Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Mum opens heart to tell of anguish at trying to kill her baby boy
AS she cradled her much longed-for baby son hours after he was born, the new mum felt all the usual excitement and pride.
However, as she told the Tele today, she had a niggling feeling that something was not quite as it should be.
The Dundee mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “I couldn’t put my finger on it but something was different from the time I held my first child four years previously.”
Little did she know then that she was showing the first symptoms of postnatal depression (PND).
Nor did she have any idea that almost a year to the day later, she would attempt to murder her child.
Five years on from that awful moment, the woman has decided to tell her harrowing story in a bid to raise awareness about the “horror” of PND, which led to her trying to smother her own child as he lay helpless in his cot.
She said: “If by telling my story I can highlight the horror that is postnatal depression and prevent at least one other new mum going through the nightmare that I lived, then it will have been worth it.
“To my dying day I will never, ever recover from what I did, knowing that I tried to harm my own baby.
“I had been begging for help, crying out for someone to listen to me. No one did and I nearly killed my own child as a result.”
The woman, who is 38, now has only minimal contact with her children. She explained that she had been told that she would never be able to have a family. When she later became pregnant with her first child, she was absolutely delighted.
And when a second pregnancy came along four years later she couldn’t believe her luck.
However, although her first birth went smoothly, things were not as straightforward the second time around. She eventually delivered a baby boy by caesarean section while under a general anaesthetic.
She said: “Because of the circumstances of the birth my baby was taken away and I didn’t get to see him until six hours later.”
A week later, the woman and her child were sent home but she still felt something was very wrong.
She said: “I didn’t feel I had the bond I should have had with my son. I was permanently exhausted and struggling to look after my children.
“Every time I tried to explain how I was feeling I was told it was normal and that I had the ‘baby blues’.”