When my daughter was almost 2 years old and my son was just 10 weeks old, one Friday night, I couldn’t sleep at all.

I tried everything – a warm bath, herbal tea, prayer, everything I could think of – but to no avail – I could not sleep, no matter what I did.

Earlier that day, I had been to see my Psychiatrist and told him how bad I’d been feeling lately.  I wasn’t on any medication at that stage, but had suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) since I was a nine year old child.

My Psychiatrist said that there was medicine that could really help me, but I really didn’t want to go on medication if I could help it.

I told him that I was probably just exhausted like any new mum and just needed to catch up on lost sleep.

I told him that I would arrange for some close friends to look after the kids for a couple of days and I would try to catch up on sleep.  If I still felt bad in a week’s time, I would come back and get the medicine.

But it was that very night that I couldn’t sleep at all.

I was beside myself.

I knew I couldn’t look after two young children on no sleep!  Now I was desperate to get my hands on the medicine that had been offered that day, but I knew my Psychiatrist office would not be open until Monday morning.

About 10 am the next morning, I went to our local doctor to see if he could get me the medicine.  I knew he was a horrible man – we hated it when he was on duty, but just my luck, he was the only one available that morning.

I sat in the waiting room and literally prayed that God would give him compassion that he did not usually have; that he would be kind and sympathetic, not grouchy and cranky like he usually was.  God did answer my prayer – he wasn’t too bad that morning.

When I told him what was going on, to my shock, he decided I was sick enough to be hospitalised in a Mother-Baby unit.

He let me go home and pack but said I must go straight to hospital after that.  My son could come with me to stay in the hospital, but my daughter had to stay at home.

For the first 2 days in hospital, I spent the whole time on the phone arranging care for my daughter for the next 2 – 3 weeks.  I couldn’t rest until I knew she was going to be well taken care of.

I had great friends from church and they were only to happy to help out by looking after my daughter.

I knew I could not leave her at home with my husband
as he went to work every day and plied himself with
huge doses of alcohol every night.

Once I had my daughter’s care organised, I could finally rest and shift the focus to taking care of myself.

It wasn’t until that moment, that I actually took time to stop, and I realised just how sick I was.

I was very open about telling the nursing staff I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) so they just assumed that this was the main problem.

The trouble is that the more they talked about OCD and the more they focused on OCD, the worse my OCD got!  I knew myself really well and I knew that OCD was NOT my main problem – something else was going on.

I finally had to say to the nurses, ‘if you keep talking about OCD and I keep thinking about OCD’, I’m literally going to go mad – so please STOP!  Thankfully they did.

Every day, we had group sessions of mums – watching videos and having discussions in groups.

One of the videos was called ‘1 in 10’ and it showed a whole lot of women who had Post-natal Depression and how it felt for them and what kind of symptoms they had.

I was shocked!  Every single symptom they had, I had!

I knew then and there that my actual problem was Post-natal Depression, not OCD.  I told the group that I had just realised what was wrong with me.

It had not been obvious to me because I had not been depressed.

I mean, every new mum has heard about Post-natal Depression, but I assumed that would mean that you were actually depressed – but I wasn’t.  But I had all the other symptoms that the mums had talked about on the video.

On my first day in hospital, my usual Psychiatrist came and saw me and started me on Movox – a medication that helps both OCD and depression.  After that, he handed me over to the in-house hospital Psychiatrist.

To my shock, she was an awful person – cold and unfeeling – the last thing I needed!!

She showed no compassion or empathy at all.  She was cold and unemotional and distant.  How could someone with this personality be a Psychiatrist??  I had to just cope with her the best I could – she was certainly no help!

So with a Psychiatrist that was unhelpful and a medical team who had not realised I had Post-Natal Depression, it was left up to me to diagnose myself correctly and ask for what I thought would help.

From the first night, the nursing staff had given me sleeping tablets, but even the strong tablets would not put me to sleep.

I was awake for days, leading me to get even sicker.  They finally found a medication strong enough to put me to sleep – much to my relief.

I was way beyond exhausted – and still taking care on my 10 week old son who had come to hospital with me.

