Finally, i’m half the woman i was!

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve opened my wardrobe over the years and stared miserably at the contents, before dragging myself to the shops to buy more stretchy leggings in the next size up. It was a repetitive pattern. Every couple of months, my clothes just stopped fitting. And it didn’t matter what diet I tried, or how hard I exercised, it was a battle with my weight that I just couldn’t win.

It hadn’t always been that way. Up until my late 20s, my weight wasn’t something I’d had to worry about. I was always roughly a size 10, I ate well and I kept active at the gym when I wasn’t working as a writer. I never really felt self-conscious or even thought about my weight for that matter.

Even after falling pregnant aged 27 with my first daughter Ruby, I lost my baby weight soon after having her in January 2008. My mantra for years was ‘everything in moderation’. I never deprived myself of anything, but I didn’t overindulge in fatty foods either. But it was after having my second daughter Mabel in August 2015, aged 35, that things began to change.

I suffered with postpartum psychosis – a form of postnatal depression that involved low moods, hearing voices and hallucinations. It was a terrifying time and one evening, while Mabel slept contently in the crib downstairs, I was doing the washing-up when something unnerving happened. From the house opposite the kitchen window, I saw a zip wire that extended from their window upstairs straight into my garden. There were men dressed in black coming down that wire and landing in my kitchen. Of course, none of it was real and though I was convinced by what I’d seen, deep down I knew I needed help.

I visited my GP and was quickly diagnosed and treated. I was given both antidepressant tablets known as SSRIs and antipsychotic tablets. But while the psychosis disappeared, my mood just felt so up and down. After counselling and tests, in June 2016 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It was such a relief to finally have an answer to the torment I had been feeling in my head. Of course, there were more tablets to take and I did so willingly. And like all medication, I understood that there would be side effects – but there was nothing more important than being well for my two girls. By now I was single and they needed me to be