Kaitlyn

Age at interview: 31

Kaitlyn is 31 years old, married and has a boy three and half years old and a 14-month-old girl. She always wanted to have two children. Her first pregnancy was relatively easy with no problems, and she enjoyed it. Shortly after the birth, she felt a sense of urgency, which she described as constantly being ‘on’, as if she couldn’t shut off her brain, which led to exhaustion because she was unable to rest or sleep. She also felt a lot of anger towards herself but not her child. She suppressed all that anger to protect her child, and those around her would not have guess she was having any issues. She was surprised to feel all that rage because she usually was not like that.

When her son was about four weeks old, he started to have severe eczema, which required an intensive care routine and significantly strained Kaitlyn’s mental health. She didn’t feel like she could share her feelings with anyone. It was very isolating, making it harder for her to ask for help. She has no family support.

Kaitlyn lives in a small town far from a big city, making it hard to find help or any mental healthcare. She needed someone to advocate for her, but there was no one to do it. The daily routine with a baby with a chronic condition made her go on ‘autopilot’ because she knew she wouldn’t have any help for her.

During her second pregnancy, she was okay but was on autopilot again and didn’t think about her mental health. Nowadays, she feels slightly better, is eating more and has started therapy again. Returning to work also helped; she is so busy that she doesn’t have to think about anything else.

She describes her mental health challenges as ‘high functioning’ because she had never had any significant red flags that her healthcare providers noted. This was why she wanted to share her story – sometimes, it can be easy for perinatal mental health issues to go unnoticed.

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More content

• Advice for Women with Perinatal Mental Health Issues – Kaitlyn
  Kaitlyn encourages women to become educated on how a baby will change your relationships.
• Coping with Perinatal Mental Health – Kaitlyn
  Kaitlyn would go for bike rides to cope.
• Seeking and Finding Reliable Information – Kaitlyn
  Participating in an online support group was not helpful for Kaitlyn.
• Seeking Help and Getting Diagnosis – Kaitlyn
  Waiting lists and being from a small community were some of the challenges for Kaitlyn while trying to get the help she needed.
• Relationships – Kaitlyn
  It is hard for Kaitlyn's husband to understand what is happening to her and she shares less with him because of that.
• Managing Personal Challenges with Sleeping and Eating – Kaitlyn
  The severe eczema of Kaitlyn's baby led to many sleepless nights and everything falling apart so quickly.
• Stigma and Feeling Judged – Kaitlyn
  It took a long time for Kaitlyn to admit she felt so lonely, as she was ashamed to do so.
• Managing New Routines – Kaitlyn
  While caring for her child's severe eczema, Kaitlyn put her own care at the bottom of the list, which strained her mental health.
• Symptoms – Kaitlyn
  It was hard for Kaitlyn to reach out for help because, on the outside, it wasn't obvious that things were not going well.
• First Symptoms – Kaitlyn
  It felt like no one was asking the right questions to understand how Kaitlyn was feeling.