The Postnatal Survival Guide

By Cat Dean

The Postnatal Survival Guide is a new and life changing book for women with postnatal depression (PND) or who are struggling to cope during the early months and years of motherhood.

As many as one in five women suffer from postnatal depression but fail to seek help - either from a perceived stigma or lack of knowledge about the sources of help that are available. The Postnatal Survival Guide is a reassuring and empathetic companion for mothers who have lost themselves somewhere along the way and want to regain a sense of confidence and enthusiasm for life.

The Postnatal Survival Guide helps women to:
•Recognise when it is appropriate to seek professional help and explore the options available
•Improve their physical and emotional health
•Examine issues relating to their identity and strengthen their sense of self
•Deal with the practical aspects of having a baby – including sleep, relationships, childcare and work.

Author Cat Dean, herself a survivor of PND, is a trained life coach and shares practical tips and exercises to help the reader reconnect with herself and carve out a new and fulfilling identity as an individual, mother, and as part of a couple.
The Postnatal Survival Guide addresses every aspect of a woman's life: physical, emotional, spiritual, social and existential, discussing related issues and offering warm and reassuring guidance. With a foreword from respected PND expert Liz Wise, it also includes stories from other women who have experienced postnatal depression and who share their experiences of recovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cat Dean
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301154456

Cat Dean

Cat Dean is a writer and blogger who specialises in writing about parenting, infertility and postnatal depression (PND). She is also a trained life coach and has helped women struggling with balancing the commitments of work and motherhood. A PND survivor herself, Cat lives with her partner and two young sons in West Sussex, England. Her other books include Fertile Thinking, a self-coaching book for women having difficulties conceiving, co-authored with infertility expert Anya Sizer.

Book preview

The Postnatal Survival Guide

Cat Dean

Copyright 2012 Cat Dean

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One: Your Physical Self

Sleep and Relaxation

Feeding your Baby

Exercise, Food and Drink

Chapter Two: Your Psychological Self

Medication

Therapy

Self help

Chapter Three: Your Spiritual Self

Relationships

Living in the Now

Laughter

Chapter Four: Your Social Self

Friends and Family

Activities with your Child

Activities on your Own

Chapter Five: Your Existential Self

Work

Identity

Motherhood

More stories

Resources

Acknowledgements

About the author

Foreword

by Liz Wise, PND counsellor

I was totally shocked about how I felt when I had my first child. Having trained as a nursery nurse when I left school and worked with babies and young children for many years I assumed motherhood would be a breeze – but I was hugely mistaken.

Emma was born in March 1986, a very much wanted baby. I took one look at her, felt totally detached and said to myself, what now? This was the start of eighteen very long months of severe postnatal depression (PND). However, I made a good recovery and decided to have another baby. Holly was born in January 1989 and PND overwhelmed me again for the next year or so.

Had anyone told me before having children that I would find it a huge shock and a real struggle, I wouldn't have believed them. I have always been a confident, outgoing person who adores babies and young children - the word depression didn’t feature in my vocabulary. How could anyone possibly be depressed after having a baby?

During my depression I tried everything I could to help myself get better - from having my hair analysed to reading many, many books, some which frightened me dreadfully. In time and with the help of my GP, a psychiatrist, antidepressants, hormone treatment and lots of talking about how dreadful I felt I made a total recovery from both episodes of PND. I was never depressed before I had my girls and fortunately haven't been since; PND is usually an isolated incidence of depression after the birth of a child.

I wish a book such as this had been available when I was going through the bad times as it could well have been a lifeline for me. Cat‘s writing comes from her heart and she is very honest about how it is to become a new parent. She writes about you and your feelings and offers some fantastic advice and tips on how to manage them, without being directive or patronising.

It is very easy to read and has been set out in chapters that you can refer back to time and time again. This book isn’t just for women experiencing postnatal depression; it is an extremely informative book for any new parent that I would certainly recommend.

Liz Wise.

www.postnataldepression.com

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Introduction

Having a baby can be completely overwhelming and arguably the biggest life change you will experience. Some people seem to take these changes completely in their stride, approaching every new stage with enthusiasm and awe. Others, for a variety of reasons linked to past, personality and psychological make-up, find it more of a struggle. I was one of those people and there are many others who have had similar experiences.

