There are SO many parts of Sophie’s story that I want to emphasise. Like how depression made Sophie feel so numb that she didn’t know what to say when a nurse asked her if she loved her daughter. Or like how intrusive thoughts made her feel so scared that she didn’t want to go near her baby. Or like how the symptoms of psychosis made her feel so confused that her husband had to write her detailed instructions to be able to shower. Or like how she panicked, instead of celebrated, when her ‘involuntary’ label was lifted in the MBU. Or, or, or… you see what I mean?!

Among the MANY topics we cover in this heartfelt episode, Sophie and I discuss:

• how sleep and feeding challenges can become a fixation

• the ‘stickiness’ of intrusive thoughts

• how self-doubt affects our mental health and parenting

• small acts of kindness that aren’t small at all

• how the difficult decision to undertake TMS was Sophie’s turning point

• …and so much more!

With some tears and laughs along the way, Sophie shares with me the long road to get to where she is now: a PANDA Community Champion, a facilitator of the Circle of Security program, the heart and soul behind AttachED, and most of all, pregnant and ready to welcome baby number two.

I could say so much more, but just listen to this episode - trust me, you won’t regret it.

“I think the more that we talk about these things, the less stigma is surrounding it. And I do find that when I talk about it, it's quite healing, actually.”

”There was a lot of shame and stuff around it in the beginning, but I don't feel that anymore.”

”My mental health during pregnancy was actually great. I loved being pregnant.”

“I guess the thought of having the baby was always the scarier part for me. I wasn't really ever too worried about the birth or anything. It was more, ‘wow, I'm about to bring a child into the world’ and it's pretty daunting. But in terms of my mental health throughout my pregnancy, it was pretty great.”

“In hindsight now that I have so much more knowledge, and I have been through what I've been through, I definitely would say that there little bouts of anxiety here and there, but I think definitely nothing to the extent of what happened postpartum.”

“I think it definitely all started from my birth.”

“I had a 37-hour labour, which definitely contributed to the whole diagnosis in the end. So 37-hour labour, and through that whole time, I didn't sleep, which is, as we all know, is huge.”

“So 37 hours didn't sleep. I then had my baby Friday night and she screamed. The midwives were trying to help me to feed and she just screamed the whole first night. The midwife just kept saying, ‘I think she's hungry, I think she's hungry.’ So we kept feeding her. That went on for two nights in the hospital.”

“In amongst all this, so my daughter was born on Friday night and then on Saturday at 4:00 PM, we went into a snap COVID lockdown.”

“Just before we were leaving, that morning, the lactation consultant came because she'd been being so unsettled and was having trouble feeding. And by that point, my breasts were just destroyed because she was on there for two nights straight.”

“And the lactation consultant looked at her and said, ‘She's not hungry, she's windy, she's in pain’. And she said that you need to stop breastfeeding and you need to pump.”

“And I was just like, ‘I have no idea what's going on, really.’ And in hindsight, these were starting to be red flags. So I said to Stewart, my husband, I said, ‘do you understand what she's saying? Because I don't.’ And it was simple stuff. She was trying to explain to me that I need to pump and then I need to wash and sterilise the bottles. And just none of that was getting through to me.”

“It was definitely insomnia that started to creep in. It was not much sleep overall. So I was already leaving the hospital with very little sleep, a 37 hour labour. So I was already exhausted. And to be honest, I thought that when I just wasn't understanding what the lactation consultant was saying, I thought that was just, ‘oh, I'm so tired.’ But in hindsight, I think that was definitely a red flag.”

“[Stewart] had to go out and find a shop that was open because we didn't have a pump. I didn't expect to have to do that so early.”

“That was definitely, I think, one of the first red flags where I was just like, ‘I'm just really confused. I'm not really sure what you're saying.’ And it was so simple. It was like: you need to wash the bottle, then sterilise it. She gave me a sheet of what I needed to be expressing to be able to feed the baby. It was really quite rigid. It needs to be this amount of millilitres. And I think I got so fixated on that, that definitely made me spiral a bit as well.”

“I could see the milk that was coming out. I was just watching the bottles, like watching every drop just dripping out and going, ‘Is that enough? Is that enough? Am I going to be able to feed the baby?’ I got so hyper fixated on that. I didn't trust myself at all.”

