37 | Sarah
“I was happy in those first few weeks, or at least I thought I was - introducing her to family members and seeming like there was joy there, but there was also a lot of anxiety underneath... I wasn’t connecting with my daughter and I wasn’t sure what was coming first: the anxiety or the fact that I wasn’t connecting with her and then that was causing me to feel anxious? Sometimes I would hold her and feel like she wasn’t even mine. That created so much pain for me.”
Sarah put on a brave face for the first three months of Isla's life but behind closed doors, the all-consuming anxiety was only getting worse. It wasn't until her husband was home over Christmas that she could no longer hide the severity of the illness and she finally said 'I need serious help'.
Many things stand out to me about Sarah's story: the pervasive anxiety that invaded her early postpartum experience; the insomnia and inability to switch off that added to her stress; the eventual depression that overwhelmed her capacity to cope; and the challenges she faced navigating an unfamiliar mental health system.
But what stands out to me the most about Sarah's story is Sarah herself and her willingness to find and accept the right support. From joining Facebook groups to connecting with a social worker, from writing to inpatient MBU stays, from in-home support to unlikely friendships with those who have walked this path before us, and more, this is a powerful story about one mother's determination to feel connected to her daughter once more.
Please note, this episode discusses suicidal ideation. Go gently.
“So I actually had quite a good pregnancy. The first trimester, obviously, was quite rough and I was really sick. But then the second and third trimester, I felt really joyful and I really loved the way my body felt, and I was sleeping really well and I felt really relaxed. So if anything, the hormones really zen-ned me out a bit. So no negative things to report in pregnancy.”
“But it all really began when my daughter, Isla, was three months old. That's when I think the severe sign started. But as I unpack it more and more, I realised that I probably actually had symptoms, things to worry about right after birth.”
“So my labour was two days long, so I hadn't slept for two days. So I think that in itself, when you've never gone through such a marathon like that before, and then you don't get time to recover. I think for me, that was already so volatile. And then I had a C-section in the end. It wasn't an emergency C-section, but I was so tired, I said ‘I just can't go on’. It wasn't like there was any fear or I don't even remember the birth experience being traumatic, but it was long.”
“Then my daughter arrived and she was happy and healthy and everything was fine. I was just besotted with her when she was first born.”
“What I was feeling and experiencing was just this enormous failure to motherhood already. In the first week, here I am being ridiculed and monitored and all the things that I guess I was trying to avoid and was hoping to never end up in that situation.”
“I had a really good stay at the hospital. Then I got home and five days post-birth, we were readmitted to hospital because Isla had lost a lot of weight. I think that was the catalyst for me in terms of my emotional dysregulation.”
“I felt like my world was coming to an end because I was just getting comfortable at home, and there was this severity. I remember the midwife being like, ‘Okay, quick. We got to go now.’ And I'm thinking, ‘What? What do you mean now?’ She's like, ‘Pack your bags. We're leaving together.’”
“I was frightened and I was overwhelmed and I was still tired and I was healing from this surgery as well. Also, I was giving breastfeeding the biggest go and my nipples were raw and sore and it was just all the things. It was a lot. Then we went to hospital and I remember them saying, ‘Okay, we have to readmit you and your daughter, and you'll stay in this room overnight.’”
“It looked like a storage unit. It was this little clinical room with a bed in it, and it was awful.”
“And I just started crying, and I was saying to my partner, ‘I don't want to stay’. Just so emotional because also I had such a good stay postpartum in the birth suite, and it was this full 360 experience. I was here last week and I was up on the birth suite and I had my own room and it was all these things. Then suddenly I'm down in this storage unit and you want me to stay here for 24 hours!?”
“They wanted me to pump. It's like pump, feed, maybe sleep, if you're lucky. But then while you sleep, the nurses give your baby formula to help them to put on weight.”
“I begged my partner to convince them to let me go home and do it on my own. I had formula already at home and I wanted to do what they were trying to do, but in the comfort of my own home.”
