***Warning: This post is emotional, discusses mental health issues and may be a trigger to some***
If you’re reading this post, you may have read last Saturday’s post about when Autumn was ill and in hospital. This post is about how I was feeling when she was in hospital, as I was not well myself and it had a terrible effect on my mental health.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about baby Autumn and I playing in the sensory room for the first time. Today we went back to have some more fun and do some more learning. Autumn had her jabs this morning, so the poor little thing has been grumpy all day and almost constantly grizzling. The sensory room seemed to help distract her to some extent for a while though.
This post is going to be very difficult to write, but I feel like it’s something I need to do. I have written a short version of this story as a guest post for Rachel Bustin‘s New Mums Series about how it’s never too early to trust your instincts as a mum, but I’m going to go into more detail here. To begin with, repeating this story felt like it hurt me deeper and deeper each time. However, I’ve now had to repeat it so many times that I think it’s now getting easier each time and possibly helping me to heal and come to terms with what happened. Perhaps one day, someone else will read this who is going through the same or a similar situation (thankfully, this is EXTREMELY rare) and can live in hope knowing it gets better.
***Warning: This post is emotional and may be a trigger to some***
Dear Autumn,
I can’t believe how big you’re getting. Sometimes it feels so long since you were born and you were so tiny, sometimes it feels hardly any time at all. One thing is for sure, I can’t imagine life without you and I’m so glad to have you in it.
Today is #TimeToTalk day, a day all about increasing mental health awareness by talking about it and perhaps reaching out to someone with mental health issues to make sure they’re doing okay. Here I have a guest post from a close friend of mine who had her daughter 7 weeks before I gave birth to Autumn and has unfortunately been suffering from OCD since during pregnancy. I’ll be posting about mental health quite a lot on my blog, so I thought it would be interesting to ask her to write a post for me about her experiences so I could find out more about what she’s been going through but also to spread awareness of perinatal and postnatal OCD.
Please be aware that as with lots of things regarding mental health, this may be triggering.