Here - Health Promotion Agency

Your own life
Stress also comes from worry and
unhappiness: maybe to do with the
place you live, money, relationships
or just a lot of small but important
things. You may not be able to
change the way your children are
or the life you lead, but you may
be able to do something about
the stress. It’s a matter of finding
solutions that are right for you.
• You may find that you can
relax just by doing something
that you enjoy for half an hour
in the evening when you can
put other things out of your
mind for a while. A bath, maybe,
or time to look at a magazine
or the television. Do whatever
will let you unwind. Borrow a
book or tape from the library
about relaxation. Make yourself
do it.
•
See other people – it does take off
the pressure. Try a mother and
baby or parent and toddler group.
Ask your health visitor or other
parents about local groups. Or, if
you’re not keen on organised
groups, get together with people
you meet at the clinic, playgroup
or nursery school.
• Relationships can go wrong
when you’re tense and tired and
never seem to see each other, so
make time to be with your
partner, even if only to fall asleep
together in front of the television.
•
Talking about the stress you’re
feeling can help to get rid of it, at
least for a while. If you and your
partner can understand how each
of you is feeling, then take time
to talk about how best to support
each other. Sometimes it’s better
to talk with people outside the
family (see page 126).
• Make the very most of all the
help you can find. And give up a
bit. You can’t do everything. Try
to believe it really doesn’t matter.
•
There are no prizes for being a
supermum or superdad.
Compromise if you’re a perfectionist.
FEELING DEPRESSED
(See also Postnatal depression
on page 6).
Most of us feel low occasionally and
lack of sleep, stress, and maybe the
strain of balancing paid work and
parenting, and money problems, all
contribute to making the early stages
of parenthood a difficult, as well as a
rewarding, time. Sometimes feeling
low takes over completely and
becomes depression.
Depression is more than feeling
unhappy. It’s feeling hopeless about
yourself and all that’s happening to
you. The hopelessness can make you
angry, but often you feel too tired
even for anger. It can seem as
though there’s no answer and no end
to the way you’re feeling. You may
even feel like harming yourself or
your child. You may feel all, or
some, of these things:
tired, but can’t sleep;
no appetite or are overeating;
no interest in yourself;
no interest in your baby;
• the smallest chores are almost
impossible to manage;
• you never stop crying.
This kind of depression is like an
illness. Nothing seems worth doing,
so doing anything as demanding as
caring for a baby or child becomes a
real struggle. Both for yourself and for
the family, it’s important to get help.
See your GP or health visitor, or
both. Take someone with you if this
would help. Make it clear that you’re
‘It’s the two of them. What
one wants the other doesn’t
want. When I’m getting the
little one off to sleep, the older
one suddenly decides he needs
the potty. You can’t seem to do
right by both of them. You’re
split in two, and there’s no letup,
it’s the whole time.’
‘It’s hard to explain to
someone who isn’t a parent
how, even when you’re
enjoying it, there’s this sort of
constant drain on you. You
think about them all the
time, you have to. You have
to think for them all the
time. Even when I’m out at
work, I have to think about
getting back on time, and
remembering to tell the
childminder something, and
buying something for tea ...’
‘It gets so frustrating. I wake
up in the morning and
think, “Right, what have I
got today?” And then I give
myself a great big long list of
all the things I’ve got to do,
and if I can’t get them all
done in that day, I get really
narked about it.’
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