“I just kept saying, ‘I'm not getting enough milk, I'm not getting enough milk.’ I knew that if I was stressing about not getting enough milk, then I wasn't going to produce the milk. It was just a cycle.”

“During the night when I had to get up and feed, Stewart had to make a list of the steps of things that I had to do because it was like my brain completely shut down.”

“I had no cognitive capacity to understand how to make a bottle, the washing of bottles. Like, Stewart had to do all of that because I just couldn't.

“I didn't understand it, which sounds so silly in hindsight, but yeah, it was complete survival mode.”

“Stewart was having to write down steps and everything, even just to have a shower.”

“It's so silly, but when your brain's not working properly, it's just complete survival mode.”

“It's like you have nothing left in your brain. It's just completely mush and absent.”

“Stewart noticed those signs and ended up calling my parents to come over for dinner. Even during the COVID lockdown, he said, ‘I think you need to see your mum and dad.’”

“So, yeah, they came over, and then that was the start of it all.”

“It was when they were about to leave. I remember going into Olive's bedroom and I was changing her nappy and just these intrusive thoughts of, I'm going to drop her. My whole body just went weak. And I just remember quickly changing the nappy, and I just handed Olive to my mum, and I just said, ‘I'm not okay.’”

“It was like my whole body just, didn't collapse, but it definitely just went weak. And once I knew that the baby wasn't in my hands, I just was like, ‘I'm not okay. I'm not myself. There's something really wrong.’ And I didn't want my mum to leave, so I made her stay.”

“It wasn't because I didn't think Stewart could look after the baby. It was more so I knew that that would be fine, but the burden of him having to be home with me who I knew was absolutely not okay and a newborn baby by himself. I was like, I just felt better if there were other people, and that's why I just didn't want my mum and dad to leave.”

“So they didn't. Mum stayed over that night and they tried to get me to sleep. And it was from that moment on that I honestly don't really remember holding Olive for the rest of that time that I was at home. I just almost dissociated from her, to be honest.”

“I was trying to get sleep, just everything I was trying wouldn't work. Yeah, the insomnia, it felt like the whole night. I don't think I got much sleep at all. I don't think anyone got much sleep. But at the same time, I was just saying to Stewart, ‘I'm in survival mode, like I'm in fight or flight. I am not producing milk because I feel like this.’”

“And I just said, ‘you need to go and get formula because I can't feed this baby’, which was in the middle of the night. And because I was pumping, I could see that there was no milk coming out. And then that just fuelled that cycle of thoughts.”

“So, yeah, he had to go and find formula in the middle of the night in a COVID lockdown. I think he travelled about half an hour away down to one of the hospitals to try and find some.”

“He did find some. And it was just from there that I relinquished the... I'm pretty sure I can't really remember completely, but I don't think I even tried to breastfeed. I don't really remember seeing Olive that night. And then Stewart's parents had come over as well. So they were helping out with Olive. And Mum was just trying to get me to sleep, but there was no hope in that.”

“It was during that first night that I started experiencing not only the insomnia, but some really scary intrusive thoughts of hurting Olive, and that's why I think that I didn't want to go near her.”

“I kept having all these ruminations about mine and Stewart's relationship and telling him all these things. Things that I didn't love him, which it's just it's crazy!”

“It's really hard to think back and think of the things that I was thinking about Olive and I was saying to Stewart. Yeah, that's really hard to remember because obviously it's the whole thing about intrusive thoughts is that, as you know, they're not aligned with your values and they're not who you are, which is why they can be so scary.”

“That is one thing that I absolutely wish that I had have known beforehand. That intrusive thoughts are just that. They are thoughts, they're not who you are. I just remember saying to mum, ‘who would think these things about their baby?’ Then, of course, I'm sure many people have done the same that have experienced it, but the thoughts just cycle.”

“You have the intrusive thought and then you go, ‘Oh, my gosh, what type of a person am I? What kind of a mum am I if I think these things?’ And I always, every time I'm telling anyone about it, I draw like my finger just goes around a circle because that's how I felt that my thoughts were. They were just cycling and there was no, I couldn't escape from it.”

