Speaker 1: I was a very very reluctant psychiatric patient.
Speaker 2: As were you embarrassed?
Speaker 3: I was so embarrassed.
Speaker 1: To me, it just felt like complete rock bottom that
Speaker 1: I had ended up there, not just a failure as
Speaker 1: a mother, but a failure as a psychologist to be
Speaker 1: on the other side of the camera, you know, to
Speaker 1: be the one who was being observed.
Speaker 2: From Momama. You're listening to no filter and I'm mea Friedman.
Speaker 2: The first days after having a baby, the first week's,
Speaker 2: first years sometimes can be really hard. But for Ariane Beeston,
Speaker 2: who's my guest today, one day when she was looking
Speaker 2: at her newborn baby, his name was Henry, she didn't
Speaker 2: see a little boy. She saw a dragon, and not
Speaker 2: a cute, happy dragon, but a red faced, angry, threatening dragon.
Speaker 2: That was the moment that arian knew something was really
Speaker 2: wrong and that she shouldn't be seeing what she was seeing,
Speaker 2: but she didn't tell anyone. Meanwhile, other very wrong, very
Speaker 2: scary things were happening too, things that shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 2: A few months later, she would be diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting you may be familiar with postpartum depression.
Speaker 2: I think most people are even if you haven't had
Speaker 2: a baby. But postpartum psychosis is something altogether different, and
Speaker 2: Arianne wasn't familiar with postpartum psychosis either until it happened
Speaker 2: to her, and several years after she recovered, she decided
Speaker 2: to share her story with the world in a wildly
Speaker 2: good memoir called Because I'm Not Myself. You see, it's
Speaker 2: about a woman finding her way out of her darkest
Speaker 2: time after becoming the new mother. There are some laughs
Speaker 2: in this conversation and a lot of hope, but we
Speaker 2: also hear about the hardest moments when Ariane struggled with
Speaker 2: feelings of wanting to end her life. So please listen mindfully.
Speaker 2: I start this conversation by asking arian about a particular
Speaker 2: case that she worked on when she worked as a
Speaker 2: caseworker in child protection, and it was about the story
Speaker 2: of a baby she calls Declin.
Speaker 1: So I was a pretty new caseworker. I hadn't been
Speaker 1: on the child protection team for very long, and we
Speaker 1: received a notification from the helpline that we needed to
Speaker 1: respond immediately the concerns where the parents had had an
Speaker 1: argument in the hospital room where Declan was a patient.
Speaker 1: He'd been admitted to hospital with a cold and a
Speaker 1: little bit of nappy rash, and we responded. We went
Speaker 1: to the hospital and there were concerns around family violence
Speaker 1: and drug and alcohol use, mental health problems. We did
Speaker 1: an assessment and it was determined that day that he
Speaker 1: needed to come into care.
Speaker 2: Because he wasn't safe to go home with his parents.
Speaker 1: He wasn't safe at that point. So oftentimes we needed
Speaker 1: to do that assessment really quickly. We had to make
Speaker 1: decisions fast, and bringing him into care meant that we
Speaker 1: were able to look into the situation a little bit more,
Speaker 1: determine what supports the parents might need, or take the
Speaker 1: case through the children's court, which is what ended up happening.
Speaker 2: You talk about that also calmly, and I assume you
Speaker 2: obviously have to be calm and kind of attached in
Speaker 2: the moment, But I imagine those situations when you're taking children
Speaker 2: from their parents at a time of intense drama in stress. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's actually like in that room when you have to
Speaker 2: tell someone we're going to take you child because we
Speaker 2: don't think he's safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm you're right, there's almost a detached
Speaker 1: calmness talking about it now, But no, I can almost
Speaker 1: feel in that moment, that conversation that needs to happen,
Speaker 1: the actual physical act of taking the child. I talk
Speaker 1: about in the book another example of being in a
Speaker 1: in a police station and yeah, having to take it.
Speaker 1: Think it was an eleven month old baby boy and yeah,
Speaker 1: having to my colleague taking him. And because my colleague
Speaker 1: was holding the baby, the father then went to attack
Speaker 1: me and went to assault me in that moment, And
Speaker 1: it was only that we were in a police station
Speaker 1: surrounded by officers that yeah, probably wasn't physically harmed in
Speaker 1: that moment. And I think I remember, I mean at
Speaker 1: the time, I wasn't a parent, and so I mean
Speaker 1: I could understand intellectually, I suppose what it must have
Speaker 1: been like. But yeah, as a parent reflecting on that time,
Speaker 1: it feels very very different.
Speaker 2: You often when you went into people's houses, you had
Speaker 2: to be accompanied by police officers.
Speaker 1: Yeah safety, Yeah, in a number of situations. I think
Speaker 1: there had been a few incidents as critical incidents as
Speaker 1: prior to my joining the team, and that had certainly
Speaker 1: become more common practice that we were accompanied by police.
