquestionably real. Demons were surrounding our home. They were coming to get us. There was no way I could stop them. I was completely and utterly terrified.

  I remember as my husband, shocked and also unable to comprehend the words his wife was saying, asked me, ‘You what? What do you mean?’.

  I replied, ‘I know it sounds crazy, but I promise you there are demons flying around the house. I can see them, they are getting closer and are going to try and take Éva.’

  It was only an hour after he had tucked his daughter up safely in bed. Now consumed with concern and disbelief, he said, ‘I’m coming home!’.

  ‘No, it’s OK, we’ll be OK as long as they can’t get into the house.’

  My husband arrived home ten minutes later to find me on my knees in the kitchen, clutching the kitchen sides, consumed by fear and confusion whilst our baby slept safely and soundly in her nursery.

  This was my first psychotic episode. And despite it being petrifying and confusing, both my husband and I thought it was all part of PND, which I was already being treated for, so this was just another symptom, nothing that needed extra help. After all, I was already being treated. This was just par for the course, and I was going to have to ride them out along with all the other symptoms I was currently battling. I was taking anti-depressants and these would fix it eventually. I just needed to suck it up and carry on with it all.

  This incident was my first taste of the illness and my first hallucination, but unfortunately not the last. It opened the door to a new darkness, and a place in my mind where I had never ventured before.

  My next very real encounter with something so very unreal took place a week later. A three-foot, mint-blue demon was peering over my shoulder and baring his teeth at me as I filled the washing machine with tiny vests, socks and baby grows. It left me screaming out loud in fear – and then saw me laughing hysterically whilst crying with relief when I finally realised that it wasn’t actually real.

  These two encounters were my introduction to the world of postpartum psychosis. Unfortunately it was the introduction of a menacing new houseguest, who lived with me for the next three years.

  THE DARK STRANGER

  The first time I saw him, he was sitting on the sofa. I’d put Éva down for her afternoon nap, my hubby was out at work and I was alone in the house. I walked into the lounge to tidy up some discarded toys and muslins, and there he was. As casual as anything, sitting on the sofa, looking right at me. Watching me, filling my heart and stomach with an electrifying, debilitating fear that I could taste in my mouth and feel coursing through my veins. There was an intruder in the house and we were in unthinkable danger. It made my knees physically tremble and my blood run cold. He was sitting there, unseen and unheard by anyone else and telling me in no uncertain terms that he was here now. That he was after me and that my days were numbered. All said in words that only I could hear.

  And so began my daily run-ins with what I came to call my Dark Stranger. He would creep around the house after me. He would turn up and take me by terrifying surprise wherever I found him: loitering in the kitchen, peering at me from the nursery door or standing behind me as I put Éva down in her cot for her nap. Confronting him in my head (which is how we used to converse), I would scream, ‘Don’t you dare come near her! Stay where you are!’. He would then scuttle off back along the sideboards down the hallway outside her nursery whilst I was left trying to catch the breath I didn’t even know I had been holding and desperately trying to cling onto reality, for the sake of the precious bundle in my arms. I had to keep her safe no matter what. It became my daily mission to keep him away from her, whatever the cost or consequence to myself.

  It is only now that I have more knowledge of the illness that I know I was suffering from an additional illness – one classed by the NHS as a serious mental illness requiring immediate and urgent medical help. In fact, the NHS website recommends that a woman who suffers a psychotic episode (such as seeing demons flying around the house) should be taken to hospital immediately for her own safety and for correct treatment. Instead I went back to taking care of my daughter.

  It is a chilling and heart-stopping reality that any one of the episodes I suffered could have placed my daughter in danger, could have meant I made a decision that led to either myself or us both not being here any longer. So why the hell do us mums and mums-to-be not know more about this illness?

  After several months of these encounters, my Dark Stranger became a permanent fixture. It’s funny how something so terrifying can become so normal. How something so alien can become so familiar. My dark and menacing stranger became so regular, so part of my day-to-day existence, that as I walked through my day I was poised and prepared to see him. Even so, the very sight of him – no matter how normal and expected it became – still evoked a terror within me that was as potent and as poisonous as the first time we met.

  He was always there, always watching me from the periphery of my life, whispering menacing, gut-wrenching threats and erasing me piece by piece. He was a constant presence following my initial diagnosis of PND and stayed with me for the long haul. (Oh yes, he was not a one night stand kind of a guy. Oh no, this evil bastard was a loyal son-of-a-bitch.) He was right there by my side throughout the first year of Éva’s life, through my second pregnancy and right up to several months following the birth of my second little girl.

