Louise's story - breastfeeding through PND

Louise’s story might be a difficult listen if you have suffered from depression, anxiety, or postnatal depression, but it is a story that she feels is helpful to share, and I am so grateful that she has. 

Louise Chappell went into her pregnancy and birth excited and happy, but after her son Robin was born, anxiety and trauma surfaced, and she became fixated on her feelings of inadequacy over breastfeeding and fear. It was the chance meeting of a former-health visitor friend that finally got her the care she needed - a seven week stay in a mother and baby unit, plus medication and talking therapy. Throughout her stay she continued to breastfeed as she recovered, and it slowly transformed into a happy bonding experience.

Find Louise on Facebook @louisechappell

Leeds Bosom Buddies is on Instagram @leedsbosombuddies

Information on antidepressants and breastfeeding here:

Antidepressants and Breastfeeding - The Breastfeeding Network

PANDAS for PND support: Postnatal depression – PANDAS Foundation UK

My new book, ‘Supporting the Transition from Breastfeeding: a Guide to Weaning for Professionals, Supporters and Parents’, is out now.

You can get 10% off the book at the Jessica Kingsley press website, that's uk.jkp.com using the code MMPE10 at checkout.

Follow me on Twitter @MakesMilk and on Instagram  @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com

This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

Transcript

Emma Pickett  00:00

Hi. I'm Emma Pickett, and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself Makes Milk, that was my superpower at the time, because I was breastfeeding my own two children. And now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end. And I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end to join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing. And also, sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly about that process of making milk. And of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk. 

Emma Pickett  00:46

Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode. I am looking into the face of the lovely Louise Chappell. We were just admiring each other's glasses earlier. Obviously, that's not very useful on a podcast, because I'm not a YouTube person. But very grateful for joining me today, Louise, we're going to be talking about your postnatal depression journey and breastfeeding through postnatal depression. So I just want to flag that up at the beginning, because for some people that may be an uncomfortable listened to, or they may feel they need to come back later when they're in a different space, but lots of people will be listening because they're here to support other parents, and they want to learn from your journey. So I'm really grateful for you to joining me, for joining me today. Louise, how do you feel about having this conversation? How do you feel about having it in public?

Louise Chappell  01:30

Really excited, because I've never, since my recovery, I've never shied away from it, and think it's something that needs to be talked about

Emma Pickett  01:39

100% because we're talking about something that a lot of people experience. It is surprisingly common, obviously. You know, depression generally, is very common, but postnatal depression is also very common, yep. So before we get into your postnatal experience, let's just talk a little bit about who you are, where you are, so you're in Leeds, yep. And you've got two children. Tell me about your family. 

Louise Chappell  02:01

Yeah, I've got a lovely husband. His name's Harry. I've got two kids, Robin, who's two and a half, and Mabel, who's just turned six months. They're both absolutely amazing, incredible kids and an incredible husband. So very lucky, but it was a little bit of a difficult start with with Robin in the beginning. So yeah,

Emma Pickett  02:21

yeah, that's what we'll be talking about today. I'm going to be a little bit weird and jump to the end. How are things second time around with Mabel, and how are you feeling today in terms of your mental health?

Louise Chappell  02:31

Well, yeah, I mean that that is the end of my story. Is that I subsequently went on to have another baby and had an amazing experience the second time around, which, of course, you feel a tiny bit of guilt for, because you sort of feel like, oh, you know, let the first down by not giving them the same experience. But you have to sort of decompartmentalize that and say it is what it is.

Emma Pickett  02:56

yes, but yeah, we talk. I know it's a bit weird to end with the backwards, but I just want to check how you're feeling sort of mentally today, because there's, I know lots of people, of people who've had a tough experience first time around are very worried that it will simply repeat in exactly the same form the second time around. 

Louise Chappell  03:10

Very oddly, even at the peak of my illness, I was going around saying that I would do it again, okay, and I would have another baby.

Emma Pickett  03:20

Not odd at all. Something in you knew that's what you needed to do, which is, and we have the very beautiful we have the very beautiful Mabel as a result, who I've just had the good fortune of seeing so. Good choice there, Louise, good choice.

Louise Chappell  03:33

When I met Robin, I thought, you can't be an only child. He's just he needs constant attention. I was like, we can't give him all of that. It just does. 

Emma Pickett  03:42

So, so let's go back to the beginning. Yeah, let's talk about so you were married to your lovely husband and Robin was planned, and how was your pregnancy, and how were you feeling about having a child?

Louise Chappell  03:57

So I was one of those really annoying people who had an incredible pregnancy. Before getting pregnant, I was a bit of a largle out my body, you know, I was getting a bit older. My body was saying, Oh, can you just slow down? Stop drinking Five pints I could do with a bit of a break. And I think pregnancy gave my body that break. It was like, oh, sweet relief. It all those hormones went into overdrive, making me immune to everything I was I felt like I was some sort of superhero. No sickness carried quite small for quite a while. Felt really fit. Did loads of swimming, felt quite mentally well, yeah, it was really good, 

Emma Pickett  04:44

good. And what were you thinking about breastfeeding while you were pregnant? Where was your brain?

Louise Chappell  04:49

Absolutely adamant. I'd always had a bit of an odd relationship with my breasts, quite large and low hanging. And I thought. Breastfeeding is where they forfeit. They that it's their time to shine. They're going to fulfill what they their function, what they were made for, and I was going to learn to love them through doing it. 

Emma Pickett  05:11

Oh, I love that attitude. So did that come from sort of seeing people around you breastfeeding? Did you have lots of family experience or experience of friends breastfeeding? 

Louise Chappell  05:21

Yeah, quite a lot of my peers had kids before me. And my best friend, who's got four children, she breastfed all of her babies. Also, like societally wise, I just felt very passionate about it. It was something that had made its way for me over the airwaves that we weren't breastfeeding in society enough, then it was just something that I wanted to do for my baby. 

Emma Pickett  05:49

So pregnancy sounds like it's gone really well. You're swimming and healthy and you're in a great place. And tell me about the birth. This is, this is Robin that we're talking about two and a half years ago.

Louise Chappell  05:59

Back to pregnancy just quickly. So me and Harry got married while I was pregnant, and we also went on our honeymoon while I was pregnant. So I had quite a lot and this was in November, and then Robin was born in December. So I had quite a lot of amazing life experiences that happened in quite a short amount of time. And I think that's a bit of a precursor to what ended up happening, because I was sort of riding this wave of euphoria, and then coming up to the birth. It was that typical thing of he didn't really want to make a move. He was nicely tucked up in there. So I ended up having the first stage of induction. I had a pessary and that bust me wide open in 24 hours.

Emma Pickett  06:50

Oh, that's a vivid phrase there. Louise, well, Liz, she bust you wide open. Literally, I should put that on the box for advertising, yeah. 

Louise Chappell  06:57

So like my my second midwife of Mabel, I told her about my experience, and she said, Oh yeah, pessary's not really supposed to like, it's supposed to help open you out to start the other process of induction, like breaking your waters and stuff. She said, it's quite rare for it to actually induce complete labor. So the person who broke my water, Midnight broke my waters and baby was coming very fast. I was in active labor for 45 minutes. So how? Yeah, not much time for planning. I was actually giving birth on maternity assessment, where they refused to have a look at me until I was sort of screaming, and they look they lay me down, looked into the sheet and said to my said to my husband, oh, your baby's got lovely dark hair. 

