'I'm a gentle person but was often fearful I might harm my beautiful baby'

In a recent article, 'I was a charging, brutal, half-animal': The ugly truth about postnatal rage', Audrey Shanahan wrote about the changes to her mood that followed the birth of her children and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and recovery. We asked readers to submit their own stories, and below are a selection of those responses.

‘Brutal, ugly, rage – so well describe my state of being intermittently for many years after his birth’

“As an almost 60 year old mother, and professional, this article could have (if only I had the courage) been written by me. It is the first time ever I have heard the experience I had after the birth of my second child, who is now 23, echoed.

“I have carried the shame, and guilt since then. The words used – brutal, ugly, rage – so well describe my state of being intermittently for many years after his birth. The sheer anger I felt still confounds my understanding. I have always been known as a gentle, caring person and was overwhelmed by these feelings, often fearful that I might harm my ever crying, little-sleeping beautiful baby.

“Counselling was of course available back then but accessing it was not easy, for reasons of time, finances, and also a denial and disgust of my ‘weakness’. I joined Cuidiú [a breastfeeding support organisation] at the time but could not bring myself to discuss this with any of the lovely mothers who attended the meetings, all of whom seemed so sane, as I may well have appeared.

“Being close to retirement, my great wish is to provide some support for mothers in a similar position especially to those who have an unsettled baby.

"Thank you Audrey for being so honest and for opening the lid on this issue. Already I feel a relief that I was not the only 'nasty' mother ever."
– Patricia

‘Visitors came and brought presents and more presents and more presents. All I wanted was someone to take the baby off me and allow me to sleep’

“Nothing – and I mean nothing – can actually prepare you for the sheer responsibility that is bestowed on you when you become a mother.

“I reflect back on my eldest daughter’s birth and the first few months of her life and I realise now that I was in a state of post-traumatic shock. I have no doubt, that had I been formally assessed, I would have met the diagnostic DMS-V criteria. I had a very tough and very long labour that resulted in third degree tears. My husband, a farmer, reported that the registrar looked more like a vet than a doctor when he entered the room, in his white wellington boots, to jack my daughter out of me.

“I remember coming home, in pain, and struggling. Struggling with the reality of having to mind this baby who suffered from colic, struggling with the loneliness, struggling with the lack of sleep. Visitors came and brought presents and more presents and more presents. All I wanted was someone to take the baby off me and allow me to sleep; allow me to have a tea tree oil bath in peace; someone to tell me that these overwhelming feelings of panic and anxiety were quite normal; someone to tell me that I would survive and I would get through this.

“New mothers need to be warned that it is not all rosy. We are doing a disservice to our friends and family when we gloss over the reality of having a child. I was very lucky to have found an excellent breast feeding support group in my locality with an experienced HSE lactation nurse at the helm. She was the first person who made me realise that I was normal and that my post-natal state was common. I am forever grateful to her.”

– Emma

‘Rage made me think I would explode if it didn’t find some way to leave my body. So I started literally beating myself up. I would slap myself, or hit myself with something’

“After my second child was born, I began to experience a new emotion; pure rage. Rage that made me think I would explode if it didn’t find some way to leave my body. The baby crying when she should be asleep would set me off (my logical head knows this is no big deal) and in a flash I would be consumed by it, like a flood rushing through me.

"Unfortunately, the only way I could find to regain calm was to hit myself. I started literally beating myself up. I would slap myself, or hit myself with something, a hanger, a cup, a book, whatever was to hand. It often hurt a lot. A trip to the GP and a lot of counselling later, I feel I have control over my mental health. It has been a painful, embarrassing secret journey and I wouldn't wish it on anyone."
– Name with editor

‘Every coin has two sides, as does mothering.The light side and the dark side’

“Thank you Audrey Shanahan, your truth and courage are essential to stop the motherhood propaganda train. Every coin has two sides, as does mothering.The light side and the dark side. Despite the fact that women are now more outspoken and equally valued members of society, we’re still cowering behind swathes of secrecy when it comes to the dark side of mothering.

“My motherhood journey was not blissful baby-gazing with the usual permitted downsides society allows us to talk about: the inconvenient lack of sleep. No, it was full on RAGE! An emotion I had never felt before came roaring, all guns blazing, from the depths of my being.