“They had said, ‘okay, but the guidelines that we have here are that if you come back in the morning and your daughter's not this certain weight, then we have to report you to DOCS because you're failing to meet this standard’ or whatever.”
“The weird thing was that my daughter was weeing every half an hour, whatever it was. She had wet nappies. She looked fine because she was a big baby when she was born. She still looked fine when she had lost a bit of weight.”
“It was just that my milk was taking a bit longer to fully come in, but there were still some there anyway. I went home and did overnight, and I was just... I barely slept because I was so scared that they would do something bad, take her away.”
“I guess what I was feeling and experiencing was just this enormous failure to motherhood already. In the first week, here I am being ridiculed and monitored and all the things that I guess I was trying to avoid and was hoping to never end up in that situation.”
“Anyway, we arrived back at the hospital the next day, and Isla hadn't put on any weight.”
“They said, ‘Look, you've got to stay’ It's 24 hours back in this room. It is what it is.’ Of course, I didn’t want to get reported to DOCS or anything.”
“And I was really emotional.”
“My doula came up to the hospital, and my partner was there, and I just couldn't stop crying.”
“I was holding Isla like, ‘Please don't take her.’”
“It really damaged my self-esteem as a mother. I felt, and I still feel now, really robbed of my initial experience of motherhood.”
“I remember the nurses, the paediatric nurses, were coming in and they were comforting me. Then these other people came in, which I guess are counsellors or something related to midwifery and new mums, that were coming around and giving me advice.”
“They gave me some pamphlets and said, ‘We think that you might benefit from some support. You're obviously very emotional, and it's a big thing that's going on and you've had this surgery.’”
“One of the services that they offered me was Mum For Mum, which, funny enough, that's actually how I found out about you, Rebecca, was because my Mum For Mum, who I ended up joining and getting a mum, Sonja, she had seen you speak in an event, so that's how this all came about.”
“Anyway, so I did that. I stayed for 24 hours, and it was awful, but my daughter put on weight, and then we were released home.”
“I think one of the things that I've always taken comfort in is being comfortable, in the comfort of my own home. I prefer to sleep at my own house than a hotel. I'm very much a homebody, and I think there's an element of safety for me with my anxiety. And so to then go, ‘this is your little storeroom for 24 hours’. I felt just like I was being suffocated. This is my worst nightmare. I already have trouble sleeping. I like being at home a lot, and here I am being forced against my will… that was where it all started.”
“Had that not have happened, I think I probably still would have struggled with some postpartum mental health condition, but maybe it wouldn't have been so severe.”
“I think the severity of that, it really damaged my self-esteem as a mother. I felt, and I still feel now, really robbed of my initial experience of motherhood.”
“After that stay, I then had to report back to the hospital.”
“I guess I was monitored for what felt like maybe a month with her weight. That just placed immense pressure on me.”
“I was so desperate to feed her and get my milk supply up that I was eating a tin of cookies a day, those lactation cookies, and pumping and doing all the things. I was already so exhausted after the birth that I just added to that exhaustion by doing all the things.”
“It was just a really painful eight to nine weeks.”
“I ended up having to take Motilium, which really made the milk come through then. But yes, I ended up having to take medication because I was so afraid that even what I had was not enough.”
“Anyway, my daughter's a great weight now, and she loves food and she's a good eater. She ended up having no troubles with the bottle either. But I think that whole pressure around the breastfeeding really, really was quite damaging in its own way.”
“I was happy in those first few weeks, or at least I thought I was - introducing her to family members and seeming like there was joy there, but there was also a lot of anxiety underneath.”
”I think I put on a brave face for those first two or three months.”
“I look back at photos and I go, I was happy in those first few weeks, or at least I thought I was - introducing her to family members and seeming like there was joy there, but there was also a lot of anxiety underneath.”
“My partner was at work because unfortunately he didn't get paternity leave. That was another thing that I was alone straight away with all these feelings and at home with a newborn. When he was at work, I remember really stressing over things during the day and not being able to sleep, like nap, when she went down, which I know would have really helped me if I could do that. Yeah, I couldn't switch off.”
