Peuperal Psychosis
Discussion
I haven't put this in the health forum as more people will see it here, and hopefully then be aware of it and more likely to seek help sooner, and I honestly won't mind any light hearted banter as we have had to develop a strong sense of gallows humour in order to get as far as we have. I think I want to write it all down now, under the relative anonymity of the written word. It will be quite long. Sorry.
4 months ago I had never even heard of peuperal psychosis, (and apparently neither has Firefoxes English dictionary) at our ante-natal classes they touched briefly on Post Natal Depression, but that was it. From early June it had taken over our lives.
Our beautiful daughter was born on 26th May, after my wife was in labour for 42 hours, all bar four of them at home with no pain relief. They both came home after 2 days, and we started to get into the "routine" of being up every two hours for feeding etc. Amy now says that she noticed things weren't right immediately she was born, but I was either too tired, or unaware to spot it.
12 days in I was woken by my wife crying in bed, saying that "everyone says I've had an affair, but I haven't done anything wrong" when I quizzed her as to who was saying this, she couldn't or wouldn't tell me. We have half of the farmhouse with my parents (and god knows where we would be if we didn't) and we decided it was a touch of the post nantals. Still I didn't twig there was anything seriously wrong.
2 days later I returned to work, and during the day recieved a couple of text messages saying that her mother was "trying very hard to get it out of her". I wasn't able to ascertain what "it" was. I came home from work early, and Amy was convinced that I had been there earlier in the day and spoken to the midwife. when I tried to insist that I had been at work she just smiled sweetly at me and said, "OK, if you say so"
I rang the midwife, and she said that she had spoken on the phone to Amy earlier and she had said some odd things about the pram, and was I concerned. By this point I was, so the midwife instructed me to ring the out of hour GP service and insist that someone came to see us that very night.
The out of hours receptionist was totally f
king useless. I had rung at about 25 to six. "we can't give you an appointment till ALL the surgeries are closed" WTF? If I ring my surgery now I'm going to get an answer phone....but no, I had to wait till 7. FFS. In the meantime I rang the midwife back, and to give her her due was bloody brilliant, and helped us circumvent the normal channels and got a doctor with some psyhciatric experience to agree to come out.
Whilst we were waitng for him Amy asked me to go out in the garden with her.
I can stil remember the conversation word for word.
"it's Ok you know, you can talk about it, let it out"
me ???
"Ok, you're obviously not ready yet, never mind."
I'm even more confused now.
"The women who give birth, WE know...."
I think this is the point at which I realised things were seriously, seriously wrong.
"...We know what it is that makes us become adults, and why its so perfect, and why all the songs are perfect, its because the have been designed to be perfect."
Somehow I managed not to panic, and managed to try and keep a 'normal' flow of conversation, which over the next couple of minutes veered from somewhat abstract to totally bizarre.
All the time, I was looking at this woman talking to me, who looked like my wife, sounded like my wife, but she wasn't my wife.
Then my parents arrived home, and with Amy sat in front of the television I went out to meet them with baby in my arms.
I couldn't speak, I was welling up, and then I just about managed to blurt out, "she's gone totally fking loopy"
The doctor then rang and I had to take the call in a separate room so I could speak freely, and the call was recorded, and I had to relay everything that had been said. Whilst I was doing this Amy escorted my mother outside and treated her to pretty much the same conversation.
When the doctor arrived to talk to her, she seemed almost normal, insisted that nothing was wrong and proclaimed to have absolutely no recollection of our conversation.
For a terrible minute I thought he wasn't going to believe me, especially as he said he had "never seen someone cover it up so well, so either she is very very good, or there is nothing wrong with her"
She was very, very good, and this was to trip us up later....
Thankfully he knew she was covering up, and arranged for some people from the local psych team to come and see us the next day.
After an assessment where Amy was a lot more open, she was diagnosed with peuperal psychosis, but apparently her presentation was atypical...She was prescribed a relatively low dose of antipsychotics.
After a few more bizarre conversations, including several where the television was talking to her, and a memorable one where we had dressed baby in a babygrow with little pictures and phrases on it, 'dogs love walks' 'see some trees' 'visit your aunties' etc, she had been texting on her phone for a while before proclaiming, "well, I don't know which aunty I'm supposed to vist then because none of them know anything about it!" and another where we couldn't find the hat baby had been given in hospital and accused me of stealing it and putting it in the post to her.
