Escaping the cloud
"PND is not a happy
thing," Lis Good says emphatically. "It's a weird sensation. You
know you should be happy, but you're not."
Sitting in her West Auckland home, with the rain beating down on
the roof so loudly that we sometimes have to raise our voices to be
heard, it seems an appropriate kind of day to talk about postnatal
depression. Gloomy. Dreary. Dark. Depressing. "This miserable
weather," Lis says, gazing out the window, "is what I felt like on
the inside, all the time. It was always raining. There was this
big, black cloud hanging over me, and I couldn't get away from
it."
When her first child was born in 1998, Lis admits that her life
wasn't in a good place. She was 24, in a not-so-great relationship,
and the pregnancy was completely unplanned.
"I cried for three months after I found out I was pregnant," she
admits. "I remember my midwife giving me a checklist of risk
factors for antenatal depression. There were 10 things on the list,
and I ticked nine of them. And all my midwife said was, 'Well,
we'll just have to be extra vigilant after the baby is
born.'"
Lis muddled through the rest of the pregnancy, working right up
until three days before her daughter's birth in January 1998. Her
little girl, Hannah, came early at 36 weeks, and things quickly got
worse. "She wouldn't feed, was a low birth weight, and had
hypothermia from being premature," recalls Lis. "We spent 12 days
in hospital before we were discharged. By then, my depression had
well and truly set in."
So Lis went home to care for her baby - but the big black cloud
was still there. "I made every effort to bond with Hannah, even
though I was really depressed. Baby massage, attachment
parenting... I did it all. But my heart wasn't in it. I became
really good at 'faking it'."
Eventually Lis was diagnosed with PND, but she admits she was
"treatment resistant". "I wanted to breastfeed, and in those days,
they didn't know if the medication was safe for breastfeeding
mothers. Finally, two years after Hannah was born, I went on
medication and started to even out."
In early 2002, Lis learned she was pregnant again. "I was stoked
to be pregnant," she remembers, smiling. "I had this beautiful big
tummy. But I was also aware that I was becoming depressed again, so
I did whatever I could to try to stave off that black cloud."
Lis, a childbirth educator, extensively researched postnatal
depression and decided to have a home birth. "There have been
studies suggesting that women who have home births are less
postnatally depressed, so that was what I planned. It was a cold,
wet, rainy August day when Ella was born. I had a good labour, but
Ella was a big baby, and I had a fourth-degree tear. My midwife
stitched me up at home, but I lost heaps of blood, and that's when
things started to go downhill."
After stitching up Lis's tear for over an hour, the midwife
determined that she needed to go to hospital and have surgery to
completely close the tear. Lis wanted skin-to-skin contact with
Ella, but instead, was rushed to hospital, where she spent an hour
in theatre getting the tear repaired. "I found it incredibly
violating to be in an operating theatre with my bum hanging off the
end of the table, my legs in lithotomy, facing the door, with no
drape or anything, and people coming and going. I felt like a piece
of meat."
Afterwards, Lis recalled, the surgeon who'd operated on her told
her, "You're going to be incontinent for quite a while. And with
your next baby, you need to be induced at 38 weeks or have an
elective C-section."
Lis spent six days in hospital recovering from the tear - an
incredibly stressful time for her. "My milk wasn't coming in, and
Ella lost 14% of her birth weight, so they made me supplement her
with formula. She had reflux and wouldn't feed. All I did was
cry."
After six days, Lis says, she had reached the point where she
could cope- barely. "I could get up, have a shower, and try to feed
the baby. That was it."
But things got worse. Immediately after returning home, the entire
family got a virus and were sick for 48 hours. And for the next
four months, Lis recalls, the black cloud parked itself in her
drive-way and refused to budge. "I couldn't interact with anyone. I
cried endlessly. All I did was sleep, feed, and eat. That was
it."
Right before Christmas that year, the depression unexpectedly
lifted. "One day, I woke up and said, 'The cloud is gone. I feel
okay."
But the mood swings didn't stop there, either. After the breakup
of her relationship with her daughters' father in 2005, Lis
experienced manic episodes and periods where she felt so low, she
didn't think she could cope. Finally, last year, she was diagnosed
as bipolar and put on a medication that is working for her
situation. She's also in therapy, and has made her mental health a
priority.
"I've finally put myself at the top of the list," she says. "I am
the most well I have been in a long time. I've learned that if my
emotional fuel tank isn't full, there is no way I can give to
anyone else. If you're constantly running on empty, there's nothing
left - you burn out.
"I survived PND by the skin of my teeth. I made the effort to seek
help - and I'm glad I did, for my daughters' sakes. I'm the best
mother I can be for now, and it can only get better."
As seen in OHbaby!
magazine Issue 2: 2008
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