“The really obvious, obvious signs were when my daughter was almost three months old and I began having a suicide ideation.”
“My partner was at work every day. I was spending a lot of time at home with my daughter and stewing over things.”
”I feel like I was just in this cycle... I was waking up exhausted and anxious and then repeating those patterns by, ‘Oh, I've got to research this or do this’. I was just adding to the state. Yeah, it was not healthy. I wish that someone had to just Just being like, ‘just relax. It's all good. It's all normal. Babies are on their own timeline’ and even just had a laugh about it with me. I needed that... I was alone too much, probably in that initial period, too. I was just alone with my thoughts.”
“And then one day, it's as if it just all got too much.”
“I remember sitting in the lounge room, and because it was coming up to Christmas, I was wanting to build my supply of milk so that I could store it and that my family could take her and me and my partner could go on a date or something, putting enormous pressure on myself.”
“I remember Isla was really upset. She wasn't feeding great that day, so I was trying to feed her. She was coming off and on the boob, and then I was trying to pump, and it just all got too much.”
“I remember just looking out the window and I had my first ever suicide thought that just flew into my mind. It's like, I just don't want to be here anymore. And it was so strong, and then it just kept reoccurring, I guess. And I knew I was in trouble.”
“Another huge thing that happened around this period that was obvious to me was I stopped being able to sleep at night. So I was getting insomnia. I was finding it extremely difficult to fall asleep at night. So I wasn't sleeping, basically, at all.”
“It was about two weeks before Christmas, and I called my GP, and they had closed early for the break. And so I then called just a telehealth doctor, someone that I could speak to over the phone because I didn't think that I could get out of the house.”
“He said, ‘Oh, because you're not sleeping, we can put you on Mirtazapine, which will help you sleep.”
“I then thought, ‘I have to stop breastfeeding because I'm not entirely sure if this is safe. I don't want to have that added stress of worrying if this is going to pass on to her.’ Everything just felt really stressful.”
“Anyway, I remember taking the medication and just really not agreeing with me. And so I had a difficult couple of weeks before Christmas. And then my partner and I went up to see his family, and I shouldn't have probably gone, but my partner thought it would be a good idea for us to get away and have a break.”
“But as a new mum who's battling a severe mental health problem, going away from everything that was easy and comfortable was actually adding to my stress.”
“And so when I got back, I think I got worse. I think I just deteriorated. Then it was quite obvious with my partner being at home with me more often that I was really unwell when he started to get really, really worried.”
“My GP was back by then. I saw her, I changed medications. Then I just kept changing medications because none of them... I wasn't having a good time on any of them.”
“I had abruptly stopped breastfeeding, which added to my anxiety and all the hormones dropping. And that didn't help, but it was so necessary because my new doctor had said, ‘‘Okay, we're getting you off the Mirtazapine, I'm putting you another one, but we've got to give you something to sleep’ because I was not sleeping.”
“She gave me a strong sleeping pill, which you absolutely could not breastfeed with. I made that call, but yeah, the abruptness of that, then the going away at Christmas, it just was all too much.”
“My suicide thoughts were just still there and still happening almost every day.”
“I did that for at least six weeks, and then I decided started to... I said to my partner, ‘I don't want to be here anymore. This is really bad. I need serious help because I've never felt like this in my life before’. And so we both agreed that I should go and just present to ED, so emergency.”
“I basically was doing it for him and for my daughter because I personally thought I can’t be saved... I was not even having a connection with my daughter, which was the most painful thing in all of it for me.”
“I presented to ED, it was a weekend and January period. It was a weird time. But I presented telling them, ‘I'm a new mum and I'm having suicide thoughts. This has never happened to me before and I'm really scared.’”
“I was admitted to what they call the short-stay in the mental health ward. But I guess essentially it's actually like a detox for some alcoholics and drug addicts. I was in there with people who were drug addicts and alcoholics, not people that had severe mental health problems. That was really confronting and confusing and scary.”
