25 | Ashlee
“When people come and go, you put on a happy face and you do all the masking, I suppose, and you do the entertainment. You’re like, ‘look how cute she is’. And then after an hour, they leave and then you go back to this hole that you were in, and you pop your head out for a moment, but people don’t see that. So yeah, it just got missed, I suppose.”
When Ashlee entered motherhood, she expected the transition to be easy from her many years of working with children. What she didn’t expect was the severe anxiety she experienced in her first pregnancy or the depression that overshadowed her postpartum. As a perinatal and infant mental health psychologist, she also didn’t expect to miss her own red flags.
Sleep, feeding, and health complications with her daughter also diverted any attention away from Ashlee’s wellbeing, and left her blaming motherhood and expecting her mental health to get better only when circumstances improved. Ashlee finally reached out for support and even moved cities for a fresh start, but two weeks later, she found out she was unexpectedly pregnant with her son.
This is Ashlee’s phenomenal story - about the benefit of hindsight, about grieving her first postpartum, about navigating motherhood with a diagnosis of autism, about the importance of being listened to, about seeking psychological help as a psychologist, about the challenge motherhood caused to her identity, about the difficulty in deciphering the difference between mental ill health and the ‘normal’ challenges of motherhood, about redefining what a ‘village’ means, about rejecting the shame of taking medication, about overcoming depression and having faith that things will get better, about learning to look inwards, and about embracing her own humanness.
Expect to be blown away when listening to this episode.
You can find Ashlee on Instagram at wells_psychology where she raises awareness about perinatal and women’s mental health. Please note, this episode discusses the lived experience of anxiety, depression and an unwanted, unexpected, pregnancy. Go gently.
“Before I fell pregnant with my daughter, who's my eldest, I was working in private practice, predominantly with children and also with some adults, just more from a general mental health perspective too, but a lot with children, a lot working with families or children with a neurodiverse background.”
“So, again, my brain was like, I work with families and children all the time. It can't be hard. Anyway, how I was very quickly rocked to my core. And I think it was complete karma because I was probably too cocky going into parenthood, given my background, I suppose. I thought how much more educated, quote-unquote, educated could I be? Clearly, a lot! I was in for a probably quite literally the most profound learning experience that I have probably ever gone through.”
“It's taken a very long time to get to the point of self-compassion for myself, and I guess because this has been such a learning experience for me as well. But because I wear dual hats. I sit on both sides. So I am a mother of two and I have experienced a lot of struggle. Then alternatively to that, I work and I hear stories and I'm in that healing space for my patients as well.”
“But I do hope that whoever listens to this conversation that we're having today, Bec, can hopefully have that kindness to themselves - that it's not because they've done anything wrong or it's not because they haven't learnt enough or it's not because they're not doing the right job!”
“And I say this probably almost on a daily basis that I think the struggle of parenthood - and that looks different for different people - I think it's universal. I am yet to find a parent who finds every single aspect of parenting easy. I just don’t think it exists… At some stage, someone will find something challenging. And I think that that is what's universal about parenthood. And when we're talking about what are these universal things, it does make us realise that hold on, we're just human. I'm just like you. You're just like me.”
“I almost feel sad for that version of me when I was pregnant with my daughter back in 2019 because it was so blatantly obvious how severely anxious I was, but it just wasn’t picked up on.”
”In hindsight, I can recognise that I had quite severe antenatal anxiety with my daughter. It was not noticed at the time, and that's something that I still feel sad about today because as a mental health professional, these are the flags that I look out for. I almost feel sad for that version of me when I was pregnant with my daughter back in 2019 because it was so blatantly obvious how severely anxious I was, but it just wasn't picked up on.”
“But fast forward to about, I would say, I think I was seven months postpartum with my daughter, only then through accessing services like PANDA did it really get brought to my attention that I was really quite suffering. I recognise I was in denial.”
“It should have been a flag because the seven months before I actually conceived my daughter, that was all I could think about. So I probably should stipulate, I actually have a diagnosis of autism, I actually have a neurodivergent brain. So my brain does get fixated on certain things. And my very special interest was all about pregnancy and conception - to a point that I often describe what's healthy versus unhealthy?”
“When does it become a problem? It becomes a problem when it impacts on your ability to have outings and go to work and look after yourself and all of those kinds of things. And even leading up to when I conceived my daughter for seven months, I was obsessed! Obsessed with everything to do with babies and conception. How do you look after them? How do they grow? What do they do? All of these kinds of things.”
“I realised now that that was really the beginning, that it was the beginning of things cascading from there. And I think it got really quite bad six months postpartum… because that six month mark was when I had to return to work.”
“I went to my GP all the time. No one was flagging anything! No one did any screeners for anxiety, depression. No one was really asking the right questions.”
