Mothers For Women’s Lib

By Ruth Moss

The original author of this blog started to write about her postnatal depression, but didn’t get chance to finish it.

I think this is a very important issue, and a feminist issue. But I come at it from a different perspective than many others, and one that feels a bit embarrassing to the feminist in me.

I had a difficult, induced birth and my baby was taken from me to Special Care almost straight away. I really struggled breastfeeding in the early days, with nipples that felt like they’d gone two rounds with a cheese grater. And I got no support, really. Family and friends’ advice ranged from “you’ve done so well, no one would judge you if you stopped” to “you’re just being stubborn and trying to prove a point”. Actual real help was in short supply.

And I started to feel I was going mad. I felt like I was totally alone, and I started to suffer from paranoia. I was convinced the entire world wanted to stop me from breastfeeding my baby. I woke in the night, not with the baby (although that happened too, obviously) but with fear and blind panic.

Trouble was, everyone seemed to think that it was continuing to breastfeed that was making me anxious and depressed and thought they were being kind by advising, persuading and almost coercing me to stop. My husband drove me in the early morning to Boots to buy some ready-made formula, which he insisted was the only solution. I remember walking around the shopping aisles crying. I must have looked a sorry state!

And others thought that what would be just the ticket was a good night out, or at least a nice meal out, away from the baby, away from Mumming. But the truth was, any separation from my baby made me panic even more. I went for a meal with my husband in The Bottle and Glass, a posh pub just outside of St Helens, while my little one was at my mother-in-law’s. I sat there the entire time distant and depressed, barely able to speak.

However, with some fluoxetine (also known as prozac) and, eventually, some skilled breastfeeding support, I started to feel much, much better.

My brief brush with postnatal depression was over, or so I thought. I had escaped almost harm-free.

Until I went back to work. Truth to be told, I didn’t want to return to work. It doesn’t sound very feminist, does it? I wanted to be a stay-at-home Mum / full-time Mum / whatever you prefer to call it. But events took over. I always feel the need, in attachment parenting circles, to justify why I couldn’t afford it, just what obstacles were thrown in our way, what unexpected bills, what problems – but hopefully, on a feminist web site I don’t need to justify myself as much. I’ll just say – I couldn’t afford it in the end. We couldn’t afford it. I think sometimes people forget it’s not just the mother’s decision. People say “you could have done it, you just needed to make sacrifices”. Sometimes this comes from people who have sacrificed everything and downsized their life completely. But sometimes it comes from people who have sold the third car and gone on a European holiday instead of to Barbados.

People – both sets – seem to forget that it’s not just up to the mother whether or not she’s prepared to make sacrifices. It’s the mother’s partner, too, if she has one, who has to be prepared to down their standard of living. I might have been prepared, at least for a little while longer, to live on supersaver food, to default on some of the bills, to get rid of the mobile phone and internet… but there was no way in the world my partner was going to.

But I digress. Instead of going back into my old job as a Recruitment Consultant I got a temping job in the NHS, doing basic clerical work: filing, copy-typing and bits and bobs. It wasn’t particularly well paid but I quite enjoyed it. After 48+ hour working weeks in Liverpool (just over an hour away door to door by train) it almost felt like part-time to be working 830-430 in Whiston – ten minutes by bus, or on a nice day, a 45 minute walk. The work was great; basically you’d get in in the morning, someone would give you some stuff to do, and you’d do it. No masses of thinking needed. I did a few extra bits and pieces to help out, like designing an annual leave spreadsheet, and a few database-type things.

But after a few months, a permanent job elsewhere came up which I applied for and got. And then the trouble started. It was quite a complex job; although the job title was “Administrator” it was much more than admin; it was almost like an Office Manager role with some bookkeeping thrown in for good measure. It also required long periods being alone in the office. In fact, I had my own office – my own room, I should say – and a request to move into the main room with the other staff members was declined. I think the Manager was scared I’d be too distracted, but in fact, being on my own so often actually made matters worse.

Every day that went by I felt worse and worse. And the awful truth was, separation from my child felt unbearable. I felt so far away from him, both mentally and physically, and being on my own so often made me feel odd.

I started to suffer moments of anxiety. I struggled to get any work done. From being the most organised person in the office in my previous, pre-baby role, I went to disorganised disaster. I got in trouble for it. That made things much, much worse. I felt like a lazy failure. And I felt paranoia coming back. I started to think my boss was watching me, monitoring me, talking about me behind my back with the other members of staff.