One day, they accidentally doubled my medication
which left me unconscious!!!

I had terrible medical care, but at least the rest was starting to do me some good.

I got so sick that one day I was sitting down at the communal kitchen table and one of the mums was talking to me, but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying!!!

She was talking plain English, but my brain was so frazzled, I couldn’t make any sense of the words.  I tried to just nod and say ‘ah ha’ at what I hoped were the right moments.

When I’d been in hospital for about 5 days, we had another shock!  Someone had called Child Protective Services to investigate us!!!

So while I was at my sickest, I now had to deal with a full investigation by Child Protective Services!

I was beyond shocked – I just couldn’t believe it.

Who thought that we were such bad parents that our kids were in danger!!

Nothing had happened – there had been no ‘incident’ – so why did someone call Child Protective Services?

My daughter’s care was all I was focused on for my first two days in hospital – I would not rest until I knew she would be extremely safe and well looked after.  So why the investigation?

So while I was at the sickest I’d ever been in my life, Child Protective Services came to the hospital to begin their investigation.  I was fuming!  Who on earth had called them – and why?

I decided that it might have been the doctor who put me in hospital, because when they began their investigation, it was obvious that they knew everything about us.

They knew I had OCD and now Post-natal depression; they knew that my husband drank a tonne of alcohol every night; they knew I was in hospital and they knew that our son had been born with a rare genetic condition.

When I stepped back from the emotion of the situation, I could see why it looked  like there were lots of red flags – but we were loving parents – our children were not in any danger – despite all that we were dealing with our family still functioned pretty well.

At the time, I had a great Mother’s Group and funnily enough, just the week before, one of them told me that someone had called Child Protective Services on her!

They were fully cleared but the investigation had been really stressful.  I was so glad she had told me this – it helped take a little of the shock out of them investigating us.

Another amazing thing was that one of the girls in our Mother’s Group, held a very senior position with Child Protective Services.  I rang her immediately and she already knew about our case.

She said that she’d been near the phones, when the call came in.  Naturally she could not reveal who it was that had called them, but she said that she would talk me through the process and put in a good word for me.

Up until that point, I had been running Bible study groups for young mums and this girl attended my group.  She knew we were good people and good parents.

She asked the investigation department if the investigators could be Christians as this would mean a lot to me.

They did allocate Christians people to our case, but they certainly did not go easy on us.  They absolutely interrogated us about every detail of our lives.

I’m glad to say that after the investigation, we were fully cleared.  It had been so stressful though.  I just couldn’t believe it had happened when I was at my lowest, trying to get well in a Mother-baby Unit in hospital.

I don’t think I told anyone at the time, but the day they put me in hospital, I was booked to preach at my local church for the first time.

That was 20 years ago – and I never did preach that sermon, but I do feel God is calling me back to His Ministry now – 20 years later.

After 2 ½ weeks in hospital, I was finally deemed well enough to go home and we had our family all together again – it was great.

This was one of the most stressful times we’d ever been through in our lives.  I was now on medication for both OCD and Depression as I tried to recover from Post-Natal depression.

The medication worked quite well for the OCD but from then on, I was rarely free from debilitating depression.

It wasn’t until 10 years later, when I saw a new Psychiatrist, that he diagnosed me with
Bi Polar Disorder and put me on medication for that as well as for extreme anxiety.

So I was now dealing with:

• OCD
• Major depression
• Bi Polar Disorder; and
• Anxiety.

But despite these really stressful events, God has brought us safely through to a place of health and peace.

My husband stopped drinking 3 years ago – something that I never thought would happen – and most of the time I am well and happy.

I am so grateful to be able to see that our children have grown up to be the most amazing young adults I have ever known.

In the Bible, in Psalm 34 17 – 19 says “The Lord is close to those who hearts have been broken.  He saves those whose spirits have been crushed.  The person who does what is right may have many troubles, but the Lord saves him from them all. People who love God cry out and the Lord hears them.”

And earlier in Psalm 34, in verse 8, it says ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’.

I have certainly see God at work throughout our lives and I can say wholeheartedly that “God is good”.  I invite you to seek Him for yourself today.