Elizabeth Gray - S.O.S

 

 

When our youngest son was six months old, I took him to his child and maternal nurse health checkup. So, we're doing really well. He was meeting his developmental targets and the immunizations were up-to-date, so we were ticking all the boxes. And at the last minute, our lovely nurse pulls out a yellow double-sided form and she says, “Oh, this is just a questionnaire to see if you might be showing some signs of postnatal depression.” And I was like, “Yup, sure, no worries. Cool.” So, after about 20 questions and she tallies everything up and she looks at me and she says, “Well, it appears that you're borderline.” And I immediately burst into tears. 

 

So, she referred me to a counsellor at the local community health center. My counselor worked out pretty quickly that I was in denial, and I really was resistant to going to a group session and really, really resistant to going on medication. So, she went for this softly, softly approach and she said, “Look, I think if you can get some sleep, then you'll feel a hell of a lot better.” Of course, this was true. But what happened was I clung to this idea that if I can just get some sleep, then I won't be crazy anymore. 

 

So, on the positive side, we made lots of changes at home. So, I had a two-and-a-half-year-old and we took the side off his cot, so I could transition him to a big boy bed. We took my youngest, about six-month-old, and his cradle out from the end of our bed and put him in his own room. I stopped breastfeeding, so that my husband and mother-in-law could help with bottle feeding. 

 

So, the downside was that I became absolutely obsessed with sleep. I was totally convinced that my six-month-old and my two-and-a-half-year-old were conspiring together [audience laughter] to keep me from sleeping. So, it all came to a head one day when I'd managed to get them both down at the same time, which was a miracle. I was laying down in bed, and I could hear that my eldest was out of his cot. He wasn't being loud, he wasn't crying or anything. But as I lay there listening to him, second by second, I got more and more enraged to the point where I just burst into his room, and I picked him up off the floor, and I threw him really hard into the cot and I screamed at him, “Stay in your cot.” 

 

He wasn't physically hurt, but I will never forget the look of sheer terror on his face. So, the next day I thought, okay, I'm going to go to this group counselling. And even though this terrible thing had happened with my eldest child, I still felt kind of like a fraud or an imposter. I was shocked to walk in and find that none of them actually had three heads. None of them were in the corner rocking or foaming at the mouth. They were actually a lot like me. 

 

A week later, I got another shock, because one of the healing parts of this counselling process was to call family and friends and to let them know that you got postnatal depression. So, I rang my mum. She was great and supportive. And then, I rang a friend and solemnly said that I had postnatal depression. And she was like, “I had it with both of my kids and I was on medication for six years.” I was like, “What?” And then, she went on to say that another friend of ours had postnatal depression with her kids and she was on medication as well. And I was like, “What is this whacked out conspiracy? It's like something out of the X Files or something.” 

 

Anyway, for the next year and a half, things were going okay. Then I hit a rough patch. And just for shits and giggles, I thought that I would toilet train both of my children at the same time. [audience laughter] Now, I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy. And what basically happened was I was just pissed off 24/7. I was so angry at everyone. The whole family was walking around on eggshells. And finally, my mother-in-law sat me down and she was crying and she said, “Liz, I don't know what to do. Every time I do something, you get angry. Anytime anyone does anything, you get angry. I just don't know what to do anymore.” 

 

So, the next day, I went to the doctor and I felt defeated. I felt like I'd failed, when I told her that I thought that I needed medication. She was talking to me, explaining all about the medication, and I was crying. She just casually said, “I don't know why they just don't put it in the water.” [audience laughter] I know that may not sit well with everyone, but that was something I really needed to hear that day, because it normalized it for me. 

 

So, after about two weeks of being on the medication, which it was really freaky and not in a let's go to the bedroom and get freaky, more of a holy shit, the whole earth has just shifted two degrees to the left and no one seems to know except for me kind of freaky. But after that, it was like this calm settled on me. And that terrible storm of anger and rage and fury just dissipated like mist when the sun comes up. I realized that it was more important for me to stand in my truth and admit that I needed help with life and motherhood than to stand by and do nothing and risk hurting the ones that I love the most.