I ended up having a further 3 weeks off work, where I did all the feeding, changing, and looking after of baby1roll, as well as looking after Amy, and then went back when things started to look more normal. She managed to talk the doctors into decreasing the medication.
The Friday evening I got home from work and sat down. "I think I need to re-increase my medication"
uh-oh....
As it turned out, from the start she had not been honest about what she was experiencing, and had been so good at covering it up, that I had felt OK to go back to work, and the doctors had felt it ok to reduce the meds.
In fact, things had been much much worse for her, and I have no idea how she coped in the week I was back at work.
She was hallucinating, in our bedroom was a group of people (the 'everybody' who had accused her of having an affair), who were nasty to her, saying she was a bad mother and everything we did was wrong. In our living room were just two, one dressed all in black, with a hood, and a scarred, cut bloody face. Apparently he kept looking at Baby1roll, then at me, then at Amy. Occasionally he would threaten with a knife.
She was convinced that my brother and I had fitted cameras in all the light fittings to spy on her.
She was convinced the TV and radio were aimed specifically at her, and even accused me of deliberately putting programmes on the tv that related to her in some way.
She heard voices in her head, she was convinced it was aliens, who were telling her how to work out how the world worked, and what she had to do. When one of the doctors asked her if they were talking to her right then, she said "no, they're busying themselves with some calculations" Sometimes she had moments of clarity, but they provided only temporary respite.
We slept on the settee for 3 weeks, as the bedroom was too "busy" for her. Me with a torch on a string round my wrist just in case I had to see what she was doing in a hurry.
On our first wedding anniversary, she didn't know who I was, didn't know who baby1roll was,nor where she was, I woke up to find her about to leave the house at 6 am in the pissing rain wearing only a T shirt.
The psychiatric team took note of all the cars registration numbers to speed alerting the authorities if she did manage to get out without me noticing.
After another week of this, on double the original dose of meds, I had been managing about 3 hours sleep a night, broken into half hour chunks, as she and baby1roll seemed to wake alternately. I could take no more and she was admitted to the local psychiatric ward for two days until the meds properly kicked in. This was a general psych ward, as the only mother and baby unit in the county is private, and we weren't going to get funding for the out of county NHS ward over a weekend, so baby1roll stayed home with me. We watched all the top gears we missed on iPlayer.
She returned home when the meds kicked in, but so did the side effects. I have since become well aware that psychiatric medicine is not an exact science, Its a balancing act between treating the psychosis, and crippling the patient with side effects, that made her able to sleep for 22 hours a day, and the remaining 2 being so stiff she could barely walk. She was given anti-side-effect tablets, which helped a lot, but which slightly counteracted the antipsychotic. It was a delicate balancing act, and it took a while to find the right level.
One website I found stated that 75%+ of relationships that suffer a peuperal episode end in separation or divorce. I was fked if that was going to happen to us. 3 hours of sleep a night or not, that was not happening.
I also found statistical links between long hard labours and peuperal psychosis, so I spent some time blaming myself for not taking her to hospital for pain relief earlier!
there were also scary statisitics about the number of women who take their lives do to this devastating illness. I tried not to think about that too much.
It's made me realise what is really important to me, that which I hold dear, and that which when push really comes to shove, I couldn't give a fk about.
I have also redefined my perception of stress!
The local NHS psychiatric team have been fantastic, on always on the end of the phone for us, coming to see us once or twice every single day until recently, and even providing transport for Amy to take babyroll to a baby club now I have returned to work. (Amy cannot drive on the medication, and we have about a fortnight ago we sent the notification letter to the DVLA, and lets be honest, her licence is going to be revoked. Its more than a bit of a pain for her now she is on the road to recovery and feeling for sociable, that she can't transport herself, and we live in the sticks a bit.)
We can be thankful that my parents are right next door, sometimes mum would sit with her so I could have a couple hours respite, but I felt I needed to be there all the time. I don't know what we would have done if they lived any more than about 500 yards away!
