Claire Rayner, 70, writer/broadcaster.
I could have come from another planet. I’d look at other women with their babies and think they were happy so why couldn’t I be. I’d wanted this baby so badly, been to all sorts of reproductive clinics, and now to feel like this...it was too bad! I felt I had no right to the baby but was too ashamed to tell anyone. People didn’t mean to be cruel but going into shops and having them coo over her and say to me “do cheer up” was awful. I’d go away thinking “Oh dear, I’ve spoilt someone else’s day now.”
Post-natal depression is particularly difficult because everyone around you thinks you should be glad, happy and grateful. It’s fine to be sad with a sick baby but with a perfectly healthy baby there’s little understanding and practically no sympathy.
With my first child, Amanda, I only straightened out after ten months when we moved house. The move somehow pulled me out of it, perhaps because it felt like a fresh start. With Adam I finally went to see the doctor when he was six months old. I was put on anti-depressants which after ten days kicked in and it was like coming up from a deep, dark hole. But with Jay, my third child, it was the worst. It came from all sides and by the end I was curling up in corners. Instead of going to the doctor this time I wrote to her. She was so alarmed by what she read that she came to the door telling me I’d written a diagnostic letter - in other words one which started off normally but then became more and more agitated.
The same thing happened when I had the menopause. I was 49 and very depressed. I remember going to the theatre to see Amadeus; I was looking down at Simon Callow dying on stage and I began to feel so ill, my head was spinning with great waves of horror. I almost said outloud “I don’t know about you dying down there, but I’m dying up here.” After that I had three or four attacks of what I call free floating anxiety which is absolute terror pinned to nothing. I was put on HRT and a short course of anti-depressants and thereafter followed 20 serene years.
FACT: 10-15% of mothers experience post-natal depression. (Mental Health Foundation, 1997)
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