“What added salt to my rageful wound was the lack of dialogue available to share this experience with others. Attempts to blow the lid off my cover and expose the hellish depths of mothering I was feeling were met with ‘Aw, you’re tired’ – which is the safe, well-versed and only ‘shadow side’ of mothering rhetoric we’re allowed to use.

“I felt so alone.I felt so de-funct. My dark side mothering journey exploded into my life nearly seven years ago, and it warms my heart to see the tide is changing.The dialogue is opening up in recent times, women are throwing off the secrecy to share their stories. It is in this sharing that we will derail the motherhood propaganda train and support women in all truth and honsety.The alternative is to continue to believe motherhood only has one side to its coin and continue to persecute generations of women by silencing them. Sisterhood unite!

"Silence feeds shame, dialogue sheds light on the darkness. A great book that helped me was Maternity: Coming face to face with your own shadow by Laura Gutman, and also the blog and book Hurrah for Gin.
– Sinead

‘I expected that my third child would fit into our family life without any drama, and so was unprepared for the reality’

“I was terrified to say the words ‘I think I’m depressed’ in case I ended up on a cocktail of antidepressants that I wouldn’t be able to wean myself off. Even now, almost eight years later, I still don’t know if I was ‘depressed’ but I do know I was completely miserable.

“I had a difficult pregnancy, difficult labour and was grieving for my dad who had died from Alzheimer’s the previous summer. I expected that my third child would fit into our family life without any drama, and so was unprepared for the reality of having a baby with colic and reflux, who never napped for more than 30 minutes and had to be carried around for hours each day.

“I became more exhausted and overwhelmed as the months went by. Even though my husband was hands-on and probably more exhausted than me, I resented the fact that he got to leave the house, eat his lunch in peace and listen to the radio in the car on the way to work! I spent a lot of the day wishing for bedtime. I berated myself for being weak, inadequate, not coping like all the other mothers.

“I never went to my GP, but just kept telling myself that this stage had to pass, that the children would get bigger and it would get easier. I listened to music to keep me sane. And it did get better, and after 18 months I felt less panicked, less trapped and could enjoy it all a bit more. And thankfully my daughter was easy to love and we have incredibly close bond. She made me smile and laugh and was worth every tear I shed.

"I wouldn't change those difficult, lonely years, because they made me so aware of my own mental health and how fragile that can be and the importance of self-care. But parenting is tough. We are too hard on ourselves, we shouldn't be ashamed to say we're not coping and that sometimes we need help.
- Jackie

‘I felt like a failure. I would try everything; I watched videos, I rang a helpline, I visited websites... she would just cry and cry and cry’

“When I had my daughter, she was taken to ICU and was there a full week. During that time I pumped my milk but I couldn’t breastfeed as she was being tube fed. During the 19-hour labour I’d lost two litres of blood and needed multiple blood transfusions. We never had skin-to-skin contact as she was an emergency C-section and I was in too much pain to keep going up and down the stairs to see her. So you can imagine how dark the cloud - that sometimes came to visit - grew.

“When I took her home, she had become so used to the tube and bottle teat that she wouldn’t latch [for breastfeeding] and I felt like a failure as a mother. I would try everything; I watched videos, I rang a helpline, I visited websites, I’d try every position and she would just cry and cry and cry. In short, she was starving and I felt like I had failed because I couldn’t feed her myself. I found it hard to bond with her, it just didn’t seem to come naturally. Every time I looked at her, I was reminded of what happened or even worse, what could have happened to her and in truth, I felt hard done by.

“I had to ask my partner to show me how to change a nappy because I had missed that while on the ward and she was in ICU. He had used up most of his paternity leave because of the prolonged stay in the hospital so when he went back to work, I felt very alone. I was exhausted and trying too hard to appear to be the perfect mother when I knew I wasn’t.

“Even the public health nurse warned when visiting that I should be in my nightdress with greasy hair and advised me that I needed to rest and look after myself but instead I was dolled up with a fake smile across my face and a horrible, sore wound under my dress. I mean who was I kidding? Myself.