We were also lucky in that baby1roll is a very easy baby to look after, she is just so chilled out, sleeps from about 10pm to about 9-30 every night, and has done from about 7 weeks old. she doesn't ever seem to cry for no good reason, she's either hungry, soiled, or wants a cuddle
In all I have had almost 3 months off work, my employers, and my boss have been nothing short of fantastic, giving me two weeks paternity, two weeks as holiday, and the rest as compassionate on full pay, saying they could well appreciate a financial worry would not be welcome to me.
I have been back at work for a few weeks now, and things are looking up. Amy is still taking loads of tablets, and will be doing so for a year or more. She has had a couple more mildly psychotic episodes, but they have been at an easily manageable level, and she is honest enough about the condition now to tell us about them.
There, I think I have said all I feel I need to right now. I've been typing for an hour and a half! that does feel better!
Chris.
4 months ago I had never even heard of peuperal psychosis, (and apparently neither has Firefoxes English dictionary) at our ante-natal classes they touched briefly on Post Natal Depression, but that was it. From early June it had taken over our lives.
Our beautiful daughter was born on 26th May, after my wife was in labour for 42 hours, all bar four of them at home with no pain relief. They both came home after 2 days, and we started to get into the "routine" of being up every two hours for feeding etc. Amy now says that she noticed things weren't right immediately she was born, but I was either too tired, or unaware to spot it.
12 days in I was woken by my wife crying in bed, saying that "everyone says I've had an affair, but I haven't done anything wrong" when I quizzed her as to who was saying this, she couldn't or wouldn't tell me. We have half of the farmhouse with my parents (and god knows where we would be if we didn't) and we decided it was a touch of the post nantals. Still I didn't twig there was anything seriously wrong.
2 days later I returned to work, and during the day recieved a couple of text messages saying that her mother was "trying very hard to get it out of her". I wasn't able to ascertain what "it" was. I came home from work early, and Amy was convinced that I had been there earlier in the day and spoken to the midwife. when I tried to insist that I had been at work she just smiled sweetly at me and said, "OK, if you say so"
I rang the midwife, and she said that she had spoken on the phone to Amy earlier and she had said some odd things about the pram, and was I concerned. By this point I was, so the midwife instructed me to ring the out of hour GP service and insist that someone came to see us that very night.
The out of hours receptionist was totally f
king useless. I had rung at about 25 to six. "we can't give you an appointment till ALL the surgeries are closed" WTF? If I ring my surgery now I'm going to get an answer phone....but no, I had to wait till 7. FFS. In the meantime I rang the midwife back, and to give her her due was bloody brilliant, and helped us circumvent the normal channels and got a doctor with some psyhciatric experience to agree to come out.Whilst we were waitng for him Amy asked me to go out in the garden with her.
I can stil remember the conversation word for word.
"it's Ok you know, you can talk about it, let it out"
me ???
"Ok, you're obviously not ready yet, never mind."
I'm even more confused now.
"The women who give birth, WE know...."
I think this is the point at which I realised things were seriously, seriously wrong.
"...We know what it is that makes us become adults, and why its so perfect, and why all the songs are perfect, its because the have been designed to be perfect."
Somehow I managed not to panic, and managed to try and keep a 'normal' flow of conversation, which over the next couple of minutes veered from somewhat abstract to totally bizarre.
All the time, I was looking at this woman talking to me, who looked like my wife, sounded like my wife, but she wasn't my wife.
Then my parents arrived home, and with Amy sat in front of the television I went out to meet them with baby in my arms.
I couldn't speak, I was welling up, and then I just about managed to blurt out, "she's gone totally f
king loopy"The doctor then rang and I had to take the call in a separate room so I could speak freely, and the call was recorded, and I had to relay everything that had been said. Whilst I was doing this Amy escorted my mother outside and treated her to pretty much the same conversation.
When the doctor arrived to talk to her, she seemed almost normal, insisted that nothing was wrong and proclaimed to have absolutely no recollection of our conversation.
For a terrible minute I thought he wasn't going to believe me, especially as he said he had "never seen someone cover it up so well, so either she is very very good, or there is nothing wrong with her"
She was very, very good, and this was to trip us up later....