“So at the six month mark, when I returned to work, my daughter wasn't taking a bottle and she was too young for solids, and I was travelling from work to her day care during the day to breastfeed her then driving back home. And it was during COVID, so I was working from home, which was lucky. And the day care was about a nine or ten minute drive down the road. But I was doing three trips a day to do breastfeeding, come back home.”
“I wasn't getting a chance to eat myself. I got no downtime myself. And all I was finding was that I was just getting more and more swamped with then work and also the nature of my work. So I did obviously return to being a psychologist and looking after this child who wasn't feeding from a bottle. Solids was a very, very long journey for my daughter. And even now at three and a half, I can still barely get her to eat one meal a week. She's a chronic snacker. She's getting there. She's healthy and she's well, but it was very stressful at the time.”
“And so, yeah, everything just felt like it was really snowballing. And it was about a month after that, after I returned to work, I was reaching out and trying to get counselling support. And I didn't even know that there was such a thing as a perinatal psychologist. I didn't know… I went to my GP all the time. No one was flagging anything! No one did any screeners for anxiety, depression. No one was really asking the right questions.”
“I feel very sad when I look back at that time because again, everything's retrospective, but it seems so obvious to me now how hard it was and how much I was struggling and how challenging I was finding it. I just don't know why, I just didn't get why no one was paying attention.”
“When people come and go, you put on a happy face and you do all the masking, I suppose, and you do the entertainment. You’re like, ‘look how cute she is’. And then after an hour, they leave and then you go back to this hole that you were in.”
“I suppose, like when people come and go, you put on a happy face and you do all the masking, I suppose, and you do the entertainment. You're like, look how cute she is. And then after an hour, they leave and then you go back to this hole that you were in, and you pop your head out for a moment, but people don't see that. So yeah, it just got missed, I suppose.”
“Look, my daughter also has cow's milk protein intolerance, soy intolerance as well, which was quite profound. So she was quite sick and it took a long time for us to figure out why she was in so much pain. Why does she have eczema and these rashes all over her body? Why does she scream for twenty hours of the day? It took a very long time to figure that out. And once we did figure that out again, despite my efforts of trying to get her to take some to bottle and formula, I couldn't. So I had to have a really restricted diet.”
“She's just recently had surgery to clear her adenoids and nasal passage because she couldn't breathe. And I had flagged this back when she was an infant. So I remember going into the GP about five or six months, and I said, she's not breathing properly, like she's snoring, she's breathing with her mouth open, etc. And they just again, brushed it off.”
“And now here we are, three and a half years later and she finally got the surgery. And for the first time in her life, she's actually sleeping and it's magnificent. However, there was a lot of compounding factors, I think at that time, obviously, she wasn't sleeping. She was very uncomfortable. She was going through a lot of pain and she was clearly distressed. She was chronically overtired. And then, by extension, so was I. I wasn't eating the way that I would have liked to have eaten because of my restricted diet. I could not get any sleep because of having to get up several times for her, and when I say several times, I'm talking like every 40 minutes for months, a year even. Even up until recently, she was still waking four or five times a night.”
“So really her entire lifespan has been chronic. But when she weaned off breastfeeding, my husband could then go in and settle her. But she didn't wean from breastfeeding until she was about 14 months. So at least for that first 14 months, it was all on me.”
“So all of these things, I recognise, yeah, there's a lot of compounding factors here. However, there were also a lot of red flags around the things that I was thinking at the time, how little energy that I had at the time. Yeah, I guess more just like around those intrusive thoughts. And I think all of these other things took precedence, they took the focus.”
“And then I was just a consequence of ‘when she sleeps better, then you'll feel better’. And ‘when she eats more solids, then you'll feel better’. And then ‘when she can take a bottle, then you'll feel better’. And of course, none of those things happen overnight and they take a very long time. And so I did feel quite dismissed.”
“I should also say too that when I was nine months postpartum, I fell pregnant with my son.”
After finding out she was pregnant, Ashlee got a blood test. “What it flagged for was actually an overactive thyroid, hyperthyroidism, and it can mimic a lot of anxiety symptoms too. So things like the high heart rate and changes in your appetite and headaches and that. And it's not to say that I wasn't anxious, I definitely was. However, there were so many things, like one thing after another, after another… And the only reason it actually got diagnosed was because I fell pregnant. And I wonder how long it would have gone on for before somebody, like a GP said, ‘hey, let's get some blood done’. Because at no point in my postpartum with my daughter until I fell pregnant with my son did anybody do any blood tests. Ever.”
“It was a very, very foreign, real disconnect from my physical body... each antenatal appointment that I had to go to, they had to weigh me. I would get to the point of sickness in my stomach, pressure on my chest, heart beating through my throat... it was another reminder of something that I can’t control, something that my body is changing.”