“I rang my partner in tears saying, ‘you got to come get me. This is a mistake. I don't know.’ It was very taxing on him, too, because obviously he was just trying to look after our baby and just wanting to do the right thing for me, too. But yeah, I guess taking me to get help and then having to pull me out of things was just really hard for him.”
“Anyway, I think I spent just a night there. I was gone the next day. I asked them to discharge me and said, ‘I'm going to speak to my GP and hopefully get into mother-and-baby unit (MBU) or something like that. That's what I did. I went back to my GP, got plugged into PIMHS, and was then getting, I guess, community support.”
“So I was introduced to my social worker who stayed with me throughout the entire period, visiting me once a week. She's just so, so lovely. So I was seeing them. I was going down to see the psychiatrist too.”
“Again, I was having these troubles with this medication. None of them were agreeing with me.”
“They had put my name down at Naamaru*, but Naamaru basically said that I wasn't sick enough, believe it or not, to go, and that they really prioritised women who were in rural areas and maybe had actually done... It had to be more severe to get into this place. I was just having thoughts.”
“My partner just was adamant. He's like, ‘We have to get you help.’ My partner is someone that doesn't take no for an answer.”
“So he was like, ‘I'm going to call this private St. John of God, and we're going to get you in.’”
“We didn't have health insurance, or we did, but it was a small cover or something like that. He managed to talk to, I guess, the top person in the health insurance company and get them to agree to put us on the highest package, back-date it, and put me into this clinic ASAP. That's what happened. We were lucky enough to get in the following week.”
“I'm really lucky that my partner was doing all the admin for me and all the talking because I just wasn't in a mental state at all to do any of that.”
“I was admitted to St. John & God. By now, it was about late February.”
“I basically was doing it for him and for my daughter because I personally thought I can't be saved. I'd been dealing with these thoughts these feelings, this depression and this anxiety for, we're talking the end of February, so two months now.”
“I was just, yeah, I lost hope and I remember packing my bag being like, ‘I don't even know what to take. I don't really care. I just don't think this is going to work. It's all pointless, but I want to do this for them, and I know I need to give it a shot.’”
“But I also felt extremely numb because when you're sick for that long, I was losing touch with reality. I was not even having a connection with my daughter, which was the most painful thing in all of it for me.“
“I got to a point where I wasn't even crying about things. I was just numb and emotionless.”
*Naamaru: the first public parent-and-baby unit in NSW located on the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital campus
“I felt like my power had been taken away. I understood that I was sick, but I just thought, ‘Surely these people know that I’m not going to do anything silly?’ Again, this element of being watched or, yeah, monitored. It brought back a lot of feelings of my initial introduction into motherhood, and I felt so robbed of my autonomy, everything.”
“So we went to St. John of God, and there were positive and negative things about my stay there.”
“The positive thing was that I met a lovely woman there that is still a friend of mine. Just being in an environment where you're with women who are experiencing the same thing with whatever mental health problem it is, there's a relief there and then a sense of community. So that was positive for me.”
“I did like some of the nurses and I guess the psychological support there and the groups and things like that.”
“I think they helped me to just not think about my problems for a little while, and that was helpful.”
“But for me, I really struggled with being locked in a facility where you can't get out and you could only go for one walk day with the nurses. I really struggled with that because, again, I felt like my power had been taken away. I understood that I was sick, but I just thought, ‘Surely these people know that I'm not going to do anything silly?’”
“Again, this element of being watched or, yeah, monitored. It brought back a lot of feelings of my initial introduction into motherhood, and I felt so robbed of my autonomy, everything.”
”While this was all happening, my partner decided to move us closer to things. Where we were living when my daughter was born was quite isolated. It was on an acreage, and I couldn't really... I had to jump in the car to go to the shops! He moved us down near the beach, on the beaches in Narrabeen. It was a good move, but he was busy packing and things while I was in St. John of God, so he wasn't there all the time.”
“I remember feeling really lonely at St. John of God. It was torturous for me, if I'm being honest.”
