The mum who couldn’t bear to cuddle her son – or even pick up anything he’d touched
Jessica was victim of a condition too many doctors don’t understand. And it left her crippled with guilt . . .
LAST week, Jessica Addicott’s seven-year-old son Dougie went to give her a cuddle. As he leaned in, her body became taut and he said: ‘I’ll kiss you on the cheek because I know you don’t like to kiss me back, Mummy.’
It’s a moment that cut Jessica to the core, flooding her with guilt.
The fact she has always struggled to show him affection is hard enough, but that he is beginning to cotton on is, she says, even more painful.
‘It broke my heart,’ says Jessica. ‘I didn’t bond with him at birth and it got worse. By the time he was four, not only did I find it difficult being tactile with him, I struggled to touch his clothes or pick up a cup he’d drunk from.’
The cause of her detachment from her elder child? Ongoing postnatal depression (PND) — the symptoms of which were so severe that this devoted mother-of-two contemplated suicide ‘nearly every day’ during the first six years of Dougie’s life.
That this devastating condition can extend far beyond the first year is not well known, nor widely recognised by GPs.
When a desperate Jessica booked an emergency doctor’s appointment on the day Dougie started school, she was told it couldn’t be PND because that ‘clears up after one or two years’.
‘I asked: “What have I got then?”’ says Jessica. ‘I was having the same suicidal thoughts I’d been having since his birth. I hated myself and felt like I was bullying my own child.’
PND affects up to 15 per cent of women within a year of giving birth. But the impact on a mother can last a lifetime.
The effects on the child, too, can be devastating. A World Health Organisation study highlighted how infants of chronically depressed mothers do not perform as well in thinking and intelligence tests at 18 months. Children of depressed mothers are also said to be more distractible, less playful and less social up to the age of five.
The effects last well into adulthood, with many developing behavioural problems and difficulties sustaining relationships.
‘The term PND is used to describe depression up to a year after birth. But that doesn’t mean the symptoms can’t persist after that,’ says consultant obstetrician in perinatal mental health, Dr Raja Gangopadhyay.
‘Depression during pregnancy is one of the important risk factors of developing PND. Mental health conditions during pregnancy can also affect the foetus, leading to pre-term delivery, growth restriction and developmental delays.
‘That’s why it’s so important midwives and obstetricians address these issues antenatally.’
Yet new NHS figures show that in almost half of the UK, pregnant women and new mothers do not have access to specialist perinatal mental health services.
It’s an issue the Government last week pledged to address, with £365million allocated for specialist services over the next five years.
Experts have long warned that the issue has gone ignored. Thousands never get the support they need, and suicide is still one of the leading causes of death in expectant and new mothers.
Jessica, 25, says that despite her delight at a positive pregnancy test, she felt ‘blank and unemotional’ at the first scan.
‘Dougie’s dad and I had been together two years and Dougie was very much planned. But the sonographer seemed more excited by the image of my baby than me. It really panicked me.’
Then, having wanted a girl, she suffered ‘gender disappointment’ when the next scan revealed a boy.
Dougie was born at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, in August 2009 with Jessica admitting: ‘When I held him for the first time, I felt no bond, no emotion, nothing. I didn’t want any harm to come to him, but I didn’t want him there.’
When transferred to the postnatal ward, she says: ‘A midwife pulled a curtain around me and said: “Give us a buzz if you need anything.” Suddenly I was alone with my baby, feeling panicked.’
Jessica, who was living with her parents at the time, says that with their support — her dad, a policeman, would even do the night bottle feeds — looking after Dougie was relatively easy. But her depression was another matter.
‘Nearly every day I thought about killing myself,’ she says. ‘I didn’t ever try it, but I would daydream about how to do it.’
Dougie was a month old when Jessica sobbed to her mum: ‘I don’t love him, I don’t love him...’
Her mother, a childminder, contacted a health visitor, who told Jessica she had PND and had likely suffered antenatal depression, too.
Her GP prescribed anti-depressants for a short time. There was an 18-month waiting list for counselling so she tried private therapy, which ‘didn’t work out’.
Dougie was 18 months old when his parents split up, in part due to Jessica’s severe depression. And there had been no improvement in her condition by the time he started school. ‘Once I’d dropped him off, I couldn’t stop crying,’ she recalls.
‘I made an emergency doctor’s appointment, where I told the doctor I still had PND. He told me it was impossible, because it clears up after one or two years.
‘No one could tell me what was wrong, so I concluded I wasn’t meant to be a mum.’
But an Australian study says Jessica’s experience is far from unusual. A child turning four is a particularly vulnerable stage for a mother, with more than 14 per cent suffering depression at this point.
That’s when Jessica started making excuses not to cuddle Dougie. She says now: ‘I am worried about the damage my coldness must have done.’
Jessica met new partner Matt, a glass-blower, in January 2014. For the first time she had someone in whom to confide. Within a year the suicidal thoughts had stopped and they have a son, Artie, now one.