“My pregnancies for both of my babies were very different. I would say absolutely hands down antenatal anxiety for my daughter, who is my oldest. However, I was in a very dark place for my son - so very different mindsets! But yes, I guess I just wanted to mention that because it was not the same experience. Both were not enjoyable.”
“Everybody has very different experiences, I'm so respectful to hearing the beautiful experiences that many other women do have throughout their pregnancies. Unfortunately, that's not something that I can relate to… I've had my two babies. I'm very grateful, extremely blessed to have them. They're the absolute light of my life. However, my mental health could not withhold another pregnancy. And I know that from the bottom of my soul.”
“So in saying that for the antenatal anxiety, I think pretty much from the day that I found out that I was pregnant with her, any and every worry that you could possibly think of, catastrophic happening to either myself and/or her.”
“For me, you can't see inside of you, right? So your brain just goes on this whirlwind and spiral and I could never get myself out of these 'what if thoughts because it's like, but I can't see, so it could actually be true.”
“I think every antenatal appointment, everything to me just triggered this profound sense of worry, stress, extreme overwhelm. So I did not respond, I hope I say this word correctly, I did not respond well to the physical changes that my body went through. And I think a lot of women feel this, naturally we get larger, we get fluid and we get pains and all those kinds of things. It was a very, very foreign, real disconnect from my physical body.”
“I was at a time of my life where a strong interest of mine at the time was being very fit. And I was proud of myself for being quite strong at that time. Not so much anymore. But at that time, I guess I did struggle a lot with my physical changes in my physical appearance.”
“And what made it extremely difficult was each antenatal appointment that I had to go to, they had to weigh me. I would get to the point of sickness in my stomach, pressure on my chest, heart beating through my throat… it was another reminder of something that I can't control, something that my body is changing. It was just not a pleasant time.”
“I did not have a large bump. And when you don't have a large bump, everybody wants to tell you that you don't have a large bump, that your bump is ‘very small’. ‘Are you sure you're pregnant?’ ‘You just look like you've had a cheese burger.’ There was always an opinion on the size of my bump. So I felt very, very self-conscious that I wasn't pregnant enough. My body wasn't doing enough even then. Because it didn't look the way that other people told me my body should be looking.”
“My anxiety just went to ‘my baby's not growing. I'm going to have miscarriage or stillbirth. Nothing's working properly. I don't have enough fluid in my body. I'm starving my baby.’ Even though I wasn't starving, I was eating fine, but my brain went to ‘my baby's simply not growing.’”
“I got to the 37-week mark and they said, ‘your baby's too small’. And I was like, ‘what do you mean? Like we’re thirty seven weeks, we’re right at the end! Like, how could this be?’ They sent me for a quote un quote emergency growth scan. And it took about two days before I could get in to get the scan done. And I was just in such a state of worry, I couldn't talk about it. I’d start crying. I was constantly tracking her movements, ‘is she still moving? Is she still alive? Like what's going on?’”
“Anyway, I got in there and they did all the scans and everything, and she was fine! Like she was healthy. She was a beautiful size, nothing to worry about.”
“It was just every single comment about every single thing that just made the experience so much more overwhelming.”
“I felt so foreign from my body. I had a lot of pain... Because I was quite active, I tried to stay doing walks and swimming and Pilates for a while there. So I tried to stay as active as I possibly could. But the pain was so profound that it would actually almost immobilise me for a day or so after. And then I was convinced that if I can't move my body, my baby is going to be harmed by this. And then it would just became this worse spiral. So ironically, doing exercise became worse for my mental health in those late stages of pregnancy.”
“In my mind, if she’s out of my womb, then she’s safe, quote-unquote, safe. And because I couldn’t see anything, I was convinced that the longer she’s inside of me for, the more chances are something horrific is going to happen.”
“And then I when I went into labour with my daughter, I was actually in prodromal labour for a week. And that was anxiety producing, too, because being my first pregnancy, I don't know what labour is meant to look like. I don't know what it’s meant to feel like.”
“Every day I'd get fixated on today’s the day that I've got to have the baby. And I was doing everything that I could! I was bouncing on the balls. I'm drinking the teas. I've got the Clary sage. I'm doing massage. I'm doing everything that I can need to get this baby out. Because to me, in my mind, if she's out of my womb, then she's safe, quote-unquote, safe. And because I couldn't see anything, I was convinced that the longer she's inside of me for, the more chances are something horrific is going to happen.”
“But then, of course, postpartum hits and the anxiety doesn't go away because then all the external worries and all the things that could go wrong on the outside hit.”