“But I found an antidepressant while I was there that actually was good for me. That was a really positive thing that came out of my stay there. I remember not having any side effects and feeling good about the choice to go on this particular one.”
“But I was still having daily suicide thoughts by the third week, which was not good because I was about to go home. I was transferred or they had been talking to Naamaru about me going there for longer because I wasn't better, basically - and not to the point that they felt happy letting me go. So I went to Naamaru for six weeks after that. So I had been in a clinic for a total of nine weeks.”
“I think a lot of my anxiety came from... I knew that my partner was moving. So When I came out of St. John and God, I was going to be in a new home, a new apartment - which we still live in now and I love it - but because my anxiety was so rampant, I was worried that I wasn't going to like it. I didn't get to see it. We're living in an apartment block again, so we're near people. Is there a lot of noise? I was really sensitive to all those, over the top with all those things.”
“My anxiety was telling me stories like: I'm going to hate it. It's not going to be good. I'm going to get no sleep. It's going to be the worst thing ever, all these sorts of things.”
“I hadn't dealt with that anxiety problem, and I had just got on medication, which takes four to six or eight weeks even to properly work. I was really feeling like I was at the beginning of my, at least in the medicine side of things, at the end of my stay there, which was not ideal.”
“I went to Naamaru, and actually it was the best thing for me.”
“Within the first few days, my psychiatrist gave me leave at any point that I wanted. She really believed in me and trusted me, and she could see how desperate I was to feel like I was a normal person.”
“The first few days were positive. But then I think it was day four or something, myself and Isla got COVID. And so even though it was after all the peak of COVID stuff, they still had the same rules that have been in place since COVID began.”
“We were put in isolation for 11 days. That was really hard because you put even a normal person who's not experiencing mental health problems in a room isolated with a newborn and you go crazy! So I took a massive step back in my journey, and it was really, really, really hard for me.”
“In the middle of the isolation, they actually agreed to let my partner come and take our daughter home because I was just not coping. Because I couldn't see anyone, I wasn't even allowed to go for a walk, nothing. I felt like I'd been punished, and I felt, again, like all my power had been taken from me.”
“I just remember thinking every day was a nightmare, and I was living a nightmare. And this was the tip of the iceberg, being in a room with your baby, people coming in with PPE gear, and that was really awful.”
“By then I'd been in there for two weeks. I then began proper treatment and everything again. I started the whole wheel again. From then on, I was there for four weeks.”
“I felt like everything before that was just not getting me anywhere and just a series of things going wrong and not feeling great. Then suddenly, I was like, ‘okay, nothing can get worse from here on in. I'm here to get better, and that's what I'm going to do.’”
“The medication had been in my system now for a few more weeks, so I was feeling the positive effects of at least not being as emotional as I was and then emotionless, just feeling normal again.”
“Within the first few days, my psychiatrist gave me leave at any point that I wanted. She really believed in me and trusted me, and she could see how desperate I was to feel like I was a normal person. Essentially, it ended up feeling like I was based there, but I was able to go about my days the way I wanted, which was helpful for my healing.”
“Again, I connected with some women in there that were lovely, and that was really nice and comforting… I guess I felt like the nurses here and the OT and everyone like that was just a bit more fresh and just a bit more relatable for me.”
“It's so funny when you reflect on it. It feels like a lifetime ago that I went through all that. But yeah, it was so necessary for me to be in a clinical environment where I could be monitored, especially because of my experience with medications. I needed to have that first-hand support.”
“I think what felt so scary is when you're titrating up and down off different medications and you're looking after a baby, I remember just always feeling so not like myself. It's a very scary thing. For me, it was a really safe and good choice to be in a clinic environment. I got lots of hands-on support with mothering things that I needed to learn, being a first-time mum, not exposed to that many kids pre-baby. I was really guided there and I learned a lot. Yeah, it was a good experience.”
“We didn't have those group sessions like we did at St. John of God, you had a lot more one-on-one with a psychiatrist. I saw a psychiatrist weekly, a psychologist weekly, an OT weekly. Every day I had someone to see, but it was all individual.”