Thankfully he knew she was covering up, and arranged for some people from the local psych team to come and see us the next day.
After an assessment where Amy was a lot more open, she was diagnosed with peuperal psychosis, but apparently her presentation was atypical...She was prescribed a relatively low dose of antipsychotics.
After a few more bizarre conversations, including several where the television was talking to her, and a memorable one where we had dressed baby in a babygrow with little pictures and phrases on it, 'dogs love walks' 'see some trees' 'visit your aunties' etc, she had been texting on her phone for a while before proclaiming, "well, I don't know which aunty I'm supposed to vist then because none of them know anything about it!" and another where we couldn't find the hat baby had been given in hospital and accused me of stealing it and putting it in the post to her.
I ended up having a further 3 weeks off work, where I did all the feeding, changing, and looking after of baby1roll, as well as looking after Amy, and then went back when things started to look more normal. She managed to talk the doctors into decreasing the medication.
The Friday evening I got home from work and sat down. "I think I need to re-increase my medication"
uh-oh....
As it turned out, from the start she had not been honest about what she was experiencing, and had been so good at covering it up, that I had felt OK to go back to work, and the doctors had felt it ok to reduce the meds.
In fact, things had been much much worse for her, and I have no idea how she coped in the week I was back at work.
She was hallucinating, in our bedroom was a group of people (the 'everybody' who had accused her of having an affair), who were nasty to her, saying she was a bad mother and everything we did was wrong. In our living room were just two, one dressed all in black, with a hood, and a scarred, cut bloody face. Apparently he kept looking at Baby1roll, then at me, then at Amy. Occasionally he would threaten with a knife.
She was convinced that my brother and I had fitted cameras in all the light fittings to spy on her.
She was convinced the TV and radio were aimed specifically at her, and even accused me of deliberately putting programmes on the tv that related to her in some way.
She heard voices in her head, she was convinced it was aliens, who were telling her how to work out how the world worked, and what she had to do. When one of the doctors asked her if they were talking to her right then, she said "no, they're busying themselves with some calculations" Sometimes she had moments of clarity, but they provided only temporary respite.
We slept on the settee for 3 weeks, as the bedroom was too "busy" for her. Me with a torch on a string round my wrist just in case I had to see what she was doing in a hurry.
On our first wedding anniversary, she didn't know who I was, didn't know who baby1roll was,nor where she was, I woke up to find her about to leave the house at 6 am in the pissing rain wearing only a T shirt.
The psychiatric team took note of all the cars registration numbers to speed alerting the authorities if she did manage to get out without me noticing.
After another week of this, on double the original dose of meds, I had been managing about 3 hours sleep a night, broken into half hour chunks, as she and baby1roll seemed to wake alternately. I could take no more and she was admitted to the local psychiatric ward for two days until the meds properly kicked in. This was a general psych ward, as the only mother and baby unit in the county is private, and we weren't going to get funding for the out of county NHS ward over a weekend, so baby1roll stayed home with me. We watched all the top gears we missed on iPlayer.
She returned home when the meds kicked in, but so did the side effects. I have since become well aware that psychiatric medicine is not an exact science, Its a balancing act between treating the psychosis, and crippling the patient with side effects, that made her able to sleep for 22 hours a day, and the remaining 2 being so stiff she could barely walk. She was given anti-side-effect tablets, which helped a lot, but which slightly counteracted the antipsychotic. It was a delicate balancing act, and it took a while to find the right level.
One website I found stated that 75%+ of relationships that suffer a peuperal episode end in separation or divorce. I was f
ked if that was going to happen to us. 3 hours of sleep a night or not, that was not happening.I also found statistical links between long hard labours and peuperal psychosis, so I spent some time blaming myself for not taking her to hospital for pain relief earlier!
there were also scary statisitics about the number of women who take their lives do to this devastating illness. I tried not to think about that too much.
It's made me realise what is really important to me, that which I hold dear, and that which when push really comes to shove, I couldn't give a f
k about.I have also redefined my perception of stress!
