Surviving or Thriving
This year the theme of mental health awareness week was ‘surviving or thriving’ and it got me thinking about how different my answer to that question would have been 18 months ago. The picture below was taken a few days after the birth of my second child, for the casual observer I looked just like any mother with a newborn, tired but happy, but inside I was in turmoil.

Early 2016, several weeks after the birth of my second child, a beautiful baby girl, and some-days it barely felt like surviving. Sure I was getting up in the morning, my children were fed, clean, dressed and my son was deposited at preschool at the allotted time each day, but for me, I was just going through the motions. If you had asked how I was I would have told you I was fine, great, living the dream. I have my two amazing tiny humans, my husband, a good job, a nice house, the full package, but all I felt was empty. The world around me was continuing while I was standing still enveloped in a thick fog that distorted everything.
I knew what I ‘should’ be doing, after the birth of my son in 2012 I was a social butterfly, running from baby group to play date to lunch date with friends, masking the fact I was terrified of staying at home alone with this creature who had come crashing into my life and turned it upside down. His birth was followed by its own issues owing to the fact that he entered the world prematurely and spent his first three weeks in hospital and his first two years overcoming complication because of this and left me dealing with anxiety related to the trauma of his birth which had led to problems bonding with him. Despite all that I desperately wanted to share him and to prove what a great job I was doing adjusting to this motherhood malarkey and so I traipsed him out to every group going, week in week out.
But this time would be different, I would have a healthy full term baby, I would be allowed to hold her as soon as she was born and I would feel the rush of love everyone always goes on about. From the get go my little madam had other ideas. Although a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy, the anxiety over a similar outcome as my previous premature labor and my daughter’s stubbornness led to several trips to hospital for monitoring, first off she engaged at 25 weeks, then she turned transverse at 28 and then had regular periods of little to no movements until the doctors finally decided to bring her early at 38 weeks. She was handed to me, laid on my chest the moment she was born and as I looked into her eyes all that I could think was ‘I don’t like this one either’.
We brought her home and she was instantly adored by everyone, especially her brother who was proud as punch and told anyone who would listen how much he loved her ‘teeny tiny toes’. Meanwhile I constantly switched between feeling resentful of the amount of my time she needed when he needed me too and feeling angry at the demands of a three year old when I had a newborn who needed me, it was a constant balancing act that I felt I was failing at and I was left feeling like I wasn’t truly giving either of them the mother that they needed or deserved.
I would love to say that this was where the story began to improve but sadly by the time my daughter was 8 weeks old I knew something was very wrong and that something had to be done, I spoke to my GP who told me that I was exhibiting symptoms of post natal depression, signposted me to self refer for therapy and put me on a course of medication. Things did change, I had admitted there was a problem and those closest to me became aware of just what it was I was living with, the feelings of resentment and anger began to subside and I realized that at some point, without me having noticed, I had fallen as wholly and ridiculously in love with my daughter as I was with my son.
So why was there still a fog clinging to everything, building a hazy wall between me and the world, why could I not let go of my daughter or force myself to leave the house, to take her to playgroup, to show her off…
I still don’t know the answer to those questions, but thankfully at this point a good friend asked me how I was and the dam was opened, I referred myself for therapy, having been reluctant to do so before, and spoke to my GP about increasing my medication and after a couple of months I finally got to the end of a day and felt that it had been a good day. Soon after that the good days became more frequent and by my daughter’s first Birthday they definitely outnumbered the bad days. Now as we approach her second birthday I still struggle some times, but I am far more aware of the feelings creeping back in and so I can take action to keep myself as well as possible.
When the question of surviving or thriving came up this year as part of mental health awareness week, it got me thinking about all this, that during those days I most definitely was surviving and that now (most days) I think that I could happily say I’m thriving. It got me thinking about all that has changed, about how sad I am that the first six months of my daughters life are a bleak blur I can barely remember. How do we make the switch from surviving to thriving?
The most important thing for me was recognizing that I needed help, though seeking the help and receiving it was not where the real heart of the change came from. The change came when I felt well enough to have the motivation and the inspiration to leave the house, to find interest in the things that I used to love and to take up new hobbies and make the effort to make new friends at playgroups or in the school playground. If someone has told me 18 months ago that today I would be writing this, that today I would be celebrating the fact that I feel as though I am now thriving… well in all likelihood I wouldn’t have believed them, but I would certainly have hoped that they were right!