Speaker 2: How long did you do this work for? Because it
Speaker 2: sounds incredibly grueling, and we know that child protection workers
Speaker 2: particularly tend to burn out quite quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I worked on the helpline for about eighteen
Speaker 1: months and then I think I was in the field
Speaker 1: for about two years, and then moved into the psychologist's
Speaker 1: position and after that, so working which was a very
Speaker 1: very different role. So you can imagine it wasn't doing
Speaker 1: that frontline work. It was more working with foster cares
Speaker 1: and children who'd been in care and more sort of
Speaker 1: behavior management and yeah, working to support foster cares.
Speaker 2: Tell me how you met Rob.
Speaker 3: It was during a job interview. I was studying.
Speaker 1: I was at university and at the time Rob was
Speaker 1: looking for online moderators and he wanted sort of education
Speaker 1: psychology students to come in and moderate these chat rooms
Speaker 1: because you can imagine remember back in the day, maybe
Speaker 1: little Avatar and you'd go in and yeah, you'd chat
Speaker 1: with with other other people now the teenagers or other people,
Speaker 1: and part of it was, yeah, making sure that there
Speaker 1: was that safety development to it and looking out for
Speaker 1: you know, the cyber sex to remember that was a
Speaker 1: big feature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you were like a virtual bouncer in
Speaker 2: a way.
Speaker 1: So I was an online moderator at Harbor Hotel and
Speaker 1: so he hired me. I turned up for this job interview,
Speaker 1: and that's how we met.
Speaker 2: Like, was it sparks in the job interview? When did
Speaker 2: you start dating?
Speaker 3: It was? Actually, we laugh about it.
Speaker 1: There was definitely a definitely an instant connection and a
Speaker 1: lot of the funny part about that job was it
Speaker 1: was mostly remote sort of even back in it, we
Speaker 1: were doing remote work that was all shifts from home
Speaker 1: and around the clock, so we didn't actually have a
Speaker 1: huge amount to do with each other until sort of
Speaker 1: later on and he'd moved into a more senior role,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we sort of we had developed a really
Speaker 1: strong friendship first and then it, yeah, developed from there.
Speaker 2: So you guys were dating and together when you were
Speaker 2: working in child protection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we had just moved in together.
Speaker 2: So did you always know you wanted to become a mother?
Speaker 3: I always wanted to be a mom.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm the eldest of four, and yeah, I grew up
Speaker 1: into the chaos of having a big family and lots
Speaker 1: of siblings and lots of noise and lots of friends
Speaker 1: over and there was always a exture of people in
Speaker 1: the house. And yeah, I always always wanted to be
Speaker 1: a mom. Always wanted to have two.
Speaker 3: I had it all planned.
Speaker 1: I was going to have my first child at twenty eight,
Speaker 1: my second child at thirty, and I was going to
Speaker 1: get on with my career.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was all sort of.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how it worked out. Yeah, spoiler alert, it
Speaker 2: didn't plot Twiss. Tell me about finding out that you
Speaker 2: were pregnant. Did you get pregnant easily?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the easiest part me. When I talk
Speaker 1: about this story, like the act, that was Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the easy part. And in a way it was
Speaker 1: it was unexpected. I think we were surrounded at that
Speaker 1: time by people who seemed to be having problems falling
Speaker 1: pregnant and fertility problems, and and so I think we
Speaker 1: assumed that, you know, it might take six to twelve months,
Speaker 1: and better kind of get it, get ahead, start just
Speaker 1: in case it did. And yeah, I think we felt
Speaker 1: pregnant first go. So it was a bit of a
Speaker 1: bit of a surprise that it happened so fast.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your pregnancy. You write that some of
Speaker 2: the ghosts of your very intense ballet training you've been
Speaker 2: a dancer when you were younger, came back to haunt
Speaker 2: you during pregnancy, like the tracking and the monitoring and
Speaker 2: the obsessing tell me about that.
Speaker 1: So I always wanted to be a ballerina and trained
Speaker 1: all the way through my teenage years. And I was
Speaker 1: too short to be a ballet dancer, which is not
Speaker 1: something you know, most people think about dancers and the
Speaker 1: kind of thin that's the aesthetic ideal that people think about.
Speaker 1: But there's also very strict kind of parameters around height.
Speaker 1: So I think the perfect hide is one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five to about one hundred and seventy five. It
Speaker 1: might be different now, but yeah, I stopped growing. I
Speaker 1: was five foot one. I was also too muscular. I
Speaker 1: had very muscular, muscular legs, and yeah, I was I
Speaker 1: just was all wrong. So yeah, those those adolescent years
Speaker 1: were spent really trying to mold and change my body
Speaker 1: to fit this aesthetic ideal that I just was never
Speaker 1: able to achieve, or not to achieve in a healthy way.
Speaker 2: Well, you can starve yourself thinner, but you can't starve
Speaker 2: yourself taller.
Speaker 3: No, And that was that was the problem.