At Artie’s birth, Jessica ‘requested skin-to-skin contact and wanted to try breastfeeding at the earliest opportunity’. She says: ‘It all felt really natural.’
The guilt she feels is the disparity in how she has treated her two boys. ‘I am a lot closer to Artie than Dougie. I love them both equally, but am all over one and not the other.’
Jessica now writes a blog and campaigns to raise awareness of ‘detachment from the eldest child syndrome’. She says: ‘Lots of women won’t admit it because they think it’s saying they don’t love their kids. I want to tell them it’s not their fault.’
One such mother was private detective Rebecca Jane, whose
‘I hated myself for not wanting my son there’
sustained PND hit her so hard it is one of the reasons she decided to be sterilised. Then only 28, she was assessed by numerous doctors before getting the go-ahead.
Rebecca, now 31, from Manchester, says: ‘I’d suffered depression after my elder daughter Paris’s birth and it hadn’t gone by the time I got pregnant with her sister Peaches seven years later. I never wanted to risk getting PND again and had the operation when Peaches was one.’
The young mother, who’d never before suffered depression, and her fiance had been together two years when she conceived. They married five months into the pregnancy.
But she cites emotional upheaval as the cause of her problems: ‘At seven months I discovered my husband was having multiple affairs.
‘When I confronted him, he denied it. I was losing my mind; I became totally helpless.’
Convinced she was incapable of caring for a child on her own, she forgave her husband — to the detriment of her mental health.
‘Paris was two-and-a-half weeks overdue and still weighed only 6lb. Doctors said the stress contributed to her low birth weight.’
Like Jessica, Rebecca felt emotionally numb: ‘It was as if someone had given me a baby that wasn’t mine.’
Encouraged to persevere with breastfeeding, which clearly wasn’t working, she says she was left ‘emotionally and physically ruined’ and Paris ‘was screaming hungry’.
‘By day 11, Mum had had enough watching me slumped against the wall crying. She said: “Go to Asda, get some formula milk.”
‘I felt such freedom when I left the house on my own that it hit me how much my life had changed for ever. I didn’t stop crying for days.
‘I started getting suicidal thoughts. I’d spend hours writing letters to Paris, apologising to her for being her mother. I was convinced she would be better off without me.’
Paris was nine months when Rebecca visited the doctor. She was prescribed antidepressants, to which she became addicted for five years. The mother-baby bond suffered: ‘I struggled with cuddling Paris.’
Her daughter was three when Rebecca filed for divorce. She continued to battle PND and reunited with her ‘very first boyfriend’, Ben, within a year. They married and had Peaches, now three.
Rebecca blames ongoing PND — and the trauma of their baby’s birth — for their eventual split six months ago. Rebecca needed an emergency Caesarean and lost 60 per cent of her blood volume. ‘Ben saw everything and it really affected our relationship,’ she says. ‘He came to view me as a maternal figure rather than his wife. Meanwhile, the PND started straight away.’
But she felt spending so much time alone with Peaches in hospital strengthened the bond with her newborn. ‘This time there were no suicidal thoughts, although I was diagnosed with PND. I was adamant I wouldn’t go back on drugs and tried self-help books and online cognitive behavioural therapy. It took another two years for the depression to lift.
‘There’s no doubt my detachment from Paris affected her. She’s quite stand-offish and my parents say she flinches when they try to hug her. ’
Another mother, 34-year-old Hannah Tubb, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is convinced her continuing PND greatly affected her elder daughter, Isabelle, now eight.
‘Isabelle is very anxious and sensitive whereas my second daughter, Charlotte, who’s four, and with whom I had an easier time of it, is confident and self-assured,’ she says.
‘As much as I tried to hide the depression and anxiety from Isabelle, she witnessed me upset on numerous occasions.
‘I get frustrated because she won’t open up to me. I also worry about how jealous she gets of her sister. She’ll say to me: “You always spend time with Charlotte,” or “You always cuddle Charlotte.” I analyse everything and blame myself.’
Hannah, whose husband Dan, 38, works in IT, believes the problems started when Isabelle was born six weeks prematurely and put into special baby care for two weeks.
‘I think the PND started as guilt at not spending more time with my daughter in those early days. I’ve since studied attachment theories and the importance of skin-to-skin contact with newborns. There’s no wonder we’ve both suffered.’
It was eight months before Hannah
Postnatal depresssion can last years
was diagnosed with PND by her GP. She is still on antidepressants eight years on.
Hannah, who is studying psychology and volunteers for the PANDAS Foundation, which provides support for those with perinatal mental illness, says: ‘I’m not sure PND will ever truly leave me. There’s no doubt it shaped the first few years of the children’s lives,’ she explains.
But it’s not all gloom. Not only are doctors becoming better informed about how to treat PND — and ever earlier — but Jenny Burns, perinatal mental health expert for the charity MIND, says such is the brain’s plasticity that all is not lost.
She explains: ‘Attachment issues don’t always result from PND, but if they do and mothers get help to rebuild relationships with their children, bridges can be built.
‘With the right help, they can counteract the effects of even the most enduring postnatal depression.’