“It's interesting because my birth with my daughter was actually, from a textbook perspective, wonderful. It really was. I am extremely lucky that nothing went wrong from a medical perspective. She was healthy, I was healthy.”
“However, I think my memory of my labour, it shifted, I think, because I was in such a shock that it took probably a good month or so before it really sunk in that I even had a baby. But the feeling, it's so interesting because the memories are the same, but the feelings behind them change.”
“My labour with my daughter, it was very straightforward. My water's broke in the morning. I called my midwife. She said, ‘Come down whenever you want’. I had a shower. I had some breakfast, went in, contractions had started. They said to me, ‘you can either stay at the hospital, but you're on a timer because if we admit you, then you've got a certain amount of time to have this baby. And sometimes that can cause more stress or you can go home’. And I said ‘beauty, I'll go home’. And I'm actually so glad that I did. I went home and my husband was there and it was just us and it was amazing and I was labouring at home and it was beautiful.”
“It was a really lovely progression. But very quickly from about, I think only probably about three hours after my water had broken, I was having super intense contractions, like really, really fast. I would say like 10 or 15 seconds in between contractions. So we called my midwife and she was like, ‘Well, you're probably not going to have a baby today, so you can probably still stay at home for a bit longer if you want. But if you really feel like it, you can come on down.’”
“I was like, ‘No, we're going, we're going’. I'm so glad that I made that call because if I had listened, I would have had a baby at home or I would have had to have called an ambulance. The hospital was probably about a 12 to 15 minutes drive. By the time I got to the hospital, I could no longer weight bear on my legs.”
“Anyway, they send me upstairs, I get on the gas, and probably within less than an hour I was fully dilated. So I think that from the time when my contractions got quite consistent to the point where she was born was about five hours. And look, she was beautiful. And I think because it happened so fast, I was in such a shock. But initially, probably a couple of days after, I was so proud of myself.”
“But you know what sat with me afterwards out of all of that was the midwife - her response to me when we phoned up at home and how dismissive she was. And even when we got to the hospital and she came down, she said ‘you’re not meant to be here today. You're not meant to be here till tomorrow’. Anyway, I'm actually relieved because there was a second midwife there. And I really do think that she was really the driver of my whole birthing experience. She wasn't even my primary midwife. I had the primary one who was a bit like airy-fairy. I actually remember she was trying to get me to walk around and go to the toilet and I couldn't weight bear.”
“They need to be observing and I don't know why, but she just was like, ‘Oh, well, you need to be moving around and now you need to go to the toilet’. ‘I can't do these things. I actually can't do these things. And you're not listening to me when I tell you I can't do these things anyway’. So it's not to say, I don't want to project and say that something horrific would have happened, but that's where my brain went to. What would have been the scenario if the secondary midwife wasn't there and noticing how I was feeling and checking me when I needed to be checked? So I think what stuck with me from that is really just like how I did not feel listened to. I felt like I was being a bit silly, like a bit dramatic and just not really taken seriously. And in actual fact, I was I was quite literally about to birth my child.”
”I must say I was extremely lucky. My daughter was beautiful. She was exactly how she should be. There was no concerns around her size. I was very healthy. We're very, very lucky. I think it was just more how was I made to feel?”
“Conversely for my son, everything went wrong for my son, and it was such a different feeling that I got because of the support that I had from my team.”
“It took such a long time. I really should have contacted someone far sooner, but it was my ego that I think that was stopping me.”
“It took a long time, I think. Like I said, I think around that seven mark, things really got brought to light around how much more challenging this really was.”
“I must add, too, my husband was a beautiful support, but like a lot of first time parents and partners who have a spouse who are going through postnatal anxiety and depression, he was, by extension, subsequently also feeling highly anxious. And I think he was struggling with his mental health, too. But again, I think that's a retrospect thing. At the time, I think we both were just in such survival. I wasn't noticing him really, and he wasn't noticing me. So he was trying so hard. But from a mental health perspective, I think we both probably missed each other's signals that we were really struggling mentally, which made it hard then for him to create space for me. And I just couldn’t make space for him at all.”
“The thing is, I have actually gone through bouts of depression in different stages of my life. I compare it back to then. I was like, ‘well, I don't feel the same that I felt then so therefore it can't be the same.’ But obviously it was the same, but different. Same, same, but different.”
It was through reaching out for support from PANDA that Ashlee’s mental health began to shift.
“I'm so glad that I did. I felt so silly. It took such a long time. I really should have contacted someone far sooner, but it was my ego that I think that was stopping me.”