“But there were group activities that you could do as a community. So we would often cook together. There was a huge kitchen, and we would do like baby massage classes or go for a walk together if you wanted to. And so I really like that aspect.”
“And there was this hilarious... She was a family health nurse, but she also did all the cooking. She had a good cooking background, and she was just so funny. And I remember her spirit just lighting up the room… That's what I needed. I needed to just try and have a good giggle!”
“At night, me and the other women who were staying there, we'd have this big shared TV, so we'd put on Netflix or whatever when the kids would go down. It was this shared community. It felt more like a house or a home to me, which I needed being a comfort body.”
“I got a lot better there just from that aspect, from the type of relationships that I had. Just the more relaxed setting, I think, was good for me.”
“I found it extremely difficult to even text someone back because I couldn’t get in touch with my old self or my real self.”
“After I came home, there was a lot more work to do. It is a long journey, but I then was plugged back into the PIMHS team. So I got my old social worker who saw me before, and she would come and visit me weekly, and she was just the best. I saw her and Sonia from Mum for Mum. I began to engage with my friends again.”
“When I was going through my acute phase, I really closed off from everyone and I was isolating myself. I found it extremely difficult to even text someone back because I couldn't get in touch with my old self or my real self. I just felt like this disassociation. So I hadn't engaged or seen a lot of my friends for two or three months. So I felt better and more optimistic. And so then I was ready once I got home after a few weeks to see them again.”
“And then I guess it was just a small trail of things just improved in that department and you start to feel more like yourself. And my partner and I, because it takes such a toll on your relationship, I think we were lucky enough to get a little bit of counselling after and, I guess, help bridge that gap that's happened since I got so unwell. And we hadn't spent a lot of time together for a few months. So, yeah, all those things were part of the healing journey.”
Speaking about her Mum for Mum volunteer, Sarah says “She saw me get better and in recovery and it was wonderful. It's an amazing service, and I hope to give back when I've got more free time and Isla's older and be a mother for someone else because it's just an invaluable exchange. I feel really lucky that we live in a time now where that was on offer.”
“She would come around once a week or sometimes twice, and she would just put away the dishes for me or help me with the washing. Sometimes she would just go for a walk with Isla… Or if we were at the shops, she would watch her while I go in and just do things on my own for 20 minutes or something. It was really helpful.”
“I think when you're in your recovery, just having that familiar, constant face… I had that with my social worker as well. Because these women were a bit older - my mum doesn't live close by, I wasn’t seeing a huge amount of her - that was really helpful for me. It felt very comforting because you do need to be mothered when you're a new mother.”
”You're so vulnerable in those first few weeks and months, and especially the first time around when it's just all so new and you're adjusting to everything for the first time. It's enormous. This identity shift that happens, nothing can prepare you like everyone says. It's so true. I think that just to be held in a nurtured, compassionate way. For me, I was lucky enough to have that with the support services that were on offer.”
“But yeah, I definitely think the most helpful thing for me was the support I got from PIMHS postpartum. If I didn't see Victoria, I had phone calls from the PIMHS team every week just checking in on me, and that was really important and made me feel, yeah, they weren't watching me as such, but they were literally just checking in to see that I was okay. That was nice.”
”I was also connected with another family health nurse that would come out to see me. So I had so many people that were coming to see me all the time, and it was just that wrap-around care that made me feel supported.”
“Coming out of my postpartum anxiety and depression and falling in love with my daughter was the best thing in the world.”
“And then also alongside that, building my relationships again and my connections and getting a little bit more of that regularity again with doing normal things that helped me to come back to myself.”
“And also a huge part was connecting with my daughter again. When I was home and felt more settled, I was able to really get my power back with my daughter and feel more comfortable in my role as a mother.”
“I think when I was in the clinics, even though I was making progress, I still felt like this wasn't real. We're in a setting that is clinical and it doesn't feel real. But then when we came home, I was really able to just go, ‘Okay, this is it now. We can move forward.’ I was able to just really step into that role and get to know my daughter. So she was by then six or seven months old. That was delightful, though. Coming out of my postpartum anxiety and depression and falling in love with my daughter was the best thing in the world.”