  However, he did take a holiday once. There was a period of around four weeks following the birth of my second little girl where I felt well – and not just well but really well. Something had lifted, the veil of darkness and dread that masked every day had gone, though I didn’t dare allow myself to start to believe his absence might be of the more permanent kind. (I’d grown accustomed to the cruel ways of the illness and knew the likliehood was that he would return.) For a while, though, he was nowhere to be seen – and, believe me, I looked hard. I searched for him high and low, visited all his usual hangouts and continued the
search until I was convinced that for now he was no longer here. For the time being he was gone, and I was finally alone with my little family. I no longer had his unwanted company.

  This window of respite came when I needed it the most. It was the break I needed. The reminder that this is how I could and should be feeling for the majority of the time. It allowed me to gather my hope and strength, and strengthened my resolve to fight the illness once it returned and the Dark Stranger installed himself into my life once more. This time, I would be ready to face it and fight the next, and hopefully final, battle that lay ahead. Looking back now, I can only question why I was not already armed with the knowledge of what this illness was and how I could fight it and overcome it.

  Those weeks of respite were bliss. The two weeks before my second tiny human arrived, I spent feeling normal, and the happiest and most together I had felt throughout my pregnancy. It ensured that I felt calm when it came to her birth and assured that I could manage. It kept me glued together and hoping and praying that this glue would last.

  THE SECOND BATTLE WITH MY MENTAL HEALTH

  And it did for a while. It stayed, holding everything in place, during my final days in hospital after the birth of my second little girl. It even got me home and through the first two weeks at home, taking care of a toddler and a newborn whilst breast-feeding on demand. Unfortunately this glue was not the long-lasting, durable-until-the-end-of-time variety, and slowly but surely it started to wear thin. Within a few short months I was more broken than ever before, and there was nothing to keep me from falling apart.

  My husband was the first one to notice. My slight edginess, irritability and anger couldn’t be explained away or ignored any longer. I became extremely protective over my time with Isla-Mai, and would increasingly take myself off to feed in private even when I was at home with just my hubby and eldest daughter. Without even knowing it, I started to withdraw and became increasingly determined to carry on breast-feeding – even when I’d been up for three days straight, feeding on the hour, every hour. I felt I would let her down if I gave up, and because I had heard that breast-feeding can help prevent PND, I felt I couldn’t dare give up as my illness would then return and I would be the one to blame.

  This time around I was determined not to mess things up, not to get ill, not to ruin what should be the most magical of times – and determined to be a better mother. I was still in denial that anything was wrong and would half-heartedly agree with my hubby that I was not quite myself but insist I was OK, I was in control of things and yes, I would most definitely tell him if I thought I needed help. Was I a good actress or what!?!

  However, time was soon called on the Liv Kidding Herself She’s OK Show: my unwanted houseguest returned. Oh yes, seeing him sat there as bold as day on my sofa was the final nail in my wellness coffin. Just when I’d dared to think his absence meant he was gone forever rather than just on holiday, he turned up, sat on my sofa and followed me around the house with such a bellyful of vengeance that his sheer presence deflated me.

  Like anyone after a good holiday, he returned rejuvenated and well rested, which meant he was back stronger than ever, running my mind and my nerve endings ragged, sharpening my tongue and senses, and leaving me with an overwhelming sense of defeat: he was here and my fate lay in his hands. I came to accept that this was now my life. This was now who I was. I believed that the real me was so far lost, so far buried under the destruction wreaked by this illness that there was no longer any hope of her return. This was now my life. My fight up and left me. I stopped caring. I stopped fighting. I simply gave in.

  This total surrender felt good for a while. No longer to be fighting it. Just to be accepting. Not to have to try to keep summoning the energy to battle against such a powerful and controlling force. To hold my hands up and say, ‘I’m done’.

  All the way through my battles with postnatal depression and postpartum psychosis, one of the key things I remember in my more lucid moments is talking to my husband and asking what more I had to give? What more did I have to do to get through it? How much further could I go past rock bottom until I started the climb back out? How much longer did I have to keep fighting for? How much stronger did I have to be in order to finally be free of this illness that was ripping my life, my soul and my tiny, beautiful family to pieces in front of me, whilst I watched on, feeling helpless?