“I think when people can reframe and rephrase things back to you - so I'd get up and I'd call and I'd say ‘I'm feeling this, I experienced that, my daughter screamed here.’ And they’ll go, ‘okay, so what you're telling me is X, Y, Z’. And I'll go, ‘Oh, my God, I didn't even think of that!’ Do you know what I mean? All they've done is just told me the things that I've just told them, but they've just done it in a way that made me listen and made me realise there is probably more struggle and mental health barriers here.”
“I started seeing a psychologist myself at that time, and I knew, because especially when I found out that I was pregnant with my son, I was like, ‘I cannot go through the feeling that I had again’. She said to me in a very gentle and beautiful way, ‘Ash, even though you are resistant to hearing, you need to hear me when I say to you, you have these traits around these mental health struggles and you have these characteristics. The longer that we push them to the side and the longer that we deny putting language to the feeling, the more difficult it is for you to go through the healing process’. And she's so right. She was so right.”
“I think because I wasn't calling myself out for what I was experiencing and what I was going through. Once we called it out, then I felt almost like I didn't have to keep trying to fake it because I think for such a long time, I was trying so hard to prove that my mental health was well and that it was all these other things that were causing all of these stresses. And not to say that those things weren't stressful because they absolutely are. So people listening who have babies with intolerances and sleep difficulties and they don't take bottles, it's not to ever disregard, those things are so profoundly stressful. But I was putting so much emphasis, all the blame, I was blaming unfortunately, my daughter, I was blaming my daughter.”
“I needed to be really real with myself and actually really realise, ‘oh, hold on, no, Ash. You got to own this. This is just what it is. Once we name it, then we can start to work.’”
“It took a long time. And I'd say it probably took a good year postpartum for me to really come to terms.”
“In my mind, the faster I go back to doing the things that I did beforehand, the better I’ll feel. And that never happened because I needed to grieve that that version of myself literally does not exist anymore.”
“It took me a good year to realise that those external things were difficult. But I think what was just so profound for me was my sense of identity. I had no idea who I was anymore. And because I had put so much emphasis on hobbies and things that I had in pre-baby life, like fitness was a really big thing for me at the time and socialising. And when you strip all of that away and you're just left to fumble around and figure out, well, now what? And for such a long time I kept trying to go back to that.”
“I joined an eight-week challenge or whatever it was, when I was ten weeks postpartum. I think back now I was just so crazy. ‘What are you doing? Your body isn't even healed yet’. But in my mind, I was like the faster I go back to doing the things that I did beforehand, the better I'll feel. And that never happens because I needed to grieve that that version of myself literally does not exist anymore.”
“And it took me a very long time. Probably when I saw that psychologist and she called me out and that was good and we just labelled it and called it for what it was. It allowed my healing journey… there's still obviously components of myself, like who I was before hand. But definitely I didn't have access to things like I could have access to before. My values had changed. I didn't prioritise the same things anymore.”
“So I think for me, my daughter could have slept all the way through. That doesn't change my identity! I had to look inside of my sense of self to a core. And that was really scary. That was a really scary process for me in many ways. For me, going from zero children to one was far more challenging than going from one to two. And it was only eight months between my children. And so I had two under two and they're chaotic even now… Like externally, I have more stress because I'm constantly run off my feet, I run a business now and I have two toddlers. But internally, I am far more at ease and far more confident with who I am as a person, my sense of identity, my sense of core to a belief, my values. I understand myself a lot more. I'm a lot more forgiving towards myself.”
“So it's almost like the flip side. So back then I was blaming the external, not recognising the internal. Now here I am, I recognise the internal. I can now take on board all the external chaos. And I feel like one to two was easier in that regard because I already was a mum. I was already in matrescence.”
“When I found out that I was pregnant with him, this is just going back to how I felt at that time, I did not want the pregnancy. I did not want to be pregnant. I wasn’t ready to be pregnant. I was still very much trying to heal from the mental struggles that I’d gone through with my daughter... I was still in the depths of grieving the possibility of experiencing my daughter when I was happy.”
“There was a lot of changes that happened in a very short period of time. Naturally, for a lot of human beings, when we go through change, sometimes it's uncomfortable. As a person who does like structure, routine, consistency, familiarity, it was a very challenging time with just those transitions.”
“However, I was excited for them. I was excited for the changes. I was excited to move cities. I was excited for new opportunities. I was excited to work in a different space and take my daughter to lots of activities and events and that kind of thing.”
“Two weeks after we moved here, I found out I was pregnant. And I don't really talk about this just because I am extremely mindful that it can be triggering for people. So if it's okay, if I just maybe just mention just a slight trigger warning around unwanted pregnancy.”
“I can look at it from then and I can look at it from now. Now I knew that the universe had a plan for me. Obviously, if I had not fallen pregnant, as a surprise, I would not have ever have been able to get back into the mental space of preparing for conception like I did for my daughter.”