Emma Pickett  07:47

Oh. And I didn't even realize, that's where you were

Louise Chappell  07:52

Yeah. So that was Yeah. And next thing was they were bringing out a wheelchair, saying, oh, getting, oh, we'll get we'll have to get a wheelchair, because this was just, just in a time where covid had made a made its comeback, and the ward was very, very low. There was about two people there, and I said I didn't want to wait for a wheelchair. I was going to have this baby if we didn't go down. And I met my eventually, just said I'd walk. And so I just walked with the baby, basically coming. And the midwife met, who helped me give birth to Robin, met me on the ward and sort of slammed her hand into the door, thing that opens the sliding doors, and said, We're not going to have this baby here. You're going to hold that baby in. We're going to get inside and get on the bed, because I basically nearly had him in the corridor. 

Emma Pickett  08:40

Wow. So Robin was keen to make his presence known. And do you remember, I mean, that's sometimes a really fast labor. Is also lots of euphoria and oxytocin and fuzzy and exciting. So you've got all those emotions flying around. Are you feeling a bit scared? How are you feeling emotionally? 

Louise Chappell  08:55

No, definitely the high, absolutely high. Happy, happy, happy. I had my all my research that I done about labor, and unfortunately, I didn't get any sort of like prenatal classes or anything, because, again, because of covid, everything was online, and they just didn't materialize. And I'm not very good at that sort of thing, and I didn't fancy paying 200 quid for NCT, so I just sort of did, did, did my own. All my research had been that you possibly could take 24 hours, three days, four weeks, you'll be in labor forever. And I was quite shocked that, and my body was absolutely telling me this baby is arriving. She was this poor midwife desperately trying to enter my details into a computer whilst sort of with the other hand going, just go for it. Baby. Yeah. Baby's coming. So, yeah, yeah. 

Emma Pickett  09:55

So Robin is here. Do you remember that first feed? What was early breastfeeding like? 

Louise Chappell  09:59

I'll remember it for the rest of my life. Yeah, the suction was real. He just latched onto my breast. And yeah, that was a real moment. I was injured quite badly. I had a tear that had to be checked by a surgeon, but I was sort of just so happy and so in that moment with Harry by my side, and, yeah, it was lovely, wonderful, good.

Emma Pickett  10:26

So tell me about those first couple of weeks of new mum life.

Louise Chappell  10:29

So I went up on the ward after he was born, because he had, like, a little heart murmur that they weren't sure about. So I ended up sort of 24 hours, whatever, a couple of days in, and and a lovely, a lovely nurse helped me breastfeed for the first time, sort of solo in the night. Her name was Marta, and she just sort of went, she was Polish, and she just sort of went, you put the baby on, and just sort of like, help me do cross cradle. And sort of pushed Robin into the position. And it some people might find that weird and invasive, but I definitely am a bit all fingers and thumbs and thumbs and a bit clumsy, so I found that really helpful. Yeah, that more of that high, but I think that hospital environment, the anxiety, and then the anxiety sort of started to creep in. I'm just going to take this moment to sort of like give a bit of background about myself. So family wise, my mum is a missing person, so when I was very young, she collected us from school and asked me to went shopping, asked me to put some new roles away, and by the time I'd come back down with my brother in the living room, she'd left no trace of her. And that was the last I ever saw of her, which was really difficult. 

Emma Pickett  11:50

Yeah, I can imagine. That's an understatement. How old were you, Louise?

Louise Chappell  11:54

I was 12, and my brother was 10. 

Emma Pickett  11:57

Okay, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that happened to you and you had a dad around,

Louise Chappell  12:03

yeah. So, my dad's amazing. He's like, my biggest cheerleader. We have quite a difficult relationship at times, because navigating, looking after two children who, you know, with a sort of 4050, hour a week career was very difficult. And, yeah, so, 

Emma Pickett  12:19

and presumably, there was a period of time where, you know, everyone was in crisis, obviously trying to investigate and work out what was happening. I mean, this is I'm going to ask be rubbish at this, because I don't know how to ask questions about this without either being a bit invasive, or

Louise Chappell  12:33

you couldn't ask me anything that I've not had before. 

Emma Pickett  12:36

I don't know how, yeah. I mean, this is obviously not a, not a common experience. I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like for you in that moment. I mean, did you find to find out later what had happened? 

Louise Chappell  12:48

Yeah, so she'd hired a car, left it around the corner from our house. So she went and drove the car to Scotland, to sort of near Ben Nevis. There was a bit of, well, quite a bit of searching for her and my dad being on this morning and all sorts of bits and bobs like that. But she didn't take any credit cards, didn't take any passports, nothing, no clothes. Everything was still in the house, so sort of the police ended up, sort of closing the conversation, like the investigation, with sort of that she wouldn't be found, and that was her choice as an adult, and they didn't think any danger had come to her through any sorry, I hardly sleep with a six month old. Any danger had come to her through anything like an assault or murder or anything like that. It was all of her own choice. So therefore, they closed the investigation, which was fine. So we don't have closure on that, but

Emma Pickett  13:49

Well, when you say it was fine, clearly the opposite of fine, clearly, really, really, really, not fine. Yeah, and you've got a parent at home looking after you who's going through a crisis. I mean, at 12, that's a funny age, because that's not old enough to fully understand, you know, what mental health might, issues might be going on, or what other but, but also, you know, young enough to feel blame. 

Louise Chappell  14:13

And so I'm nearly 38 so it was a long time ago. It was very much at the time. It happened on the Tuesday. I was back at school by the Friday, no support offered at all in terms of talking about my mental health or anything like that. It was, it was just bish bash bosh. Get on with life. These things happen, which in some ways, I think kind of worked for me, because I'm quite a resilient person. Yeah, well, you must, you must be Louis, but it had quite a big knock on effect in terms of the whole point of me telling you this is that I had low, low level anxiety my whole adult life, and had peaks and troughs. So at one point I had quite bad health. Anxiety. So that was like, I'd maybe I was going to get cancer, or I was, have I had some sort of bowel problem? I there was something wrong with me. I was constantly going to the doctors, and that was in my early 20s. And then things calmed down. I managed to change my situation, and bought myself out of it, and has some peaks and troughs of this. I had quite a long relationship with a gentleman that had quite bad alcohol issues, and so I sort of mothering him for a period, and that gave me quite bad anxiety. And anyway, so the point is that I ended up meeting Harry and having this fantastic relationship, and my anxiety was at the best it had ever been, and I felt really in control and quite happy. And then when I had Robin, the overwhelming responsibility of being responsible for a human life was what triggered the worst anxiety episode I've ever had, and breastfeeding, sort of unfortunately, being the catalyst for that. 

Emma Pickett  16:06

Okay, okay, and that's what I'm very grateful for you to be willing to talk about today. Before we talk a bit more about those early days with Robin, I want to ask you a bit more about your mum. If that's okay, do you are you in a place where you've you gave up hope ever seeing her again, a long time ago? Or do you still sometimes look across a crowded space and wonder if she's there? I mean, where are you kind of mentally with that

Louise Chappell  16:33

totally closed to that chapter, you kind of have to be, otherwise you would really go crazy. I do really feel for these people on, you know, my missing family and all that with Dave and McCall or whatever, if that's how you feel about your missing family members, and if there's and I can imagine that it's down to individual circumstance, I'm sure whether you feel that way about that pull to find the person. But for me, I feel like she made the finite choice to leave, and I have, I had to move on quite early. So, you know, after 20 odd years, you know it, it does that whole never closes, but it just gets easier. 

Emma Pickett  17:24

Yeah, and presume, I'm guessing, that you ended up feeling quite responsible for your brother in that situation as well. 

Louise Chappell  17:30

Not so much my brother more my dad. Because unfortunately, when when a man leaves a woman, the woman gets, I can often get a sort of, oh, that what a horrible, you know, horrible man, and you deserve better and stuff like that. When a woman leaves a man, often there can be this stigma that, what did the man do? Did the man hurt the woman? Did the man? Did the man abuse the woman did? Is it his fault? And it's very that was very upsetting. There was a lot, you know, and in the initial police investigation was, of course, sort of centered on my dad, which, you know, subsequently, we found out that she made all these plans herself, completely in private. So nothing to do with my father. But that didn't stop sort of the people in our small village, sort of rejecting Him, really, or being very nosy. 

