INTRODUCTION Oh S**t, What Have We Done?

‘Don’t worry Ms Williamson, just because this birth didn’t quite go the way you wanted it to, it doesn’t mean you can’t try again one day.’ Not exactly the magical first words I’d dreamed of hearing after the birth of my son. And as for the labour not going ‘quite’ the way I’d hoped… well if that wasn’t the understatement of the century I don’t know what was!

So how did I get here? Before we get into the practical stuff, I wanted to share my pregnancy and birth story with you – so that you know where I’m coming from, and because I asked so many other people to be brave and share their stories with me, too. I hope it helps – remember, we’re all in this together!

I’d entered the no-man’s-land of pregnancy with trepidation, excitement and no idea about what the next nine months would hold, with the actual physical task of getting the baby out being just too mind-blowing to comprehend. So, I did what every mature and sensible woman does: I initially buried my head in the sand. I wouldn’t say I’m a naïve person, but I somehow foolishly convinced myself that being pregnant would be like the movies, with a weightless ‘beach ball’ bump shoved neatly up my jumper, showcasing my newly voluptuous figure, with the actual ‘getting sprog out’ being merely a polite cough, a teeny ‘straining for a poo’ groan, and then… ta-daa… hello baby. Cue the obligatory schmaltzy Facebook post and off we go.

Oh how wrong I was. The harsh reality was that I really didn’t enjoy pregnancy. I can’t say I hated it, there were definite moments of happiness/anticipation, but on the whole, I felt sick, heavy, hot (not in the sexy sense), and the actual labour and birth experience was definitely one of my top-five most un-fun things to do ever. From the moment I saw the positive result on the pregnancy test my ecstatic joy was instantly masked with a niggle of worry… As someone who’d suffered for years with anxiety and panic disorder I always knew that I was a candidate for prenatal and post-natal depression and anxiety, so from the beginning I was aware that I needed to take good care of my mental, as well as physical, health. The overwhelming responsibility I felt for both of us was, well, completely overwhelming!

Armed with my ‘golden ticket’ (the positive wee stick) I hotfooted it down to see my GP and get some much-needed advice on what the heck to do now I was pregnant, and still taking a low dosage of anti-anxiety medication. My plan had originally been to come off the medication before we started trying but clearly Santa Claus was destined to give us a joint present that year (yep we actually conceived on Christmas Eve) so I never actually had a chance to reduce and come off the meds gradually – which is usually recommended.

I was advised by my doctor to come off the pills as soon as possible in order to guard against growth and development problems in my three-week-old foetus. And there, in that little clinic, my anxiety was re-ignited… ‘What if I’ve damaged the baby already?’, ‘What if my anxiety returns?’ Hmm, never mind the new baby, a whole new breed of anxiety was born.

It didn’t help that I had terrible morning sickness (how annoying is it when people say ‘ooh that’s a good sign’? At the time I just wanted to not feel so darn awful and be able to eat anything other than Birds Eye Fish Fingers and baked beans). A few months into my pregnancy, and with no medication crutch, I began to feel those familiar feelings of dread, worry and unexplained loneliness creep in. I was also extremely irritable and irrational at times, but people often just brush this aside and blame hormones.

The NHS antenatal team put me on a special list, and gave me an appointment with an Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Ob/Gyn) Consultant who was tasked with keeping an eye on my mental health. At my first appointment I was asked questions about how I was feeling about my unborn baby and impending motherhood. I obviously passed the test and seemed pretty together because I was deemed fit and well and released back to the standard midwifery team. Hurrah.

But looking back, I’m not sure whether or not I felt a stigma attached to being pregnant and fears of being judged an unfit mother due to my mental health history. In all honesty, I think I felt that I had to be fit and healthy in all ways or else people would think that I couldn’t do this. The NHS care team really were lovely and very supportive (massive shout out to my angel of a community midwife Julie), but I put way too much pressure on myself to suddenly be this ‘Mary Poppins’ expectant mother – ie unrealistically perfect in every way! Everyone just assumes you must be loving every second of carrying your child, and the truth was that I felt so rough I just wasn’t enjoying it, and was too scared to admit this to anyone out of sheer guilt. After all, how many people struggle to get pregnant and here I was with an easily conceived honeymoon baby growing in my tummy. And there it is, that word GUILT – a word all parents are so familiar with – and I felt it way before my son was even a fully formed foetus. So really, what chance did I have, eh?

With the months ticking past, agonisingly slowly, the impending unknown of giving birth felt even more terrifying. ‘How will it get out?’, ‘What if it doesn’t fit?’, ‘How bad will the pain be?’… as time went on I read every book going, scoured NetMums and BabyCentre forums daily, took hypnobirthing and NCT classes to prepare me for the task ahead… by 40 weeks I felt I knew it all… yet nothing, NOTHING, could have prepared me for what was to come.

Forty hours of labour. Back to back contractions, more drugs than you could shake a stick at, two epidurals, a spinal block, episiotomy, and a forceps delivery… in a haze of semi-consciousness I delivered a healthy baby boy. Ta-daaaaaaa… and my initial feelings: nothing other than sheer shock.

Where there ‘should’ have been a flood of love and overwhelming joy, there was nothing. It was like my emotional plug socket had been yanked out of the wall and stamped on. The disappointment at my zero feelings was just terrifying. I could hear the baby crying from somewhere in the room and I remember feeling an instinct to protect him (at least I felt something), but as I lay there exhausted all I really felt was an overwhelming feeling of sadness, detachment and disappointment – not in my son I hasten to add, but by the way he came into the world. Nine months of my husband and I fantasising about meeting our little baby (we deliberately hadn’t found out the gender as we wanted the surprise of discovering it together in a Lion King-style presentation) and celebrating with the first joint cuddle, was, in my eyes, ruined.

As I lay there with doctors sorting out the battle zone that was my privates, the shock at what had just happened was almost too much to bear. And now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to look after a little baby from scratch. Cue my anxiety relapse, BIG TIME!!

This is the start of my journey: after birth. I find so much is focused in the news and media on the practicalities of new parenting – and don’t get me wrong, this is seriously important; without several books, apps and websites I’d have been clueless about how to bathe my newborn, or how to ease his colic – but nothing prepared me for just how crap it can feel emotionally and mentally, and how in the space of a day I could go from a confident, independent career woman to a hapless, terrified, emotional wreck that I didn’t even recognise as being myself.

This, my friends, my wonderfully brilliant fellow new parents, is the book in which we all make sense of those weird, wonderful, terrifying and traumatic feelings, thoughts and behaviours that can affect us all at some point along the way from those first newborn days to the months ahead of learning how to juggle and embrace this fabulous, scary new role.

You are among friends. It’s time to realise that you are not only doing a great job as a parent, but that you are also totally normal to not love it ALL the time.

Grab a cuppa and a (packet of) biscuits, and let’s share this experience together…

Anna x