“So for my daughter, as I mentioned, like I did like months and months worth of preparation. I knew when I was ovulating and all of that stuff. Because of the experience that I had throughout pregnancy and postpartum for her, there is utterly not a single chance I would have ever fallen pregnant on purpose again. So the only way that the universe saw that for me to have my boy was to go, ‘right, well, this woman's not going to do it on her own. So we're going to have to just put that baby in.’“
“So when I found out that I was pregnant with him, this is just going back to how I felt at that time, I did not want the pregnancy. I did not want to be pregnant. I wasn't ready to be pregnant. I was still very much trying to heal from the mental struggles that I'd gone through with my daughter. I knew that. I knew that I was not in a mentally strong point in my postpartum. I knew that. And that's why I was getting help. And that's why we had a massive change as well. So we had a change for lots of reasons. But one of them really was and again, because my husband was struggling, we just needed to change. And it's been the best decision that we could have made. Like living down here is just glorious. We love it. I wish we had done it sooner. But anyway, hindsight is a beautiful thing. So I knew that I was not ready.”
“I was still in the depths of I think I was grieving the possibility of experiencing my daughter when I was happy. So I knew that I, not to say that I was always unhappy, but I was struggling. I would say that my postpartum was a struggle. And I was excited to move and excited to have new changes and new opportunities because I thought this is it. I'm going to build a new friendship connexion. I'm going to start at a new job. We're going to have a fresh start. It's going to be wonderful. I'm getting mental health support for myself. I'm finally going to have the postpartum experience with my daughter that I had been working so hard to have!”
“And then what I found out while I was pregnant, I was just angry because I didn't want to be pregnant. I really didn't. I was angry at myself. I was angry at my husband. And I just thought I'm running out of time and it spiralled from there.”
“This was probably the first time in my life that I did not care if I lived or died and I did not see meaning in my life. I was not hopeful that it would get any better. If anything, I was convinced that it would get far, far worse given the fact that I was now doubling my children and my stress.”
“I was never at a point, and I guess I should say that, I was never at a point where I had any suicidal plans, probably because of my daughter, though. But I probably I had no fear. I had no fear of anything happening to me. I really didn't. I could have got hit by a car tomorrow. And there just was not that part of my brain that was worried about death.”
“And those were my thoughts. They were really dark thoughts. And I don't really talk about them a lot because I know that I have to be careful… I am extremely aware of the struggles that so many families go through, have a baby. And absolutely it makes me sick to my stomach, honestly, even just like now. But it's real. I'm just being brutally honest because I never, ever, ever want somebody to think ‘you don't deserve to be a parent because you had this type of thinking’. And I just I never want to take that away from other people's losses or infertility and those struggles. So it's a really sensitive thing and it's a really hard thing to talk about.”
“But you know what? I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one, I'm not the only one! I'm even going to go to cry even now just thinking about it. I'm not the only one who has thought, ‘I do not want to be pregnant right now’. You know what I mean? I'm not the only one who's thought that. I guess I'm comfortable sharing with you, Bec, and having this conversation because it is real and it is honest.”
“It makes me very sad to think back to how I was at that time. Now, he's just the absolute light of my life. He's just absolutely glorious… The reason why I chose to continue with that pregnancy was simply because I guess I had faith enough that the feeling that I was having the thoughts that I were having was temporary. I don't know why. I think it was just something in my core, something in my deeper parts of my soul that just knew that he was meant to be here. I didn't know why. I didn't fully agree. I was fighting my emotions.”
“But it's a really interesting mental space to try to describe because it's like this real, dual, conflicting thoughts versus feelings, you know what I mean? It's so opposite. But I did feel like, in the really deep parts of my soul, I know that this feeling won't last and I know that this will pass and I had faith that it would pass and I had faith that all these other things are changing for a positive and I'm getting mental health support and I am reaching out and I am talking about these things. And so I was again, just confident that it wouldn't last forever.”
“I actually couldn't even talk about being pregnant, I would say for probably the first four or five months. It took me a very long time to even just say, ‘hey, I'm having another baby’ because I would have this instant feeling of wanting to cry. I'd just start to panic. I just had this sickness in my stomach, lump in my throat. I get blurred vision, like the full-blown panic symptoms. I couldn't even say the words.”
“I didn't prepare, like I didn't buy any baby stuff, until I was like 35 weeks pregnant, because every time I walked into a baby store, I just was sick. Every time I even thought about it. This was how unprepared I was when we moved. I had actually sold all of my newborn stuff. I got rid of everything.”
“So it took a very long time for me to even just get to a point where I could even just buy a baby gear. I don't think I actually posted on my private social media until I was about 36 weeks pregnant. A lot of family didn't even know.”
