Trigger warning: This blog contains mention of suicide and depression.
I've never done this before. Not like this, anyway. I've learned to talk about the topic openly with friends, family, and introduce the idea on a social media post or in a video. I'll say something like "I had postnatal depression with Ralph, my first." I'll say how hard it was and how long it took to emerge, but I've never really told my whole story, and the story of why Hatch came about in the first place. So here it is, deep breath.
I guess my story starts as someone who's always been a perfectionist. Someone who's always fought an inner critic. A feeling that, a lot of the time, I was never good enough, or I couldn't rest until I did better, or an inner worry that someone else was doing it better. It's like there was a default negative frequency living inside me, and to fight that feeling I would go into 'hustle mode,' charged by a motor to try to fix it, never short of energy to be creating, completing, personally 'winning' at something to somehow justify my worth to myself. Some now say it's perhaps a bit neurodivergent, but I'd always used that to my strength. It has made me a very high achiever: in my short time on this planet, I've secured 4 A-levels, two bachelor degrees (one BA, one BSc - just for balance), became a successful physio, I've climbed mountains, sailed the Atlantic, run a marathon, swam a marathon, renovated houses, become a highly competitive athlete (competitive, me?!) and have basically always achieved the tasks I've set for myself. Perhaps it is the locus of control, or the feeling of fulfilment. Tick - I've achieved that. Phew, I'm somehow a better, more successful person now. On the list was always to live in another country. To have kids. To own my own business.
When I met my now husband, Tom, I was on my latest mission - to move to Australia. He was sold, and within a year of being together we'd packed up for our adventure in the southern hemisphere. And within one month of arriving, I discovered I was pregnant. And no, it wasn't a surprise, I was 35 and we knew time wasn't on our side so we had accepted it would happen when it happened - but at the time I don't think I realised how much pregnancy would floor me. And also how much one needs a village in pregnancy as well as postpartum, and we didn't know a soul. Couple that with my tendency to perfection and need for achievement - for the first time in my life, I lost control of my ability to accomplish. Training was HARD. I was very sick for the first 20 weeks, which meant very basic training 3 times a week at very best. And at the time (2018), there was little to no reliable evidence-based guidance on lifting or CrossFit in pregnancy.
It was at this point that Hatch Athletic began. It began as a research-based blog where I connected with specialists, other women's health physios around the world and also documented my own experiences to try to make head and tail of this very confusing time. I was working as a physio full time but didn't have any friends, it occupied my time, and gave me a project.
I muddled through, but I'm going to guess I was a bit lost and depressed before I even got to postpartum.
I think the excitement gets you through though. You're giddy with the possibility of your new baby, this life as a new mum, the clothes, doing the nursery, nesting. It's something I'd wanted deeply for a very long time. As part of my journey to becoming a women's health physio I'd spent my earlier career working in paediatrics. I loved children and babies and fancied myself as a natural. I believed that if I studied and read hard enough and prepared hard enough for the birth, that I'd nail it - because that was my understanding of the order of things: work hard enough and you will succeed. I was ready to become the earth-mother of my dreams, starting with the epitome of my utopian ideal birth-plan of a home-birth in our little 'perfect' apartment overlooking the ocean.
Having labelled myself as strong and capable coming into this, I hadn't realised I had some very strong risk factors for PND (postnatal depression) coming into this. We were still finding our feet financially, we hadn't got any family or friends nearby, paired with a neurodivergent, tightly controlled mindset, a tendency to negative, very polarised thinking, it hadn't really occurred to me that I was in fact incredibly vulnerable.
Our home birth did not go according to plan. I had a very stalled pre-labour, three days of on/off contractions. By the time full blown labour arrived and my waters broke I was already overstimulated, sleep deprived, exhausted and emotional. I managed about six hours at home before demanding pain relief and therefore a rather dramatic drive to hospital. I had an epidural, which was a very traumatic experience in itself, and then slept whilst my labour fully stalled, as it often does. I was already labelling it as a failure, was scared, shaky, lonely and terrified. I submitted to the recommended emergency c-section that was recommended when baby-Ralph started going into stress and felt like I was watching someone else's movie. I checked out and if I'm honest with you I don't think I fully returned for a long, long time.
That first night was like a nightmare, I was left alone in a shared ward, with screaming babies in the same room, my husband wasn't allowed to stay with me. My baby Ralphie didn't feed and I didn't care, I didn't even know or care that there was a baby next to me. I would push a call button when he cried as if he was someone else's baby. In the morning and the mornings that followed I went through the moves expected of me, smiling for photos, attempting to limp through the most excruciating breastfeeding journey (I must succeed) and we went home. I remember crying in the car park on the way home thinking how scared I was - terrified. I didn't want to go home with a baby, I didn't know what to do. I could hardly walk or make sense of it all, let alone care for someone else. And the gravity that that someone else was part of our life forever also felt very frightening too. It's funny you'd think it shouldn't have been a surprise - but it was.
I spent the next 3-6 months in fight or flight. I did everything I was supposed to. I breastfed every night, I went to every mum group, baby check-up, I went back to training at 5 weeks postpartum and started writing down my workouts - I'd already decided to write the first Hatch Athletic postpartum programme. On the outside everything looked right. I lost weight, I became strong and quickly competitive again, I smiled, I swam in the sea. But Ralphie's breastfeeding journey was hellish and I also wasn't sleeping. And I was becoming obsessive about it. People would ask: "how's Ralphie sleeping?" But no one ever asked how I was sleeping. He was always an incredible sleeper. I had raging insomnia. At around 6 months postpartum I'd be lucky if I got 2-3 hours a night, even though Ralph would sleep through. I was also very upset about my new body, I had an abdominal separation and I wasn't adjusting to the aesthetic changes very well. We had money concerns. I didn't have many local friends. A perfect storm had arrived.
