Antenatal depression: 'I cried at my baby's predicament'

When Claire Kilroy got pregnant, it was the start of months of torment as she wasstruck down by antenatal depression – a towering blackfigure looming over her. She felt as if her life was finished, but what would take its place?

Alan and I decided to start trying for a baby in February. Having read the militant propaganda, I had pretty muchconvinced myself that, given our age (38), we were A) biologically past it, or B) it would take us years and a small fortune to conceive, but this wouldn't ruin our lives because C) we were OK with childlessness as we enjoyed ahappy and fulfilling relationship together and did not need a baby to complete us, although D) perhaps, unbeknown to ourselves, we had adopted a defensive position that we would come toregret over the long years stretching ahead, and we could, after all, give a child a loving home so what was stopping us? The first surprise was that I conceived immediately. Alan was triumphant at this evidence of his virility but I'd already been feeling weird fora few days by the time of the discovery. Not pregnant weird, just weird, and not in my body but in my head. "I've never felt so aimless in my life," I'd written in my diarya week or so previously. Afterthat I became too aimless to make diary entries, although I'd kept one since primary school. I became too aimless to do anything. Too aimless to get dressed, to open a book, to remember why I had walked into a room, to walk back out again. Suddenly the pilot light had gone out. As the weeks passed, the gloom coagulated. It grew corporeal. I had the sense of a figure towering over me. He was about 20ft high and draped in black. When I woke in the morning, I would feel OKfor maybe five seconds before realising, oh Jesus, he's here. He's been hoveringhere all night. The baffling part in retrospect is how readily I accepted his presence as my new reality. I had no resources with which to fight him. My old life was over. That whole glorious business of writing books? Those small miracles when a door swung open on to a room in my imagination that I never knew existed and released the gift of a sentence? That was over. I was a drudge now, a trudging drudge, dragging my 20ft ball and chain. The figure in black supervised trips down the pier to buy mackerel because the child growing within me needed oily fish or he'd get attention deficit disorder. I forked it down my throat as I gagged with morning sickness.I declined champagne at my wedding because the child would get foetal alcohol syndrome. No more buns or he'd have diabetes. No more horse riding as a fall might maim him. No more anything, basically, that might afford me an iota of pleasure. I was going to be a mother now, andan Irish mother to boot: sacrifice was the only game in town. The colour dial on my life had been turned to zero. And everywhere this ideology about how great pregnancy was, how serene, how fulfilling. No mention of antenatal depression . I'd never heard of such a thing until an internet trawl. "I haven't experienced a single positive thought about this baby," I confessed to Alan, and then cried at the baby's predicament, having a mother who couldn't love it. Visiting friends with babies didn't help. Oh, it's wonderful, one girl who also worked fromhome told me. It's an amazing experience. Of course, you never get time to formulate a thought again because they cry when you're in the middle of it and in the beginning I found that hard and I started to self-harm but eventually I just got used to it, you know?No, I thought in horror. No, I do not know. I watched another stay-at-home mum shake a rattle to her baby's delight, her lunch untouched because she hadn'ttime to eat any more, never mind go out and I thought, nope, I can't do this, it's too inane and I'm too selfish. But the ominously omnipresent figure in black reminded me that my imagination had been snuffed out and that this was my life now. This was being a mother. I began fixating on miscarriages, I couldn't help it.My first appointment at the maternity hospital exacerbated matters. I skirtedaround the issue. When was itsafe to start telling people that I was pregnant, I inquired.Wait until you're showing, the midwife advised – you've months yet. Yes, but what about friends and family : when can I tell them? Tell themwhenever you like, she said. I wasn't making myself clear so I came straight out with it: when does the risk of miscarriage fall off? There's apoint, isn't there (I persisted) when the risk plummets? You'lljust have to learn to trust in the Blessed Mother, the midwife informed me, confirming that all the years ofprogress I had made towards enlightenment and freedom of thought counted for nothing. My money was no good here. Iwas just a brood mare. ->

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