Speaker 1: There's only so much you can do, and I think
Speaker 1: once I sort of realized that there was nothing I
Speaker 1: could really do, like I was never going to be
Speaker 1: the aesthetic ideal. I mean, it was a heartbreak, it
Speaker 1: was a it was a grief and I very much
Speaker 1: sort of put that aspect of my life behind me,
Speaker 1: and yeah, decided I was going to throw myself into
Speaker 1: into study and psychology and completely.
Speaker 3: Changed my life track.
Speaker 1: But as we know for a lot of women, perinatal
Speaker 1: period is when those disordered eating habits can either happen
Speaker 1: for the first time or can reappear. And I really
Speaker 1: struggled with I really really struggled with my changing body.
Speaker 1: I really struggled with how I felt in my skin.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel Yeah, I didn't feel beautiful. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like I was glowing. I just felt all wrong.
Speaker 1: And for me, it definitely stirred that, like he said,
Speaker 1: beautifully before those ghosts, Yeah, sort of stirred that dormant beast.
Speaker 1: And I, yeah, really really struggled with eating and trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, wrestling with those ideas of you know, the
Speaker 1: baby needs to be healthy and you want to do everything,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, yeah, really not feeling good
Speaker 1: about myself.
Speaker 2: You also started to think or obsess or feel very
Speaker 2: anxious about birth defects. Yeah, and you were very specific
Speaker 2: in the birth defect that you were concerned. Can you
Speaker 2: tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was reflecting on this recently, and I wonder
Speaker 1: whether at the time, obviously I was still watching a
Speaker 1: lot of commercial TV, and there was the ad a
Speaker 1: lot at the time for the Elevant you know, the
Speaker 1: prenatal vitamins and like Folllate.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of obsession around about foll Aight. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was pregnant. It was this idea
Speaker 2: of you need to start taking fullate before you get pregnant,
Speaker 2: because that's that's you know, in those first few weeks.
Speaker 3: Is it's those first few years that's really true.
Speaker 2: When most women don't even know they're pregnant.
Speaker 3: No, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that stuck somewhere in my mind, obviously,
Speaker 1: and that's what the anxiety latched onto. So and I
Speaker 1: think too, because I'd fallen, we'd fallen pregnant so quickly,
Speaker 1: I did worry or maybe I hadn't taken the folllight
Speaker 1: or I hadn't taken enough vitamins before falling pregnant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I became really fixated that he had till the baby
Speaker 1: had some kind of neural tube defect and that I
Speaker 1: would be told at the twenty week scan that there
Speaker 1: was something wrong with him. Yeah, I just I didn't
Speaker 1: feel that I was able to bond or attach at
Speaker 1: all during pregnancy because I just assumed that something was going.
Speaker 2: To go wrong. Yeah, that was what happened at that
Speaker 2: twenty week scan. Those scans are awful. I hated all
Speaker 2: my scans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a stressful one, that that twenty week scan.
Speaker 2: Sc anxiety they call it anxiety.
Speaker 1: Him and he was fine, and remember the yeah obstetricians
Speaker 1: saying everything, everything looks good, and yeah, he was healthy.
Speaker 1: And I remember it was almost at that moment when
Speaker 1: the anxiety sort of folded in on itself and then
Speaker 1: it just became I mean, what I now know was
Speaker 1: an antenatal depression, but I didn't certainly didn't have the
Speaker 1: language or to describe it as such at the time.
Speaker 1: And I think because it was like qualitatively very different
Speaker 1: to what happened postpartum, mean that it was a real
Speaker 1: sort of absence of emotion and a real everything just
Speaker 1: seemed very strict of color. Everything was gray. This is
Speaker 1: towards the end of the pregnancy, which just felt so
Speaker 1: strange and out of step with what I had expected
Speaker 1: it to be like and what society almost tells you.
Speaker 2: Had you experienced depression or anxiety before tea?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question. Yes, I think so. Had I
Speaker 1: been clinically diagnosed and treated for it?
Speaker 2: No, so you weren't on any medication. You didn't have
Speaker 2: the language of oh, this is my anxiety. It was
Speaker 2: more there's something wrong with my baby. I hate my body.
Speaker 3: I feel exactly, I feel flat or flat. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: For me, I had definitely experienced We talked earlier about
Speaker 1: huge op protection work and those periods of just burnout,
Speaker 1: and I think I had written off those periods of
Speaker 1: feeling flat and down as I'm just really burnt out,
Speaker 1: rather than I'm clinically depressed. So yeah, certainly, retrospectively, I
Speaker 1: could say, yeah, I certainly had had periods of anxiety
Speaker 1: and depression, which then placed me at higher risk. Obviously postpartum,
Speaker 1: as we know when.
Speaker 2: You were pregnant and you were feeling this way, the
Speaker 2: fears and the flatness, could you tell anyone? Could you
Speaker 2: talk to Rob about it or any of your girlfriends,
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of pressure to are you so excited?
Speaker 2: Is this the best thing that's ever happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't say a word. I didn't say a word.