Emma Pickett  18:32

Yeah, human beings aren't always the kindest, and I can definitely see that that gender flip and the assumptions people make, she was escaping for some from something, wasn't she? That's the, you know, the ITV drama cliche, yeah,

Louise Chappell  18:45

100% Yeah, yeah. So back to like, missing people thing, like, I yeah, I never had that call to find her, because I just felt that she done what she wanted to do,

Emma Pickett  18:56

yeah and yeah. But you never had any counseling as a teenager or no one offered you any sort of family therapy or anything. You just kind of went back to school, did your resilience thing. And as you said, you were holding on to this at some level, possibly. And when Robin was born, something was triggered. A lot of people who've lost mums when they have their children find there are some big feelings around that. So the the motherless mums are a population who need an enormous amount of support. So I think you're already likely to be somebody who's quite vulnerable. Yeah, 100% Was that something you were thinking about in pregnancy, the idea of him not having your your mum around? 

Louise Chappell  19:36

No, we like I say, I was in this weird spot in pregnancy where my brain had in the same way that my immune system was like fortified. My brain was protecting myself. My brain was just giving me this happy time. And yet, it wasn't till the hormones sort of started to leave the building. But. 

Emma Pickett  20:00

Yeah, so you had that lovely first feed in hospital, but even in hospital, things started to not feel quite right. Would you tell me about that? You talked about this anxiety episode was there one particular day when that you had a moment that was particularly hard.

Louise Chappell  20:16

Nobody likes your baby being poked and prodded. So when he had a heart murmur that started like the little bits and but they were very calm about it. So I tried to not be too worried. It was very routine. The breastfeeding support that came the midwife that came to see me for breastfeeding support before I left, made me feel a bit awkward, like trying to do rugby ball hold when I'm basically a bit gone out with this quite bad injury, and just it was not the best, and I felt all things and thumbs again, not quite sure what I was doing, but it was a weird time, because basically had two weeks, I would say, of like this euphoria. I hadn't done any breastfeeding research, per se before I started, I just sort of presumed that, because I had these fantastic breasts, that you know, it was going to be an absolute go and it, and that belief did work for me, but I very unfortunately, used a very popular brand of silicone milk catcher from very early on, because I just thought it sounded fantastic to catch your excess milk. What you know? Wow. Why wouldn't you want to do that? It's going to be wasted if you don't who who wants to waste milk on clothes, when we could give it to baby in a bottle while I sleep and recover. So that's what we did. I had a lot of milk, and it very quickly. I sort of induced lactation towards the end of pregnancy with colostrum harvesting, and it went so well that my milk never really had that time. Didn't do that sort of biological thing of coming in. It was just sort of there and present from when Robin was born. And yeah, I would collect milk when feeding him, and Harry would feed it in the night. And I would sleep at night for the first few, sort of about a week, which are now really, really sort of regret, because now, knowing what I do about breastfeeding, I know that sort of biological breastfeeding is much is a much better way to go, because Subsequently, I ended up with really bad oversupply.

Emma Pickett  22:36

Okay, yeah, so these, those, these milk catches, no brands mentioned, are not just catching, as you know from your I know you've done some peer support training, they are not just catching. We are stimulating supply. And obviously by sleeping a bit more at night, you're probably confusing breasts a little bit in terms of production as well. So things started to go a little bit pear shaped in terms of oversupply, and that meant you were dealing with discomfort, and Robin was struggling with fast flow as well. 

Louise Chappell  23:04

so lots of popping off milk everywhere, so much like projectile vomit. Very, very unsettled, very lots of constipation, trophy poo. I mean, you've, I've listened to your episode on oversupply and how you've mentioned how difficult it can be, and it was all of that, and that's what really started to that's what triggered my anxiety massively, because I then had to start learning about this on the job. I was terrified.

Emma Pickett  23:40

And your and your anxiety, focused on on Robin and him being uncomfortable. 

Louise Chappell  23:46

And as well as that work, I took the crying completely personally, like I felt that. I mean, it's ridiculous, because it's a baby and it's his only way of communicating. And obviously, when I've started recovering, this all started to fall into place, but at the time, it was that he was not happy with me, not satisfied. I wasn't doing a good job. I was letting him down. It was not going, you know, not going well. 

Emma Pickett  24:16

So there was something about it that that your brain interpreted as like a personal failure. It wasn't just that I need more support for breastfeeding or, you know, this decision happened and that wasn't great, and let's recover from that. You felt it almost a sort of rejection. Is that a fair way of describing it?

Louise Chappell  24:32

Yeah. And also, I didn't mean I didn't understand at the time that the the in the inducing of the lactation and that I'd done was causing oversupply. 

Emma Pickett  24:43

I'm just going to pause you for a second, Louise, just to get boring and technical, so your colostrum harvesting didn't contribute to your oversupply. That that's not, that's not the way that milk production works. So, so colostrum harvesting isn't something I want you to necessarily regret or feel that you, you know, made up. Org choice there, it sounds as though your milk supply came in very quickly. Once you'd lost your placenta and the progesterone levels are dropped and your prolactin levels increased. It sounds as though your milk supply came in very quickly, but the the inducing lactation aspect and colostrum harvesting wasn't what contributed to your overproduction. To be honest, you may have done nothing, and you might still have had overproduction. I mean, you talk about having your lovely, fantastic breasts, you might just be somebody with a massive storage capacity, high levels of prolactin.

Louise Chappell  25:28

We definitely found that subsequently, through having a second, yeah, because some of the similar experiences, but the Yeah, not, not quite the volume, yeah, and, but, and you're right

Emma Pickett  25:40

and, I'm not even to sort of, you know, I don't I mean to say I'm counteracting what you're saying and saying you were wrong. I just said that tiny little bit of your narrative. I don't mean to think it was my fault, and this is why this other action caused this,

Louise Chappell  25:52

and I do tend to do that a little bit.

Emma Pickett  25:55

So he's this is a few weeks in, when you're really struggling with oversupply, there's a lot of anxiety developing. You're starting to feel that sense of personal rejection and and a lot of this could have been normal in adverted commas, but when did you get the sense that maybe something with your mental health was not quite as it should have been, or something that needed extra support? 

Louise Chappell  26:17

So I started sort of like basically obsessing over things that I could do to change it. So obviously I stopped using the silicone doodah, and was basically trying everything, looking I'd spend hours on YouTube, looking at breastfeeding positions, constantly Googling, why is my baby have so much gas because, because of the fast flow, he was extremely gassy. And, you know, there had been bits of information like people had said to me, oh, breastfed babies aren't, don't really have gas because, you know, it's the bottles that cause the gas so and it was things like that that made me think, Oh, my God, I'm really I'm just getting this wrong completely. I'm not good at breastfeeding. I'm terrible, which was just ridiculous, because Robin was a beautiful way. He was fantastic. He was so healthy. I was doing everything right, but my brain was just drilling in this narrative that because he was unsettled and that it was he wasn't feeding, right? He was maybe not not getting enough, or he was, I was completely obsessed with four milk and hind milk, and I went down like endless Googling, you know, like Googling, Googling, Googling, what could I do? And that's the I just started to sort of think, God, this isn't like. This isn't right. I'm, you know, my husband would was being so lovely and supportive, but he could see that something was going on.

Emma Pickett  27:53

And has anyone else picked up anything at this point? So obviously, Harry's a bit worried. Have you had any conversations with midwives at this point, or or health visitors. What was happening with external support?

