Can post natal depression really get THIS bad?

wow! That is truly sad gemini! My mother never experience any post natal depression, it just stop but nothing hard on her part with God's grace! I have not heard also any friend of mine complaining about their mom for the said problem. I wonder why the husband didn't help her for some medication of course for those span of time they have been together, there will be signs for her problems..I hope this story will be an eye opener for all especially those who will be passing through the same stage!

Believe it or not, but it CAN get that bad. Birth is a very traumatic experience on the woman's body and can screw with her in many ways. She may not have asked for help because she was ashamed. I know I was. After I had my baby, all I thought about was dying. I wanted to kill myself, and her. Nothing violent. I thought about drowning both of us. And I was so ashamed of it. Because I knew it was wrong and I knew I didn't want to do that and that I loved my baby, but it was just something I couldn't control. Fortunately, I confided these thoughts in my husband and he was able to get help for me and things are better now. It is very ahrd to ask for help. I was afraid people would think I was a terrible mother and that I was evil. It took everythng I had to ask him to help me.

hi gemini I am a person who had a child as a teenager and found that my postnatal depression was not to the extremes that it can be, I didnt turn my pain and confusion on my child but on the people around me. I was very fortunate to have a health visitor who visited me through out the first eighteen months of my first pregnancy,Ihad a very understanding female GP. I didn't see my health visitor much when I had my daughter but my practice nurse was really amazing. I am now a grandmother and I can honestly say that postnatal depression is something that can make a woman become severely agressive towards those closest to her. It has torn my son's relationship with his ex and now he only see's his son two nights a week.Or when it suits her there are now other factors involved in her behaviour and this is a great concern to me. She is not the sort of person that would admit she needs help or guidance. you asked about thoughts on the story I actually read the story about this happening to those children and I beleive there could have been mitigating circumstances, including post natal depression. We all re act to depression in different ways.

Unfortunately, yes, it can get this bad. Thirty years ago when my first daughter was born my wife came home from hospital after a few days and everything seemed normal. Within hours she was seized by a pyschotic episode the details of which I will NOT go into for her sake and my daughters, lets just say it was a good job I spotted that something was very wrong. She was hospitalised for 6 weeks and received electro convulsive therapy which in its way was as bad as the illness. She had large chunks of her memory burned away. Sounds like a horror story? It was. Thankfully she mad a full recovery over time (2 years) but missed out on those first few weeks of my daughtrs life. They are now incredibly close, I am glad to say. I don't know if social care and medicine has moved on but there are many houses where I live where the 'nosey parkers' of the nanny state would not be welcome.

I also have suffered bouts of depression since adolescence and, I believe, that I had undiagnosed post-natal depression. No one in my family or circle of friends seemed to recognize it. I think sometimes people just don't see what they don't want to deal with. They just hope they can ignore it and it will just go away. Just as you say you now "just ignore it". Unfortunately, sometimes it gets better before things get out of hand and sometimes it doesn't. I never wanted to hurt my baby either, but believed that others did. I was hyper-sensitive to his crying, but thankfully he was a good baby and didn't cry much. If he had been very difficult I don't know how I would have dealt with it by myself, day after day, in my state of mind. I think when a mother is severely depressed, she may actually believe she is doing the child a favor by ending his/her life - this would be postnatal psychosis, I guess. That mother was not in her right mind and it is sad that she did not have enough support.

Although, I do not suffer from depression, I know that it can go a long time without being detected. There was a case a while back here in the states where a woman had postnatal depression but we call it postpartum depression, anyway she did have a long history of depression and after her fifth child was born, she killed them all. She drowned them all in the bath tub while her husband was at work. I think that's really good that in the UK health workers are suppose to check on new mothers, and it would be great if they did. We don't have anything like that here as far as I know. I have three children and no one came to my house. I think that this is a very sad story, and until every country becomes more educated and willing to help with women's health issues during and after pregnancy it will continue to happen.

I had my son 31 years ago, I cannot remember if I had it or not, but if I did I didn't know I did, and nobody cared back then anyway

I don't quite know where to start with this one as I have a lot of experience with clinical depression which also leaves you more prone to post natal depression and I know how cut off from reality you can become whilst hiding behind a mask that disguise the way you are really feeling! I remember when my eldest was a baby and had colic and cried and cried , it was awful and i thought I would break apart but never thought of hurting him , when he was a toddler though it was different , I had a bad cycle of depression and he would really test my patience, I phoned my health visitor in hysterics as I was terrified I would hurt him. I felt like a terrible mother as I felt I was going over the edge so had put him in his cot, closed the door and walked away leaving him screaming! She was very good calmed me down as much as she could on the phone and told me to put the kettle on she would be right there and by the time the kettle was boiled she was there, she made an arranged for the doctor to make a visit and a neighbour to take my son and sat with me for 2 hours. She reassured me that all mothers (or most of them) feel as though they are losing control at some time and rather than being a bad mother for what I had done I had in fact done exactly the right thing, I made sure he was somewhere safe and given myself space away from him til that feeling passed. I was lucky I had someone I could turn to and I managed to do one of the hardest thing which was reaching out for help. I feel so sad that this has happened to those poor children and I feel horrified that anyone could do that to their own or anyone elses children and my heart breaks that there did not seem to be a support network for their mother! I will say that my health visitors were overworked and often short staffed but very, very supportive and they got to know me and win my trust so that I knew I could go to them with anything but I think there are many unfilled health visitor posts and there just aren't enough to go around. I also don't think we can blame them for not noticing how this woman was feeling without knowing all the facts as I know all too well just how easy it is to hide the signs of being desperately depresses and put a face on it! xxxx

Hi gemini, I could only read part of your link because it is horifying and the answer is yes woman do kill themselves and their children with this illness and it does need picking up on and women given the help, Puerperal pshycosis some women can suffer with after a birth which is a chemical reaction to the sudden drop in hormones causing violent mood swings haullcinations and so on it, it is horrific to suffer like that after giving birth. I myself have suffered with PND after my three children and it getting worse after each child until with my third child it was pshycosis, which let me tell you it was not like my previous depression, it was terryfying and unless you have suffered with that type of pnd no one can understand a mother killing her own child, I can obviously I never did but I can see how that lady would of and yes it is horrific to read and people with no knowledge of how bad pnd can get are at a loss has to how a mother can, I am now sitting with my own sound mind it beggars belief but it's a very real illness and more should be done for women. Like you and me we have children and it gets worse after each child so midwives and health visitors should be extra vigilant and more should be done whilst women are pregnant not wait until they get to the point this poor lady did. I have a forum my link to it is on my profile, I go into more detail about my own experiences with this illnes and I'm happy to continue to do so if it helps any mother, then I'm happy, you'd be most welcome to join us.