Bonkers Page 8

  I often wonder now what I must have looked like to passers-by (few and far between at that time of year; I was usually the only one literally crazy enough to be walking, let alone pushing a buggy). There we were, me with a grimaced look on my determined face, fully clad in winter gear, pushing the buggy like a demon, lost in my personal pursuit of silence as I manoeuvred us over whatever snowdrift was in our way. It must have been a strange sight!

  I probably looked quite wild. To be honest, that is quite a good word to sum up my mental state at that time. I felt like a wild, untamed and unknown species. Something I didn’t recognise but which I also understood completely.

  During these early months of motherhood, my days were spent trying to cage this wildness. Trying to tame it through the normal schedules and acts of everyday mum life. However, when no one was around, this wildness was left to run free and untamed, ruling my days with its unruliness whilst I watched on as a spectator of my own life.

  • Unusual rituals

  The days where I was alone and therefore able to indulge this wildness freely, saw me spending my days charged on empty adrenaline and feeling acute anxiety. As crazy as it sounds, it made me feel as if my senses were tuned into the universe and I was able to feel and hear everything around me as if we were one living organism. All my nerve endings were primed and on high alert and I would spend my days charging around the house, feeding, changing, cuddling and entertaining Éva.

  I had the lounge set up in different sensory areas – reading, tummy time, soft play – and we would venture around each one. Then she would be fed and changed and placed down for her nap. Then I would begin the ritual of reorganising the lounge so all was ready for when she woke up. I would sterilise all the bottles, have two jugs filled with sterile water, as well as each bottle already filled with the correct amount of water and the formula measured out to precision in its container. I put the washing on, and dried and folded the clean laundry. Then I would clean everywhere and begin the daily stock take of the nappies, rearrange her clothes into size order, and place away any clothes she had outgrown. Once this part of my daily checklist had been completed I would try to have a quick shower, after which she would be waking from her morning nap and the whole play–feed–change ritual would start again. It exhausted and exhilarated me in equal measure. I was functioning on around one to two hours of sleep a night and spent my days veering from being supercharged and overefficient to depleted and desolate with no energy to smile, let alone get dressed and leave the house.

  There was no middle ground for me, no mediocre, no calm and no let-up to this all consuming pattern. I was either the superefficient, super-sociable, supermum coping better than anyone else or so buried in the pits of despair and self-loathing that I stopped answering phone calls and texts and stopped leaving the house. My friends and family only ever got to see the supercharged me, the me who, despite being as tired as expected, was coping and had her mummy shit together.

  • Loss of appetite

  I’ll always remember a good friend of mine asking me a few months after having Éva when I had lunch? Did I have it whilst Éva was awake or did I wait until I’d managed to get her down for a nap? I laughed at her, as I thought she was joking, and said, ‘I don’t have time to eat.’ My friend was visibly shocked, realising that I was being serious and I wasn’t actually eating. I asked her what now feels like a totally ludicrous question: ‘Do you eat?’. At the time this was a serious question, no joke intended. I couldn’t quite get my head around how she managed to eat, how she found the time to look after herself as well as her baby, and I wanted to learn how I could do this. It was then that it dawned on me that I couldn’t remember the last time I felt hungry or the last meal I had prepared for myself whilst my husband wasn’t there.

  As I watched the concern sweep across my friend’s face, a little voice inside me screamed: ‘Stop talking! You’re going to get into trouble.’ I’d overshared. I’d revealed something that I obviously shouldn’t have, so I quickly changed the direction of the conversation towards the more light-hearted, adding that I was ‘too tired to remember my name let alone eat’ and promising that I would start making more of an effort. I didn’t. Things carried on right along as they were.

  • The ‘I’m coping’ deception

  One of the most destructive elements of a mental health illness is the secret nature of it. I quickly became an expert in ‘I’m coping’ deception. I would put on a show, a façade that I was coping. Yes, I was tired, but yes, I was most definitely coping and taking motherhood all in my stride. Tired but yes, most definitely happy. Naturally overwhelmed at times, but most definitely coping.

  The outside world (and my husband to some extent in the early days) just saw me as Liv enjoying motherhood and doing a damn fine job of it. I said all the right things, thanks to all the candy-coated parenting magazines and blogs I’d read beforehand on how ‘real mums’ talk and act after having a baby. I did all the right activities, lived up to all the new mum clichés. I was in every sense and expectation of the outside world ‘coping’.

  Unfortunately, the only thing I was coping at was convincing everyone else (including myself at times) that I was OK.

  I’ll always remember a good friend being shocked to hear that I’d been diagnosed with PND. Out of all our friends with babies, she thought that I was the one ‘coping best’ at being a new mum.

  I was not.