Louise Chappell  28:04

I had a really amazing health visitor who came multiple times to see me, and she was amazing, really supportive with breastfeeding, talking about positions and stuff like that to help with the flow of my milk. So, you know, leaning back and all that kind of biological nursing and all that kind of thing. I had been to bus and buddies in Leeds and seen the amazing I'm going to Can I give a shout out? 

Emma Pickett  28:36

You can always

Louise Chappell  28:40

Cath Stone, who's just just incredible. She's, she keeps there, she's going to retire. So, you know, we might, might have a world without her soon, but she, you know, really gave me lots of support and told me I was doing everything right, and she understood how hard it was. And so I got a lot of positive a lot of people ask, like, Did you not get any support? And that's how you ended up so poorly. But I think I could have had all the support in the world, but I would have still ended up where I ended up because of my family trauma, which is why I felt like it was important to mention it. 

Emma Pickett  29:16

Yeah, yeah.

Emma Pickett  29:22

A little advert just to say that you can buy my four books online. You've Got It In You, a positive guide to breastfeeding is 99p as an e book, and that's aimed at expectant and new parents. The Breast Book published by Pinter Martin is a guide for nine to 14 year olds, and it's a puberty book that puts the emphasis on breasts, which I think is very much needed. And my last two books are about supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding. For a 10% discount on the last two, go to Jessica Kingsley Press. That's uk.jkp.com and use the code MMPE10, Makes Milk Pickett Emma 10. Thanks. 

Emma Pickett  30:08

So you're getting some support around the breastfeeding. Did things get easier with the oversupply at any point?

Louise Chappell  30:16

So there were things like he started to sleep better in the night, like some babies do, but because my mental health was failing, that made it worse. So that went back down a route of feeling like, why is my baby sleeping so much? My baby doesn't feed anymore. He he'd obviously reached some sort of weight milestone where the baby was like, Okay, I'm I'm good. I'm going to start feeding a little less. I'm getting older now, because, you know, he was, he was, we're talking about about the three month mark, and you know, I, in my head, I was, it was supposed to be getting easier by now, in I think for Robin it was, but for me, it wasn't just getting worse.

Emma Pickett  31:00

So that's a sign, isn't it, that you were poorly, because even though his symptoms had sort of gone away, and as it were and on paper, things were easier with his sleep and being more settled, your mood obviously wasn't getting easier. You used the word anxiety at the beginning, and then obviously the title of this episode is talking about depression. Tell me a little bit about how those two things kind of sit together and and how they sort of worked out alongside the each other,

Louise Chappell  31:29

so with the knots. So I would sit and watch Robin sleep, it just became a point where it was no longer worry. It was not finding any joy in my surroundings, in eating, in going outside, going for a walk, like working with a blank canvas, really, there wasn't any of the like, I'm quite an outgoing and fun person, and all that stuff just sort of stripped away, really?

Emma Pickett  32:02

Yeah, Mark, I see you're getting upset. You want to take a moment. Louise, if you want me to pause recording or anything, please let me know.

Louise Chappell  32:10

Honestly, it's it's good to talk about. It's healing to talk about it.

Emma Pickett  32:14

It's kind of cheesy when people leave in the recording the bit where they offer to pause the recording. But I want you to know that if at any point you wanted to pause, because I could obviously, this, it's painful to look back at this and think about these, these weeks and months going by and remembering the struggles that you were having. So he's three, four months old. Yeah, he's set more settled. You are not feeling better. And that kind of description of not for having any joy is a very vivid image, and that's that I think that's helpful for a lot of people to hear that. So were you sleeping at all? What was happening with your knowledge?

Louise Chappell  32:48

Very much. No, that's when things start to really go downhill. I would spend hours ringing the Lecce league breastfeeding hotlines, Samaritans. I was really terrified, if I'm honest, and I could sort of feel it happening, and I didn't know what to do or who to talk to about it, because I was met with sort of like this, all your young a first time mum, and things are difficult, and people don't really know what went What point to intercept when you're in this situation. Think one of the worst parts of been to the GP. I'd finally got the courage to go to the GP with parry and the baby, and I sat down with the GP and opened up my heart, and it was a female GP, and she sort of said, oh, you know, okay, let me get back to you about this sort of thing. And I was met with the age old we can self refer for some counseling that the weight will be around about eight to 10 weeks. And that just broke me, because I was in crisis?

Emma Pickett  34:03

Yeah, I'm so sorry to hear that was the response that you had. And you talk about it being quite frightening when you were phoning the Samaritans and shout out to the amazing Samaritans when you were phoning them, was that in moments where obviously they're not going to give you any breastfeeding support? Why were you sometimes calling the Samaritans and sometimes calling the helpline? What was going through your mind when you called the Samaritans? 

Louise Chappell  34:28

Because I think I knew that I was having the sort of like mental health episode that had been waiting for me. I'd always managed to fend it off, and I feel like I knew that it had arrived, like the beast had come like and I just didn't know what to do. It's pretty amazing how it all transpired, really at this point. So. I ended up going for my daily dog walk with my little dog and my baby, and I bumped into a friend who is an ex health visitor. And she said, Oh, can I come round to your house for a cup of tea after we went and walked the dog. And I said, yeah, yeah, come around. Because at this point I'd started to be afraid to be alone with the baby. I forgot to mention that Harry had had 10 weeks off with me, okay, and I'd become completely reliant on him during that time. And it was when Harry went back to work that things really took a turn for the worst, because I hadn't really formed a bond with Robin, because he was so unsettled that I'd feed him, and then I'd pass him to Harry for settling, because I felt that he didn't like, particularly like me or whatever, which is just Crazy. And we weren't. We just weren't bonded. So I was then in this situation where I was on my own with him during the daytime, and I just couldn't I felt like I couldn't be responsible for him on my own. I didn't feel like I was going to hurt him ever, or anything like that would happen. It was just that I didn't feel like I was actually capable of doing it okay? It's mad because I was feeding him on demand and he was perfectly fine. 

Emma Pickett  36:29

And your friend, who you'd gone on the dog walk walk with, obviously sensed something was not right, not right, which is where she does to come round, 

Louise Chappell  36:37

yeah, so she came round, and I was just completely erratic and having sort of this very odd behavior. And Robin, you know, when baby, the babies reach a sort of age where they get completely overwhelmed and just start screaming. He had one of those moments, and he was just screaming, screaming, screaming. One of the things that had often come up because of oversupply was reflux, and I was sort of a bit obsessed with whether he had that or not, or whatever. So what my friend did was use that as an opportunity to ring my GP. So she rang up and said, like, this baby is unsettling. They've got reflux. I demand you give us an appointment today and that we come down and see you. You know, you've got to, you've got to see this mother and baby. It's really important. So they gave us an appointment there, and then we went down. The same GP that had seen me before for my mental health, who apparently just didn't seem to remember me, referred us into the cat unit for Robin's, quote, unquote reflux.

Emma Pickett  37:43

Tell us what, tell us what a cat unit is.

Louise Chappell  37:48

Children, acute, I don't know it was like acute illnesses for babies. It was completely the wrong place for me to be. There was very ill, very, very ill children and Robin was not ill, which made me feel very guilty, like very, very guilty, because I was in the wrong place, really. That's quite just a, quite a disturbing experience. But within sort of a few hours of me being there, I was being intercepted with for my mental health. 

Emma Pickett  38:24

Okay, so do you think that your, your friend, was making that appointment with mental health in her mind, but didn't necessarily want to say that to you? Yeah. And, but interestingly, in that moment that that the GP didn't kind of twig that was what was going on and and went down the baby route. That was an interesting I think

Louise Chappell  38:43

this is why it's really important to talk about it, because I don't want to vilify the GP. I feel like there's just not enough training on what to do in these situations. And I think that markers they are looking for, and the reason I mentioned that I never felt like I wanted to hurt Robin is a big marker for perinatal mental health. Is this idea that, Oh, they're going to kill the baby, or they're going to sorry to give you must give a trigger warning, but like, hurt their baby? And that was not the case for me. My diagnosis was moderately severe postnatal depression. But that doesn't mean that that doesn't require treatment. 

