My story of depression in pregnancy

I am a medical doctor and now I work in research, investigating the chemical nature of depression in pregnancy and whether or not stress hormones produced by a pregnant lady affect her baby's growing brain such that baby develops a potential for depression in later life herself. I have also been a depression sufferer. This is my story of my own experience of depression in pregnancy. (That's me in the picture below right.)

Having a baby created a situation that I found very difficult to cope with. I fell pregnant a year after my husband and I had emigrated away from my extended family. It is only with hindsight that I realize that I had depression in pregnancy. I had been pregnant before and lost the baby, and in that short time of being pregnant I experienced emotions that were utterly strange to me. I was oversensitive, weepy, given to outbursts of anger that made me feel violent….generally in quite a desperate place. When I fell pregnant for the second time I experienced the same depression-in-pregnancy symptoms, again, but this time I also experienced feeling very, very alone.

My husband had always felt ambivalent about having children and he was a little ‘freaked out’, to say the least, when I told him I was pregnant again. I had no one to be excited with me, no one to reassure me. All my friends and family were 10 000 miles away and sometimes it is really difficult to have a conversation about how you are truly feeling over the phone. My mood plummeted and I began to experience symptoms of depression in pregnancy. I am sure that this was exacerbated by the extreme tiredness I experienced in the early pregnancy, and by the persistent nausea. Click here to read more about 'absent' partners and depression in pregnancy.

I had not registered with a doctor when I had arrived in London, because I AM a doctor and had not yet had need of one, but a friend told me that I needed to register with a GP surgery so that I could be referred for my early scan. Many of the surgeries that I tried to register with were not taking on new patients and I began to feel awfully panicked. I got to that horrid depression place where you start to feel like there is something wrong with you and people don’t want to associate with you. (That’s depression-thinking by the way; just in case you actually believe that’s the truth when those thoughts are in your mind!). I felt utterly overwhelmed and helpless, unable to do anything to sort out my situation as a normal non-depressed person would do. I was tearful. I argued with my husband and shouted and screamed at him. I wanted to hit him and that urge felt almost incontrollable. This made me feel even worse about myself. I thought perhaps I wasn’t meant to be a mother, that I would be a bad mother; I fantasized about having a termination.

I started not wanting to go in to work in the mornings and I would often be late. I still did my on-calls because I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to do on-calls if you are pregnant. So I got up in the middle of the night, one in three, and ran to emergencies, and got totally freaked out because I was exposed to X-rays, and said nothing, because I was stuck in the inertia and guilt of depression in pregnancy. I was seeing a psychotherapist, though, and through that lifeline of support I managed to sort things out slowly and little-by-little. By the middle of my pregnancy I had found myself a new job with no on-calls, had taken some leave and rested, and was starting to feel a little bit happy about being pregnant. I still struggled with getting myself going in the morning, but at least I looked forward to having the baby with something other than dread. And bear in mind, here, that this was a WANTED baby. I had been desperate to have a baby for 2 years since my miscarriage.

My partner eventually came around to the idea of my being pregnant, especially after he saw our baby on the scan. Slowly, he began to be a little bit more supportive; he’d make sure I didn’t overwork and began to be more gentle and caring than he had ever been before. But he was still very anxious about our lives being about to change enormously and he was often ‘off with his worries in his own head’.

Toward the end of the pregnancy I began to experience depression in pregnancy again. I found the pregnancy tedious and tiring. I didn’t feel like working but I wanted to maximize my earnings before I went onto virtually no salary at all. By 36 weeks I just wanted the baby to be OUT. I lost the feeling of pleasure and enjoyment that I usually experienced from things I liked to do. I couldn’t sleep very well. I ran a week overdue and felt as if I was being persecuted. I also had a strange, almost delusional, feeling that it was all a big cosmic hoax and that I had endured all this but at the end of it the baby would never arrive.

If you are reading the above and have known depression you’ll understand what I am talking about; how real and yet, at the same time, irrational it all is. If you have never been depressed you might think I had a case of self-pity-extraordinaire and needed to have it pointed out to me that I ought to be grateful to be pregnant and should ‘buck up’. It can be very difficult for people who have never been depressed to understand what a depressed person is feeling, much less sympathize with someone experiencing depression in pregnancy. My husband has admitted to me that he did not understand why I was unhappy because I had been begging to have a baby for two years and, since I was now pregnant and had got what I had wanted, none of it made any sense to him.

I didn’t realize, though, that I had postnatal depression. Or perhaps I did realize (because I did feel like I wanted to die) but I didn’t WANT to be so I tried what I had always tried before: I lambasted myself, inwardly. I fought with my husband almost as if I wanted to make him feel as bad as I did, or try to get his sympathy for the way that I was feeling. I tried to pretend I was A-OK, but I didn’t really succeed. I dreaded every single bleak day that I was alone and my husband got to go to work. I hated being a 'milk factory' for my baby and not being able to get a minute to myself. I wished I could will myself to be a better human being, a better person. THAT has always been the problem with me and depression. When I have been IN it I haven’t been able to see it as an illness that can be treated; I’ve only been able to see myself as a fundamentally pathetic failure of a human being who needs to ‘do better’. And I have felt ashamed to ask for help because I’ve been sure that that’s how everyone else sees me, too. As a result I never got adequate treatment until I’d had many cycles of depression including depression in pregnancy and postpartum depression.

