Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

When my daughter was just 5 days old I became very unwell
with postpartum psychosis.

You might be asking, what is postpartum psychosis?

I also did not know what it was…

Postpartum psychosis is a rare (1 in 1000) but very serious
mental health illness, its symptoms include hallucination, delusions, manic/low
mood, loss of appetite, extreme paranoia, fearfulness, depression and anxiety.

It’s a very scary place to be!

Unfortunately, my story did not end there, after a few months
of feeling OK, or so I thought, I stopped the medication and had a relapse when
my daughter was 6 months old. All the symptoms came flooding back with a vengeance!

This time the amazing perinatal team felt something else needed
to be done so I was admitted to a mother and baby unit in Bournemouth to
recover.

As hard as it was being away from my husband and son, I received
amazing care for about 4 weeks. Only then I realised that I had not fully
recovered from the previous episode and it hit me just how unwell I had been!

Then came the depression!... a deep dark place that is filled
with awful memories of what had happened and what I had missed out on with my
children. Not knowing who I am anymore, how do I cope? Why did this happen to
me? What did I do wrong? How will this impact my children? With all these
questions, I felt numb to the world around me.

I have spent a long time feeling ashamed about what I went
through, but now I am breaking the silence and helping to raise awareness of
this mental health illness.

During my recovery I found the amazing Action on Postpartum
Psychosis (APP), they allowed me to meet others who have also been through PP,
making me feel less isolated and alone. If it wasn’t for APP and the women I met
through them, my recovery journey could have been a lot longer and harder.

I can now say that I have come out the other side, I have
recovered from postpartum psychosis but many are still going through it every
day. The more people know about postpartum psychosis the easier it will be for
women to talk openly about it and feel less alone.

Please help me to raise money for this amazing charity and raise
awareness of postpartum psychosis.