Emma Pickett  39:21

Yeah, I mean the idea of people wanting to harm their baby. We're talking about a very small, very, very small minority of people with, maybe with postpartum psychosis, a tiny minority, the vast majority of people with mental health problems. Yeah, post birth are, just, as you say, not going to have joy, you know, losing that, that sense of love of life, not being able to function on a daily basis, and not, you know, not trusting themselves, all those feelings. So, so you were in this, this hospital, they realized there was a mental health crisis. Is Harry on the phone? Did your friend call Harry? I mean, what's his 

Louise Chappell  39:54

Yeah, so Harry ends, ends up coming into the hospital when I'm after work or whatever. And I think you could sense it's the right thing within 24 hours. Anyway, the perinatal mental health team were there, pulled me into a room and basically did an intervention where, you know, this is, you know, when it needs some treatment. I think the reason that I wanted to talk about it again is that had I had help from the GP when I first went I don't think that I would have sunk so far into this hole, which isn't, yeah, we're not taking it seriously at like the first port of action, where we're off. We're waiting to see if the patient can sort of pull themselves out of it or whatever. And often that is not, not, not the case. 

Emma Pickett  40:48

So, I mean, I hear what you're saying about not wanting to vilify the GP, and I think it is so important that you know, we're talking about a system. We're talking about people being overworked. You know, a massive caseload of people to see that day. You know, the fact she didn't even remember you shows how overwhelmed she must have been as a professional. But it's okay to have a little bit of anger, and that doesn't, isn't necessarily directed towards her as an individual. That's, you know, directed towards the fact that, you know, there wasn't a really clear pathway for her to take you down, yeah, so you were taken aside in this hospital, and then did you end up going to a different place to stay? Were you? 

Louise Chappell  41:26

Yeah, so there was three people there, and they decided at that meeting that I would get a home visit the next day. And the lady, the lovely, amazing lady, that came to see me the next day, I was feeding Robin, I just looked her in the eyes and said I was terrified. And yeah, she left and called me in the afternoon and said, we really think you ought to go into the mother and baby unit. There's an eight bed ward. There's a bed available. If you don't go today, you don't go there that bed might not be available, and you'd have to go to somewhere like Manchester or Derby. I was really, really lucky. It was only just down the road in like armly, which was just a 10 minute drive from my house. So I went, it sounds very strange. But I went downstairs and sat with Harry on his computer and sort of Googled where we were, where we were going to be going, and sort of had a good old look at it and decided that, yeah, it was a good idea. Yeah.

Emma Pickett  42:33

Why do you say that sounds strange? That sounds very sensible to me.

Louise Chappell  42:36

It felt strange because it was like looking at some sort of retreat or something like because obviously they make the website look very nice. So it's like women doing painting in a room, and like, it was just one of those strange moments where you're having such a difficult time, but then, like you're also kind of positive, because something is happening.

Emma Pickett  43:02

I can get that. And actually, why can't we call it a retreat? I mean, you know, if retreat means moving away from something and taking a moment away from normal life, sounds good to me. It sounds like, you know, in this moment, you needed to retreat from, you know, day to day, feeling scared on your own, at home, alone with Robin. So I think we can use that word. Let's reframe them. I mean the idea of a mother and baby unit, that phrase unit is not the friendliest word in the world, so I think we can reframe it. So you packed your bag, yep, you went off and tell us a little bit about that environment. What's it like staying in a mother and baby?

Louise Chappell  43:39

So the hardest bit was like parting from Harry because him, like, I just, I'm so close to him. And like in he was extremely bonded with Robin, so I felt like we were basically just taking the baby away from him, which we were. And then that was really hard. Like, I remember just like weeping going through the door because, you know, he couldn't, it was, it was still post sort of covid visits were just at certain hours and in a certain room, they weren't allowed to come in, or fathers were allowed to come in, or anything like that. So it was very like, much like saying goodbye and leaving. Subsequently, I ended up there for seven weeks, so it was a long time.

Emma Pickett  44:31

So the actual room itself, there are eight people who are in that unit with you. Are you? Do you have a bedroom to yourself with just you and Robin? And what kind of staff are around day to day. What kind of treatment were you getting?

Louise Chappell  44:44

So it was a mixed Ward, so you'd have like acute patients as well as patients like me with sort of depression. Think it's really important to clarify the difference between. PND and psychosis, because when you do end up admitting admitted to a ward like this, it's often people don't really understand what, like postnatal depression is. They assume that you've had a psychotic episode, which what? It's just not the case like, I guess I'd reached some level of psychosis, but it wasn't triggered by a psychosis is triggered by a hormonal change. It's your brain rewiring differently, and PND is severe, low mood. So yes, a mixed Ward had both types of patients. You had your own room, but there was like communal areas, and you would have the nurses who would just help you with day to day things. They would help you with your baby. Because when you are really depressed, you it had got so bad that I'd become quite petulant. So I'd become sort of that state of depression where you're borderline useless. So I sort of like, I can't look after the baby that he'll have to go to Harry's parents, like I can't do it. It's just that's it. Like I was so worn down by it all that I'll never forget the day after I'd been admitted. On the night when I was admitted, it was in an evening, and when I got there, they said there wasn't any food to give me because tea time had been and gone and I hadn't had my dinner and as a breastfeeding mum, because that was the only about the only thing I was managing to do was eat properly. And I went absolutely mental. I was so annoyed and enraged that there wouldn't be any food. I was offered like a BIS. They were like, we can get you some biscuits. And I was like, that isn't enough. I need my dinner. And anyway, so I didn't have any sleep that night, and you're in this plastic bed with plastic sheets and all of that. And the next day, the doctor came to assess me, and he looked me in the eye and said, Can I ask you? Were you always this irritable?

Emma Pickett  47:15

Oh, 

Louise Chappell  47:18

and I said, I'm not irritable. I'm hungry.

Emma Pickett  47:22

Yeah, me and I made a hungry, breastfeeding mum and see, see how that goes. Oh, gosh, okay, wow. Interesting language for the doctor to use. Maybe, maybe he was asking that question, or she was asking that question to sort of see what your response was. Maybe that was, maybe that was part of the assessment?

Louise Chappell  47:37

yes, and it very it annoyed me very much. But I do think it was quite important to sort of see the level that I was at at the time, which was, yeah, very irritable, very I can't do anything. I'm not fit for anything I anyway. So the point of me telling you this is that, like the staff, build up your confidence little by a little over time in increments. So like at first, they help you with the baby all the time. They take the baby so you can have a rest. They take the baby so you can have a sleep. They build up your confidence that you can be away from your baby for more than 10 seconds, because that was another thing that I'd have to like. I didn't want to be around him, but I had to be around him all the time and be near him all the time and breastfeeding him all the time, which means I never got any kind of break. And you know, we're nearly, we're, like, nearly on the cusp of, like, four to five months at this point. So yeah, and then over time, you don't really realize, but you you become more confident that in tandem with medication, because at this point it got so bad that I don't think any kind of cognitive therapy would have bought me out of it. So the but the amazing thing is, while you're there, you see a doctor every week on a Friday, and they would discuss the level you were at and any changes that needed to happen appropriately. So unlike when you go to the GP for antidepressants, and they they tell you to take them for eight, no sort of 10, eight to 10 weeks or whatever, and see how you go, and then they'll reassess you. You were reassessed on a date on a weekly basis, which meant that, quite quickly I, I did, start to lift out of it. 