“I guess that's when I just wanted to run away. I just wanted to escape. I didn't want to do it anymore.”

“The whole three hour, that was really overwhelming, knowing that I'm not actually going to be able to get a chunk of sleep because I need to feed her every three hours. So to me, it wasn't... I felt like it was never going to end.”

“I think the stickier they got and the more that they kept happening, the more I didn't see any way out. I didn't get any sleep during that time. And I think then, of course, when you are going, ‘oh, I just need to sleep’. But then when you can't sleep, the cycle just starts again. And then you start stressing about not being able to sleep. And then it's just a never-ending cycle.”

“I just spiralled. From there, I really spiralled.”

“I remember bits and pieces of it.”

“Like, Olive was definitely taken care of by all of our parents while I was... I just remember being in bed the whole time trying to sleep that first night.”

“I had a midwife appointment that was scheduled the next morning. So when she came over, I just said, first thing I said, ‘I'm not okay’. My family had explained what had happened, that I wasn't sleeping, that I was just not myself.”

“She could obviously see. And she asked me to then hand the baby over to her. And I said, ‘oh, no, no, it's okay. I can hold her’. And she's like, ‘no, I'll hold her’. And that was when I went, ‘oh, okay, this is pretty bad’. They're not actually letting me hold her, which then fed into that almost It's like, ‘oh, maybe I am dangerous.’”

“So then the midwife ended up calling the acute mental health care team and just asking advice there. They were questioning me about what thoughts I was having. I was being completely honest because the midwife said, ‘just be so honest with what you're thinking.’”

“To me, they were like the worst things in the world. But they then said, ‘It's okay.’ And I guess that's the whole thing about intrusive thoughts, where it's not likely that you're going to act upon them. They are just thoughts. Which, again, I would love to have known that. That's something that I wish every new mum knew. It's not something that you are going to act on. It's a thought. It's not who you are.”

“So the mental health care team deemed me okay. And they just said, if things get worse or she doesn't sleep, then call the hospital, call the ambulance.”

“Also in that time period, someone had gone and got me sleeping pills to try and help me to sleep. It didn't work.”

“So I think this is going on the second night or maybe... I'm not sure what night it was, but one of the nights, it just got to the point where I wasn't sleeping. Things were getting worse. I was saying, ‘Don't bring Olive near me. I don't trust myself.’”

“Yeah, it just got to the crisis point where they said, 'you're not getting better. This is bad. You need help.’ I remember saying, ‘I need to go somewhere.’ I didn't know where I needed to go. I didn't know anything about an MBU. I didn't even know about perinatal mental health, really, to the extent of what I was experiencing. But I just knew in myself that I needed to go somewhere to be able to get better because I wasn't right.”

“So that night, my family made the call to call the ambulance, and the ambulance came and I went by myself.”

“It was COVID, so no one was able to come with me. My family and Stewart’s family kept Olive at home with them, which baffles me how hard that would have been to send someone in an ambulance by themselves in the state that I was in. That would have been so difficult for our families and for Stew, particularly. But I wasn't really with it enough to understand completely what was going on. So I went by myself and they took me to the emergency department.”

“I just remember thinking that I need to speak to a psychologist: ‘Once I speak to a psychologist, I'll be fixed. That's just what I need. I'm not okay, but as soon as I speak to someone, I'm sure I'll be fine’ was my understanding of what was happening.”

“Within the emergency department, I was placed on an involuntary stay. So under the Mental Health Act. It meant that I couldn't leave even if I wanted to. It just meant that I wasn't of sound mind enough to make medical decisions on my own. So the doctors took over that care and I was taken to the psychiatric ward.”

“The ward itself was the vulnerable patients unit (VPU) or something. And I just remember being in pyjamas, hair completely everywhere. I had breast milk everywhere. Like I would have just… Yeah, not myself, obviously!”

“Then, yeah, the security guards escorted me from the emergency and I had to walk down with them into the psychiatric ward by myself, which was incredibly scary.”

“And I didn't really know what was happening at that point. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I just knew that I need to talk to someone and then I'll be okay. I need some sleep. And that was the extent of me understanding what was going on.”