I started to have panic attacks, rage attacks. I had trouble regulating my nervous system. It was around this time that I'd proactively sought the support of a psychologist - the early rage attacks had scared me and my husband enough to seek help.
Thank god I had because this is where it got a bit nasty.
I'd get in the car and slam my foot on the pedal, dreaming of driving into a wall. I'd scream until my throat bled. I'd go out at night and wander down to the ocean and tempt myself with a night dip, knowing that really I was toying with doing something drastic. I fantasised about what it would feel like to wade in and be pulled under. One night I got to my ankles. After this episode my psychologist gave me 24hrs of close observation and she said if I didn't accept her pharmaceutical recommendations, she would need to complete a section order. I accepted pharmaceutical help: I was given an antidepressant and a sedative. I started to sleep, but I it wasn't good quality sleep. And nothing helped the darkness, which grew on me like a mould. I felt like a failure, I had to stop breastfeeding now I was on meds, I wasn't glowing like the other mums. I didn't find the trials and tribulations of babies funny — I found them monotonous, lonely, suffocating and didn't see the point. I was angry. In March 2020 I spontaneously took an overdose. Thankfully, it ended in one night in A&E and I was subsequently discharged.
Just for context. The postpartum training programme was now written and this was at the time I was designing the logo for Hatch Athletic's website. I took Ralphie to music class. I trained 5 times a week. I always messaged back, I reached out to friends at home, I made new fledgling friends, I ate well, I enjoyed cooking, we planned a holiday or two. I will say this now: my postnatal depression was everything you wouldn't expect - it was sneaky. It was dark and disgusting. It would come out at night, or in the morning, or at the lonely times. It was definitely not with me at all moments of every day, but it was always there right under the surface - and that surface was one cell deep. And no one had a clue except us, behind closed doors.
At this point I found meditation. I'm gonna say this, and the fact that my husband was at home so much to help with Ralph during the pandemic was my saving grace. And the meds. I started a very rigid schedule of deep, unguided meditation for 20 minutes twice a day and kept it up for at least 2 years at this intensity. It was a non-negotiable. I came off the meds quite quickly and found I could manage things better as long as meditation was always there.
It was at this point, almost a year after Ralph was born that I launched Hatch Athletic for real. At the same time I committed to not only being the most reliable source of evidence-based, healthcare led training for postpartum women, I wanted to be a source of truth and support for women from a mental health standpoint. We started with a buddy system, for every woman to have company and accountability when engaging in our postpartum training. I collected a mental health score out of 10 from every single athlete prior to beginning. I committed to checking this score personally with every single mama who begins Hatch Athletic, and I still do to this very day. Anyone scoring low gets a personal email from me checking in. I also created a community group which quickly grew to over 3000 members. All of these were things I never had, and I think it would've been bloody brilliant to have this when I'd just had Ralph.
So what happened next? I slowly got a bit better every day. It was very slow, I needed to (and still do) meditate every day. On the days I don't, I know about it. I had three losses between Ralph and Maggie - this was a really tough time and again I'm going to say the practice of meditation has kept me on the straight and narrow. I thankfully had a great support team when I got pregnant with my second baby, Maggie, and I also went on a very low dose of antidepressants at the end of my pregnancy with her. Things were much better with her, but then my birth story for her was different and very healing, we moved back to the UK and we had family a little closer by. Who knows what the recipe was, and I definitely have had some low points with Maggie, but never as bad as it was with Ralph.
Hatch Athletic continues to operate successfully and we have launched pregnancy training programmes, an athletes' course, a whole library of education and a world class perinatal coaching certification. We now have a team of 6 at HQ and we have another 8 healthcare professionals who contribute to our specialist content. I'm very proud of what we've achieved, but it's also been a huge cause of stress. Owning my own business and working without boundaries has been stressful, and has meant I've been putting my children in childcare more than I'd like. There have been some very dark weeks and months. There have been days where I've questioned it all, but then I think about the number of women and professionals that we've helped. And always with mental health at the forefront of everything we do.
Growing a team to support me has meant I don't have to do it on my own anymore. It's been such a joy working with others again. I have to give myself permission to not do it perfectly, to drop a ball, or answer an email late, or even just switch the computer off from time to time. The same goes with training - I've taken my foot off the gas. It's not easy, but it's happening more and it's really very liberating.
Ralph is now 6 and Maggie is 3. I love my children and some days (!) I even enjoy being a mum. I'm going to say I still struggle - my inner critic is still in there - I think something shifted in my hormones when I had kids, and it's never quite gone back. I'm much more anxious as a person than I ever used to be. Who'd be a woman?! But there is a deep awareness in my close network, and within myself, and there's so much more self-compassion than there ever used to be. There's also a huge network of women and athletes that I've created myself, and the support they've offered back to me over the years is also something that keeps me going. I'll also let you into a lovely little secret, I'm now so bonded and connected with Ralphie. There was a point where I wondered if I could ever love him (which also made me feel like a failure), but now he's the centre of my world. So I'm gonna say this story has a happy ending.
Many don't. It doesn't really get better without action of some sort. PND doesn't just resolve if you wait long enough. Everyone's action will look different. Be it starting to talk. Starting to exercise. Starting meds. Starting a permanent change - mine was in finding the healing and compassionate powers of meditation. But something's got to change. One small action, one small step. Have a think about what yours could be - and take one small step towards it today. Coming from someone who thought there wasn't a point to it all, I now genuinely believe that life is worth living. That's got to count for something.
Thanks for reading. x
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