Emma Pickett  49:29

Yeah, and do you mind me asking the other parents, mums in the ward, were they? Did you have support from them, or were people too unwell to be able to support each other. What's, what's the community like in the among those families? Amazing. 

Louise Chappell  49:47

There was couple of other breastfeeding mums in there. Yeah, there's a few people. Obviously, everybody's at different stages of recovery, so when you go in as the newbie, there's people that have been there a while, and. Yeah, I did get amazing support from the other mothers, and that's definitely a part of it is that you're in a communal environment, yeah, seeing that other people have challenges and how they deal with those challenges,

Emma Pickett  50:14

and your breastfeeding was always valued by everybody around you. It wasn't ever something that someone said, Oh, I think you should not be breastfeeding as much. Or, you know, why don't you come be feed? I mean, what was the, what were the conversations like around breastfeeding?

Louise Chappell  50:26

Oh, I haven't even covered that part. That's crazy, because we have. I'm accidentally focusing so much on mental health. I'm not

Emma Pickett  50:33

really quite important. I think that's quite important, Louise, so I think I'm glad that we have focused on that so far, and that's why I'm only now gently moving on to that a little bit, not because I think we've we shouldn't have been talking about the other stuff,

Louise Chappell  50:45

but I'm just Yeah. So part of the journey, circling back to before I went in, was that there was part of me that was like, yeah, just get him on the bottle. We'll give him formula, and I'll stop breastfeeding. But then, like, I also didn't stop breastfeeding. So like, there was quite some quite traumatic times where we were, like, I said, I couldn't do it anymore, and got carried to give him formula, but obviously he didn't want to take it. And there was bottle quite, quite indignant bottle refusal. And that was really traumatic, and all sorts of terrible things that, yeah, contributed to my demise as it were. So I did go in there with a tin of formula, and there were times when I'd asked the staff to maybe give him a bottle, but it never worked, and it never happened, and I'm so grateful that it didn't and I just got the support to continue breastfeeding, and it was really difficult. I sort of thought that that would be a solution for me, but it never really was. I don't know if that makes sense, yeah.

Emma Pickett  51:53

So, so from what I can gather, there was some bottle refusal going on from Robin anyway, which obviously was complicating things. But do you think there was part of you that actually did want to carry on breastfeeding, or do you feel like you got trapped and stuck and in the end, it worked out that that was the good solution, because you wanted to breastfeed,

Louise Chappell  52:12

or a bit of both, a bit of both. Um, definitely. Okay, I think I was looking for another solution. But the reason it's so important to talk about it, and I'll keep saying that line, but breastfeeding healed me because it healed my bond with my baby.

Emma Pickett  52:34

Yeah, yeah. So when, when did that begin to happen? When did you begin to feel that was the case? 

Louise Chappell  52:41

about three or four weeks into being in the unit, I'd started to make that it sounds crazy to do this at four or five months, but I'd started to make the association with he was unsettled or crying and he needed To be put on the breast, and that would be the magic cure and be with that. Would that, would, you know, at bedtime, you know, I'd sit there, we'd put, I'd put a bit of music on, and we'd have a big, long feed, and I'll take in the day and the things that had happened while feeding him, and it was just really magical.

Emma Pickett  53:27

So in the in your room, you've got a cot for him, have you? Or is there a sidecar cot? How? What's the sort of setup with sleeping arrangements in the unit?

Louise Chappell  53:35

you get, like a big bug standard, sort of big, sort of wooden cot. It was a bit upsetting, because I wanted a next to me, because I'd had a next to me at home, which I loved, and there was only, like, one or two of those available, so I had to, sort of like, put him back in. You're not allowed to co sleep, because slave sleep rules, and you're being, you know, monitored through the night and checked and told to put your baby back, if you fall asleep, and stuff like that. Because, obviously, it's a monitored environment. It's not, you know you're in, you're in a hospital ward, even though it's sort of like a sort of community feel. If you've ever seen the film Girl Interrupted, where they sort of look through the hole and then close it. It's very, very much that I remember. I remember lying in bed and thinking about that film and thinking, just like that film, babies with babies, yeah, because we're all a bit, all a bit nuts and all a bit happy and sort of Yeah, doing things like singing in the corridors and having these crazy moments. And it was wonderful but terrible or at the same time, 

Emma Pickett  54:43

yeah, yeah. And those breastfeeding moments, those evenings, those long, lovely bedtime feeds, even though you didn't have the next to me, obviously he it was still a very precious time for you. And I can see when you're remembering that time now you've got tears in your eyes. Is that because your thing? Thinking of those as happy moments, or is it, is there just a sort of overwhelm of emotion? Generally?

Louise Chappell  55:04

Oh, no, totally happy, like it was a terrible thing that happened to me, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I had to be healed from the gaping sort of wound that was my family trauma. And if I'd have somehow survived postnatal depression without treatment, that would have just kicked that ball further down the road, so maybe into second baby territory, or, who knows, and so once I'd started to feel like I was on that upward trajectory, it was a very good feeling, yeah,

Emma Pickett  55:52

so you began to trust yourself again around Robin, and you believed that you could breastfeed and you could care For him, and those sort of skills gradually returned, yep. And what's it like with sort of family visits? You said that Harry could visit you while you were there. 

Louise Chappell  56:08

He came every single night for seven weeks, except for when he went and saw his family in Wales at Easter, which was I was very sad about, because I would have liked to have gone, but it was really important for him to still do things during that time.

Emma Pickett  56:26

Yeah, and, and, how is the decision made about when it's time to leave and go back home?

Louise Chappell  56:35

Yeah, it's just so weird. You sort of say, get to the stage where, when you recover and you get to a stage where you sort of rely on the staff who are helping you, but there they know that you can then take care of babies, so they're trying to pass the reins back to you. So there's a bit of tough love involved. Where they say, you say, well, we take take Robin for a minute while I go for a walk. And they say, like, Oh, I think you should take Robin With You. Why don't you, why don't you pop him in the pram and see how you go and you, I don't want to, you'll cry. And then they go, he'll be fine. Just pop him in the pram and off you go. So yeah, those moments start to happen more and more and more. And then you get to the point where they go, Louise, can we take Robin so you can have a break, and I'll go, I'm fine, thanks. I'm taking him with me. And they go, all right, okay. And they know that you're what I'd like to call graduating.

Emma Pickett  57:38

And did you were you consciously aware of that process? I mean, do they sort of talk about, you know, let's review it six weeks. Let's review it eight weeks. Is there a sort of timetable given, or is it a bit more flexible than that?

Louise Chappell  57:49

It's definitely flexible. There's no timetable. But it did get to get to the point where I sort of enjoying it and enjoying being in control, but I didn't want to leave. So I'd be like, or you'll have to make me leave. I'm not gonna go. And they'd be like, you know, you you're ready. You're like, you're ready. And I'll be like, No, I'm not. I'm staying another week. And then there's just something where I was like, I've had enough of this. Like you, you have home visits as well. So I'd go home for like, the weekend, like Friday, Saturday, or whatever, and go back on Sunday. And it got to say, I didn't want to go back on Sunday. I wanted to stay with my husband. And so, yeah, one day I just went back and said, nothing could like to go please. They went, well, I'll have a review, and we'll talk about it. And then, yeah, that's it. Off you go.

Emma Pickett  58:47

So you leave, you graduate, leaving behind you are the people you've known for lots of weeks. It's really hard. And, yeah, that must be a really difficult moment. And what's your care like once you're home? Do you have anything ongoing? 

