Something I overcame this week...

If you are facebook friends with me you will know I am an oversharer... I tend to write statuses that are very personal to me and reveal a lot about myself. I have lately been writing a mix of statuses, quite a lot of them have been very low. This isn't really a recent occurance, however, and has been happening on and off since just after I had Cameron.

I have bottled my emotions up to some extent though, and have point blank refused to go and talk to the doctor about how I have been feeling, terrified they would take Cameron away from me or call me a bad mother for feeling so depressed when I have a perfectly happy and healthy baby. I am of course so grateful my baby is fine, and I love him to bits, but it has been a huge struggle to cope with the massive changes that your body and mind go through when you have a baby, especially as I am not very old and Cameron was an unplanned pregnancy, leaving me as a single mum.

I started feeling very low when Cameron was only a couple of weeks old but was sure this was just the 'baby blues' and hoped it would pass. It didn't, and instead I got worse and worse, but then sometimes better. Writing this blog has really helped me as I find writing about my life is therapeutic and lets some of my tensions out. There have been times when I have considered running away from everything, and even worse, when I have felt so unbearably sad. I have been in hysterical tears in front of my mum, begging her to take Cameron as I couldn't be the mum he needed me to be. It is hard to even admit this, because I love him so much, but I often feel like a failure, like I don't deserve him.

I have found this year almost impossible, and have wanted to quit uni so many times I have lost count. I persevered and am now almost at the end. I am going to feel so proud, but the cloud has yet to lift and I today finally managed to make the most important step and to go and seek help from the doctors. I felt a weight lift slightly when I admitted to the doctor how I had been feeling. I am dead against antidepressants but am now considering them, as I have read leaflets the doctor gave to me and feel a bit more at ease with what they are. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to me is getting better as quickly as I can for my son. If that means taking tablets, then so be it. I am also going to get more counselling, as I had pre natal depression whilst pregnant and found this really helped me at the time to vent my huge range of emotions.

Do you want to know what finally made me see sense and make that appointment for the doctors? It wasn't my emotions, I had been feeling them for months. It wasn't my mum telling me to, as she had been doing so since I first told her how I felt. It was reading a news article about Stacey Solomon and her experiences of PND that made me realise I had it and that I needed to get help. Reading her story made me cry... a lot. It is heartbreaking having a baby but not being able to fully enjoy the experience because of how you are feeling inside. I am so glad I read the story and realised I had PND.

This is why I am now writing this blog. I may not be as famous as Stacey, but I have got a voice, and I have nearing on 100 followers, most of which I am betting are women. If I can just help one other woman out there who is feeling depressed and not realising how bad things have got, then I will be so happy. Nobody need suffer in silence as I did for 8 months. I am going to get better for mine and Cameron's sake now and I hope others out there who have undiagnosed depression, of any type, are able to take that step and start recovering from this illness.