Mum’s the word

If I thought that just because I was now an adult, working my way into the wider world, my depression would be treated with more severity, I was bitterly disappointed.

Reading what shatterboxx wrote yesterday, I figured out what it’s taken for my depression to be taken seriously: I had kids.

I’ve been a depressed schoolkid. I’ve been a depressed student. I’ve been a depressed young employed, and unemployed, woman. But a depressed pregnant woman, a depressed mother? Whole different kettle of fish.

It’s not that I’m not profoundly glad that midwives, GPs, psychiatrists, CPNs, health visitors, psychotherapists, art therapists and whatever else have taken my problems seriously. And it’s true that, as the mother of two children under four, my usual “coping strategies” of staying in the house, stopping doing anything much and pretending nothing bad was happening haven’t been available to me. If I hadn’t got support, I would not have survived the last four years.

For all that people say postnatal depression is hard to talk about, hard to diagnose, invisible, it’s respectable in a way my earlier miseries haven’t been. Perhaps because it sounds so clean and curable (after all, you’re not postnatal for ever. Well, except you are, of course). Perhaps because it’s connected to something that’s okay for a woman to do; positively applauded, in theory at least (though, whoa, try being a mother who wants respect or a flexible job). There are professionals, pathways and dedicated services for me now. To the extent that, when my PND specialist psychiatrist booted me when my firstborn reached a year, I seriously considered bumping up the schedule for a second kid. (I didn’t do it, okay? That would have been crazy!)

Anyway, as my secondborn approaches a year, what of the fact that I’m still taking Prozac? What of the fact that I’m not yet cured? Who will want me now? I had an illuminating conversation with my GP when I was pregnant with #2. She’d assured me that most women who experience depression during one pregnancy don’t with another. However, it was now a couple of months later, and I was a howling loon again. “You might want to consider not getting pregnant again,” she said. I’d done the socially acceptable thing; I’d chosen two kids. I even have a girl and a boy! But it was made clear to me by various people then that a third pregnancy wasn’t thought appropriate for the likes of me.

There are a number of things that aren’t appropriate for the likes of me, as a nutso mother. I’ll write about more of them another time. But basically: this is the best mental health care I’ve ever had. It’s contingent, I feel, on playing the game; on having the right number of babies and no more; on not presuming that I know what I’m doing more than the professionals do; on getting better on the right schedule and then pissing off and not bothering people any more. But hey, at least it’s there.

(Disclaimer: I’m seeing a therapist at the moment who is a feminist treasure. I don’t mean you, if you should, by some odd circumstance, read this!)