“So I spent a few nights in the vulnerable patients unit (VPU) without Olive, but they were good enough to let Stew and Olive come in during the day so that I could see her.”

“And the nurses there, they were incredible. There was one nurse that had printed all these photos of Olive off and stuck them all over my room.”

“I'm a teacher, so I have quite a bit of understanding of childhood trauma, and I just believed that I was then creating trauma for Olive. And I kept saying to the nurse, ‘oh, my gosh, her A score is going to be through the roof. I've traumatised her. I've absolutely ruined her. Her attachment is not going to be...’ All these catastrophic thoughts. But I genuinely believed it because I thought, well, I've completely stuffed up this first part.”

“I'm going to ruin her was my absolute worst fear.”

“So, yeah, the nurse - I had a really good relationship with her - she was helping me look at the pictures, trying to bond with Olive when she wasn't there.”

“She was incredible. Like, wow. Yeah. And they were stuck all over my door and there was this one, and it looked like [Olive] had this big smile on her face, but she was just burping or something. But I just remember looking at that going, ‘I don't feel anything at the moment, but I know that I need to’. And I just kept looking at that photo.”

“That photo definitely got me through those days when I was in the psych ward by myself.”

“The whole idea was in that unit just to get sleep. And they had put me on to anti-psychotics at that point as well because they weren't sure if it was psychosis or what it was. Not that I knew what was going on. I just took the medication and hoped to get some sleep.”

“At that point I was just completely out of it. I thought that I was in a prison. And because they had told me that I was involuntary and I wasn't allowed to leave, And that's what it felt like… I was scared of the other patients because I was in a psychiatric ward. You just don't ever think that you're going to end up in one of those. So that was scary.”

“And then the perinatal mental Health team from the Lavender Ward, so the mother-baby unit in the Gold Coast Hospital, had said that there was a space opening up in a couple of days.”

“I was so, so lucky to get in there. I don't really know what my recovery would have looked like if that hadn't been available to me. And I can only imagine how hard things would be for mums that don't have access to the resources like that. As much as I didn't really like being in there, it absolutely saved us.”

“When I got to the Lavender Ward, I had this idea of the Lavender Ward that it was going to be... Because my family just kept saying, ‘oh, this place sounds so much better! Olive will be able to be with you!’ And I just had this magical fantasy idea of walking through lavender fields and everything would be fine.”

“And it definitely wasn't.”

“I just thought I'd walk the doors of the lavender ward and be miraculously fixed. But yeah, that wasn't the case.”

“But it definitely helped.”

“I was then in there for five weeks.”

“The whole idea of the first week was protected sleep. So again, they were giving me that same medication that they were giving me in the VPU, but I kept fighting it in the mother-baby unit (MBU). I kept saying, ‘no, I'm not taking it. Why should I sleep? No new mother gets to sleep! I'm not taking it.’”

“Then I thought that they were drugging me at one point. I thought that they were forcing me to take it. Every time they'd come to give me medication, they'd have to explain to me what each of the pills were. I had absolutely no idea. No idea at all.”

“In hindsight, the protected sleep was absolutely needed. This time round, it's something that I will definitely be protecting on my own, hopefully without the help of an MBU. But yeah, I just didn't think that I deserved a full night's sleep because what new mother gets to sleep?”

“And the thought that Olive had to go into the nursery to be fed by somebody else. I was like, ‘But she needs me! How can I sleep when she needs me?’ They're like, ‘Yeah, but she needs a well mother.’”

“I completely, obviously understand that now. But yeah, at the time it was so hard to, and I'm pretty sure the nurses hated night shift with me. Every night shift, I was like, ‘No, what is this? I don't want to take it.’ It'd just be the same for the first week, I think, when they were trying to get me to do protected sleep, but I eventually gave in.”

“On some paperwork, it says psychosis or signs of psychosis. So in terms of a diagnosis, I know that it was definitely severe postnatal depression is what was on the paperwork. But psychosis has definitely been raised and they thought it was that in the beginning. I was hearing voices of, not voices, but I was hearing babies crying when they weren't there and things like that, which is why they thought that it was.”

