SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS

Stroking furry animals and swimming with dolphins are both recommended for relieving stress and fighting depression. Well I’ve found another therapy, namely tickling Billie. It’s become a bit of a morning ritual and comes a very close second to my weekly yoga sessions in terms of relieving tension.

Each morning after Olly has gone to school, Billie and I go back upstairs, she brings her bottle, blue blanket and pillow into my room and we lay on the bed smooching. First she drinks her milk and I lay there stroking her hair and kissing her soft tummy. Then when she has finished her drink we play hunt the tickle - this involves me tickling her under her chin and arms whilst maintaining that all I am trying to do is catch this tiny little tickle that is hiding somewhere on her. Her laughter is a drug; it’s heady and musky like an opiate. Her little mouth isand the gurgles and giggles trip past her perfect white teeth. I inhale her sweet breath with its lilac fragrance, both rare and intoxicating. When we lie there with the winter sun falling in through the bedroom window I know for certain what being in love is. And the pleasure is all the more precious when I recall how hard I found it to love her when she was born.

When Billie came out of my stomach I felt like I had a hole shot through me the size of a football. I swear I could hear the wind whistling through me. It was as if the world had frozen and me with it. The people in the theatre bustled about, Steve held her full of wonder and delight and I lay there cold and disappointed. And the feeling didn’t go away…for months. The problem with post-natal depression, particularly when it happens directly after the birth is that it seems so entirely at odds with what is going on around you. You have a beautiful baby, both you and her are healthy, your family is delighted, the sun is shining and yet you feel like your heart is a stone and you are emotionally paralysed. It was as if someone had pulled the plug out, and the warm bubble bath of hormones that had soothed me all through the pregnancy drained out in seconds flat. I kept hoping as I held her, gazed at her and put her to my breast that I would undergo some Damascene conversion. That the heavens wouldup and a shaft of light would beam love straight into my heart. But it didn’t.

And the shame and fear of the way you’re feeling prevents you from vocalizing it. I remember it wasn’t until several months later that I confessed to a friend that I thought Billie looked at me strangely. Like she didn’t feel that she really wanted me as her mum. I just could not bond with her. This was in direct contrast to the way I felt with Olly, who arrived to a fanfare of frenzied love from me, which carried me like a magic carpet floating above the clouds. And it was the shame of these feelings, or perhaps lack of them, that kept me from seeking help for over a year. It was over a year of feeling inadequate and depressed, before I broke down in my doctor’s surgery and sought help. It took time, but I did recover and importantly, now that my doctor and midwife know what I went through they are on the alert this time and we hope to prevent a repeat of this experience.

So after a truly horrible first year, horrible too I’m sure for my family, I got better. I have had nearly two years of soppy, puppy love with my little girl. She melts my heart like ice cream on a hot day; I’d walk barefoot over glass for just one kiss, no teenage fan of a boy band is in love like me. The main thing is that I overcame my guilt and got help. And now I’ve been rewarded a thousand times over.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughter Billie (aged 3) in Hertfordshire.

Read Juliet's previous diary