  • Socialising

  During the months following Éva’s birth, I could still function in social situations. However, the energy it took for me to be able to build up my self-confidence and resolve to take part was monumental. From being a social butterfly who loved having friends round I came to dread the words, ‘I’ve invited some mates over for dinner.’ It zapped all my energy and sent my mind reeling and my anxiety levels soaring. Prior to any get-together I could always be found hiding out in our bathroom and psyching myself up to be able to face everyone, to get through the next few hours being the sociable and bubbly Liv that everyone expected.

  The only person who got to see behind the veil and to be introduced to the two sides of my personality was my husband. It must have been so confusing to him at first, seeing me be the person he loved on one day and a total stranger the next. However, during the first several months, the erratic nature of my behaviour meant that it was easy to put the bad days down to one-offs; the next day I seemed OK again and back to myself. And so the vicious circle continued – me desperately ill and in need of help but also desperately convincing.

  THE EFFECTS OF PND

  I’d heard in the press about PND (linking the illness to mums being unable to feel maternal), but I didn’t ever doubt my ability to take care of Éva. I never once doubted feeling maternal towards her. No matter how lost I felt and despite the darkest of days, I never once questioned if I was the best person to be looking after her. I was certain deep-down that I was the best person to look after her and that, no matter what happened to me or how desperate I felt, she would always be my top priority. She would always come first even at the sake of my own wellbeing. I loved her more than life itself.

  By contrast, my relationship with my husband, Jamie, deteriorated.

  • My relationship with my husband

  I cannot describe how difficult it has been writing this next bit, but here goes …

  It is one of the most difficult things to own up to, but at the time I resented my husband so deeply for not protecting me from what was happening. For carrying on as normal, inviting friends over, planning normal sociable things to do, whilst I was having the shit kicked out of me, mentally. For not realising how wrong things were, for not rescuing me from the terror that I was experiencing and enduring in silence. For not realising how much danger I was in. For not realising that I had given up everything to have his child.

  We as a couple were being led down an incredibly dangerous and ugly path, and with each step my resentment for him grew stronger and the distance between us
greater.

  Just before I was diagnosed with PND, Jamie went away for a week cycling with one of his best friends. It had been a trip he’d had planned since before the birth. At the time of booking, it was a trip I was happy for him to take. I was going to use it as a good excuse to go home to the UK for a week with Éva, to see family and friends and then meet him at the finishing point in the UK.

  If we had both known how ill I was, he would never have gone. However, he didn’t, he just saw that his tired wife was being a bit of an arsehole at times, someone he no longer recognised, and he probably viewed the trip as a much-needed break. I, on the other hand, watched him leave and resented him for abandoning me and us at a time when I was at my most vulnerable and isolated. I remember Éva and I waving him off and feeling an incredible numbness take hold of my heart and a detachment from him. I thought: ‘Well, there he goes, off for a week of freedom, doing something he loves most in the world whilst I am left here, on my own, holding the baby and trying to hold onto my grip on reality.’

  I felt abandoned, uncared for and alone, and I hated him for it. As the week progressed, I flew us back to the UK (something I cannot even remember doing now) and visited family with Éva. The detachment I felt from him came with me. It was something I couldn’t shake off; it had taken hold of me.

  Unlike other times when we had been apart, I did not look forward to his phone calls. I did not try to keep in contact with him, and when he did call me with updates on his trip I was unenthusiastic to the point of not caring less. I was hurt, confused and resentful – and unfortunately he got it from both barrels.

  This was the man I had once loved with every fibre of my person, but now I found myself looking at him like I had no clue who he even was. I wasn’t a part of us anymore and felt immune to any feelings I’d had towards him previously.

  Rather than being the welcoming wife, waving welcome home flags on his return, I missed him crossing the finishing line. I couldn’t get my head around how little I cared about us and our relationship and, if I’m completely honest, how little I cared about anything at all – apart from Éva.

  I can’t begin to imagine what a total mind fuck it was for him. He was no longer living with his happy-go-lucky, enthusiastic wife who loved him to bits. Instead he was existing alongside an incredibly erratic and angry stranger who had cut herself off from him – and he had no idea why.

  My lack of interest in us and my shutdown led him to ask the heartbreaking question: ‘Liv, do you want a divorce?’.

  He followed by asking if the reason I was so unhappy and so distant was because I no longer wanted to be with him. I told him that of course I didn’t want a divorce and of course I still wanted to be with him. However, hand on heart, at that time, the illness had taken me over so completely and seeped its ugly waters into every part of my life that actually I felt no emotion at all when he asked what should have been a devastating question. If he’d walked out on me right there and then, I was so numb that I would have not felt anything at all.

  These are pretty strong and ugly sentiments, particularly when it comes to talking about the love of my life – and the person who helped pull me through the darkness with his soul-strengthening promises that we were going to get through the hell we now found ourselves in.

  A month later, I was diagnosed with PND. Without this diagnosis, our marriage would not have survived. I would have instead spiralled down further into the illness and my actions would have confirmed his greatest fear that I no longer wanted to be with him. It is a miracle any relationship survives through a battle with a mental illness, and after going through it ourselves as a couple we understand how relationships are destroyed because of it rather than made stronger. Sometimes love, family and a history together are not enough. Even the strongest and once happiest of relationships cannot survive the brutal and unforgiving damage it causes.

