When Maisie was around 10 months old, one of my dearest friends and his husband came to visit us. I saw looks between them, and before he left he asked if I was OK. “You don’t seem like our old Em,” he said. By that point, I had also begun to wonder if I was OK. Perhaps my overwhelming anxiety wasn’t the way I was supposed to feel? Maybe constantly hearing crying when your baby was asleep next to you wasn’t just a sign of tiredness?

I went to my GP and gently broached the subject of not feeling great. Once he heard the timeframe, he immediately diagnosed me with PND and put me on antidepressants. I was so relieved, and I couldn’t wait to feel better, to not feel like this all the time. And I did feel better once the antidepressants kicked in… for about 6 weeks. Then the intrusive images started.

The human brain is an astounding thing, and I’ll always be grateful that, for whatever reason mine, despite torturing me, also found a way to ground me. I started to see images of myself dead or dying – lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood or hanging from a tree – but in all of these images there was something that didn’t quite fit the scenario. In the tree image, I was dressed like an extra in Gone With The Wind; in the bathroom image, the entire suite was in avocado green – something anyone who knew me would tell you would never happen. These little details allowed me to understand that they weren’t real; they were intrusive thoughts, and as such we notice, we acknowledge and then we let go.

Despite knowing this, the thoughts never really went, and eventually they came in faster and faster, until every time I blinked I saw them. I became terrified I was going to lose my understanding of what was real and what was not. I showed up to my GP surgery late on a Friday in such a panic the surgery manager took one look at me, took Maisie in her arms and pulled me into a room ahead of all the waiting patients. The GP looked stricken; he’d never dealt with postnatal psychosis before and didn’t know what services were available. My husband was called home from work and instructed to monitor me for any sign of suicidal behaviour; meanwhile, I was prescribed me a heavy dose of anti-psychotic medication and slept for most of the weekend.

“I was so happy to become a mum… then my postnatal psychosis began”