Louise Chappell  59:00

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I was under the perinatal then, which is an amazing experience. I had a community worker for a number of months who would come on a weekly I also completely forgot to mention that while I was in the unit, I started therapy with an amazing therapist, the love lovely Phil. So shout out to Phil, because I'm going to send him a link to this podcast. Because I never thought a man could talk to me about maternal issues, and I don't know that's my preconception of what therapy would be, but he was absolutely incredible. So was such an amazing experience. I was always really sort of resistant to therapy, because I just thought, I'm fine. I don't need it. But that in tandem with having some nights on medication and and. Lots of help. Just was just amazing. So I continued to see him after shout out for Phil.

Emma Pickett  1:00:06

 I'm so glad for Phil. So do you mind me asking a bit more about your medication? No, no. Are you comfortable giving me names of medications?

Louise Chappell  1:00:15

So I was just on sertraline for a number of a few weeks, and they kept up in the dosage, and it really didn't do anything. And I definitely got worse in the unit before I got better. So I was also given a therapeutic dose of Quetiapine, which is an antipsychotic, because, as I say, my low mood had got to the point where it was sort of borderline, so the antipsychotic pushed me out so that a sertraline could could do its job, basically, and they worked in tandem with each other.

Emma Pickett  1:00:54

Okay, that makes sense. So sertraline, for anyone who's listening, is one of the most commonly given antidepressants for breastfeeding mums. And we've, you know, we feel pretty confident that there's no reason why anybody can't take it while they're breastfeeding, when you were feeling anxious about Robin's health, I'm guessing sometimes when people are in that really, really anxious state, they're not necessarily thinking logically about medication, and they get very worried about, you know, medication having a negative effect on baby, but it sounds as though you were given good evidence based information and and breastfeeding supportive information, so you didn't have to worry about any of that sort of misplaced anxiety. 

Louise Chappell  1:01:34

100% I had an amazing female doctor, Dr Nicola Nicola Sturgeon and um, she was just really supportive of taking medication while breastfeeding. So I that really, didn't I. I was so desperate for a solution at that point that when they, when they said, this is, this is a really good idea. I will monitor you, monitor you and your levels really closely. I just put my trust in them, because I was like, What have I got to lose at this point, I'm not getting better through, through talking, through trying to do things to lift my mood. It's not working. And I think that's there's a lot of stigma around taking medication that, oh, you need to deal with them, you deal with your problems and talk about them. And talking therapy is amazing. It's absolutely amazing. But medicate, therapeutic medication, when you when somebody really needs it, it should not be ashamed for that,

Emma Pickett  1:02:41

yeah, 100% 100% that's such an important message for people to take away from this conversation 

Louise Chappell  1:02:47

while I'm thinking about it, I'd also like to say that I didn't end up staying on that medication long term. I was off I was off antidepressants within the year, and I decreased them slowly over time as instru as as instructed, with the help of the perinatal team, and experienced no adverse side effects or issues with with that, because that's another thing that I think people are very scared to end up reliant On these, these medications, but because I'd had the therapy in tandem, I I just got better over time and phase that medication out, and that, that that is that is possible, that kind of trajectory is possible.

Emma Pickett  1:03:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that's coming across across to me from your story is that you did, you know, despite not having a great couple of conversations with a GP in the early days, you actually did get really good treatment, amazing the mother, the mother and baby unit would be nice if they could afford a few next to me cots, and maybe we could do a little fundraiser to get them a few more next to me cots. But actually that you were cared by people who really knew what they were doing, and they knew how to get you ready to come home, and they knew how to rebuild your relationship with your baby and support you through that. And then the lovely Phil and Nicola, you're talking about people so positively, which is lovely because so often on this podcast, I'm having conversations about health professionals, which are not always what always positive. So even though a system might be failing, you've got this sort of golden experience of getting the right support. And I also really appreciate that positive description of the mother and baby unit experience, because people are often thinking, Oh, someone's gone to the mother and baby unit. Oh, my God. You know they like, that's a disaster. But actually, that is not a disaster. That is someone who's really got the help they've needed. They're being recognized as needing that support and going into environment where they're going to get it, which, yeah, which sounds like a good thing,

Louise Chappell  1:04:46

absolutely.

Emma Pickett  1:04:47

You talk about your breastfeeding, saving you tell me a bit more about that.

Louise Chappell  1:04:52

It just allowed me to to form that bond with Robin and. And, and he, he had always, he was so sad, because I thought that I was fading him, and he like that breastfeeding wasn't going well, and it just so was, and he loved it. And we had a great experience. I mean, there's so much that happened during our journey. You know, he ended up having a posterior tongue tie, snipped, all sorts because of my obsession with it not going well, and it just did it just in it just transformed my relationship with my son.

Emma Pickett  1:05:36

So when you got home, you carried on breastfeeding. Yeah, and I don't want to make it sound like everything was roses and butterflies from then on. I mean, did you have some difficult moments back at home once you left the unit, or was that ongoing support from Phil and the rest of your team and from Harry enough to make a difference? 

Louise Chappell  1:05:53

Honestly, no, like, I that's why. I mean, about being in crisis was sort of like, really, like dealing with that big sort of like thing that was in me. Once that await had been lifted, it was just such a relief. It was such a relief to delve into my family and everything that had affected me over that time that it was just, it was just amazing, and it did help that I do. I graduated in May, so it was, we were just going into summer, and we just had, you know, great holidays, and just breastfeeding out and about, because, you know, when, they're older, and they, you just pop them on for five minutes, so they're just, you get what they need, and then they're off again. And he was starting to learn to crawl and roll. And starting, you know, starting solids was an amazing experience, and really lovely bonding experience. It, honestly, it just started to sort of the better experiences started to snowball. You know, it was lovely,

Emma Pickett  1:07:04

good, good. And tell me a bit more about Harry at this time. How is I mean that obviously, is a very difficult experience for any husband or partner to go through. Did he get any support through that time? Or was it many, just from family and friends? 

Louise Chappell  1:07:20

Yeah, so there was like a man's group that they had, like a Partners Group that he was part of. I think it was mainly online, but there was a lovely gentleman called Errol. Shout out to Errol, who ran that group, and I, we also sort of consciously made the decision that he was to sort of go out and enjoy his life and not to be sort of sat at home. So it was like, get, get that we were part of a really lovely pub community. And I, like, you know, get yourself to the pub. Watch the play, play the pub quiz. Go out for meals. Go. He loves the cinema. Go. I was like, get you. Get yourself down the cinema with your best mate, and we, our friends, are all the same friendship group, so we were all very close, so everybody sort of banded around him. And it was, yeah, very lucky that both sets of families were very supportive, a bit scared, obviously, because they need they didn't really have much to do with Robin during that seven weeks, which is very sad, but just needed to happen. 

Emma Pickett  1:08:26

So, yeah, needed to happen. That's the way to look at it. And then you got pregnant with Mabel, yeah. And did you we touched on a little bit about this at the beginning, and luckily, you haven't been unwell again and and that hasn't been a problem for you. But did you have any fears during pregnancy? Did you wonder what might happen? What was going through your mind?

Louise Chappell  1:08:47

So the best part, so Robin weaned, self weaned beautifully at 16 months. It wasn't like my intention. I would have loved to have carried on that he's always been two or three clothing sizes ahead, and is always been a massive eater. And it just just sort of happened, I don't know if he sent like, if your milk can tell your baby, like your your child, that that's ready to sort of start making babies again. Because we were we, we were having the conversation about having another baby, and then, yeah, Robin just self weaned, and then with it, within a month, I was pregnant. So I don't know if it all kind of happened around about the same time, but getting pregnant again triggered me getting back under the perinatal mental health team's care, and that was amazing. I had the most fantastic midwife, Holly, who is just was amazing. All my midwife appointments were at home rather than at a doctor's. It was very, very patient led care. I actually was fine and well men. Actually throughout the pregnancy, but having that safety net was, I think, a massive part of that. I then went on to make the decision to have a home birth, which was fully supported despite sort of some quote, unquote high risk factors, like my BMI and stuff like that. But my midwife, Holly, fully supported my decision for her home birth, and helped me facilitate that, and helped me advocate for myself. And yeah, I ended up having the most amazing birth and the most amazing start to my next breastfeeding journey, just on my sofa at home, just makes more cry, just thinking about it really. 

