1993

The first time...

When I found myself pregnant for the 2nd time in 1993 I was overjoyed to say the least, the first pregnancy has gone smoothly, no depression before or after and there was no indication this 2nd pregnancy would be any different. 

I lived in Bielefeld Germany at the time because my husbsnd was serving in the British Army, it was a beautiful summer that year and in the August my brother came over to stay for a month. We visited the local safari park, went shopping, had barbecues and talked long into the night. I having so much fun being pregnant. Then one evening as I was going to check on my 1st child my daughter I lose my footing on the wooden steps and fell on to my growing bump. Water leaked out of me....I calmly sat down in the lounge and pointed out a hedgehog in the back garden before saying to my husband we need to go to the army medical centre. We rushed there, I was scared but not so much it was a weird feeling. The medics checked me and I was lucky the water wasn't from the baby it was from my bladder which had leaked when I fell. Husband took me home, put me to bed and that is when the first ever grip of depression took me.

I had also slipped a disc in my lower back very early on in the pregnancy,  it pained me before but suddenly from that evening on the pain was worse, a gnawing ever present pain that matched the blackness that was now creeping across my heart. The other day my GP said backache and depression go hand in hand making both hard to treat. That year I can testify that it's true. Day by day I went down, I worried and obsessed over news items convinced it was going to happen to me. At my worse I developed a morid fear of death, I was going to die having this baby and I was only 21. I only mentioned how bad my back was to health visitors,  doctors, my midwives convinced that if they knew what was really going on in my head I would lose this baby and my beautiful toddler daughter. Looking back I still did all the mum things, still loved and nurtured her, a small nugget in my mind told me she was going to be ok.

So looking back what happened in the end? My health visitor concerned about my back pain, lack of sleep (in hindsight I believe she could read me like a book, she knew exactly what was going on in my head) gave me a new friend, this friend came from a wonderful organisation called Homestart http://www.home-start.org.uk/, this wonderful woman came 3 times a weeks to listen to me, take me out and importantly talk to me,. I remember it seemed harsh at the time and indeed I remember crying buckets but she told me to face facts, the baby was healthy (he weighed 9lb at birth) I was fortunate to having a beautiful daughter, a lovely husband, live a tax free life in wonderful Germany. At the time I don't believe it really helped, looking back it helped enormously. I took stock and even though the blackness of depression still gripped and terrified me I wasn't alone anymore. But still I never until years later told anyone even my husband how severe the depression that year really was. And so in the November after a short 3 hour labour my son was born.

The moment he was born and given to me was like an ice cold bucket of water was poured over me from above. The depression that sat on my chest had lifted. I still had a bad case of the baby blues over the next couple of days, but the army hospital staff looked after us splendidly and after a week I was ready to go home and begin again, to take up the life that I'd left behind 4 months previously in the summer. Yes I still worried and obsessed but life felt lighter, cosier, more real. Life at 22 was good. Now looking back at the end of 1993 beginning of 1994, I wish I ther now, instead of being here in 2015 feeling as low as I do. The first experience of the black black cannon ball was awful, but it shows me there is a flickering candle at the end of the hard granite tunnel.