I was taken by ambulance to an acute psychiatric mixed ward without my baby. I’d been having delusions since a couple of days after giving birth and at home things had got much worse. It was only when I was taken to Bethlem MBU and reunited with my baby that I finally started to trust people and get on the road to recovery.

My pregnancy was straightforward, a very lovely pregnancy. But I was overdue so things didn’t exactly go as planned and I ended up having an emergency c section. Unfortunately, both my baby and I had an infection so we ended up being on the postnatal ward for a week rather than the couple of days I was expecting. I had severe insomnia and I was taking strong pain medication and I think this might have all played a part in me getting unwell.

So I was in pain, medicated, emotional and exhausted. But I think the turning point was when I received a message from a friend with some bad news about another close friend of ours, which triggered some strange thoughts and symptoms in me and some extreme paranoia.

For example, I noticed that when someone sent me a message, my response wanted to say happy new year or happy Christmas and I couldn’t understand why I wanted to write it. I also believed that I was being tested as to whether or not I was a good enough mum. And every time there was a bleeping sound on the ward I thought it was because I had done something wrong.

I filled in a form to say that I wasn’t feeling great mentally, but as my paranoia got worse, I retracted the letter. I asked for it back and ripped it up. And then, even though I wasn’t well, at times I appeared, on the outside, to be fine. So it was decided that I was going home with my baby.

When I finally got home, all the paranoia ramped up and I never slept. I was stuck in the house and there were people coming and going – midwives, health visitors, family members.

It got to a point where I was really confused. I couldn’t give the midwife the correct information, and when my family visited from America I was confused about who was who and started imagining that my niece was my long lost daughter. Then I started going through phases believing that my son had died – so much so that when I went to register the birth I was convinced they were going to hand me a death certificate.

I just questioned everyone and everything felt really trippy, and I became obsessed with things like clocks, so my mum removed all the clocks from the house.

My family, realising there was something very wrong, tried to work together to get me some help. Eventually I was visited by paramedics and then a doctor who I think prescribed me an antipsychotic – they were trying to treat me at home at that point.

Meanwhile, my mum was doing her own research and found out about postpartum psychosis – so, in a way, it was my mum who diagnosed me! But I became quite aggressive and frightened, so they had to call the police and the paramedics, and I even had to be handcuffed in order to be taken to hospital.

They took me by ambulance to an acute psychiatric mixed ward without my baby.

The ambulance ride was frightening because I was convinced I was in grave danger and I thought all the medical professionals were fake – I thought they were really all terrorists.

So when I finally got into hospital I refused to eat or sleep or take medication. I was paranoid about everyone and everything.

Nothing was working and I was in full-blown psychosis, at the peak of my illness, and without my baby. Everything seemed crazy to me - but I was the one being crazy. I started doing morse code on the window, and became paranoid about different colours – anyone who had a pen or who was wearing anything in the colour blue I simply couldn’t trust.

As I wasn’t getting any better, they decided to take me by private ambulance to Bethlem Royal to the MBU there.

Thankfully, not long after getting to the MBU, things started to change.

I don’t know if I felt more comfortable because there were more women there, and because my son was able to come and stay with me, but I started trusting the staff and taking my medication.

I think it was also because there was more of a normal kind of atmosphere in the MBU and there was a really good programme with specialists who knew all about mums and babies. I had lots of help learning how to make a bottle up and how to change my baby’s nappy – something that was invaluable because, with PP, everything seems ten times harder. Plus, knowing my son was safe and close by meant I was able to start sleeping. I started getting a good eight hours sleep!

I stayed in the MBU for nine weeks.

I 100% believe that if I had gone in the MBU straight away I would have started my recovery straight away.

I think my parents and my husband were given the option of an MBU at the start, but they didn’t really understand what it all meant so I really wish there was more awareness about specialist services and why they’re so important.

Now I feel I’ve fully recovered. Since my son turned seven months I’ve been so active with him, visiting friends, going to baby groups. I love being a mum and I feel like I’ve been making up for lost time – doing all the normal things new mums do.

I’ve also gone back to work and I now work with a charity that helps people with learning disabilities and mental health problems. And I’ve started a mother and baby group to help provide peer support and a place for mums to be able to talk freely with other mums.

While the whole experience of having postpartum psychosis – and the anxiety and postnatal depression that followed - was frightening, in some ways I’m glad I experienced it. It’s helped me to relate to people, and to provide support to others because of my lived experience which is really valuable in my job, too.