Speaker 1: I put on my performance ace, and yeah, I just sort.
Speaker 2: Of performed pregnancy performed excited. I did expect it.
Speaker 1: And I think I was the first in our sort
Speaker 1: of friends group to have a baby, so I didn't
Speaker 1: really have a lot to compare it to. And so again, yeah,
Speaker 1: have that kind of chorus of voices of women who
Speaker 1: are excited to you but haven't gone through it themselves,
Speaker 1: and the days sort of you know, oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: must be so excited, and the anticipation, but yeah, not
Speaker 1: not not not having gone through it themselves, they didn't.
Speaker 1: I think have that perspective as well, that as we
Speaker 1: know when you've gone through it, you tend to be
Speaker 1: a bit more measured in how you ask pregnant women
Speaker 1: how they're feeling or what their experience is like, because
Speaker 1: we know it's not always blissful and a lot of
Speaker 1: women spend nine months with their head down the toilet
Speaker 1: and it can be miserable and there's a lot of pressure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to feel grateful and blessed.
Speaker 2: And Henry was born and placed in your arms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did you feel.
Speaker 2: In that moment, and what did you expect to feel
Speaker 2: in that moment.
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember feeling it was almost like an
Speaker 1: out of body experience.
Speaker 3: I remember looking down at him.
Speaker 1: And and I'm very little, and the whole way through pregnancy,
Speaker 1: I'd been told, you know, he's measuring small, he's little,
Speaker 1: he's really little. We're worried about his growth. And he
Speaker 1: was placed on me and he was actually big. He
Speaker 1: was very healthy. I think three point four kilos.
Speaker 2: Wow, which is that's a sizeable baby.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a large boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the kind of it didn't the baby
Speaker 1: and we talk women talk about this a lot, with
Speaker 1: the baby you imagine during your pregnancy and then the
Speaker 1: baby that you have of two very different things. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I just remember him being much bigger and
Speaker 1: much heavier, you.
Speaker 3: Know, on my on my chest than I had expected.
Speaker 1: And I remember, I mean, there's so much pressure to
Speaker 1: feel that rush of love, or you expect to feel
Speaker 1: that rush of love at first sight, that suddenly life
Speaker 1: in the universe and everything will make sense in that moment,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't feel anything. It was just this
Speaker 1: very strange sense of nothing. And I've since learned that
Speaker 1: that's actually very very common, that that almost powerful sense
Speaker 1: of indifference to when when women see their baby for
Speaker 1: the first time. It's indifference. Nothing, not necessarily positive, not
Speaker 1: necessarily negative, just oh well, what is this little stranger,
Speaker 1: this little person who I've housed for nine months and
Speaker 1: now they're here? And yeah, oftentimes you women go through
Speaker 1: when they go through a traumatic birth as well, and
Speaker 1: that that experience just isn't what they expect, and it
Speaker 1: can be quite distressing, I think for a lot of
Speaker 1: women when they expect to feel that rush of love
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't arrive.
Speaker 2: You're right, so beautifully in your book. Wrenched from between
Speaker 2: my legs, Henry's now under my chin, the midwife grabs
Speaker 2: my breast, places the baby's mouth around it, and I
Speaker 2: lie there, shocked, depleted, a new citizen of what the
Speaker 2: poet is very calls the republic of motherhood. I wait
Speaker 2: for the love to come. I wait for the moments
Speaker 2: they show in movies, the scenes I've read in books.
Speaker 2: I look at this boy, this perfect crying boy, and
Speaker 2: I feel nothing. Nothing you talked about when you're working
Speaker 2: with babies, you didn't know much like I'm out of
Speaker 2: my depth. What do I know about babies? And then
Speaker 2: someone gives you one and asks you to take care
Speaker 2: of your own. And I know there's a moment I
Speaker 2: think for every new parent when you're driving away from
Speaker 2: the hospital and you're like, are they just gonna let
Speaker 2: us collect me go home with this baby?
Speaker 3: Like I need a note?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I asked me what FID Like I don't know
Speaker 2: what to do? How can we be legal?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly, it does feel a little bit. Did you
Speaker 3: check all about.
Speaker 2: After this shortbreak? Arion brings Henry home and tries to
Speaker 2: begin well motherhood, but things do not go to plan.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. When you got home, in those first
Speaker 2: few days adjusting after Henry was born, how did you feel, like?
Speaker 2: What are your memory of those days or is it
Speaker 2: just a blank?
Speaker 3: It is a bit of a blank.
Speaker 1: And I know I say that because I know that
Speaker 1: it was probably about day four or day five that
Speaker 1: the first psychotic symptoms for me started to show. I
Speaker 1: remember the slow drive home from hospital, which is again
Speaker 1: a really universal experience in partnersad were going really slowly
Speaker 1: with your precious cargo.
Speaker 2: The world seems very dangerous and full of threat.