According to whichever study you read, between one in three and one in ten women will experience postnatal depression in the year after childbirth, ranging from the baby blues at the mildest end, to serious postnatal depression (PND) at the other. A few months after the birth of my first son I began to feel depressed, unusually tired and agitated. I couldn't sleep and lost my appetite. I became obsessive about sleep, both my children's and my own, spent whole days in tears, and often felt on the brink of madness. At that point it was very hard to think straight and I craved the support of someone who would hold my hand and tell me what to do. It seems ironic, but after having my babies, what I wanted most was to be looked after myself. Most worrying of all, I started to feel suicidal.

I went to my doctor and was diagnosed with moderate PND, prescribed a course of the antidepressant drug Sertraline and offered a few sessions of counselling. The drugs, which I took for six months, helped me through the first year of motherhood, but their effect only describes a small, if important, part of my journey to becoming a more confident mother and fulfilled human being.

I was lucky that I had the constant support of a loving partner and family, but I knew that, ultimately, the buck stopped with me. As a grown-up, and having chosen to have my children, I needed to look after myself and get well so I could properly look after them. I realised I had to first accept the reality of what was happening. I had to shake off the if onlys and what ifs surrounding my expectations of motherhood and respond to my present circumstances as they were, not as I wished they had been.

Looking after myself involved a variety of things. It meant looking after my body, so that it could function as well as circumstances allowed. It meant getting rest, being social, rethinking my career, learning to meditate, and a host of other things. This book, then, is a collection of approaches to life that I, and others, have found useful.

The physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and existential elements to your life are all affected by becoming a mother so I have devoted a chapter to addressing them all. In each section you will find suggestions, advice and practical exercises that, I hope, will make you feel better. None of these tips in isolation are groundbreaking or will magically change your life – but taken together they offer a toolbox of resources to help you feel stronger and more positive about your new self and identity as a mother.

I'm not a doctor, nor am I a therapist, and this book is not intended to replace medical or psychiatric treatment. I am a writer and have trained as a life coach, and I hope my suggestions will complement any professional treatment you receive at a stage when you feel strong enough to make some changes to your life.

At the back of this book you will find a section of resources and recommended reading to explore, along with the stories of some other women who have experienced PND and who share what helped them to recover. I hope you find inspiration and motivation within these pages to make the changes that will enhance your life. There is no one size fits all solution to recovering from PND, but finding out what works for you can result in an exciting and worthwhile journey of self-discovery.

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Chapter One: Your Physical Self

Sleep and relaxation

Feeding your baby

Exercise, food and drink

Sleep

Are you getting enough sleep? OK, you can stop laughing. Of course you’re not. If you have a baby under the age of one, the odds are pretty slim that you wake up feeling refreshed and alert. Broken nights are par for the course with young children, and prospective parents are warned about sleep deprivation, but you don’t really know what it’s like for your life to be hijacked by a human alarm clock that goes off every couple of hours, every night, until it happens to you.

If you’re lucky, your baby may fall into a predictable napping and nighttime sleeping routine within a few months, maybe waking twice, or even less, each night for a feed. If this is your experience, I suspect you don’t advertise the fact. In the same way that some women are hugely resented by other members of their sex for being beautiful, mothers whose children sleep though early are the silent, grateful minority.

If you don’t belong to that chosen few, however, and you’re managing to read this through the matchsticks that are propping open your eyes, your attitude to sleep has probably shifted over time. Whereas once it was how long until my baby sleeps though? you now ask, when can I hope for four unbroken hours? There may even be times when you’d settle for four hours sleep in total, however broken.

I don’t want to get too deeply into sleep deprivation competitiveness. If you meet with other mothers with babies around the same age, it’s tempting to get all Monty Python about things (half an hour’s sleep, you say? Bloody luxury, I had minus six hours last night and woke up yesterday with one child in A&E with a pencil up his nose and the other spotty with chicken pox. And I work full time). There are no prizes for guessing that I was (am) one of those mothers.

In some ways, it’s just as well you don’t realise how terrible the lack of sleep will make you feel, otherwise the human race would probably struggle to reproduce itself. Below is a list of common effects of sleep deprivation on the average person:

* Decreased alertness and focus

* Mood swings

* Decreased energy and motivation

* Increased likelihood of pain, such as headaches

* Lower libido.

This is just a general list of physical symptoms that everyone who is sleep- deprived will suffer to some degree. As a new mother, you may also be suffering from additional miseries including:

* Feeling anxious and doubtful about your parenting abilities

* Being more likely to overreact to small things

* A lack of an evening social life (and therefore limiting your recreational contact with other adults)

* An increased likelihood that you will need antidepressant medication

* Being less able to return to work at a time of your choosing

Here’s the cold, hard reality. Unless you are incredibly fortunate, your life with young children will