It’s a startling fact. Most people I’ve trained, or spoken to, during my work with the Luna Foundation assume that young people bereaved as teenagers are at a greater risk. We’ve certainly seen situations where the focus is on supporting older bereaved children and really just ensuring the basic needs of the younger child are…
My biggest worry is not piles, or stretch marks. It’s losing my baby again. Do you want to ‘end’ or ‘delete’ your pregnancy? There’s a picture in an app on my phone of a tiny embryo. Apparently, my baby is the size of a peach. Their tiny heart is beating fast. Except it isn’t. I’ve…
18 years ago a doctor prescribed me antidepressants as if they were painkillers. I’ve tried to reduce my dose or come off them many times since. Now I think I’m stuck on them for life. Usually I’m OK with this. But sometimes it feels quite scary. Yesterday I heard a radio report about a new…
Today is the start of Baby Loss Awareness Week 2019. A week to remember babies who were lost in pregnancy, during birth or soon afterwards. I wanted to write something in honour of little Sprout whom we lost in August. Sprout was only on the brink of being – a seven-week-old embryo whose heart had…
I’m writing this to make sense of how I felt yesterday. I’m sharing it because I’m sure I’m not alone. Parenting is really hard and parenting with mental health problems can sometimes be a real struggle. Like many of us, I’ve managed mental health problems most of my life. Mainly eating problems, anxiety and depression….
The WRISK project is a collaboration between the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) and Heather Trickey at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. They are aiming to draw on women’s experiences to understand and improve the development and communication of risk messages in pregnancy. They asked me to blog about my experience of…
A few weeks ago I saved an article about Instagram from the Guardian’s website – Instagram is supposed to be friendly. So why is it making people so miserable? It struck a chord because I was feeling uncomfortably aware of the disconnect between how my life looked on my Instagram account and how it really felt….
Oaklan came on the 5th October. He’s almost eleven weeks now and things are slowly starting to feel a little easier. I’m still pretty tired – and I’m writing this with him feeding on my lap – so please excuse any typos, half-formed ideas or clumsy phrasing. I wanted to get down some thoughts about…
Last year, James Withney of The Recovery Letters emailed to see if I would be interested in contributing a letter to the published anthology. The Recovery Letters are addressed to people experiencing depression. They share experiences and give friendship and hope for recovery. I’ve always believed in letters and writing as a way through difficult…
I don’t usually blog about individual Mind booklets and online resources I write or update (you can see the list here). But my most recently completed product is pretty close to my heart. It’s called Understanding eating problems. Changes and updates I’ve tried to emphasise that you can find eating problems incredibly difficult to live…
Disrupting the balance I’m pretty good at managing my mental health. I know what helps, what doesn’t and how to recognise when I need to take better care of myself or ask for extra support. But early pregnancy disrupted this balance. I’m nearly 17 weeks now and finally ready to write about the first trimester….
Pregnant and taking Sertraline I’m 17 weeks pregnant and still taking the SSRI antidepressant Sertraline. I thought I was pretty firm in that decision. An attempt to stop taking it last year ended badly. But we had to try, if only to help us work out where we sat in the endless risk/benefit balancing act. But…
Recovering from eating problems Over the last year, I’ve been facing up to eating problems that have dogged me my entire life. This became particularly important as we tried (and for a long time failed) to conceive. It was really hard going but I got my cycle back and my hormones balanced – by the…
A toxic mix I had some very low periods and dark thoughts during the first trimester of pregnancy. The myth of pregnancy as a calm, exciting and enjoyable time is still pervasive – but there were times when I felt unable to take pleasure in anything, distant from Al and scared I wouldn’t be able…