Monkey Chatter

Yesterday was Parents Mental Health Day. Parenting can be such a dichotomy of feelings. It’s the best feeling in the world but can also be so tough, especially if you don’t have adequate support around you. The reality is a lot of us are raising families without a village and that’s hard. A lot of parents struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD and it can make you feel so lonely. Like you’re the only one going through it.

 

Even if you don’t have a diagnosis, it can still be lonely and exhausting and overwhelming. Taking care of yourself becomes low on the list of priorities. Your relationship with your spouse can suffer because suddenly there’s not that time there anymore. You’re running on little sleep and taking care of a child, or multiple children, while trying to balance all the other things that society says we ‘should’ do. It’s really hard when you can’t get a break. It’s normal to feel touched out and guilty! It’s okay to feel lonely and we should be normalising and talking about it. Maybe that way we can all feel less alone.

Aleks, our new teacher shares her experience below:

After the birth of my second child I suffered really badly with depression and PTSD. I found (still find) it really difficult to do normal things and a terrible night’s sleep (happens frequently in our house!) would just exacerbate that. I can’t tell you the amount of times just getting out of the house helped, preferably somewhere I could interact with other mums.

Even if I wasn’t talking about what was bothering me, just being around other mums and talking about mum stuff really helped. You always think everyone else has their stuff together, but really most of the time everyone is winging it, just like you!

This year’s theme with Parents Mental Health Day is about creating positive relationships and I genuinely believe that classes like Monkey Music help immensely with that. Not just relationships for me (I’ve made some great friends at baby classes over the years) but also for my kids. They make friends that they get to see again every week and grow close to over the months and even years. It’s really special.

Aleks’ full story:

After my second child was born, I was on cloud 9. We’d had a beautiful home birth and I was very lucky. We had noticed his foot and leg were deformed but I was reassured by midwives that he would be referred to physio and it would be resolved. Sadly, at two weeks old he caught RSV and ended up in hospital on breathing equipment and being tube fed after going into severe respiratory distress. He then caught pneumonia and at one point we didn’t know if he would pull through. He is a fighter though and after a few weeks of x-rays, antibiotics, breathing equipment and being fed through a tube he was discharged.

He had lost a lot of weight and was still quite poorly. That started a long list of admissions for respiratory issues. The whole experience led me to developing PTSD for which I ended up in therapy for. He was also diagnosed with a rare congenital condition that affects 1 in 10,000. Due to this he was in a cast for 7 months, he then had surgery when he was well enough respiratory wise and now wears special equipment during naps and night and special orthopaedic shoes in the day to keep his ankle from collapsing. We don’t know what the future looks like and we’ve had several other issues flagged but we are taking one day at a time and he is the strongest baby I know. He is always happy and smiling, no matter what. But I have found this journey incredibly lonely, especially with developing PTSD and suffering from depression. It has been a very lonely place and I am so eternally grateful to the mums I have had around me during this difficult time. I was saying to Sally that even having a chat with her after going to her Monkey Music classes really helped!

 

Sally’s full story:

When I had my first baby I found it tougher than I could have ever imagined. Having had a hard time conceiving and 2 miscarriages, to finally hold my long awaiting baby in my arms, I should have been ecstatic, over the moon and happier than ever, but I wasn’t. It was hard!! Trying to breast feed, an undiagnosed tongue tie, different advice every time I saw a midwife (and it was a different midwife every time too), a constantly crying baby (I guess now she was hungry but I was clueless) and the lack of sleep - I can honestly say I wasn’t enjoying it, and felt guilty - I should have been loving it!

 

People had advised me to get some good box sets and settle in to feeding, burping, nappy changing, repeating… but I hated being in the house on my own - I knew quite quickly that I had to get out of the house every day for my own mental health. Also, some sunshine and vitamin D definitely helped the tiredness! Having a January baby and so much darkness really didn’t help my mood so being out - even if just a walk around the block, made a big difference.

 

Finding other mums in the same position as me was imperative. I found though that often I’d try and talk about how I felt, or ask other mums how they were coping and they all came across as being so much more together, happy and little to no concerns. I started not talking about how I was feeling for worry of being judged or people thinking I was clearly an unfit mother or just not coping.

 

Looking back, and having kept in touch with many of those mums, I now know that not to be the case - they all had concerns, worries and felt low at times but so few people felt they could open up about it, even to the people who should get it the most!

 

I can’t say enough how important it is to feel able to talk - find your tribe and be honest about how you are feeling! I really wish I’d had the confidence to do so.

 

But getting out and going to classes was definitely a life saver for me - having a routine and something to get up and dressed for was essential!