“It took a very long time for me to be able to mentalise the fact that I was actually having on the baby without going into a really dark physical space.”
“And it's interesting because when he was born, I almost flipped. So with my daughter, I would say because I was in shock, I think it probably took a couple of days. I was a little bit distant from her at first, like for the first day or so, just like I was there and I was present, of course. But I was just like I was just in shock, honestly. With my son almost instantly wanted to protect him, instantly wanted to protect him."
“Honestly I don't think it'll ever go away, this feeling of, immense guilt for the feelings and thoughts that I had in my early stages of his pregnancy, even though I couldn't control it, it's not my choice. I didn't mean to think or feel that way. But I guess I just never want it to be misperceived that I'm not grateful for him or that I don't love him or that excited to be his mother or anything like that. But it's almost like when he was born, I became extra protective because I was like, ‘I almost lost you and lost myself within this journey. I have to do everything that I can to advocate for you, to love you, to protect you and do everything that I possibly can.’”
“This idealised version of a village for me did not exist. So I needed to create a different definition for us.”
Speaking to a psychologist throughout her second pregnancy helped Ashlee process her complex feelings.
“We talked all about motherhood and identity and again, going back to values and coping strategies. And she gave me some really practical strategies for how do you prepare for having a newborn when you have a toddler?”
“It really just gave me a space where we could talk about motherhood and what I was feeling and processing. I think I was grieving. I grieved my postpartum because I didn't get the village. I talk a lot about the village and I didn't get any village for my daughter. And my son was a little bit better because we had moved and I had access to family members, although not two seconds down the road. But they were there when I needed them. And that was just absolutely amazing. So postpartum for my son, I had a bit more of a village.”
“But postpartum for my daughter, I felt very, very alone. And I had to grieve that and to go through the grieving of, again, ‘what does this village look like’? And I think also adapting my own expectations of what a quote-unquote, village looks like. And I became a lot more forgiving for myself because I needed to come to terms with the fact that our educators in my daughter's day care were part of our village. And even though it was paid support, it was still a huge support for us. And I think I had to shift, what were my ideas? This idealised version of a village for me did not exist. So I needed to create a different definition for us.”
“Now I feel very blessed and very lucky where we are living now in Brisbane. We have access to a lot more family. And when I need them, they will be there. I just got to pick up the phone and someone will come and we're very, very lucky. It's a different experience this time around, which I'm extremely grateful for.”
“When I was pregnant with my son, I was seeing a psychologist, as I've just mentioned, but she'd actually moved clinics… I had to start with a different clinician when my son was born because the other clinician had moved on. And it's so funny. In Brisbane, I was nervous to find a clinician that was too local. Big city, but in my mind, I was like, ‘oh, they'll know me!’ Anyway, so my psychologist, I’ll laugh if she listens to this, but she's over in Western Australia! So I just, I think I needed that boundary!”
“But anyway, so I re-engaged again with psychology with her. I think I was probably, I don't think I had returned to work yet, so I was probably about two or three months postpartum with Ollie, and she's just been magnificent.”
“I was doing all of these lifestyle things and I was seeing my psychologist and I was trying really hard to get balanced with my work and I was getting supervision. I was doing all the ‘right’ things. And I just thought, ‘why am I struggling still so much?’”
“I think, if I have to be brutally, brutally honest, again, coming back to the resistance, the real thing that clicked for me where I saw more better days than harder days was when I surrendered to the fact that I needed medication to help me.”
“It took me a very long time because I was like, ‘no, I'm going to do all.’ I'm going to go see a naturopath. And I did. And that was helpful. I'm going to go get acupuncture. And I did. And that was also helpful. I'm going to make sure my diet is well and I'm going to start exercising. And I was doing all of these lifestyle things and I was seeing my psychologist and I was trying really hard to get balanced with my work and I was getting supervision. I was doing all the right things. And I just thought, why am I struggling still so much?”
“I don't know if there's ever a balance, but I was doing the best that I could. I was trying so hard, but why was I still having more hard days than good? And I think it was probably the third consecutive visit with my GP - and I had to get a new GP because we moved again, and she's just glorious, she's just the most beautiful GP - and after the third time, I'd been crying to her and she said, ‘Ash, why aren't we taking medication?’ And I just said, ‘you know what? I don't really know at this point. I don't know what was stopping me.’ I had been fighting for such a long time.”
“In a previous stage of my life, I was taking medication then and I didn't like it and it made me feel really awful and it affected other things in my health that I didn't like. And it took a very long time for me to come off that. I was on it for a couple of years and it took a long time to wean off that. It was just a really unpleasant experience. So I was scared. I was scared to have to go back and have to do that all over again… I was just scared because of how hard it was last time. And I just don't want to do this trial and error thing.”