I started to get more and more panicky.Then I came down with a water infection (unknown to me at the time) and had a terrible, dreadful panic attack.  I went into work anyway. I sat on the train on the way to work shaking with fear. I thought I had been drugged, such was the feeling of paranoia. It felt like someone had put some acid, or strong skunk, in my food somehow. My mind raced around and around.

I got into work and sat on the floor, under my desk. I was in on my own, again. I called my husband, who worked in Warrington, and asked him to come and get me. I called one of the other employees and told her I had to go home. I called the IT person, with whom I was meant to be meeting that morning, and cancelled.

My husband came to my work and drove me home. I got an emergency appointment at the Doctor, who analysed the situation (I was also drinking lots of water, and going to the toilet very frequently) and told me I had not been drugged but was having a panic attack; he said that often, if you’ve had depression before, and then you get ill (he also diagnosed a UTI with a urine test) it “presents” with a panic attack.

After I knew that, I managed to stop panicking a little. And over the course of the rest of the evening, I was back to “normal”.

But after that, the panic attacks continued. Nothing ever quite as bad as that one, mainly because I knew they were coming, and could tell myself “it’s a panic attack, it’s a panic attack”, but still pretty debilitating.

I really started to struggle in work. I would sit in my office for long periods just staring into space. My boss was starting to notice and started to take steps to improve my performance (which also meant steps to get rid of me if I didn’t improve). Obviously, this made the anxiety much worse.

I visited the Doctor and begged her to put me back on the fluoxetine, but at a higher dose. She started me on the lower dose again. She offered to sign me off work for a while, but given everything that was going on, I declined.

I wish I’d taken those two weeks off. The fluoxetine made things worse, just as the Doctor had predicted. I got very behind with my work, but out of fear I hid how behind I was. Eventually, I took a day off with flu, and came back in the next day, a Friday, to find out my boss had been through my drawers and found out the amount of work that hadn’t been done. I was called to a meeting on the Monday with the boss and the Chair (who was a very unsympathetic and unlikeable lady) and rather than face them, I handed in my notice that Friday, the last Friday before Christmas.

I’m now looking for part-time work, something basic, something close to home, something that just enables us to keep going with all the bills, and mortgage, and still have a bit left over for the odd nice bottle of wine. My husband has kindly stepped up saying he is now happy to do this, seeming as full-time, permanent work affected me in this way.

I feel there’s still a stigma around postnatal depression – around any mental illness, really. But I also feel – whether rightly or wrongly – that within feminist circles, it’s fine to talk about the lonliness and depression of maternity leave, of feeling tied to your child and hating it – but talk about the dread of being separated from your child, about finding paid work the lonely sphere, not maternity leave (which, after those anxious and panicky early weeks, I quite enjoyed) and it’s a bit – well, it’s just not very feminist, is it? Betty Friedan would be turning in her grave! I don’t know if I’m imagining this response, if only a “straw feminist” would react with disapproval, but I know myself I feel almost as though I’ve “let the side down”.Especially with the reliance on my husband; isn’t that what the second-wavers were trying to get the hell away from?

The Doctor has finally agreed to double my dose of fluoxetine, and I’ve signed up with a few agencies in the hope of finding some temp work, until I can get that nice easy part-time close to home job. In the middle of a recession.

I’ve tried to put into words how I felt. But actually I will give you an image. Recently, a film came out called The Golden Compass. It was based on a book called Northern Lights. In the film, all children grow up having a daemon. This takes the form of an animal, rather akin to a “familiar”, but it is basically their soul. The child is attached to their daemon by an invisible force. One of the most harrowing scenes in the film is where the bad guys, who are trying to separate children from their daemons, get hold of the heroine, Lyra, and put her into the machine that will separate her from her daemon. Her panic, her fear, her horror – it’s all on her face in that moment, just before she is rescued.

And that look on her face, just then, encapsulates neatly how I felt when I was separated full time, permanently, from my child.

I appreciate not everyone feels like this. Some mothers cannot wait to get back to work; the “back to work for a rest” is only half a joke. I think feminism listens to these mothers, even if the mainstream doesn’t and believes they have to carry about some kind of guilt. But there are others, too, for whom separation actually makes things worse.

Can feminism embrace both sets of mothers? I hope so, it might just help restore my sanity.