Speaker 1: Every year exactly, and that even if it's a short
Speaker 1: drive home. Yeah, it's a very universal feeling. A lot
Speaker 1: of people can relate to that. I remember, again a
Speaker 1: common experience if you get home and what do we
Speaker 1: do now? But also managing the rush of visitors as well,
Speaker 1: and everybody wants to come to hold the baby, and
Speaker 1: the baby so again wrenched out of your arms and
Speaker 1: passed around and people often mean well, but again don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know how to help or how to be useful,
Speaker 1: and so you're there sort of entertaining people as well.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of pressure, Yeah, a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think a lot of women decide
Speaker 1: for their second or subsequent babies that they're going to
Speaker 1: do things very very different.
Speaker 2: On the fourth day, you were changing Henry's nappy. What happened?
Speaker 1: I was changing here snappy was in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, as you do, and he had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a nappy rash, which is very common, especially
Speaker 1: for newborns.
Speaker 3: They get nappy rash.
Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, in that moment, my brain connected
Speaker 1: it with the cases that I had worked in child
Speaker 1: protection and baby Declan who had a bit of nappy
Speaker 1: rash and who we had taken into care, not for
Speaker 1: that reason, and I had the first of the psychotic symptoms,
Speaker 1: which was the false belief or the delusion that somehow
Speaker 1: dogs or child protection would know that he had this
Speaker 1: nappy rash and that they were going to come and
Speaker 1: remove him. They were going to come and take him away.
Speaker 1: And I knew that because I had done that myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was a very powerful sense of I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a paranoia or a sense of that I
Speaker 1: was being under surveillance and that they would know and
Speaker 1: he was going to come.
Speaker 2: And when you say, because some people listening to this
Speaker 2: might think, oh, yeah, maybe you were just having you know,
Speaker 2: new sort of sympathy or empathy for that mother and
Speaker 2: what it must have been like for her, and wouldn't
Speaker 2: it be awful? Because sometimes we play out these hypotheticals,
Speaker 2: right like what would happen if I accidentally dropped the baby?
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be terrible? Or you know, you're very.
Speaker 3: Alert those intrusive thoughts. Yeah, very common, Yeah, intrusive thoughts.
Speaker 2: But a day or so later, there was a knock
Speaker 2: at the door unexpectedly. What did you do? How did
Speaker 2: you react to that?
Speaker 1: I lay down flat on the floor in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and I waited until whoever it was left, and I
Speaker 1: remember my heart just pounding into the floor. Yeah and yeah,
Speaker 1: just assuming that it was so workers coming to take him, because.
Speaker 2: We all have irrational anxiety sometimes or fears, I guess,
Speaker 2: but this was more a certainty, like you just knew
Speaker 2: that that was what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: I was just waiting. I was waiting for it to happen.
Speaker 1: It was inevitable.
Speaker 2: It was inevitable. It was just your body was reacting
Speaker 2: as though someone was actually on their way to take
Speaker 2: your baby. Yes, did you tell Rob?
Speaker 1: I it's interesting we have very different memories of this time.
Speaker 3: And I mean memoirs tough, isn't it me?
Speaker 1: I mean you've written memoir and when you're sort of
Speaker 1: digging back and collecting those snippets of memories to check
Speaker 1: your own. Yeah, I think he has sort of memories
Speaker 1: of me. Almost what we now know is almost sort
Speaker 1: of trying throwing little things out like I wanted someone
Speaker 1: to ask or probe, but I wasn't ready to. And
Speaker 1: actually part of that was not so much around docs
Speaker 1: coming to remove him, but I was very concerned about
Speaker 1: the rash and not I didn't vocalize that I was
Speaker 1: worried about docs coming, but I was obviously very very
Speaker 1: worried about it, and out of proportion worried about it.
Speaker 1: And he was traveling a bit for work, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we can laugh at it now, but he has memories
Speaker 1: of sitting, you know, at a boardroom in LA He
Speaker 1: was working for the Walt Disney Company for Club Penguin
Speaker 1: at the time, and as memories of opening up his
Speaker 1: phone and just me sending him picture after picture of
Speaker 1: this rash and just saying, it's really bad. Isn't it
Speaker 1: like there's something really wrong. It's really really bad, and
Speaker 1: Rob just thinking that I was just anxious and just
Speaker 1: trying to reassure me. And you know, it looks okay.
Speaker 1: Have you used the cream? And have you given him
Speaker 1: some nappy free time? Saying all the right things because
Speaker 1: he's beautiful. But it was more around I started to
Speaker 1: have these halloosin nations where I found it really difficult
Speaker 1: to make out what Henry looked like, and his face
Speaker 1: just never looked right to me. I could never make
Speaker 1: out the features of his face, really hard to articulate now,
Speaker 1: and I would sometimes would see him as a little dragon,
Speaker 1: so I would hallucinate and he would just be this
Speaker 1: little dragon, not like, isn't.
Speaker 2: He a cute little dragon? But actually physically look like
Speaker 2: a drag. His face would look like a dragon's face.
Speaker 2: Was it a friendly dragon?