I feel that its so important for me to be able to share that there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is hope - even when you’re seriously unwell like I was.

I’d had some experience of mild depression in my late teens and early 20s, but nothing could have prepared me for becoming seriously unwell with postpartum psychosis.

Being pregnant for the first time, my husband and I were like fish out of water. However, it was a really straightforward pregnancy for the most part, and I felt in a good place mentally. We went along to antenatal classes – where there was a brief mention of postnatal depression – but I didn’t really consider it could be an issue for me as I felt really well.

However, towards the end of my pregnancy I became more anxious. I was overdue and I felt disappointed in myself because of that. Eventually, I went into labour naturally but had to have a forceps delivery because my contractions were inconsistent.

I was in so much pain and so exhausted when my little boy was born, I felt like I was in a state of numbness. I just felt so relieved that the birth was over.

After a little time in hospital, I started to feel really confused. I was given charts to fill in about feeding times and I just couldn’t get my head around them, which I found really distressing. I put it down to just being really tired.

We were discharged and I went home with my husband and new baby, and things seemed OK for the first couple of days. But then everything went downhill really quickly, and my husband suggested we go back to the hospital to speak to someone.

From my point of view, everything was really confusing at that point. I hadn’t slept for about five days straight, and my thoughts were just running wild – but there was no cohesiveness to them. I had this overwhelming sense that something terrible was going to happen, and I kept thinking that I might die, so I was in a state of constant panic. I also started to exhibit some quite unusual behaviour at that time, for example, I was dressing in winter clothes even though it was springtime, and I was obsessively cleaning the house.

That’s when my husband noticed that things weren’t right and phoned the hospital.

He shared his concerns and was advised to bring me straight back to the maternity ward.

By this point I had become obsessed with colours and the need for things to be colour co-ordinated in order for everything to be OK. I remember a nurse carrying a mug that was the same colour as her coat and I remember telling her that it made me feel better because the colours matched. I had this awful fear of something bad happening and I felt I had to prevent that by surrounding myself with matching colours.

I also started believing that I might have died, or that my baby might have died, and that the other parents in the hospital were actors and their babies fake. It felt as though we were in a film set or something, but I also remember thinking the TV set was sending messages to me and I was having auditory and visual hallucinations by then as well, and often not being able to recognise my own baby.

I was seen by a psychiatrist really quickly and she diagnosed me straight away with postpartum psychosis, explaining everything to my husband and mother in law and referring me to the nearest Mother and Baby Unit (MBU).

I was so lucky to be sent almost immediately to the MBU, which was only about 25 miles from our home in Edinburgh.

I’m from Belfast, and there is currently no MBU in the whole of Northern Ireland, so I knew that other mums in my situation wouldn’t have been so lucky.

My symptoms started to decrease during my time on the MBU, where I spent around seven weeks altogether. Initially I was under 24 hour observation, but then, as I started to get better, I was able to start building back my confidence and gaining my independence again.

After being discharged, I was still under the care of the MBU, and was regularly visited by an occupational therapist and a community psychiatric nurse – the same one I had met on the MBU.

Sadly, when my son was around seven months old, I became unwell again – but this time with depression. The first time I was admitted to the MBU it was on a section but this time I volunteered my admission, because I knew I needed help to get well and bond with my baby – and I knew that the MBU was the best place for me.

Getting a bed on an MBU twice meant that I was doubly lucky and it meant I was able to recover quickly and strengthen my bond with my baby. With the help of the staff at the Unit, I began growing in confidence as a mum and my love for my son really grew.

It was only during my recovery that my diagnosis was properly explained to me. At the time of my illness, I wasn’t able to process anything at all. But I remember feeling really upset because I’d never heard of PP and I felt really alone in it.

As I started to do my own research on what this illness was, I stumbled across APP and realised that I wasn’t alone at all – all these other mums had been through what I had. It made everything a lot easier to process.

Since my illness I’ve had a diagnosis of anxiety and PTSD, so I’ve just finished cognitive behavioural therapy for that, which has really helped.

Now I want to raise awareness of PP so that other families feel less alone, because it’s such a traumatic experience to go through. However, I do feel lucky that I got the diagnosis - and therefore the specialist care I so badly needed - really quickly.

Women need MBUs because they work. It’s frightening to think that some places, like my home of Northern Ireland, still don’t have them.