Finding Harmony

So why did I feel so blue? After the births of each of my children, I felt increasingly overwhelmed and with anxiety came depression. It wasn’t so bad with Peter but I felt its grip tighten after the birth of Clara. Trying to unravel the symptoms of MS from possible signs of post-natal depression and the normal feelings of life-change associated with motherhood can be very difficult.

My reaction to the pressures of now having two kids was an urgent need for order: I was manic. By 8am, I’d have the kids washed and fed, the kitchen swept, the dishwasher on and would start calling people, while wondering, why aren’t they being more chatty? I went to see the GP to talk about my feelings of inadequacy and frustration, my mania, and she diagnosed post-natal depression and suggested a course of anti-depressants.

Because of my MS I was allocated a community psychiatric nurse, who after two visits was signed off with stress and so that was that. I wasn’t unduly alarmed. Lots of mums suffer PND, usually in response to fatigue and a sense of being overwhelmed; it heals over time. I refused the anti-depressants and battled the depression until it lifted, which it finally did.

Looking back, I don’t think I allowed enough leeway for the MS, by which I mean that I didn’t want my condition to impact on other peoples’ attitudes towards me. Perhaps I was in denial, maybe I should have had more support – after all, MS exhaustion is the sort of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t remedy. My exhaustion (made twenty times worse by the MS) in turn triggered feelings of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough.

Driving the kids home one day, I fell asleep at the wheel. We were on a motorway. Thank God for the rumble strips at the side of the motorway, which woke me up! I parked up in the lane and took a deep breath, adrenalin coursing through my veins. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have been able to say it’s the MS, not me. Instead lodged in my head was a comment made by the GP after my first big bout of MS.

‘You need to break this sleeping habit,’ he told me. ‘Pull yourself together.’

So I didn’t put it down to MS – I assumed it was my failure as a mother.

In retrospect, I don’t think the medical community could have helped: you have to be pretty bad to be entitled to respite care. Besides, I wanted to look after my kids and I wanted to work. I wanted it all. Why shouldn’t I?

Just as I did with Peter, when Clara was six months old I put her in a nursery and went back to work. I had mixed emotions but there was also the relief of being able to sit down, plan my day and drink a hot cup of coffee. This, however, was undermined by anxiety over how the kids were faring and guilt that I myself should be caring for them. I always felt better after I’d collected them, seen how happy they were and I learned how active they had been during the day. Anyway, I was still with them well over 50 per cent of the time, I forced myself to remember.

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