Speaker 3: Mostly? No, some more friendly than others.
Speaker 1: I remember particularly scary relapse, and it was a very
Speaker 1: angry red dragon.
Speaker 2: What did you do when he looked like a dragon?
Speaker 1: I mean, you do start to question your sanity? What's
Speaker 1: am I seeing things? Am I just really hired? Surely
Speaker 1: I didn't see that? Surely not? And then when it
Speaker 1: became more frequent, I knew something wasn't right. But I
Speaker 1: was also a newly registered psychologist. I was a mental
Speaker 1: health professional, and I was really worried that if I
Speaker 1: spoke up, if I was too honest about what was
Speaker 1: going on and some of those things that were happening,
Speaker 1: that they might take away my registration, my ability to practice,
Speaker 1: that I might never be able to work again.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that you don't say you're worried they'd
Speaker 2: take away your baby.
Speaker 1: No. At that point, the early delusions around the removals, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was sort of more early on, and then it
Speaker 1: definitely morphed into the hallucinations and the sense that I
Speaker 1: had died as well, that I was dead and that
Speaker 1: I never actually existed. I wasn't real, and if I
Speaker 1: was dead, then it wouldn't matter if I took my
Speaker 1: own life because I never existed in the first place.
Speaker 1: I was never real, no one would miss me, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would get stuck on that loop of thought
Speaker 1: about never actually existing.
Speaker 2: That must have been so terrifying.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It's actually one of the most difficult things to even
Speaker 1: still talk about. I think everything else is sort of
Speaker 1: I can reflect on, almost clinically with a bit of distance,
Speaker 1: but that feeling of being confused about whether or not
Speaker 1: I was alive or dead and what that would mean if, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I actually did take my own life, by that point,
Speaker 1: I had become very suicidal, and that almost that canceled
Speaker 1: that out. And so you can see, I think why
Speaker 1: or how dangerous it can be when you get stuck
Speaker 1: on these loops of thought around suicidality, because to me,
Speaker 1: it just made complete sense. It wouldn't matter because I
Speaker 1: was dead anyway, I didn't exist, I never existed.
Speaker 2: When you had these delusions when Henry became a dragon,
Speaker 2: when you thought that you were alive, Were you always
Speaker 2: alone or was there sometimes rather to.
Speaker 1: Be I tended to be mere, which is really which
Speaker 1: is quite interesting. I feel like I came into existence
Speaker 1: when when other people were around, because you can sort
Speaker 1: of relate, you know, when someone else is there.
Speaker 2: It's like Rob's talking to me, I must be alive
Speaker 2: exactly when he wasn't exactly.
Speaker 1: And those the most powerful memories of of not forlfeeling
Speaker 1: like not existing, tended to be when I was alone,
Speaker 1: or when I was pushing the pram and yeah, just
Speaker 1: pushing a pram as you do around the back streets.
Speaker 1: And I would sit there sometimes in the playground and
Speaker 1: take photos of my feet just to prove that I existed.
Speaker 1: And I would look at these photos and it was
Speaker 1: just pictures of my shoes to make sure that they
Speaker 1: came up in the in the pictures, just to.
Speaker 3: Prove that I was real.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it was on my feet, but
Speaker 1: I have, yeah, hundreds of pictures of just my feet
Speaker 1: that Rob saved in a file somewhere because it's like
Speaker 1: you might want to look at those one day. Part
Speaker 1: of your story.
Speaker 2: How old was Henry by now? Over what period of
Speaker 2: time was this happening, and had you still not told anybody?
Speaker 1: By six months it was too hard to hide. Not
Speaker 1: so much what was going gone in my head with
Speaker 1: the delusions and the hallucinations, but the physical aspects of
Speaker 1: the depression had become really obvious by then. So I
Speaker 1: was very I had no appetite, I couldn't sleep, and
Speaker 1: I was just vacant. There was nothing there behind my eyes.
Speaker 3: The light had gone.
Speaker 1: It was very obvious to people around me that something
Speaker 1: wasn't right. And Rob went overseas for work, and the
Speaker 1: moment he left that particular day, something just broke and
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop crying. And it was the first time
Speaker 1: where I hadn't been able to kind of regulate my
Speaker 1: own emotions around the baby. I think up until that
Speaker 1: point I had been able to keep it together.
Speaker 2: For him and perform motherhood and.
Speaker 1: Perform motherhood, and I couldn't perform anymore. I was just
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop crying. And so that's when, yeah, I
Speaker 1: went to seek help for the first time.
Speaker 2: What did that look like?
Speaker 1: That looked like Initially being sent to a male psychiatrist
Speaker 1: who just wasn't the right fit came highly recommended, but
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what it's like you've been with
Speaker 1: over the years.
Speaker 3: I'm sure different. You have to have a few professionals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but did someone straight away say to you postnatal depression?
