All posts by Lucy Nichol

I finished work for my maternity leave in February 2020, just before the lockdown. My pregnancy had been smooth but the last few weeks were awful. He was ten days late and I was just so ready for him to come out. I wasn’t sleeping, I had a 72 hour labour, and I had to switch from having a water birth to going into a labour unit because I got to around 4 or 5cm and nothing was happening. Eventually, I went into hospital and had an epidural and forceps delivery.

When my baby was born he was immediately taken away. During the delivery his heart rate had dropped so he had to be put on an incubator in the neonatal unit two floors up.

During this time I started to feel like there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t sleeping well and something just didn’t feel right so I told the nurses. They reassured me that it was probably all normal, I’d been through a traumatic birth, etc. But the sleep wouldn’t come, and I started thinking strange things and not wanting to be around my family (other than my husband) which wasn’t like me at all. I was just pacing around the hospital day and night feeling anxious.

I became really distressed and starting thinking that if I fell asleep I would die. That’s when things really hit me.

I began seeing and hearing things, with imagery of heaven and hell and other religious visions playing a big part in it. I also thought that my own body was trying to kill itself which was terrifying. Plus, I kept thinking that I could hear my baby crying which was really upsetting. But I couldn’t have heard him because he was so far away.

My husband was really worried about me and kept speaking to the nurses and doctors, but the problem was that I sometimes appeared well and lucid when they checked on me. I finally agreed for my mum to come in and see me and that’s when I told her about my fear of dying if I fell asleep.

The hospital then moved me into my own private room because I was in so much distress, which I think they thought might help the other mums around me as well. They allowed my mum to stay over night with me too and, meanwhile, my husband was still urging them to get me some more help, because he knew there was something seriously wrong.

The hospital, however, suggested that I had the baby blues and at one point even suggested I was ready to go home! So my husband did his own research and found out about postpartum psychosis. He recognised the symptoms in me straight away.

He’d read about Mother and Baby Units (MBUs) and reached out to the one in Chorley not too far away. I was so lucky that they sent somebody to see me because, just prior to this, the hospital were considering sending me to a general psychiatric ward, which would have meant being separated from my baby.

I was transferred to Chorley MBU eight days after giving birth and I am so grateful that I got a bed there.

In those first few days I was really anxious. I didn’t know what was happening to me and I’d been googling things like schizophrenia, personality disorders and bipolar. I also remember googling ‘will I die if I have a mental breakdown.’ It wasn’t until I was settled in the MBU that I first read about postpartum psychosis in one of the leaflets they gave me, which also talked about how treatable it was. It was such a relief to know what it was that was happening to me, and to know that I could recover from it. Plus, I knew at that point that I was absolutely in the best place.

I was given anti-psychotic medication and the hallucinations stopped and I started sleeping again. But, after a while, I started to feel really unhappy and detached from my baby. I felt kind of dissociated from him and from being a mother. I wasn’t actively suicidal, but I felt like I didn’t want to live. That’s when the psychiatrist started discussing postnatal depression with me, and I was prescribed with additional medication.

Prior to this I hadn’t experienced any mental health problems at all. In fact, neither had my husband, so we were both really unprepared for it.

I kept telling the MBU nurses that I might be the only one who doesn’t recover from it all, because I really couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, but they kept reassuring me. They told me to distract myself, to focus on my baby, and told me that it does take time to heal.

I also met Jocelyn, APP’s peer support worker, on the ward, as well as other mums who had experienced PP and recovered and that really helped me. To know that there are other mums out there who have gone through these same experiences really makes a difference.

Finally, by the back end of April, I started showing signs of getting better and they started talking to me about going home - just for a couple of hours at first. By this point I was very detached from the outside world so it was really daunting but I did go home for a little bit which felt strange.

I was finally discharged fully on the 21st May 2020. I wasn’t fully recovered, but I’d say there was around an 80% improvement by that point. I was still on meds, still getting support visits to the house however, even though the country was in lockdown at the time, I tried to get back to some sort of normality.

It took a while to get back to feeling like me again and it really affected my marriage. My husband had struggled with the trauma of it all as well. However, eventually, by November 2021 I came off all the medication and started to feel like myself again, which strengthened our bond as a family.

Looking back, I think for us, not having any idea what was happening was the most frightening thing. We didn’t know about PP, mental health was barely covered in the antenatal classes, other than a brief mention of depression, and the midwives didn’t seem to know too much about what was happening to me either. It wasn’t until I got to the MBU and met with specialist workers and peer supporters that things started to look up. I feel so grateful to have got a place at Chorley – I know not everyone is so lucky.

It’s now 2022 and I’m in a really good place. I’ve developed such a great bond with my boy, and he’s such a happy little boy too. So I get that excitement, that joy, that feeling of love now, as a mother, which is so incredible. I’m also back at work, taking care of myself, going to the gym and, importantly, my marriage is stronger than ever.

Now I can reflect on my experience I really want to help others by sharing my story. Awareness is so important, I think it would have helped us enormously if we had been armed with more knowledge from the start. Just being able to spot the signs, to know what help is out there and to know that you can recover would have relieved so much of the distress that I felt.