“I didn’t want to tell anybody how I was feeling for fear of being looked down upon, scared at the thought that I didn’t love my baby and so I would do my make-up every morning and get done up, I would have her in her best clothes too. I would have our home spotless so visitors could see how well I was getting on. I was lying of course.

“Three weeks after she was born, it all came crashing down. I just hit a brick wall. I told my partner everything; my feelings, how I felt like I couldn’t cope with it all, how I felt almost like I was drowning.

“That day I went to the doctor. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome because of the difficult birth, and post natal depression (I would later suffer panic attacks before upcoming social situations and be diagnosed with perinatal anxiety which still to this day happens and something which never happened before the baby came along). My GP explained that this was normal and more common than you’d think. For me, the main pain relief was being able to talk about it and open up, pulling down the facade and being able to stop the act.

“That is when I started to feel better. It didn’t happen overnight but as the weeks went on I felt like I had less and less on my shoulders. My love for my girl which of course had always been there, just a bit muddied over by negative thoughts, began to become clearer and grew every day to the point where I eventually thought my heart would burst with love (and still do).

"I never thought I would ever feel that way, that's what depression does, it darkens everything. I tried to stop thinking about what happened and started to look at all the positives, that I came out of it alive with a beautiful baby girl, that I was living a lovely life with a very understanding and loving partner and family who supported me. I realise now that life does not go to plan and neither does having a baby, it is not always how you expect."
– Clodagh

‘I don’t feel alone anymore. I don’t feel like I’m going mad. I nolonger feel that I can’t talk about things like breastfeeding being hard ’

“It’s 05:47 in the morning and I’d like to say I’m awake just now, but the truth is I have been for the last two-and-a-half hours. My eight-month-old is teething and I’m feeding her on and off all night. My name’s Michelle and I’m a new time mammy, and I read the story of postnatal rage as if I was reading a letter I had written to myself.

“I’ve been feeling bursts of rage since my little baba has arrived and shortly followed by guilt and a row with the hubby. I chose to breastfeed and although I’m so proud of how far I have come – after a four-day induced labour (and I then had a C-section) – it didn’t come easy, and has certainly added to the many stresses that followed having my angel. Because she really is an angel, and I feel sorry sometimes I’m her mother and she will probably end up a bit like me, and God if she does she will be mad... this is normally how my train of thought will go at this hour of the night.

After reading that article I don’t feel alone anymore. I don’t feel like I’m going mad. I nolonger feel that I can’t talk about things like breastfeeding being hard or that I’m feeling overwhelmed sometimes because I’m afraid I’ll be judged by all the other mammies. I now feel I’ll be understood and am a part of some very amazing, difficult, strangely wonderful club.

All thanks to that article so I say thank you. At five in the morning I’m feeling fresher and I’m feeling ready to go at it again. I may even make dinner!

Thank you for putting into words my every emotion for someone who never finds that easy, so I can breathe a little again and rest assured I'm not the only one. But I'm off now for another feed because she is coughing and awake again."
– Michelle

‘I see how much I still long to be parented despite being a parent myself.’

“Reading Audrey’s story resonated hugely. After my first baby (at the age of 37) I was, I see now, in deep shock for months. I breastfed and couldn’t express so I was never away from her for more than a couple of hours and nothing had prepared me for the 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, full-on totality of it; nothing had prepared me for just how much my life would change.

“In order to get through the nights I used to chant to myself: ‘you never have to do this again, you never have to do this again’, and I would sit and say to my husband: ‘No more f***king children, no more f***king children.’

“I was quite terrifying in my anger and upset. I resented every minute that my husband was away from home, we had epic rows if he was even two minutes late, and I frequently felt as though as I was on my own. We did have a second baby (and in fairness, I’m not sorry!) but it took quite a while before I was prepared to even consider it.

"I still struggle with being a mother, I'm not very patient, I shout and rage, and they test me to my absolute limits. I see how much I still long to be parented despite being a parent myself. I have worked hard to build supports and these are crucial – meeting new mums and making friends, along with my own lovely parents, my mum in particular, have been a huge help. I'm not a bad mother but I always feel I am falling short and rarely give myself credit for the fact that we have two lively, funny, feisty, healthy girls and that that is partly down to me."
– Emma