”I think that a lot of my, I guess the thought process for me when I I didn't want to be here and didn't want to carry on and things like that, it had to do with, I wasn't connecting with my daughter and I wasn't sure what was coming first, the anxiety or the fact that I wasn't connecting with her, and then that was causing me to feel anxious... Sometimes I would hold her and feel like she wasn't even mine, that created so much pain for me that I thought, ‘I'm not cut out for this. This is wrong.’ And so I think that just being able to fully overcome that and fall in love with my daughter and say she's my daughter in that feel, because that was really hard for me, too. I struggled to, again, this disassociation was going on for me for a long time.”
“For me, because of my mental health condition, I struggled with all those basic things and I felt like I was failing and not connecting with her. So once I overcame that, I'm just so in love with her and I can't even believe that I was in such Just a painful state. It just doesn't feel real now because she's my world.”
“I remember when I first started to reconnect with her and feel more myself, and it was just like, I imagine that's what I would have been feeling initially having her. It's the same as Christmas or something, waking up at Christmas and just being like, ‘Oh, my God, look!’ It was the same thing, every day I would get up and just be like, ‘I'm so excited to see her.’”
“Just to be on the absolute other side of darkness or depression. It was just like, ‘wow, I'm breathing again and I am seeing clearly and wow.’”
“When you're in the thick of it… You can't see past your pain. You just think nothing's going to work. You just give up and you think nothing's going to work and I'm never going to get over this. Every day is going to be this awful forever. I couldn't see past at all. You get this very tunnelled vision.”
“Now being where I am, the biggest, I guess, advice or thing that I can say to anyone listening that's going through it is that you will get through it. It will pass as much as you believe that it won't. It just does. The timeline for everyone is so, so different, but there is absolutely light at the end of the tunnel. And, yeah, your little babies are the most precious gift ever.”
“In my sharing, whether it’s writing or talking, it’s actually opening up, hopefully, the door to someone that needs to ask some questions or wants to know some answers about support or what to expect.”
“I've always been a natural writer. I used to have my own blog and I shared a lot more there - this was many years ago. But now I just write and keep it to myself for now. And so I began writing just for my own healing when I got out, and that was really helpful.”
Sarah was also involved with The Mind Cafe in Narrabeen. “They're an amazing mental health organisation that have a cafe here in Narrabeen, and they offer loads of mental health support. I began sharing my story with the owner one day, and they asked me to come and do some support work for women who were looking for perinatal support.”
“And so I began writing some stuff for them that they wanted to use on their own socials and things like that. So I was writing for myself, writing for them, and then I ended up feeling like, actually, this is helpful and healing for me. I feel like it's almost my place to offer my support.”
“I remember when I shared on my social media about my experience, I was inundated with women who knew women who needed to speak to someone. Even now, I just got a message a few weeks ago and I had a phone call with a lady who lives in a different state, but she had some questions for me.”
“I think realising that in my sharing, whether it's writing or talking, it's actually opening up, hopefully, the door to someone that needs to ask some questions or wants to know some answers about support or what to expect.”
“I definitely can hopefully see myself working in the perinatal space. Whether as a peer support worker or a counsellor one day, that's what I want to do, what I want to dedicate my purpose to, at least for now. Because I just feel like once you have that lived experience, for me, I just want to give back and help other women who might not feel like there's any help for them.”
“They don’t define us, these bad experiences. If anything, they teach us if we’re willing to listen. That’s really what’s happened for me.”
“I wouldn't go as far to say that I'm grateful for the experience because it was awful. I don't wish it upon anyone, but there was so much that experience taught me about myself, about my own unresolved traumas, about mental health in general.”
“Even the compassion that I now have and the deeper understanding I have of mental health is just tenfold. Had I not had my experience, I still would have had my own stigma about it with people like, ‘Oh, I don't understand why you can't just snap out of it or get on with it. Or what do you mean you can't get out of bed?’ I didn't actually understand until it happened to me.”
