Being a stay at home mum

I enjoyed being at home with my son full-time. We were involved in all sorts of playgroups and mothers group and got out and about quite a bit, so we were able to have a lot of fun. I was still however, struggling with the loss of identity that came with becoming a mother and read many many books dealing with becoming a mother, the guilt and grief that comes with it. The books helped to an extent as they at least confirmed that my feelings were somewhat normal and the fact that I wanted to throw my child out the window some days was also quite normal, apparently!

During my checks with the health nurse I was basically on boarder line for post-natal depression, but I always denied that I had depression and put it more down to just being overwhelmed at that time and struggling with other things in my life. My son was always quite clingy and this didnt really change as he got older, he was always under my feet and wanted to be held and cuddled. Somedays I had the energy to deal with this and other days not so much. He was never one to go and explore things by himself and I had to be with him to do pretty much most things. I spent most of my days playing with him on the floor. I wasn't able to get up and move around the house and do things without him becoming upset and screaming or crying. So we either played together or I tried to do things around the house with him either screaming holding onto my leg and being dragged around the house or me carrying him and trying to do the house stuff with one hand. Needless to say, I was exhausted physically and becoming exhausted emotionally. I couldnt understand why my son couldnt play on his own without me and then when he needed some comfort, come and have a cuddle and then go back to playing. I knew he had some form of separation anxiety and figured he would grow out of it, I just hoped it would be sooner than later. I was growing very tired of it and starting to get frustrated and angry at him because of it. I didnt get a break. I couldnt see at the time that I needed to do things for myself so that I could be a better mum to him. I just kept thinking that he needed me and I needed to be there for him constantly as he would get so upset whenever I wasnt in the room. My husband could see how hard this was for me and tried desperately to get me to leave him with friends and go do things for myself, but I just refused. The pain of knowing that my son was upset and knowing that I could fix it by being there was too much. So I was always there. I remember having an appointment and having to leave my son with friends and he screamed or cried the whole time I was gone, it was just too much for me to handle at the time and I couldnt. I was becoming quite fragile, emotionally.

As my son got older, things improved and I was able to have some freedoms back in my life. I enjoyed this, but started struggling with my external environment more and more. We had lived in a fairly quiet neighbourhood, we lived on a busy road, so we got lots of traffic noise, but that probably drowned out most of the other noises and I had got use to all the traffic. Thankfully, my son was a good sleeper at night and maybe this was why; he had to get use to the traffic as well. When our son was about 12 months, new neighbours moved in. They were very social people and spent most nights out their back drinking, smoking and talking. Unfortunately their backyard was very close to our bedroom window and we got all the noise. I couldnt sleep and was getting very frustrated and tired. This happened most nights of the week and it was driving me insane. I couldnt open my house up during the day because it would get filled with smoke and I couldnt sleep at night because of the noise. They also had a small dog which would bark off and on during the day and night. I was starting to loose control. A couple of nights a week I would go out in my backyard and ask them to keep the noise down. Sometimes I was met with abuse, other times they would quieten down. A lot of times I would sleep in the loungeroom or spare room to try and sleep, with earplugs. Thankfully, my son slept through it all most of the time.

I had been to my GP a couple of times and mentioned that I was having a hard time dealing with things. We had spoken about anti-depressants, but I had told him that I didnt think this was the answer for me and I had declined to take them as I wanted more children. When our son was just about 2, we moved house and I was about 8 weeks pregnant with our second child. We looked around for somewhere quiet and did our research (or so we thought...)