Emotional Well-being

The two lines appear, and everyone expects you to be overjoyed. And maybe part of you is. But mostly you feel braced. Frightened. Unable to let yourself believe it might work out this time. Where other people seem to get an innocent, hopeful pregnancy, you got the one where you already know, in your body, exactly what can go wrong. If pregnancy after a loss feels more like holding your breath than celebrating, you are not ungrateful, and you are not doing it wrong. You are ca

For a week or two before your period, you become someone you barely recognise. The world goes dark and heavy. Small things feel unbearable. You might be flooded with anxiety, or rage, or a hopelessness that frightens you. You snap at the people you love, or you cannot stop crying, or you cannot feel anything at all. And then your period arrives, the fog lifts, and you are yourself again, left to survey the wreckage and wonder what on earth just happened. Then a couple of week

It arrives out of nowhere. You are carrying your baby down the stairs, or standing by the bath, or watching them sleep, and a sudden, horrible image or thought flashes through your mind. Something terrible happening to them. Or, worse and harder to admit, something you might do. It is gone as fast as it came, but it leaves you shaken, sick with guilt, and certain you must be the only person in the world who has ever thought such a thing. You are not. And it does not mean what

Most people feel some nervousness about giving birth. That is ordinary. But for some, the fear is a different order of thing entirely. It is the dread that sits in your stomach when a friend announces a pregnancy. It is avoiding the subject of birth altogether because even thinking about it makes your heart race. For some people, it is wanting a child deeply and feeling unable to face the path to having one. If that is closer to your experience, there is a name for it. It is

You are standing in the kitchen at 3am. The baby will not settle, the muslins are somewhere you cannot find, and your partner has just asked, in a perfectly reasonable voice, whether you have tried feeding again. Something in you snaps. A wave of anger comes up so fast and so hot that it frightens you. An hour later, once everyone is finally asleep, you are left wondering what on earth is happening to you. If this sounds familiar, please know two things straight away. You are