As someone who had never experienced mental ill health, the bubbly and outgoing Nikolina was confronted by the sudden onset of perinatal depression and anxiety within her first few weeks of motherhood. From crying for no reason to not being able to sleep, her PNDA symptoms hit very hard and very fast.

Nikolina pushed through these symptoms for weeks, even using her son’s milestone photo cards as a countdown to the idealised six-week mark. But when nothing changed at six weeks as she had hoped, it was her husband who helped Nikolina realise that she wasn’t herself and that she may need some help to get her spark back.

In this episode, Nikolina takes us on her journey from the career high in her first pregnancy to the excitement of dressing up for therapy, and now to the recent publication of her children’s book - filled with lots of tears, insomnia, therapy, stepping on Lego pieces, and of course, laughter, in between!

You can follow Nikolina on Instagram @heynikolinak where she shares the ridiculousness and realities of motherhood and order her new book My Mummy Loves Fudge! from her website heynikolinak.com

As a self-confessed ‘flaming extrovert’, Lauren struggled with the isolating and all-consuming eat-play-sleep-bathe-repeat cycle of early motherhood. By six months postpartum, the newborn ‘love bubbles’ that she felt so intensely after both of her births became overshadowed by the onset of postpartum depression.

From IVF, miscarriage, severe pregnancy health complications, to two traumatic births, this depression was only the latest in a long line of anxiety and trauma that Lauren experienced on the journey to motherhood.

In this powerful episode, Lauren opens up about her mental health during her pregnancy and postpartum with both of her daughters, and shares with us what helped her through this time - from the PANDA National Helpline (1300 726 306), medication, talk therapy, EMDR, and a psychiatric hospital admission, to her supportive and loving partner, Alex.

While walking the sunny halls of the psychiatric hospital, Lauren created her blog ‘Mental as a Mother’ and is now a volunteer for PANDA. You can follow Lauren on Instagram as @mental.asamother where she hilariously shares all things motherhood, mental health, fertility, and feminism - while wearing her signature bold lip, of course.

When Helen, a midwife and academic, describes her mental health in pregnancy and postpartum, she uses the word ‘blindsided’.

Despite her expertise, Helen was confronted by post-traumatic stress disorder following two traumatic pregnancies, a NICU admission, baby loss, grief, and the continued uncertainties of IVF. As a health clinician, she was also staggered by the prevalence and general lack of awareness of psychological trauma in the perinatal period.

In this episode, Helen takes us on her painful journey of trauma through pregnancy and postpartum, to her subsequent research and advocacy as a result of her experiences. We also discuss the importance of language in this space, post-traumatic growth, grief, stereotypes, trigger warnings, trauma-informed care, and art therapy.

I thank Helen from the bottom of my heart for sharing her story so candidly.

You can find Helen on Instagram as @reallifemidwife where she uses her platform to raise awareness, validate, and educate us all about perinatal psychological trauma (and where she occasionally creates reels of herself in Grey’s Anatomy cast photos).

Please note, this episode discusses baby loss. If you are able to listen, I welcome you to join me in ‘sitting in the shit’ with Helen.

In this episode, I welcome Jade who shares her ongoing journey with mental ill health - a journey which is both three years old but new at the same time. After the birth of her son and the subsequent sleep deprivation, Jade’s mental health declined and she was (mis)diagnosed with postpartum depression. Despite proactively and consistently seeking support from several psychologists and trying multiple anti-depressants across three years, Jade was still experiencing depressive episodes while all the mothers in her online community were in the enviable stages of recovery. With the persistence of a very supportive friend, Jade finally reached out to a perinatal psychiatrist. Within 15 minutes of that first appointment, Jade received the correct diagnosis which came with a whole new treatment plan, a referral to the perfect psychologist (finally!), and of course a whole lot of grief.

Like everything else in her life, Jess had many plans for motherhood. As planned, she fell pregnant after completing her psychologist registration. But when Jess fell pregnant, she was surprised that her once positive outlook was overshadowed by an all-consuming sense of dread and anxiety. Despite sharing this openly with her care providers, her severe anxiety remained undiagnosed.

To her relief, that relentless anxiety ended the moment her daughter, Charlotte, was born - 3 months early! Jess found that she coped better with the unexpected preeclampsia diagnosis, the emergency c-section at 28 weeks gestation, and the subsequent 51-day NICU stay in a hospital over an hour away from home, than she did with pregnancy.

Unfortunately, it was finally bringing her little girl home - a moment she’d waited so long for - that saw the return of her anxiety. But this time, it was crippling.

With the support of an incredible care team, featuring her GP, the hospital-appointed psychologist, and her family and friends, Jess’s anxiety started to ease and she could finally enjoy those moments of motherhood she dreamed about - like sitting on the couch with her daughter in their pyjamas - just as planned.

With a long list of achievements under her belt, Lisa assumed motherhood would be easy compared to her prior endeavours. As she says, she thought highly of her ability to get shit done. To her surprise though, Lisa struggled with the transition as motherhood didn’t provide the feedback and awards she was used to, and felt she was failing because nothing she did would stop her colic daughter from crying all the time. At five months postpartum, she was diagnosed with depression.

Pregnancy and motherhood really forced Lisa to confront the reality that she had past experiences to unpack and behaviours to unlearn - the biggest being her reluctance to ask for help.

Through therapy, postpartum planning, a strong support-system, and a much more self-compassionate attitude, Lisa approached her second pregnancy in a completely different way and is finally enjoying a maternity leave without mental ill health.

At 18 weeks pregnant, Aimee suffered the unimaginable - her waters ruptured. But to the surprise of every doctor, Aimee’s waters resealed and at 38 weeks, Evie, a healthy baby girl, was born.

But her relief and joy vanished when suddenly she felt like she was living the worst case scenario she feared, rather than the happy ending she got. Aimee hid her suffering for weeks, until one day her shocked husband found her in a heap on the floor.

When Ella reflects on motherhood, she talks about two things: firstly, the dream of motherhood that she’d had her whole life, and secondly, the nightmare that she was confronted with when she actually became a mother.

A successful economist and accomplished career woman, Kathryn from MotherUp has always been the quintessential high achiever who needed certainty and control over every aspect of her life. Although, of course, when she had her little girl Liv, Kathryn learnt the hard way that perfectionism and motherhood do not mix.

After weeks of being dismissed by medical professionals and the hospital, Tegan finally received the care she needed when she was admitted to an MBU (Mother and Baby Psychiatric Unit), all thanks to the help of an unlikely stranger.

I spent most of my life imagining motherhood. I couldn't imagine anything else - not a career, not travel, not study - just motherhood. What I didn't imagine, however, was a mental breakdown that sent me to a psychiatric ward only days after my son's birth.

Join me as I share part two of my story where I talk about how my postpartum unfolded in all the ways I could never have imagined.

With a long history of anxiety, I had every intention of not letting anxiety get in the way of birth and parenting. In fact, I spent most of my pregnancy doing everything I thought was ‘right’ to plan and protect my mental health in postpartum. Unfortunately, I was so focused on postpartum that I couldn’t see the anxiety escalating throughout my pregnancy.