Well hello there Mumblers! Firstly I think I’d best introduce myself and tell you a little bit about why you should carry on reading 🙂.
I’m Kirsty and I’m mum to a cheeky little 1 year old that goes by the name of Ollie Wollie.
I’d love to say that the last year bringing Ollie up has been totally amazing and full of joy but to be honest, it hasn’t.
Which brings me onto National Maternal Mental Health Week which is this week (1st-8th May).
I want other mammas to feel comfortable talking about the realities of motherhood, not just the cute parts. I was diagnosed with
I was diagnosed with postnatal depression (PND) when Ollie was around 3 months old and although once I got the help I needed I have recovered, looking back, I don’t think the help was as good as it can be.
I had issues with medication and issues with my GP which left me feeling isolated and hopeless at times.
I had days that I was so low and tearful, anything other than surviving was a major struggle.
Looking back at those days from a point now where I feel I am more or less on the other side of PND, I can see that more needs to be done to help women who are suffering and more needs to be done to raise awareness of how common mental health issues are perinatally (fancy word I know! When I first heard it I got it confused with a part of the body… I’ll let you figure that one out haha).
Now that you know a little bit about me I want to introduce Seedlings.
Seedlings is a group aimed at new and expectant mums and is a support group offering information, help, advice and cups of tea to ladies who need it.
We are big on promoting health and wellbeing in women and raising awareness of perinatal (there it is again!) mental health.
Seedlings was born from a snuggly hotel bed in London one evening when myself and Jade (one of the other Seedlings ladies and my rock!) were chatting after a few glasses of wine.
We’d both suffered from PND and felt very lucky to have found each other and decided that we wanted to do something to help other women in our community.
We bought a fancy pink notebook from Harrods and decided that would be our bible/magic book of our master plan.
We then got Tracy, a fellow mum and counsellor, involved who shared our vision to promote maternal mental well-being and help local mums access the support they need.
Seedlings are currently running taster sessions on Monday afternoons that are on a drop-in basis.
We have invited a number of speakers that will each do something aimed at making mums feel amazing, bonding with baby or general wellbeing.
We also have weekly representation from PANDAS Foundation (pandasfoundation.org.uk) and F.A.B Wakefield as well as the opportunity to have a lovely cup of tea from a teapot!
All our sessions and information is on our Facebook page @seedlingsossett where you can also message if you simply need to talk/vent/get information.
Well, you’ve got to the end! If you take anything away from this please let it be that you are doing an amazing job, and there is ALWAYS help available.
Please spread the word and share the hell out of the posts related to National Maternal Mental Health Week and get more mammas the help, love and support they truly need!
Kirsty x