Speaker 2: I mean, I know that you took the standard screening
Speaker 2: test for post natal depression pretty soon after Henry was born,
Speaker 2: but you passed that with flying colors.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, how did you slip through the net in that
Speaker 2: six months or is it something that hit later or
Speaker 2: is it about your performance that you were just so
Speaker 2: good at performing?
Speaker 1: Some of it was performance, some of it was as
Speaker 1: a mental health professional. I knew what to say and
Speaker 1: what not to say. I knew what boxes or what
Speaker 1: things to circle and what not to circle.
Speaker 2: I knew he lied yes to escape detection.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not uncommon. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of women later sort of almost fess up
Speaker 1: and say, oh I lied on that test too.
Speaker 3: I lied.
Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely at that early mark, I evaded detection.
Speaker 2: Well, so Rob goes overseas you're you fall apart? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you go to the doctor.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: I imagine it's hard, particularly if you're not being completely
Speaker 2: truthful yet. Yes, How what's then the path to being
Speaker 2: admitted to hospital.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the psychiatric unit.
Speaker 1: So the psychiatrist I had seen just wasn't the right fit.
Speaker 1: He went in, I think with the assumption that you're, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're a psychologist, have you tried these strategies? And to
Speaker 1: me that sounded like, oh, you're a psychologist, have you
Speaker 1: tried to fix Why haven't you fixed yourself yet?
Speaker 3: Sure, he didn't mean it that way.
Speaker 2: It felt shaming. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And by that point I had tried an SSRI,
Speaker 1: so an antidepressant. It wasn't working. Again, I was I
Speaker 1: had become increasingly suicidal. I had no sort of safety
Speaker 1: net of a good psychologist or psychiatrist. At that point,
Speaker 1: it just became Yeah, I guess I needed more intense support.
Speaker 1: I needed someone to do a proper assessment, medication review,
Speaker 1: and yeah, just to get that almost like yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a bubble almost, those units, other baby units. You
Speaker 1: go in and you're sort of a little bit protected
Speaker 1: from the world and from the stresses of the outside
Speaker 1: world in a way where you can focus on just recovery,
Speaker 1: bonding with your baby and getting help around mothercraft and
Speaker 1: those sorts of things, and also filing different medications under
Speaker 1: supervision watching out for those side effects.
Speaker 2: And the idea is keeping the keeping the baby with
Speaker 2: the mother.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, exactly, which.
Speaker 2: Is interesting because most people would think, oh, you would
Speaker 2: want to separate the baby and the mother, so to
Speaker 2: give the mother a rest and also to protect the baby.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1: But know these units, I mean, we know that if
Speaker 1: it's safe to do so, if it's safe to keep
Speaker 1: mum and baby together it's a treatment, then that's where
Speaker 1: they should be.
Speaker 2: Arian Can I ask you a really hard question, did
Speaker 2: you ever think about hurting Henry or yourself?
Speaker 3: Never? Never thought about.
Speaker 2: It, even when he was a dragon, even.
Speaker 1: When he was a dragon. No, that was never. It
Speaker 1: was always about myself, It was never about never about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's why it was established that you were
Speaker 2: not a danger to him. Yeah, and as long as
Speaker 2: you were safe in hospital, he could be with you.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: And there are situations where women do have to be
Speaker 1: separated and put in hospital by themselves, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: for me, it was determined that the best place for
Speaker 1: us was to be admitted together.
Speaker 2: When we return, we hear about the help that Arianne
Speaker 2: received in hospital and when she finally felt the clouds
Speaker 2: begin to part stay with us. There was a particular
Speaker 2: turning point for you? Henry was now about nine months old.
Speaker 2: What was the turning point in the hospital.
Speaker 1: I was a very very reluctant psychiatric patient, very reluctant.
Speaker 3: As were you.
Speaker 2: Embarrassed.
Speaker 1: I was so embarrassed it was absolute to me. It
Speaker 1: just felt like complete rock bottom that I had ended
Speaker 1: up there, not just a failure as a mother, but
Speaker 1: a failure as a mental health professional, as a psychologist
Speaker 1: and someone who had worked in a similar space. To
Speaker 1: be on the other side of the camera, you know,
Speaker 1: to be the one who is being observed and watched
Speaker 1: was very shameful.
Speaker 2: Can you explain that because literally you had to be
Speaker 2: observed interacting with Henry to make sure that you were
Speaker 2: not a danger to him.
Speaker 1: I think so in that context, it wasn't so much
Speaker 1: about being danger. I think that that episode wasn't so
Speaker 1: much about safety. That was more about part of being admitted.
Speaker 1: A lot of women come in and they are having
Speaker 1: issues around attachment and bonding, and for a lot of women,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sort of we expect that to come naturally,
Speaker 1: that you should just know how to relate to your
Speaker 1: baby and we know that's not the case. A lot
Speaker 1: of women have to learn how to respond to their baby.
Speaker 1: So that was part of being admitted. Part of the
Speaker 1: program was that you would be filmed interacting with your baby,
Speaker 1: and so the nurses would basically watch you in a
Speaker 1: one on one scenario and then they would give you
Speaker 1: feedback basically that, yeah.