Many mothers fully recover from postpartum psychosis, but some face a long road to recovery. I am one of those mothers, and my journey has been long and hard. But today, my life as a mother is wonderful and fulfilling.

My story starts in the autumn of 2015 when I miscarried in the ninth week of pregnancy. The grief that followed my loss was engulfing. It consumed me. I found myself crying for over an hour at my work desk, at a Chinese takeaway and relentlessly at home. I was crying pretty much all the time.

Naturally, the loss of my baby left me shattered, but the depths of my despair went well beyond the pain of loss. I knew something was seriously wrong.

After several weeks of severe hopelessness I visited my GP. She stressed that the depression I was feeling was emotional rather than hormonal, and sent me away with a month’s supply of antidepressants. The tablets sadly had little effect, and my depression took a turn for the worse.

In December 2015, approximately 8 weeks after I miscarried, I became suicidal and floridly psychotic.  Convinced I had spread SARS across the UK, I believed I was on death row and facing execution by the electric chair.

Delusions of torture soon followed, along with hallucinations of flies flying around me. People’s faces would appear disfigured. Confused and clinically depressed, I was admitted to hospital for assessment, and would go on to spend three weeks as an informal patient on my local psychiatric ward.

This devastating experience had been my first episode of postpartum psychosis.

Despite making a full and speedy recovery, I went on to have two further psychotic episodes before the birth of my son in 2019.

One experience was so violent I had to be sectioned by the police. I was initially diagnosed with Acute and Transient Psychotic Disorder, and was advised by consultants that if I managed stress and sleep better I could prevent further episodes.

Managing stress and sleep was becoming easier, and in 2018 I found myself unexpectedly pregnant with my son. I was ecstatic. At 35, and with two failed pregnancies behind me my hopes of becoming a mother had been rapidly fading.

My son was my miracle baby. My rainbow baby. But my pregnancy was tough. Once again, I began bleeding heavily early on. Convinced I was going to lose another pregnancy I developed severe OCD. I would endlessly wash my hands, and avoided a wide range of foods – believing I would catch listeria. My anxiety peaked quickly and I becamepsychotic. Feeling very paranoid, delusions followed. I briefly believed sewage was leaking from the sink in my bathroom.

Concerned for my wellbeing, my Community Mental Health team linked me in with the newly established Perinatal team. I met with the Perinatal Consultant Psychiatrist early in February 2019 (2 months before my son was due). I was 31 weeks pregnant.

It was a devastating meeting. The consultant diagnosed me with Bipolar Type 1 disorder which she believed was triggered by the miscarriage in 2015. She went on to inform me that, as I had had a previous episode of postpartum psychosis, my chance of becoming acutely unwell after giving birth was 50%. I was urged to start antipsychotic medication immediately.

Because of my anxiety and previous failed pregnancies, I flatly refused, and hesitantly agreed to start medication immediately after my son was born. I went into labour a week later, and gave birth at 35 weeks. My son was tiny. Weighing only 5lb10oz…but he was healthy. And I had avoided a severe psychotic episode thanks to the amazing Perinatal and Maternity teams who had managed my labour like a military operation.

The perinatal team were concerned, however, that I was showing early signs of postpartum psychosis. I therefore spent a week on the labour ward and was admitted to the nearest MBU in the neighbouring county. I stayed at the MBU for three weeks.

Initially I was elated. I felt I had won the battle against postpartum psychosis, and I had a beautiful, healthy son. But later I struggled in the MBU, finding it a daunting experience. I was a new mother away from family and friends…and my hometown. It was not how I expected to spend the first weeks as a mother. But I found solace in the unit. I realised I was not alone, that other mothers had suffered like me, and that we had a huge support network to rely on.

As hard as it is to admit, I did struggle to bond with my son after birth. My traumatic pregnancy, combined with my shock diagnosis, had flawed me. I wondered how I would cope – if I could cope.

My elation at beating a full blown second postpartum episode was dashed last May. Psychosis had finally caught up with me. The anxiety of being a new mother, combined with fears relating to the Covid-19 outbreak tipped me over the edge. Fortunately, this time I was on medication. This meant the episode was less aggressive and slower to progress. It also meant I had a lot more insight – I knew I was unwell. I did not need to stay in hospital and was able to see my son (at my mum’s house) regularly. This was empowering for me as I realised I could now manage bipolar psychosis.

Happily, I am now in remission. The longest period of remission since 2015. I am aware however that medication does not eliminate the risk of relapse, and I accept I am on medication long-term.

Life has changed vastly for me since my miscarriage. I carefully manage my stress levels, and sleeping patterns. I no longer drink alcohol. My once fast-paced, chaotic life has almost ground to a halt. But in losing almost everything, I have found what is most important…health and motherhood.

For years I doubted my ability to move past my episode of postpartum psychosis. It had, at the time turned my life upside down. But I am often reminded of the Perinatal Consultant’s comforting words, “The illness”, she said, “will always be part of you, but doesn’t need to define you”. These words gave me hope, and Action on Postpartum Psychosis have connected me with mothers who have shown me that this is true.

I now see that it is possible to move on from postpartum psychosis. In fact, not only is it possible to move on from, but I now know that I can live a wonderfully fulfilling life. A life full of meaning and purpose. A life as a mother.