I felt anguish of being a lonely mum, just like Kate

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OST-natal depression is now, thankfully, a well-recognised phenomenon. But when the Duchess of Cambridge t alked the other day about the isolation she experienced as a new mother, she will have spoken for many women on a less familiar subject. She certainly did for me.

There you are, gazing down at the swathed bundle you most likely had been delighted and excited to bring into the world, wishing you felt joyful and fulfilled but instead feeling swamped by uncertainty, fear, frustration and loneliness.

And to cap it all, you don’t think that it would be somehow ‘right’ to discuss this. It seems self-indulgent, ungrateful, unmaternal even, to reveal these emotions as visitors come to pay homage, bearing gifts of woolly hats, knitted bears and maybe bath oil for you.

Or, as in the case of the Duchess, who found herself with the newborn Prince George i n Anglesey, new mothers can often be far from friends and family and therefore would have to share their feelings with people they scarcely know.

The other day I visited a young friend who had just given birth. I di s covered her crouched silently in the corner of her baby’s darkened bedroom, black circles ringing her eyes, desperate that her child didn’t wake up but unwilling to leave the room, so worried was she about leaving her newborn alone. What might happen? What could happen? So many things. All so terrifying.

It reminded me of feeling the same way when I had my child. We had moved into a new area. My husband was working and I was alone much of the time. Few of my friends had small babies, the house seemed stiflingly silent (bar my son’s crying) and both the days and the nights felt endless. Many people had told me about how life would change for ever but they hadn’t mentioned the anxiety of being in charge of your first baby. I remember thinking that I couldn’t imagine how I would ever feel confident letting him out of my sight.

It was such a contrast to how I had imagined this period would be. Although there were conversations about being exhausted, I don’t remember talking to anyone about how lonely I felt pushing a stroller down the empty suburban streets, missing, as I never imagined I would, my usual people-filled office life with all its demands and pressures. I would have liked knowing that there were many others feeling the same way.