The local NHS psychiatric team have been fantastic, on always on the end of the phone for us, coming to see us once or twice every single day until recently, and even providing transport for Amy to take babyroll to a baby club now I have returned to work. (Amy cannot drive on the medication, and we have about a fortnight ago we sent the notification letter to the DVLA, and lets be honest, her licence is going to be revoked. Its more than a bit of a pain for her now she is on the road to recovery and feeling for sociable, that she can't transport herself, and we live in the sticks a bit.)
We can be thankful that my parents are right next door, sometimes mum would sit with her so I could have a couple hours respite, but I felt I needed to be there all the time. I don't know what we would have done if they lived any more than about 500 yards away!
We were also lucky in that baby1roll is a very easy baby to look after, she is just so chilled out, sleeps from about 10pm to about 9-30 every night, and has done from about 7 weeks old. she doesn't ever seem to cry for no good reason, she's either hungry, soiled, or wants a cuddle
In all I have had almost 3 months off work, my employers, and my boss have been nothing short of fantastic, giving me two weeks paternity, two weeks as holiday, and the rest as compassionate on full pay, saying they could well appreciate a financial worry would not be welcome to me.
I have been back at work for a few weeks now, and things are looking up. Amy is still taking loads of tablets, and will be doing so for a year or more. She has had a couple more mildly psychotic episodes, but they have been at an easily manageable level, and she is honest enough about the condition now to tell us about them.
There, I think I have said all I feel I need to right now. I've been typing for an hour and a half! that does feel better!
Chris.
Edited by chris1roll on Sunday 13th September 00:32
Thannks guys, I would never have thought that I would have been able to cope with something like this either, especially seeing as I myself was treated for OCD and anxiety a few years ago. I guess its one of those things you won't know how you deal with it unless it happens, and then you do what you have to do I suppose.
Long term prognosis is that she will be able to come off the the medication, and return to normal, and is unlikely to spontaneously return - but something we will need to keep an eye on.
It is apparently much more likely to happen again if we have another child - does this mean this will be our only one? Can't say at this stage, we both wanted 2 or 3, and before we were 30 (I'm 27 now) but could we risk this happening again? Apparently it is do-able, they start the medication immediately after birth, forgoing breastfeeding, but that's something to consider very very carefully in a few years time.
Long term prognosis is that she will be able to come off the the medication, and return to normal, and is unlikely to spontaneously return - but something we will need to keep an eye on.
It is apparently much more likely to happen again if we have another child - does this mean this will be our only one? Can't say at this stage, we both wanted 2 or 3, and before we were 30 (I'm 27 now) but could we risk this happening again? Apparently it is do-able, they start the medication immediately after birth, forgoing breastfeeding, but that's something to consider very very carefully in a few years time.
then get a beer 
Sounds like a difficult & life changing experience.
You've cleared the initial hurdle with aplomb but I've always thought that one of the hardest things about this kind of situation (aside from the obvious ones) is dealing with the unknowns - How long before you can actually relax and not have to worry about what might happen?
Of course the other one is taking the pressure associated with 3 lives rather than just one.
It may well be a long road but you always have to believe and at some point it will all be worthwhile and you will get back what you had, as well as the joys of a new addition.
You've cleared the initial hurdle with aplomb but I've always thought that one of the hardest things about this kind of situation (aside from the obvious ones) is dealing with the unknowns - How long before you can actually relax and not have to worry about what might happen?
Of course the other one is taking the pressure associated with 3 lives rather than just one.
It may well be a long road but you always have to believe and at some point it will all be worthwhile and you will get back what you had, as well as the joys of a new addition.
It sounds like your little one is doing well. Hold on to that concept; it doesn't happen by accident so it is both a credit to you both, and an achievement already.
It also sounds like you are going to be near enough a single dad, at least for a bit. I can maybe give advice on that (I'm currently 'Daddy Daycare') - ask on here, or PM me.
I wish I could give better advice on your OH's struggles...
It also sounds like you are going to be near enough a single dad, at least for a bit. I can maybe give advice on that (I'm currently 'Daddy Daycare') - ask on here, or PM me.
I wish I could give better advice on your OH's struggles...
jesus man thats horrific, but strangely familiar, I don't remember much I think i blocked most of it out, but when my mum had my little brother 30 odd years ago, she was diagnosed with this. We have only just started talking about it recently. Good luck with the future mate, its a hard slog and will define a large portion of your life forever.
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