  A mental illness rips out the very heart and soul of a partnership. It knocks down the little kingdom and safe haven you have created together, leaving a path of mangled and charred remains in its wake. Once you have endured this destruction, it is time to try and rebuild a new city of hope together, one that can house you and your family safely. Unfortunately, for some this is impossible. They do not make it through to the other side. The damage done is irreversible; there is nothing left to rebuild, no desire left to try again. There is no going back, there is no going forward, no happy ending.

  Like all love stories, ours has had its share of happiness, challenges, heartbreak and darkness to overcome. Stuff like this, we thought, wasn’t supposed to happen to a couple like us. We were supposed to be strong enough, positive enough, happy enough for our lives not to be blighted by an illness that took us over the cliff of our relationship and into the mouth of hell.

  However, it did happen to us, we were not immune to it. And why should we have been? Because you know what I’ve learned? No one is immune. I am proud and at times in awe at the things we have overcome, the depths we have sometimes managed to drag ourselves up from – and I look back in disbelief at the unapologetic grit and blind determination it took to stay together through it all.

  But together we still are. In some ways, a little weaker and unhealed in places, the precipice too wide still to cross. We live with the hard but honest truth that we as a couple are not (as we once thought when standing in a beautiful château grounds in front of all our family and friends) unbreakable. But we are in many ways stronger than we ever thought possible.

  We have not quite found our happy ever after. There are still wounds trying to heal and memories that need to be more distant than they are currently. But somehow we are back on our path. We know, without speaking of them, the things that have cemented us together. The dark corners to which we have journeyed. The demons we have faced and overthrown. And we know that when the going got tougher than we ever dreamed possible, we have been there for each other – for better and for worse.

  That to me makes ours a love story and a half. That is where the true, honest and challenging romance lies. That is what I find more romantic than candlelit dinners; the strength, pure grit and determination it took to survive, to keep surviving and to forge the next part of our journey battle wounded, but together.

  THE TIPPING POINT – GETTING DIAGNOSED

  Being ill with PND strips you of any sense of control – over your life, your mind and your emotions. It’s this lack of control that can send you spiralling deeper into the illness without knowing if there is any way back. For me, this lack of control destroyed the very core of who I was. I, therefore, clung onto the one and only bit of control I felt I had left: the control over the daily Mummy’s Got Her Shit Together Show. Oh yes, as long as I was in control of how others perceived me as a new mum and as long as I could control the ‘together and coping’ impression of me the outside world was seeing, then it didn’t matter that I was losing my mind behind closed doors.

  I came to discover the truth – which is as unavoidable as it is inevitable – that this ‘control’ cannot and does not last forever. Like a bad TV show, the Mummy’s Got Her Shit Together Show was decommissioned; no follow-up series was wanted. You see, this form of control is short-lived – and, as I found out, it finally screws you over royally! After several months of trying to keep my show together and trying to carry on as normal, my control up and left and I had a complete breakdown.

  What was my tipping point I hear you ask? What was the big moment that sent this control packing? Nappies. Yes, nappies, and the fact that we were a pack of Size 4 nappies down.

  Let me explain Nappygate to you.

  I had drawers and cupboards filled to the brim with nappies, all organised in order of size and calculated down to the last change and the time when she would need the next size. (Hello OCD, so glad you could join the party!) I had the wardrobe drawers packed with the ‘soon to be needed nappies’, all in size order, and then her ‘wearing now’ drawers packed with nappies the right size for her at the tim
e. (I had the same rota with her clothes and toys too; I would have made a fantastic librarian!)

  I would visit the drawers daily and run my hand over the neatly packed and organised array of nappies, packs of wipes, muslins, multiple jars of Vix and bottles of ‘just in case’ Calpol, neatly folded and organised vests, Baby-gros, outfits and matching socks – and I would feel a sense of fulfilment and achievement. A feeling that despite the negative sentiments of my mind, I was in fact a good mum. These drawers and their ridiculous level of organisation were the proof. If I was having a really bad day, I just had to look into these drawers to prove I was a good mum, I’d done my little girl proud. I deserved her.

  However, on the day of Nappygate, I opened the drawers of the wardrobe to find that it wasn’t brimming with nappies like it should have been. There was a whole row missing of Size 4 nappies. (I should probably add that she was only in size 2s at the time and was tiny for her age, so she was probably not going to be in this size for a good few months to come.)

  I quickly and desperately checked inside the main wardrobe for the back up ‘future packs’ – and there were none. Panic gripped me like nothing I have ever known, my final strand of logic and common sense left the building and I was tipped over the edge and into the ravine of the illness; no control, no holds barred, no coming back. I instead found myself fully immersed in the murky depths. I could take no more.