I’m super-excited to have a guest post on the blog today from the lovely Hollie Smith. I got to know Hollie online when she put out a call for mums to contribute to a book she was writing. That book is out very soon indeed (details at the bottom of the post), and she has kindly agreed to write me a post for me about one of the topics it touches on. 

A bit about me, um, I am 42, married and have two daughters aged ten and eight. First Time Mum is my tenth book (and my last I think, cos I’m knackered!). Before, and in between, books, I scraped a living as a freelance journalist. However, I always found it a pretty demoralising business, and having submitted my last manuscript – in spite of the fact I was staring unemployment in the face – I vowed I was not going back there! So now I blog, instead and write what I like, when I like. I also work part-time as part of the Netmums PR team.

As someone who’s researched and written three separate books about the challenges of early motherhood, there’s a subject that never fails to touch me, every time I return to it: postnatal depression.

When I write about PND, it’s only ever in the third person. Although I struggled to cope in many ways as a new mum I was never, thank God, forced into a state of actual depression.  But in the course of my work, many women have shared their PND stories with me, and it’s given me some understanding, I think, of how awful this illness can be.
Continue reading →