“I do wonder, though, if I hadn't got the support and the treatment so soon, if it could have developed into more. Because I have heard of stories, people on your podcast and stuff as well, and of people who have had psychosis. I'm like, yeah, a lot of the symptoms that they say I can relate to. So I'm just so grateful that I was able to get support, treatment and help so soon.”

“I'm not sure when it was within my stay, but it was definitely after the first week, I think. I didn't really know what was going on. I knew that it wasn't right, but I hadn't been told what my diagnosis was or anything.”

“I just remember the psychiatrist was in my room and I said, ‘What's wrong with me? What is actually wrong with me?’ She said, ‘You have very severe postnatal depression.’”

“I was like, ‘No, I don't. I just No, I don't. I'm not sad. I don't feel anything. I just felt completely and utterly numb to any feelings, any emotions.’ So yeah, I didn't believe her. Then I started saying, ‘well, no, there's something wrong.’”

“She goes, ‘Sophie, I've been doing this for a really long time. This is what it is.’”

“And I said, ‘the thoughts that I'm having about my baby? Is it the thoughts that I'm having about my relationship? Is that’s what caused this?’ She said, ‘No, they're all symptoms of your diagnosis.’”

“It still wasn't for a while that I completely agreed with them or accepted the diagnosis.”

“I think just because I had understanding of mental health and things before, but until you actually experience it yourself, you do have that idea that depression just means that you're sad and you're down. But in my experience, that wasn't it at all, really. It was more the confusion and the memory loss and just that complete feeling of being totally numb. I felt nothing.”

“I remember there was a midwife in there that asked me if I loved Olive, and it was the most awful question to be asked in the state that I was in.”

“I said no at the start , and I was like, ‘I don't feel anything’. Then I called her back after she left and I said, ‘no, I know that I love her. I do love her.’”

“But I just think it's a really tricky question to ask someone who's in the depths of such a severe illness because I knew deep down that obviously I loved her, but I didn't feel anything at that point.”

”I remember the day that they signed me off on that I wasn't involuntary anymore. They were saying that, you are here on a voluntary basis. We feel that you're getting a little bit better, so you are able to make some decisions. The other mums in the MBU were going for a walk down to the supermarket or something. I just remember turning to the nurses and they were like, ‘you can go if you want, you're able to go.’”

“I just had a full-blown panic attack.”

“I handed the baby to a nurse. I was just hyperventilating and didn't know. I just was like, ‘I can't trust myself to do that.’ That was my thinking.”

“I've been told for X amount of weeks that you can't be trusted to make decisions and I didn't trust myself to begin with. And then you're giving me all this freedom to go on my own?! What if the baby starts crying? What if I can't? And I just I ended up obviously saying no because it was too overwhelming.”

“It's like you've got the freedom physically, but you don't have the freedom mentally.”

“No one else is keeping you. Yeah, no one's forcing you, but your mind is! And yeah, I guess over it all, I've learnt how crazy the brain is.”

“I believed I couldn't drive. I honestly believed, even after I got out, I was like, I can't drive. I can't drive with... I don't know how to drive.”

“We had a few weekend home visits during my stay. And yeah, there was no way I was getting in the driver's seat!”

“And it was just after a lot of talk therapy and things with my psychologist, it came down to a lot of doubt in myself, which I've done a lot of work on with my psychologist. And yeah, it's just crazy what the mind can do. Absolutely baffling.”

“I'd never heard of the MBU before being placed in one, so I never actually knew what I was going into. I just thought it was another psychiatric ward.”

“We had group sessions and I was like, ‘oh, okay, I have to go to group sessions.’ Then your psychology would be one-on-one, and then they do some group sessions.”

“But I remember when I was really unwell in the beginning, I was dodging the psychologist. I just didn't want to talk. I just, I don't know, pretend I was busy or feeding or doing something.”

“They had the dietitian, an OT, a psychologist. Yeah, just all like different group sessions that we'd do, at least one or two a day. And I'd just go because I thought you had to go.”

“I was just doing the day-to-day MBU things that I felt that I had to do to get out, I guess.”

“But every day that went, the medication that they had given me wasn't working. It was treatment resistant. So, yeah, tried a few different medications. They weren't working.”

