“Within a week of bringing home my second baby I could feel that my OCD and anxiety had returned. I couldn’t feel safe inside my own mind. At times I wondered if my family would be better if they committed me for life and took full custody of my children.”

— Tegan

For Tegan, mental ill health was nothing new. So naturally, a happy and mentally healthy pregnancy and postpartum with her first daughter, Addie, took everyone by surprise - including Tegan!

It was only after baby number two, Amelia, that Tegan was reacquainted with anxiety and OCD. Unfortunately, it was far from a happy reunion.

After weeks of being dismissed by medical professionals and the hospital, Tegan finally received the care she needed when she was admitted to an MBU (Mother and Baby Psychiatric Unit), all thanks to the help of an unlikely stranger.

In this episode, Tegan discusses the very real distress that comes from OCD latching onto the one thing she cared about most - her relationship with her babies.

“These intrusive thoughts came in, and it was what if I can’t love both these kids? … you can’t love them both so much, and therefore, you can’t love them both equally.”

Her obsession with the love for her girls manifested in the form of checking, a type of OCD compulsion.

“This is what started a really dangerous cycle… I would check how I felt about the girls… all of a sudden I was doing that all day.”

This lasted for about two months.

Coupled with insomnia, a COVID-lockdown that shrunk her support system, and a belief that her girls would be better off without her, Tegan’s mental health deteriorated beyond anything she’d ever experienced before.

Despite doing everything ‘right’ and reaching out to any and every support system she could contact, Tegan still wasn’t receiving the help she needed.

“I had a very high-risk pregnancy… on a piece of paper, it would have looked like the odds of me not getting [PNDA] were probably stacked against me… That’s the concern I have: how did I, seeing as I accessed healthcare from day one of my anxiety, end up putting myself into hospital 8 weeks later?”

The hospital she’s referring to is the mother and baby unit (MBU) psychiatric hospital at St. John of God, Sydney. This is where Tegan started to feel relief.

Although, of course, an in-patient admission to the MBU wasn’t an easy decision.

At an MBU, mothers and babies are admitted together, but this meant that Tegan had to be separated from her toddler, Addie, for an indefinite amount of time.

This also meant that Tegan’s partner couldn’t stay to help out due to the demands of work and looking after Addie, made even more difficult by the fact Tegan isn’t actually from Sydney. Although, she felt she had no choice.

“I knew I needed to do it, but I also was really scared that they couldn’t fix me.”

Despite these challenges, Tegan made the most of the weekends when her partner could drive to Sydney and enjoy what she calls ‘date nights’ eating takeaway in the MBU kitchen.

“I’m still heartbroken that [NSW] only has one public MBU that just opened and one private MBU… I can’t even begin to imagine how many women right now are sitting there going I need this help and they either don’t have the financial capacity to get into the private system or [face the long] waitlist for the NSW public one.”

During her admission, Tegan still grappled with the fear of ruining her girls. “It was not worth taking the risk that I should be in their lives.” Although she found comfort in the stories of the other patients, knowing she wasn’t alone. “I was really surprised to hear that a lot of women have similar thoughts… it’s a symptom that I think maybe really drives PNDA… A huge part of the healing process was the connection we made together”.

It was at the MBU that Tegan learnt valuable distress tolerance skills and really felt things turn around enough that she could continue receiving the help she needed from home.

“MBU was amazing! I have not seen a more wonderful team working together; caring, compassionate, but also knowing their stuff and knowing what you need.”

“The last thing I’d say about MBU is that I wish I did it earlier.”