Emma Pickett  1:10:43

Oh, well, happy tears very welcome. Yeah, tears are welcome. But we like the happy tears especially so no silicon thing in me jig this time, and you knew how things were going to be going differently in terms of your oversupply, if you had any breastfeeding difficulties with mobile, 

Louise Chappell  1:11:00

yeah, so I, I completely, I did a bit of classroom harvesting. Knew that that was happening. That was good, but my milk came in naturally. After about three or four days, which was lovely. Got that experience of sort of like she was constantly on me and getting really like, come on. And then, rather than having everything to do with like bottles or Harry feed it, or anything like that, she was just with me all the time, and we just did natural, biological breastfeeding and cluster feeding and all of that. And I knew that it was all natural and normal for her to be on me all the time, and we've just succumbed to that moment. And yeah, it's been a really good breastfeeding journey. The I still had a lot of milk, so there was a lot, still a lot of sick, but I now I've discovered the term happy chucker. And on reflection, both my babies were happy Chuckers, because they're they're both healthy and gaining weight. But yeah, had had some issues there. 

Emma Pickett  1:12:08

Yeah, and she's now at the age where Robin was back home with you after having been at the mother and baby unit, and you've passed that, that same sort of threshold, yeah, you touched on it very briefly at the beginning, that sometimes there are feelings of, oh, I missed this last time. Or this is not quite the same experience that yeah Robin had. And I'm guessing that your logical brain knows that there's nothing that ever could have been done that would have you know you did not cause your illness. There was nothing you could you have nothing to feel guilty about, yeah, but tell me a little bit more about some of those feelings that go through your mind. 

Louise Chappell  1:12:45

Yeah, it's the classic mum guilt, isn't it? That like Mabels had a very calm and nurturing breastfeeding journey, and Robin's start was very like, a lot of chaos and tears, but he still thrived, and he's, you know, he I have to just look at him and like, yeah, you have to look at him. He's about six foot already, and he's just amazing. So it's just like, he's fine, but, but it is. It is wonderful. Breastfeeding has healed me again, because I had quite a negative experience in the early days with Robin having this positive experience of Mabel as healed me from that. So it's it's all come full circle, really,

Emma Pickett  1:13:31

yeah, yeah. I'm so glad that that's happened. I'm so glad that that's been your experience. So I'm going to ask you slightly heavy question at the end, let's imagine that someone is listening to this. They are somewhere around the world. They are in the early weeks of their breastfeeding and mothering experience, and they're not feeling good. They are worried about their mental health. Obviously, different things happen in different countries, but let's imagine they're in the UK. What would you want to say to that person?

Louise Chappell  1:13:59

Keep talking. You don't have to go into a lot of details. But like, I think it was me being out and about, sort of speaking to people or and speaking to people on the phone and stuff that just gave me that awareness that I did need some help, and that's okay. Yeah, it's not easy to do that. I know a lot of people try and shut that out and try and just deal with it, but pushing it deeper down isn't necessarily the best it's not it's not really the best idea. And if you can let it come up, there will come a point where you start to feel better from that point, 

Emma Pickett  1:14:49

yeah, yeah. And the right care doesn't mean you're separated from your baby. You know this postnatal depression is, is not uncommon. There is, there's a whole system out there where. You are supported with your baby, rather than taken away from your baby. Oh, yeah, like, worried. Or if I, if I talk to someone about this, or if I talk to someone about, you know, my psychosis, or what, you know, something terrible is going to happen to me. I'm not going to any social services, or all these, 

Louise Chappell  1:15:14

no, I didn't even mention that part. Like, there was all that, yeah, there was all that. Like, me, screaming, crying, going, you're not going you're not going to take my baby away. Are you there was it. Was all of that. 

Emma Pickett  1:15:25

Yeah. And we know that keeping mummies and babies together is how we get through this. Doesn't mean you, you know, you have to have 24 hour, 100% care. There will be people to support you. But you know, there's, there are going to be people out there who will help you. So if anyone is listening to this and having a tough time, we'll put some some links in the show notes, although I think most people will understand that GP in the UK is a good first port of call. Now you're not painting a super rosy picture of the GP conversation. How would you suggest somebody handles that conversation? Is there anything that you'd recommend someone does? 

Louise Chappell  1:15:56

I think looking back and the perinatal have said the same. Is that, like given my family history, I probably should have been under their care from the beginning, just as a precautionary measure. So if you are someone that has had periods of low mood or anxiety, just bear in mind that having a baby can be quite a catalyst for that, even if you're feeling well and you may want to think about putting some preventative measures in place, on reflection, I wish I had, yeah, yeah.

Emma Pickett  1:16:34

Is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanted to make sure we covered, or anything we haven't mentioned?

Louise Chappell  1:16:40

My main point is that your breastfeeding journey doesn't have to end because of postnatal depression. I think I thought that that would be the solution, that if I didn't breastfeed anymore, I would be fine. I blamed breastfeeding a lot because of the oversupply. It was, you know, was I was unsettling Robin, and if I could just make him happy and stop breastfeeding or whatever, that would make things better. But actually it was, it was the breastfeeding that brought us together. And I know that our numbers are so drastically low in the UK that I can't even imagine how much PND factors into or, like, at the very least, low mood factors into stopping breastfeeding. Yeah, because it's i It can feel isolating when you're sat alone with your baby and you're feeding on demand, and you're not getting out and about, you're not seeing people, you're not doing the things that you want to do, but you're talking exclusive for six months, which sounds like, Oh, my God, six months. That's half a year. But it's, um, once you've reached that milestone, it's you feel so proud of yourself, 

Emma Pickett  1:17:59

yeah, and you have absolutely every right to feel very proud of yourself. Louise, you've come and just your honesty, talking today and sharing your experience today is something I hope you also feel proud of, because even though you made it sound like I was a superstar at the beginning, I am not. But a few few 100 people will listen to this podcast at the very least, maybe even a few 1000. And I, and I know that you sharing your experience today will have really helped them. So thank you. Thank you.

Louise Chappell  1:18:23

Just wanted to say thank you to you, because listening to your podcast made me know that you'll be the type of person that I'd be comfortable to talk to your podcast. Well done for breastfeeding till now is just listening to that is just wonderful. Thank you. And you make me laugh when you said in the beginning that you, if you're about waving sage in the air, that's fine, but you're, you are more science based. And I think I love that, because I love being able to listen to the facts of the figures and the interesting ins and outs, and it's, it's fantastic.

Emma Pickett  1:19:02

Oh, that's very kind of you to say thank you. Well, you have now joined the podcast roster. It will be going out in a few weeks time, and I'll let you know when. And, yeah, I'm very grateful to you. Thank you Louise. Thank you,

Louise Chappell  1:19:14

And can I just shout out Leeds Bosom Buddies? Yes, that's the amazing team. 

Emma Pickett  1:19:20

Yeah. So I'll make sure that we put their account in the in the in the show notes as well, because I know they do. They do great work. And I'm speaking to one of your leads, bosom buddy colleagues, in a few more weeks. So I'm getting good, good leads representation over the next few weeks. Thanks, Louise, 

Louise Chappell  1:19:35

thank you so much.

Emma Pickett  1:19:41

Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at Emma Pickett IBCLC and on Twitter @MakesMilk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist. And leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey, or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast. This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.