“I wasn't seeing, or my family, wasn't seeing any improvement in my mood or any signs of normal me, I guess.”

“So the psychiatrist recommended ECT, to which I, again, wasn't really in any state to be really part of those conversations. But my family and Stewart obviously definitely were. And it definitely scared them off.”

“Knowing the side effects, I guess, of memory loss and having to go under and all of those things, I just kept saying no. Well, my family were also saying no. And so we just kept giving it a little bit of time. And yeah, nothing was getting better.”

“So the team then came back to us and said, ‘well, what about TMS?’ - which is transcranial magnetic stimulation, to which there were no known side effects except for headaches, potentially. And the risks were a lot lower than ECT.”

“I just remember being in the room with everyone at that point, and I was just at the point where I said, ‘I don't care anymore. I just want to get better. I just don't want to feel like this anymore. I will do anything.’”

“So my family agreed to it, I agreed to it, and I started TMS, and that was the absolute turning point.”

“The first time I had it, I had one of the nurses from the MBU walk me down.”

“I was quite nervous. I was at the point where I didn't really care what happened to me as such. I just knew that it was a possibility that this would help me. I was just willing to do anything, really.”

“For those that don't know what transcranial magnetic stimulation is, it's where they place a coil on your head and it sends magnetic signals into the parts of the brain that are responsible for mood. And it basically just refires them or restarts them because they're all completely not working, shut down from the depression.”

“So, yeah, that first session was... It was daunting because I was like, ‘oh, my gosh, what have I done? I'm about to have something done to my brain’, which was scary.”

In that first session, prior to commencing TMS, Sophie had to undergo a test to figure out which part of the brain the coil needs to go on.

“The first session they had me put my hands on my legs and they positioned coil on my head in different parts. And they knew that they had the right spot if my middle finger involuntarily lift it up. It was crazy.”

“At the time I was like, ‘what is happening to me? What on earth?’”

“But yeah, so I had my hands and they place it in different spots. And then when my middle fingers came up - they knew. They're like, ‘yes, that's the spot!’”

“So then I had that session. That was the start. And then I had 30 rounds of TMS spanning across, I think it was 10 sessions.”

“So you do three sessions and they only last for about a minute. And it just felt like it was like a tap on my head. So it didn't hurt. It was just a bit uncomfortable. It wasn't painful, but it just zapped and tapped on my head for a minute continuously.”

“And then I had, I think it was like 30 seconds or a minute or something off or maybe even longer, I can't remember. But then so I did that three times.”

“So in total, the session was actually three minutes long. I was only actually stimulating for three minutes. And then that was the session done. And then I'd go back the next day.”

“And we knew that it was working because we started to see more signs of myself coming out. I started to feel better.”

“And the psychiatrist, the whole time I was in there, I kept saying to her, ‘I don't want to be in here.’ I just was refusing treatment, refusing everything, just going, ‘no, I don't need to be here’. And after a few sessions of the TMS, I said, ‘yeah, I think I just need to stay in here for a little bit more time so that I can really reap the benefits of the psychology sessions and stuff.’”

“I was forward planning a little bit more going, ‘no, I actually think that will help me.’ Whereas before I was like, ‘I don't need to be here. I don't want to be here. I just want to go home.’”

“I just kept asking them when I could go home. So the fact that I was then saying, ‘okay, yeah, I think I need to do this session, this session and this session,’ was definitely a sign that I was getting better.”

“A couple of days in, I think I started to notice some smaller signs, but I ended up doing half of the treatment as an inpatient. And then the last couple of sessions I did as an outpatient. So I guess I graduated from the MBU in amongst that TMS.”

“I think they must have been able to see that it was working so well. So, yeah, they let me go home and I finished the TMS treatment as an outpatient.”

“I think towards the end, I wasn't feeling as numb anymore with Olive, and I was starting to... I forced myself the whole time to interact and play. I remember saying to the psychiatrist at one point, I don't want to be the still face experiment. So I was purposefully interacting and using my face because I knew all the benefits of that, but it was all forced.”

“And yeah, towards the end, I remember I have videos on my phone of Olive in the MBU bed with me and we were just giggling, we were singing, and I was sending videos and photos to Stewart, which I wasn't doing for the first three or four weeks. I didn't even know where my phone was. Cognitively, I wasn't able to even deal with anything phone-related.”

