WEEK FIVE

When we first learned of our loss, we were overwhelmed by different options of grievance support.

My mind went straight to the lady who I genuinely believe saved my life and my marriage after experiencing post-natal depression with Charlie. Her name was Sarah and after sourcing numerous counselling support due to high anxiety since the age of 14, I can happily confirm that Sarah was the only one who got through. We spent months getting to know each other, discussing my triggers and calling out negative behaviours – and I had grown and successfully learnt from my mistakes. But now I needed her and no one else would cut it.

After no contact for almost two years, Sarah pulled out all the stops. She immediately jumped to my defence when the midwives left her a voice message, informing her of our loss, not that we had given birth to a little boy named Louis – she was utterly disgusted. She was unable to officially make contact until now (week five) but she had been messaging me regularly, checking in and reminding me that there were immediate options available.

The reunion was bitter sweet, but I’m glad I pushed for Sarah. She knew my past; I didn’t have to tell her where my mind and heart were at and I knew I was going to have to start from the bottom and slowly build my way back up. My confidence was shot, my anxiety was through the roof, I had all the pregnancy hormones and no baby – I was physically heart broken.

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Originally the plan was with the arrival of our new baby, Dave had requested a maximum six weeks of annual leave from work. The way things played out and with my mum coming back and forth, Dave and I agreed that he would return to work three days a week. I wasn’t ready to have Charlie on my own so Dave would stay home on a Monday and Tuesday with the both of us and head into work on the days that Charlie was at day-care.

Because of my history with depression and anxiety I was scared to be on my own with Charlie. What if I couldn’t get out of bed? What if I couldn’t face his tantrums? What if I locked myself in the bathroom and refused to come out? And what would that say about me? As a mother?

This was a common trait of mine – to which I would continue work on with Sarah.

I had gone into a deep place after I had Charlie, yes, we continued to function and I was able to pull myself out of it, but there were several times I experienced what is referred to ‘postpartum rage’.  To those who are unaware of the diagnosis, postpartum rage is when you experience anger, frustration or lose temper easily after having a baby. Apparently, lifestyle changes, changes to your body and other emotions play a role, but I would scream uncontrollably when I felt out of control. When Charlie refused to sleep and continued to scream-cry awake from his cot, when Dave and I stopped communicating, when I was tired – I would scream all the frustration out, I would throw myself to the floor or aggressively throw any objects in my line of sight. It was a dangerous cocktail of emotions and I was petrified of it returning and having no one here to give me the space I needed to recover. This is extremely hard for me to talk about, and most people still don’t know the full details of what we went through, but post losing Louis, my biggest fear was any form of this returning.

Sarah would say to me ‘but what would that look like Maddy?’ ‘if you become the person you’re feeling?’. The truth was I would tell a lot of people to ‘Fuck off!’ But I didn’t want to give in to any form of aggression. I was afraid I would say things I would regret to people who I thought were my friends and family. I didn’t want to act erratically, I wanted to think about what I really wanted and I needed the space to make these decisions clearly.

One decision that had been hanging over my head since before we lost our beautiful boy, was what next year would look like – would Charlie and I return to Nathalia or would we decide to start fresh in Numurkah? To tell the truth I didn’t know what to do but we had to look forward, for Charlie and think about what 2025 would look like for all of us.

To silence some of these words I enrolled Charlie in 3-Year-Old Kinder in both places so I had the option to decide later in the year when I was ready, and it was the best decision I ever made.    

This would also be my first encounter with someone who said something out of the goodness of their hearts but were unaware of our loss. The lady on the phone at Numurkah asked if we also wanted to enrol our baby! She wasn’t to know, but it was what she did next that encouraged me towards their environment, she rang her employee, whom is an old colleague and dear friend of mine and told her to call me. She was utterly mortified and wanted to make sure I was ok and she took things further to made sure I had someone who cared if I needed. This was what I needed in my life, someone who would go the extra mile – as Sarah always had.

Nathalia had meant so much to me and I had made some real friends during my time there but after suffering such a loss, the loss of our little Louis, maybe it was time to say goodbye?