  Once I accepted that my PND and postpartum psychosis were back, and back with a vengeance, I was so angry, ashamed and exhausted; I was totally spent. I’d had a taste, through my momentary respite from the illness, of what life should be like as a mum and what I should be experiencing. More acutely I knew not only what I was robbed of now but what my eldest daughter and I had missed out on. What the illness had taken from us. I remember thinking: How dare it? How dare it do this to me again? More importantly, how dare this illness rob my little girls of what should have been rightfully theirs – a happy and mentally well mummy to create nothing but positive memories. How dare this illness try to snatch this out of my little girls’ tiny clutches? How dare it even make the slightest of shadows over their new and precious lives? ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH.

  This was the turning point. This was me getting my fight back. These thoughts were what burst my bubble of acceptance, fired me to get back on the road to recovery. This was not the old me, but a glimmer of the new me; a mum-of-two who was, yes, mentally ill, but who was owning her illness and calling time on it. I was angry, determined and driven to protect my girls from it and to claim back the lives they deserved: a mummy 100 per cent well and kicking the arse out of this illness, forging memories to make them proud. One of these memories being their mum battling through and overcoming the most difficult struggles of her life – not just once but twice. How kick-ass is that?

  I’d been here before, so I tried my hardest to use this as a tool in my armour rather than a chink. I had knowledge of the illness and how it affected me. I knew what lay ahead and as my husband often repeated to me, ‘We have got through this once, we can do it again’.

  When our new little girl was six weeks old, I restarted my counselling, twice weekly. I started doing all the things that had helped me the first time around, including little things such as opening the windows and breathing in some fresh air. Just this simple act of throwing open the windows in the house and taking a few deep breaths seemed to calm me and refocus my incredibly busy and over-anxious mind. I started going for short runs, which gave me a chance to try and burn off the anxiety that was fuelling me through each day. And on the days when things were just too much, I made sure I told my husband about it. I voiced my fears and at times just let myself be with the illness. Accepted it was one of those days, that it would pass and hopefully not be as acute the following day. I drew strength from the fact that there had been a light at the end of the tunnel once before. No matter how debilitating or hard it was at that time, I just needed to keep focused and keep putting one exhausted foot in front of the other and trust that I would eventually find my way out of the disorientating, terrifying and tricky maze of my mind.

  GETTING WELL AGAIN – COMING OUT THE OTHER SIDE

  Sometimes to bring about drastic change you need to take drastic action. For us, this came when Isla-Mai was twelve weeks old. As a family we were back in the grip of the illness. Yes, I was getting regular counselling, but I felt more lost and alone than ever before.

  My dark and menacing houseguest had been away, and just as I had used this time to regroup and grow in strength, so had he. He knew his victim inside out, had studied her for months, knew her trigger points – and he came back armed with claws more potent and gripping than ever before.

  During this time I felt like a tiny sailing boat cast adrift in a ferociously violent sea of blackness, being bashed and battered senseless by waves that were gaining in strength with each strike. This tiny boat contained my life and my mind, and I felt as though my hands were trying to grip the edges and keep it upright, afloat and balanced. Howev
er, no matter how hard I gripped or how much resolve I summoned, another wave of darkness would come crashing down on top of me, sinking me further back into that boat adrift in the bleak and unforgiving waters, and threatening to send me plummeting into the icy depths, to be lost forever.

  Pretty dramatic words, I know, but God, the despair I felt was tangible! It seeped into everything. My days looking after the girls and going through the motions of being a normal mum of two were quite simply blighted by crippling anxiety, which was now such a part of me that to be without it would have felt abnormal. An overwhelming, deep sense of dread and fear had my nervous system working on overtime, to the point that when people touched or brushed past me my skin would tingle with pain. I stopped sleeping. My newborn lay snoring away next to me and I just lay there awake and distraught, demons running around my mind and filling it with constant chatter. I found myself shaking my head violently throughout the night to try and silence them.

  I had ventured deeper into the illness in a shorter amount of time, and trying to acclimatise myself to these new conditions left me feeling fearful and powerless. The answer to my wretchedness and the thing that gave me something solid to hold onto and remain focused was the thought of my family.

  We had lived in France for six years, first as a couple and then as a new family. We’d got married there, had fantastic friends there, had our two children there, and this is where we’d battled the illness. We’d been through a lot with this glorious country, a breathtaking and beautiful backdrop to some of the darkest and ugliest times of our lives. However, the one thing I didn’t have was my immediate family on hand for that much-needed and invaluable support, not to mention general shared history, which makes life so much easier.