“But then that last couple of weeks or the last week at least, I was messaging Stewart at night and sending little videos of Olive. I could definitely feel that relationship getting stronger.

“They had mentioned things about Circle of Security in the MBU, and I hadn't heard of it before. I knew things about attachment and things, but I hadn't ever actually heard of Circle of Security.”

“After I graduated, I went to a programme, and it was called Together in Mind, and it was as an outpatient. Other mums that had postnatal depression went along, and it was learning all about infant mental health and perinatal mental health.”

“I was quite well when I going to those sessions. The TMS had really worked and I was feeling pretty much quite well.”

“As a teacher, I was sitting there watching and listening to all these things going like, ‘this is so amazing for parenting, but this is amazing for teaching as well’ … So I think learning those few things definitely helped with my relationship with Olive.”

“With Stewart, honestly, the whole experience only made our relationship so much stronger. We weren't married at the time, but we got married a year and a half later. He was just incredible through the whole thing. I went through the illness, but him and my family had to watch me and look after Olive. There was so much more to it, but I can't thank them all enough. I'm so grateful that I had that support, because if I didn't, I don't know really where I'd be, to be honest.”

“I feel really lucky that my experience was so severe and so sudden because I was able to get the help, support, and treatment that I needed so fast, which I think helped my recovery to be so much faster.”

“I hate to think like what if I... There was no hiding it. I was in absolute crisis point, so there was no hiding that I was unwell! But for mums that do go through it and hide it for so long, I'm grateful that I guess it was so sudden and so severe because it helped me to get the help that I needed faster.”

“So the TMS was definitely the point where I was seeing an up. And when I got home, it was a surreal feeling being at home, trying to adjust to motherhood, six weeks postpartum, having gone through everything that we've just gone through.”

“And then I guess your identity as a mum starts to shape, and I guess that starts to shape other people beforehand. But for me, I was like, okay, well, I'm home. What does this mean for me as a mum?”

“And I just kept having this idea of like, oh, I need to get the housework done. And I think I almost felt like I needed to make up for lost time. So I felt like I couldn't leave Olive on the floor at all, on a mat to play by herself. I felt like that had to constantly compensate.”

“So, yeah, it took a little while.”

“Around four months, I actually remember the moment, and I think I've heard you speak about moments before and other mums have done the same thing. Yeah, I was lying on the floor on Olive's little play mat and we were just playing and stuff. Then I just had this thought of bath time and singing to her at bath time and then rubbing the moisturiser in. And I was like, ‘oh, I actually get to do this every day.’ It just brought me so much joy. It was the first time that I actually felt pure joy. I don't think I'll ever forget that moment.”

“I was like, ‘Here it is. This is what I thought it was going to be like from the start, but obviously wasn't.’ But it was a relief to feel that.”

“I wish it was just more known that you might not instantly connect with your baby. And that's okay because it will come. It might not be that magical moment at the start.”

“I felt that magical moment right at the very start when she was born. But other than that, when I was then numb, I didn't get that feeling.”

Following on from her experience, Sophie became a parent facilitator and classroom facilitator of the Circle of Security program.

“I just had this feeling of needing to do something to tell other people about this. I didn't know about any of this. How does every new mum not know about this? How is it not in antenatal classes? How is it not? So I just had this urge to, I guess, inform people or tell them about my story”

“As a teacher, I've always been really interested in the social-emotional learning side of childhood and teaching. So I was like, why not combine it all? So I just created an Instagram page called AttachEd and I loved the circle of security so much that I became a facilitator to be able to facilitate the program with parents, and loved that so much that I then went on and did the training to become a classroom facilitator as well. So I can train early care professionals and teachers to follow the Circle of Security, but just teach them and educate them about attachment and how important all of those early relationships are.”

“I'm really passionate about it. I love it. I don't know, it makes so much sense to me. And it's definitely made me be a better parent, a better teacher. It just makes so much sense to me. And I think everyone that does it says the same thing.”

“Yeah, I just want to be able to, I guess, spread that word.”

