My daughter was born on a golden Brisbane winter morning. The pregnancy with this first baby had been uneventful. I was well informed and idealistic.
She arrived squalling and sizeable on her due date, after 33 hours of labour by caesarean after my cervix had swelled shut. My relief over her safe arrival was soon swamped by exhaustion and I fell asleep as I was being sutured up.
For the next 4 days in hospital, I slept only an hour or two a day. By day five, when I was due to be discharged, I couldn’t stop crying and had begun to stutter.
I got lucky. My midwife was switched on. She said: ‘You have more going on than the baby blues.’ Relief that what I was experiencing was not normal was replaced by terror when the obstetrician recommended I be admitted to the mother baby unit (mbu) of a private psychiatric hospital half an hour away.
I had no history of mental illness, and this was not how I had envisaged our going home day.