Support and Help in the Home
I am assuming that she lives alone, with her daughter? Unfortunately I have found this in my experience of 10 years of listening to women with PNI to be the worst scenario for a woman with PNI - that is to live alone or to live in a situation with someone where that get no help at all with childcare and support for themselves.
I have had incidences on the forum and woman I have known personally who were really very ill and in and out of psychiatric units with their children fostered or with relatives when living alone, yet when they either moved in with a friend or supportive relative or started another successful relationship they rapidly began to recover.
I am sure she will not mind me mentioning this but we have a woman on the site now that this is true for and she is getting married next year and it is hard to recognise the desperately ill person she was a year ago. She is now working again and things are so much better for her. I am not suggesting that the love of her fiancé is the only factor in her recovery, she has made a lot of effort herself, but it does really help to have a supportive relationship with someone.
A friend like you could indeed provide this also - but it really depends on how much time you have as it can take a lot of time, whether you can provide the sorts of things she needs such as childcare, support at the times she panics etc and if this sufferer would let you help to the degree she needs it.
Obviously living with a supportive person or persons or having a friend who comes in and helps you in this role is not the only answer but it does give you the breathing space to recover.
In my experience it is women in this situation who end up in psychiatric units more often, not necessarily because have a more severe illness or cope with it less well than a woman who is living with a supportive partner, husband or even sister, brother mum, friend or girlfriend in the case of lesbian mothers ( the person does not have to be the father of the child - just someone who if there).
While it also helps if this person is supportive to the extent of at least a few days a week taking over childcare completely, (the mother of course has to trust the person) if this is not possible it can not be underestimated the help just having a supportive person in the house during the worse times for a PNI sufferer.
These times tends to be late in the night and early in the morning. A person who can at least listen for the child in the night so the woman with PNI does not have to sleep with her ear cocked and has more of a chance of a good nights sleep. ( the chance of uninterrupted sleep is one of the most important factors in recovery from PNI) and someone who can watch the child now and then while the mother gets on with other tasks, even the luxury of having a bath alone helps.
My husband is a seaman and away for up to 8 months a year so for me it was 8 months until I ate a meal uninterrupted and after the initial 6 months when the baby was quite inactive and could be left safely in a cot while I had a bath etc it was longer before I had a bath or even went to the bathroom without a child following me - probably about 3 years.
The ability to have at least the bare minimum of personal time alone in your own home is very important and crèches where you do an activity and your child is looked after are not that useful in terms of getting real rest as the mum is having to do an activity and be responsible even when the child is in the crèche.
Obviously if your friend is living with someone and they are not helping like this maybe they just do not know what is needed and they need to understand what they can do, perhaps you can print out this answer and show it to them?
However if she lives alone help has to be provided - such as a nursery place (social services will pay for this sometimes. I had a nursery place paid for when I was ill over 10 years ago and also a few hours, they have to be persuaded that their is a real need for this and unfortunately this requires having a social worker and welcoming their input into your home a situation that many try to avoid, however if your friend has been a psychiatric inpatient the chances are she already has a social worker and she should have a CPN so it would only be a matter of tying to negotiate this with them. There should be no stigma in taking up such a place in a nursery as the other parents should not be told who is paying for it. Does she have a CPN and social worker?
Another thing social services – and sometimes some family centres attached to hospitals or other voluntary organisations – can occasionally provide is a volunteer of a family aid to come in and help during the times you are most vulnerable ie when your friend panics.
Telling Your Story
The reason this site exists is that I believe that one of the best tools to start your recovery from PNI is to tell your story.
I do not know why exactly this should be but perhaps because you feel so much you are the only one suffering like this and also because most women with PNI have many things which they feel an overwhelming guilt.
Such as just the fact they have PNI at all and by it they feel they are letting down this child who did not ask to be born, and then the guilt that looking after that child is so painful to them and not the joy they think it should be.
On of the worse causes of guilt is if you suffer from having horrible scary thoughts that include accidental or neglectful or deliberate harm to your loved child, yourself or someone else important to you.
I large proportion of women with PNI suffer from this but almost never if ever do anything that these thoughts are about. There are something like 1 in 10 women suffering PNI at any one time (post-natal illness affects between 70,000 and 100,000 women and their babies in the UK every year and this is a low estimate) as this is the number that is known about as they have sought help, there are many more who are not known statistically.
If even a small proportion of women acted in any way on these thoughts PNI would be a well known and treatment well financed, but they rarely do and because in the end most women with PNI do get through and continue to care for their families - but at great personal cost to themselves – their simply is just not enough help out there for women with PNI.
However these thoughts and other symptoms lead to tremendous distress for the sufferer and is often at the root of the panic.
Telling your story both gives you an opportunity to take the lid off the kettle, be affirmed by finding out that there are others who have experienced the same as you and that you are no an evil or neglectful person – just a woman suffering this horrible thing.
Of course you have to tell your story to someone you trust and you need to feel you can tell it with out any repercussions, that you can - in your own time – say everything you need to say, without social services, crises teams etc descending on you unless this is what you ask for and want.
Internet Help
The net and this forum is a very safe place to do this and it is available when other services are not i.e. in the middle of the night when even telephone help services (other than Samaritans – but I have found that the help has to be specific to PNI to be of any use so Samaritans and general help lines are not that useful for PNI - are not available.
Also participating on forums such as mine can be done anonymously until if and when you feel you can say who you are.
Is there any way your friend can get on the internet?
I in fact run a service whereby I get given and recycle to women who need internet support very basic internet capable computers. If we could find a way to getting one of my PCs to your friend ie pay the courier, she could have one and then all she would need is a landline and to pay an ISP about £15 a month. ( I may have enough in the kitty due to donations, if you think one of the PCs I have would be helpful if you tell me where you are I could find out how much the courier would be?
However if this is out of the question she could go to the public library to access this and other internet support, this is free and I know some women who use the forum have done this and some areas have other free internet access.
Telephone Help
However if she can only use the telephone The Association of Post Natal Illness offer long term ( not emergency as they match a woman up long term with a befriender/counsellor I am one of these) befriending/counselling with women who are past sufferers of PNI:
Their number is 020 7386 0868 web site:
www.apni.org/145 Dawes Road, Fulham, London, UK, SW6 7EB
They have a form asking for help you can print out for your friend.
Another good telephone help line is Deborah’s PND Helpline PNISH Post Natal Illness Support Helpline 01335 347599, Deborah helps on this forum and her husband is a GP who also offers advice through Debs.
Another thing she could do is write her story and send by post for me to publish on my website under the stories page – see
www.pni.org.uk/pnifram.htm stories.
She could also ring me on 07974817933. I am only available on this number during the hours of 10 am to 3pm ( but outside this you can leave a message and I will get back to you ) as I do have to keep my home number private.
I also do not usually offer a telephone helpline, because I am only one person run off my feet trying to keep this site together, but if your friend wants to ring me initially to look at where she could go for support, I am happy that she does this.
Well that’s about all I can think of for now except to say a traumatic birth and experiences such as pre eclampsia ( I had this too and a caesarean when my blood pressure hit the roof ) seems to be one of the trigger factors for PNI.
I hope some of this will help your friend
All the best
Veritee