Speaker 2: Talk about a performance review under pressure Exactually.
Speaker 1: It's actually and yeah, I was able to perform you know,
Speaker 1: motherhood on command. But it was a very humbling experience
Speaker 1: to be on the other side. But you asked me
Speaker 1: about the turning point, and I tell this story about
Speaker 1: being observed because a lot of that is about looking
Speaker 1: at attachment and attachment behaviors. And when I went into hospital,
Speaker 1: I was very concerned that Henry and I hadn't developed
Speaker 1: that attachment and that bond. And I felt that he
Speaker 1: and I used this language actually in the notes that
Speaker 1: I've read, he doesn't like me, he doesn't need me,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want me. Just a real sense of yeah,
Speaker 1: that that wasn't happening. And each day we had to
Speaker 1: go to we had to do group therapy, and the
Speaker 1: babies would go into a nursery to be looked after
Speaker 1: by the staff to give us a break while we
Speaker 1: did our therapy, and I remember he would have been
Speaker 1: here about nine months, and I gave him to one
Speaker 1: of the nurses and he started to cry, and he
Speaker 1: started to show those behaviors of not wanting to be
Speaker 1: deporated and sort of reached reached out to me, and
Speaker 1: one of the other women I was in there with said, oh,
Speaker 1: that my heart breaks, you know that that's so sad,
Speaker 1: and I remember saying, no, this is great, Like this means.
Speaker 3: That he misses me. This means that.
Speaker 1: He he you know, he does love me, does need me,
Speaker 1: and that he knows that I'm his mom and he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to just go to anyone. And through the
Speaker 1: act of handing him over to a stranger and him
Speaker 1: reaching out to me was just this really powerful moment
Speaker 1: of no, it's it's it's okay, like it's there. And
Speaker 1: I remember going off to therapy and then coming back
Speaker 1: and opening the child gate in the nursery and him
Speaker 1: just crawling towards me with this big beaming smile and
Speaker 1: me picking him up and just feeling like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is what everybody this is that feeling, This is
Speaker 1: what everybody talks about, and I just remember being completely
Speaker 1: just smitten and yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: Before that, it's like, that's the performance review you needed. Yes,
Speaker 2: before that. How did you feel about him? Did you
Speaker 2: like him? Did you love him? Did you were you
Speaker 2: kind of just indifferent to him? Did you were you
Speaker 2: angry at him? How did you feel about him?
Speaker 1: It's a really great question. I felt definitely a sense
Speaker 1: of that I wanted to protect him, and you know
Speaker 1: that that's that sense of intense responsibility that comes with
Speaker 1: motherhood and parenthood.
Speaker 2: Did you like him?
Speaker 1: I think I did like him. I did like I
Speaker 1: found him fascinating. But I just kept waiting for that
Speaker 1: feeling that everybody helped about. And I remember a doctor
Speaker 1: explaining to me at some point it's like it's there, Aria,
Speaker 1: and the feeling is there. It's there, it's just you're
Speaker 1: not well and it will come. Yeah, So I felt
Speaker 1: like it's in there, it's just buried. And it was
Speaker 1: that moment in hospital when he had that big smile
Speaker 1: and that I don't want to be separated because you're
Speaker 1: my mom, and yeah, that was the rash. That was
Speaker 1: the movie moment. It just came nine months later.
Speaker 2: And in the movie that would be like the closing credit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can hear the music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it would be.
Speaker 3: Like hanging the baby exactly.
Speaker 2: You're gazing into each other's eyes and it would be beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What actually happened over the next few months you got
Speaker 2: out of hospital. That must have been a relief.
Speaker 3: It was a relief. I really struggled.
Speaker 2: Did the medication work to take away the hallucinations and
Speaker 2: the psychiotgist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by then we'd sort of come up with the
Speaker 1: right medication. I was referred to a brilliant perinatal psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: doctor Q, and she was the first person who looked
Speaker 1: at all of the different sort of I amassed all
Speaker 1: of these different clinicians and their notes and their kind
Speaker 1: of assessments. And she was the first person who looked
Speaker 1: at everything and just thought, there's something not right here,
Speaker 1: There's something that doesn't add up. And she was the
Speaker 1: first person who said, no, you had a psychotic depression.
Speaker 3: I was the first person to explain.
Speaker 2: There's even more to Arian's story, and you can hear
Speaker 2: the rest of it in part two, where she tells
Speaker 2: me what a diagnosis of psychosis means, what life was
Speaker 2: like after she was discharged from the hospital, how she
Speaker 2: learnt to trust spending time with Henry, and how things
Speaker 2: went again horribly wrong before she finally turned a corner
Speaker 2: to where she is now. You can find the link
Speaker 2: to part two in the show notes, and that's where
Speaker 2: you'll also find links to some support services that Arianne
Speaker 2: has provided us. If this conversation has brought up some
Speaker 2: issues for you and you think you might need some help,