“Even the suicide thing, I never would have thought that could happen to me. I understand that sometimes it just takes a series of really taxing stressful events for your brain to snap. That's what happened. It just broke.”
“So I just have compassion for a lot of people that are going through their own things. And I understand. There's less judgement from me now.”
“I didn't know that the severity of postpartum anxiety or depression could happen in the postpartum periods. It's not something that was discussed in any of my antenatal appointments. It wasn't something that my GP mentioned. It wasn't something that was talked about in any of my circles. So I was really learning about the illnesses that I was experiencing as they were happening.”
”And I think the biggest thing, for me, the biggest, biggest, biggest thing was just healing myself so I could be the best mum for my daughter.”
“You want to enjoy motherhood, and until you feel good, you can't. And so that's step one, was just, I just want to feel better and enjoy this lifelong commitment that I have here that is not going away. I wanted to enjoy it.”
“But as I was saying earlier, too, I realised that my whole breakdown was really an invitation to look at some deeper stuff that has actually always gone on for me. I wouldn't say I'm still in recovery, but I'm still learning about myself. I guess I'm still learning parenthood as I go. There's lots of things that I want to work on within myself.”
“Even stuff that maybe went on for me in my childhood that I thought I've dealt with, that I've got on with that's not affected me - Well, actually, that was a big fat lie because then you have a baby and it all floods back or something! And so dealing with that and accepting it and acknowledging it. And that's what parenthood really did for me. It's just inviting me to work through all those things.”
“I don't see anyone anymore, but I still do a lot of the self-help and self-care things that are necessary for me to deal with my own emotions. Certainly, I still have some issues with sleeping every now and again that I attribute to my nervous system being overworked. So I need to put things in place so that I don't get so overwhelmed and I don't get so stressed. That all stems, I think, from childhood, not having coping it mechanisms from a young age. And so I've had to retrain myself and learn other ways to to nip things in the bud when they first happen.”
“And, yeah, I just think if I ever had another baby, I so know what to look out for that I would never... I don't think it's even possible for me to ever fall down into that dark hole again! I just don't think it's possible because I just know what to look out for and how to get on top of it very quickly.”
“From time to time, there'll be moments where something will happen, and I'll be reminded of something that I'm sad about, and maybe there's an element of shame there. But most of all, I think I've overcome that, and I'm accepting of what's happened and happy to talk about it and happy to share because I realised that, yeah, it's helping me, it's helping other women. It's helping, hopefully, my daughter, if she ever learned about this, what happened and what the early days were like, but to not have any judgement. We got through it. We all got through it. Hopefully, that can be a beacon of light for lots of women.”
“I guess the biggest thing that I want to be able to show [Isla] is that we can overcome these things, and they don't define us, these bad experiences. If anything, they teach us if we're willing to listen. That's really what's happened for me.”
“I think for me, looking at this tragedy, in a sense, that happened to me and trying to turn it into something positive, which you've done as well, I think that is the only way to be with things. I've learned that I could stew on it and I could hold a lot of shame and I could suppress it and not want to talk about it and pretend it never happened, or I could walk into it and own it and try and use it to be a positive thing. That's what I've chosen to do. In that, it just feels a whole lot lighter.”
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Episode Sponsor
This episode of Perinatal Stories Australia is proudly sponsored by Mums Matter Psychology—because your mental health matters.
Frances and her expert team of psychologists, social workers, and occupational therapists are passionate about providing affordable, high-quality mental health care for pregnant women and parents with children up to 4 years old.
Through Medicare bulk-billed therapy sessions—up to 20 at no cost to you—they make support accessible to everyone. If you’re in Victoria, visit one of their welcoming clinic locations. Outside Victoria? Their nationwide Telehealth services bring care to your fingertips.
Mums Matter Psychology also offers a range of online therapy groups and webinars, providing additional ways to access support and connect with others on a similar journey.
Ready to take the next step? Visit mumsmatterpsychology.com to learn more and book your appointment today.