At my six week medical check up my health visitor asked me to complete the ‘Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale’ questionnaire. I did fill it in honestly (including the question about having thoughts of self-harm) and, needless to say, I scored high for possible postnatal depression. For the next three months the health visitor came to see me at home about every two weeks. Her visits were a godsend and a lifeline. I felt a deep sense of shame that I was taking up so much of her time but I literally lived between those visits on the knowledge that she was coming back. I told her about our financial concerns, about our relationship ‘falling apart’, about my fears of raising a child in a country where I had no idea of how the ‘system’ worked. She was a mine of practical information and a well of kindness and reassurance. I discussed with her how to go about looking for childcare when I returned to work and her sensible tips on that subject lessened the enormous guilt I had about ‘leaving’ my baby.

I had to go back to work when my little boy was 4 months old because we were in financial dire straits, having taken on a too-big mortgage when I was pregnant. (Having financial concerns can be associated with depression in pregnancy.) Luckily, my parents were willing to come to London for the summer to look after their grandson, while I worked 3 ½ days a week. I had been in such inertia and ignorance that I had not made any decisions or enquiries about childcare when I was pregnant; I was deeply grateful for their help for four months.

My mood improved, but only slightly, after I returned to work. I still had awful low periods and sometimes thought about dying. A cosmic stroke of luck, a gift from a 'higher power', was that I went to work in Perinatal Psychiatric research, on a project that was looking at the chemistry of depression in pregnancy. Since this was a fairly new field for me I was required to do extensive reading about depression, specifically depression in pregnancy and the first postnatal year, and the brain and body chemistry involved in depression in pregnancy. I had to learn to administer the questionnaires that screen for depression, like the 'Beck Depression Inventory' and others. I interviewed many women who were suffering from depression in pregnancy and found myself to have a compassion for them that I did not have for myself. At last I was able to fully admit to myself that I, too, was suffering a depressive episode that had started as a depression in pregnancy. From the reading I was doing and from personally completing the questionnaires I was using in my work, I realized that I had a common, ‘chemical’ illness not a case of ‘being a bad person’! And I also learned that depression is a recurrent illness and that, without appropriate treatment, it seems to get worse with each episode.

I had to read this for myself in black and white in many published research studies in order to get the message: The longer I went on putting off actively treating my depression, the longer my brain and body were becoming damaged by stress hormones. People who have long term depression get cognitive impairment. I had already noticed a decline in my ability to learn and to remember things that was not consistent with my age of 32. Is that what I wanted for myself? Accepting these harsh scientific findings made me willing to take antidepressant medication and give it a fair 6-month trial for the first time. (I had been put on antidepressants before in my early twenties but stopped taking them, cold turkey, after a few weeks, which is NOT recommended; after that I’d always had strong 'opinions' about taking medication.) It was a big deal for me because I had a belief that my feelings would become numb if I took antidepressants....but for once I knew with every cell in my being that I could not beat my state of mind through positive thinking or willpower. I had no motivation for anything else right then, I had gotten so low. (If you have depression in pregnancy and are wondering about the safety of antidepressant medication, click here. )

As it was, my feelings did not become 'numbed' on the antidepressant medication. The change in me was both subtle and enormous. I didn't feel overwhelmingly HAPPY either. It just made me no longer feel that the only solution was dying. It gave me a proper reality perspective, which gets lost in depression where you actually BELIEVE all that negative hooey that your brain comes up with! Amazingly, I no longer felt compelled to fight with my husband until I was ready to kill both him and myself. But the biggest blessing was that I developed a capacity to enjoy my little boy (who is fabulous) and I never ever feel like leaving him out for the bin men to take away any more!

Anyone who says that depression in pregnancy is only a state of mind should be forced to read all the dull (yet brilliant) research that I have had to wade through to understand my research area. Yes, there are real alternatives to antidepressants and I am not suggesting that everyone needs to take meds. But I do believe that every day that depression is not treated is a sad waste of a life because depression is a crippling and potentially fatal illness and deserves to be taken seriously, not least by the sufferer!

I am now thinking of having another baby. I know that for many women this is not as big a deal as it is for me. Remembering the depression in pregnancy from the last time, and how awful it got in the first few months postnatal, makes me more than a little afraid. But I also feel well-armed with information and compassion for myself this time around. I know that, because of my history, I am more likely than most to develop depression in pregnancy or the postnatal period. I am biologically and mentally predisposed to it. For me this means that I can be prepared. I can look the depression in pregnancy ‘enemy’ squarely in the eye, if it comes, and I can DO SOMETHING to help myself rather than just letting myself be destroyed. I know what to look out for. My husband knows what signs to look out for. I know where I can get help and I am no longer afraid to ask for help because I no longer believe that I am a bad person for having depressive episodes. I do things every day to help prevent relapsing. I feel that if my son is going to have a predisposition to depression in later life because of my depression when I was pregnant then at least I should be able to teach him the tools for coping with it.

My hope in doing this website is that many more women can have the tools of knowledge and compassion-for-self that I lacked when I had depression in pregnancy.

God Bless You.

Back to top