“Then I became a PANDA Community Champion as well. So just advocating for perinatal mental health majorly, but also children's mental health. I see a lot of things in schools as well that make me want to do something, I guess, to help and educate people.”

“I've done a few things with PANDA. I've shared my story with them and I've volunteered at the Baby Expo. I guess it's a lot of advocacy and awareness raising and educating people around perinatal child mental health in general.”

“You can't have infant mental health if the parents aren't looked after and they're not well in themselves, which I definitely learned and which I've taken some valuable lessons out of for this next time around.”

Regarding Circle of Security, Sophie says “it makes sense to you and it helps you to look at your own self and you're able to look inside yourself and reflect upon your own triggers and upbringing. And yeah, the result is a really beautiful secure attachment, which I definitely have with Olive now. So I'm very thankful that I was able to get well quite quickly.”

“I remained on medication throughout the TMS. Sertraline. It was slowly working, but it just wasn't working at the speed that they wanted it to. That's why TMS was introduced.”

“I am still on it to this day. I decreased my dose probably at about a year, I think, or just after her first birthday. I considered decreasing it again because I felt so well, and I still do. But after talks with psychiatrist, after saying that we wanted to have another baby, the recommendation was to stay on it just until I have another baby and the next postpartum. So I'm still on it.”

“I have a completely different mindset about medication now than I did previously. I'm not ashamed to say that I take medication anymore, whereas before I was refusing it from the nurses because there was that shame attached. But yeah, I know that it's helped me so much. And yeah, I'm not ashamed to take it anymore. So I think I'll be on it until at least a year or so postpartum, and then we'll, I guess, reassess how I'm going after that.”

In regards to her psychologist, Sophie says “I still see her to this day, and she's amazing. I am so glad that I found her. I was lucky that the MBU referred her to me, so I was able to get into her straight away.”

“In the beginning, I was seeing her weekly. It was a lot of unpacking what had happened, but then looking at, I guess, the triggers and a lot of the doubt that I was having within myself and unpacking that. And then I now only really see her... it depends! It depends if I feel like I need to, but I definitely ramped it up a little bit once I found out that I was pregnant again.”

“I just wanted to be well-prepared and just make sure that I am mentally read as well as I can be going into the next bub. Hopefully, it doesn't all happen again.”

“I am obviously realistic, though, as well, that the stats are quite high for people that have already experienced a mental illness, but I've got so much support in place and things that we're doing to make sure that I am, I guess, as well, equipped and prepared.”

“I'm seeing my psychologist regularly. I'm linked back in with the psychiatry from the MBU, and I am also in a midwife programme where I have my own midwife and she's linked as well in with the psychiatry team, and she's amazing. I didn't have that last time.”

“They know everything I've gone through. So they're able to help support me where I need it. And sleep was obviously a massive contributor last time. So everyone's on board.”

“I'm not really 100 % sure what birth is going to look like yet, but another part of the support is that I'm seeing an obstetrician as well. So they'll give me some advice. They'll take the psychiatrist and the obstetrician's advice and we can talk about a plan of which way we're going to go with birth.”

“There is so much support and I just think that it can't be worse than last time. I think I got through the absolute depths of it last time. And I feel that if I got through that, that I can get through it again. I just I already feel like it's going to be completely different.”

“I don't know. I've learnt so much I think knowledge is power, and I feel like I have so much more knowledge and education this time. And I feel like with all the work that I have done with my psychologist and I feel like I'm in such a better place mentally in myself.”

“So yeah, and confidence, I guess, in my own parenting now, whereas you don't know what you're going into and you don't know what you're going to be like when you have your first… I didn't actually recognise it prior to unpacking all that with myself psychologist, but in hindsight, I doubted myself, whereas I don't feel like I do now.”

“I have trust and I have faith in myself that I got through something really hard. If it were to happen again, I can get through it again. I think, too, the Circle of Security has given me such a great mindset in terms of good enough parenting.”

“The Security has helped me to see that our bubs don't need a perfect mum. They need a well happy mum. And yeah, it just needs to be good enough. That's going to be my mantra.”

From the bottom of my heart, I wish Sophie all the best for this upcoming birth and postpartum, Rebecca x

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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.