After disclosing her fears and prior experience to her GP, Ashlee was prescribed a different type of medication that is much more gentle according to her GP.
“I kick myself even now. I started three years too late!”
“And not too late not to say anything is too late, because look, everything has led to the person that I am right now having this conversation. Everything has led to me being motivated to do extra study and hold space for my patients and hopefully be a better parent. And I know that I needed to go through these adversities in order to continue to grow and to continue to be, I suppose, the person that I am now. So it's not to say that medication wouldn't have allowed me to do that. But I know that I needed to go through this journey maybe just to lock my ego down a little bit more, which was probably needed.”
“I think at the time of me being a very early career psychologist, and I suppose it wasn't even that long ago, really, but almost 10 years ago, it was like you can't have self disclosure, like you can't share these things. And then it really shamed, or I felt shamed, and I work a lot with other clinicians and we do peer supervision and I know that other clinicians have felt the same. You feel the sense of shame and like this moral high standing like you can't have this and then be on the opposite end and then still be giving advice.”
“And so it almost like I shamed myself out of being really honest and being really real. And that's the thing. Like my symptoms weren't just short term. We're talking years. By the time I got to really accepting and surrendering that I needed that additional treatment support, it was good two and a half years, and that's a long time! And even sooner, really, because of the antenatal experience. So we're talking probably three, three and a half years. That's a long time. I was tired. I was tired for lots of reasons, but also emotionally, I was tired.”
“And I really I think what I needed to do was give myself a little bit of extra support. And I finally did that!”
“I've become less harsh in my expectations of myself. And I think I've just become softer and a bit more gentle towards myself. And I think I've become a lot more confident in my role of what motherhood actually looks like for me and what I really value. And I'm a much more confident parent now and I feel confident in my approach and the things that I want to teach my children and the way that I want them to feel.”
“And don't get me wrong, I still get frustrated, of course, and I still get overwhelmed… I think what I've done is, I've just become more confident in my expectations for myself and my parenting style that I try to have. And I really try to focus on humanness in the relationship that I have with my children. And it's human to get frustrated. It's human to feel sad and it's human to get scared.”
Ashlee’s advice:
“I think first and foremost, we just need to be kind to ourselves because we are really our own worst critics, and we can be so critical of every little thing that we do. And of course, the more critical we are, the more that compounds and magnifies.”
“It's okay if you're finding it challenging, because it probably is. Hands down, it would be challenging! And so where's the compassion? Where's the self-compassion and kindness that you're having towards yourself?”
“The last time I checked you weren't a robot. Like, of course, we're going to feel a bit overwhelmed and taken aback by these things and feel like we've always got people demanding things from us. And that, in its nature, is exhausting, of course! And so I think we need to stop trying to pretend that we shouldn't be exhausted!”
“Again, we come back to labelling it… This experience that I'm having right now is actually really quite overwhelming. And how can I be kind to myself and less critical towards myself?”
“I think I mentioned earlier, but when does it impact on your functioning? When does it impact on your ability to go to work, have a spouse, see your friends, look after yourself, attend appointments, do grocery shopping, all of these kinds of things? And if you answer ‘yes’ to that question and you say, ‘oh, well, I haven't been doing this and I did stop doing that and doing things that are different to my regular quote-unquote, regular way of being’, then I would say probably it's impacting on your functioning. And that's a beautiful opportunity for you to say, ‘hey, these are some flags here. Let's go and reach out and get support.’”
“Please don't be resistant to reaching out and getting some support. There are so many services out there, so many people that want to help. Even just if it's non-professional, just go find a mom's group or online forum parenting group or something like that where you can just debrief or vent or share experiences or whatever it might be, because it can be really isolating. And it's bizarre because we're often all feeling, or have felt, a very similar way just in regards to like sleep deprivation and feeling overwhelmed or whatever it might be. And yet at the same time, it feels very isolating. So please don't feel like you can't reach out. There's so many places out there that want to help.”
“You've got to find the right places… if you go to a particular service or a clinician and you don't feel like they're a right fit for you, please don't stop trying. They just might not be the right fit for you. And that's so fine. That's really okay. There's so many more other people out there, counsellors, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational therapists. There are so many people out there who really, really, really would be the right fit for you. You just got to find the right one.”
“If you get one bad haircut, do you stop getting your hair cut or you just find a new hairdresser? So if you find a therapist and they're not the right therapist for you, you don't stop going to therapy. You just find a new one and you find someone you gel with that gets you, that validates you, that helps you feel safe and you stick with them.”
“So please reach out and don't wait too long and don't be stubborn like I was being stubborn for such a long time, and allow the treatment that's there. Because you probably will find that when we do a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B, a little bit of column C, you might actually start to feel a lot better.”
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