“My daughter is everything – but after postnatal depression, I know I’ll never have another.”

I have suffered mental health problems since I was 13. There was real darkness in my past, so I had been on and off antidepressants and in and out of talking therapies for a decade before meeting my husband. Our life together, our plans for a marriage and a family with three or four children was the bedrock of my joy. I fell pregnant in November 2021, six weeks before our wedding, and we were both so thrilled.

Because of my history of poor mental health, I was assigned a mental health midwife for monthly appointments during my pregnancy. She was immeasurably helpful and even came to see me in recovery after my c-section.

During one of our prenatal NCT sessions, the subject of maternal mental health came up. All very gently and scientifically, but I just burst into tears. I couldn’t stop myself. I thought about Laura Dockrill, and women like her, and I saw a vision of myself in their shoes. Somehow, right then, I just knew it was coming for me.

I was determined to breastfeed – I had done bundles of research and was committed to making it work. My daughter Melody latched on for a few moments shortly after birth, and I was too thrilled to notice anything untoward at first. She fell off and on for a bit but by the time we were settled on the postnatal ward, she was hungry, and the horrors began.

I had Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex, a rare breastfeeding-related condition in which the milk letdown triggers a wave of negative emotions like shame, depression and anxiety. By the second night, I was sobbing in my hospital bed, a nurse feeding Melody with a syringe of colostrum because I was too hysterical to hold her. My husband was being asked to leave, and he was trying to round up anyone in uniform that he could find to remind them that I was under the Perinatal Mental Health team, and I really, really needed someone.

He went home, and no one came.

Once home, those first two weeks were a blur of sleeplessness, exhaustion and well-meaning gift bags from excited grandparents. I couldn’t explain how I felt we’d thrown a grenade into our lives, and this beautiful child we’d so longed for was making me the most unhappy I’d ever felt in my life. I cried until I ran out of energy for it and spent hours staring out of our lounge window. I started to feel particularly despondent around 5pm each day; as the sun went down, I felt like my soul went with it.

I’d cry if my husband so much as left the room. I had a couple of home visits from my mental health midwife, but she wasn’t overly concerned.

I abandoned breastfeeding after a week, which compounded my feelings of failure. I used to talk to my daughter during night feeds in a sad whisper, apologising to her that I soon wouldn’t be here and how sorry I was that I’d miss her growing up – but I was certain, I reassured her, that she’d have no reason to miss me.

I dreamed one night a man in a white coat hugged me. He was hugging too hard, and I realised he wasn’t embracing me – he was holding me down.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“You know where you’re going,” he said. I awoke in a frenzy of panic and tears.

Over those two weeks, all our plans changed. I couldn’t – wouldn’t – do this again. I believed I was an awful mother, and I couldn’t possibly put more than one child through the hideousness of what I was. The feelings I had – no matter how many websites and health visitors said I was ‘normal’ – were all-consuming, every second of every day. I had failed, I had failed her, and I wouldn’t on my life fail another one.

One day, after my husband had returned to work, I managed to walk to a coffee shop with Melody in the pram – the sort of mid-morning I dreamed my maternity leave would be full of. I happened to get a text from my mental health midwife and I told her where I was, and what I was doing. She said that was great and then discharged me from the service without another word.

It’s hard to say when the turning point came – and it did, just very slowly, especially without that support in place. I went back on antidepressants and have stayed on them, not sure what to do next.

I met a friend recently and we discussed whether I’d have another baby. I was nonchalant, but she said she’d be concerned about my mental state. She reminded me of a text I’d sent her about four weeks in, in response to her asking if there was anything she could do to help, saying she could help by “mercy-killing me”.

My Melody is the child of dreams. Unfortunately, still not a fan of independent sleep, but she is funny, beautiful, good-natured and clever. She loves me purely and unconditionally, and I her. I don’t believe our relationship has suffered in the slightest despite those first few weeks, which I am incredibly grateful for.

But still, I feel robbed. The big family I dreamed of can’t possibly be a reality now, knowing this is there, lurking in the shadows of my psyche and my soul. And why me? Who can say. I feel desperately sorry for my husband, who always wanted two children at least, but he knows almost as well as I do now, what that darkness is like.

Yes, it might be better next time – but what if it is worse?

Images: Emma Marns

Read more:

• 'Not coping as a new mum? Asking for help is the bravest thing you can do'
• What is D-MER? And why you might get it when you're breastfeeding
• Study shows how saliva could reveal mental health struggles during pregnancy