Parenting post...1 year on

Hey everyone. Our baby is nearly 1 and im just lying here reflecting on the past year. It has been an amazing year but hard.. VERY HARD not because of our beautiful girl charley she is amazing and we love her to bits but my mental health just wasn't right. I suffer from anxiety as most of ye know and just before we decided to try for a baby my mental health was the best it had ever been and all trough the pregnancy I was perfect too bar vomiting for the 1st 16 weeks and hardly being able to walk towards the end due to pelvic pain but we were excited to meet our baby that we knew nothing about yet. So on Wed the 1st of July 10 days early charley came into the world weighing 9 lbs 9 ounces (thank god she was early) haha. I lost 1.2 litres of blood I was very weak but over the moon  (of course) they were close to giving me a blood transfusion but didn't in the end. By saturday we were being left home and they were doing routine tests on charley before we were to leave and they found a heart murmur so she was sent for a chest x-ray and an ecg all of which were perfect but at the time I was in bits thinking the worst because I knew nobody with a heart murmur so didn't know how little of a deal it actually was. It has since dissapeared thank god. We came home and I was extremely weak and tired thank god for my fiancés mom my mom and my friends for the first week or so between staying with us or cooking dinners we were blessed and it's something we will never forget. I then ended up in hospital with an infection in my womb. A pain which I will never forget. I was lying in the hospital without my baby my other girl kaysey who was almost 7 at the time and my fiancé and all I wanted was to be at home with them so I spent most the night crying missing them but I was left out the next day thankfully. At home I was still very weak and found it hard to cope but slowly we were getting there. Then when charley was 5 weeks old around 8 in the morning we brought her into bed to stare at her because we still couldn't believe she was here when all of a sudden she started choking I picked her up and put her over my knee face down rubbing and slapping (gently) her back but it wasn't helping she was turning blue and we were starting to panick so we rushed her to south doc who were brilliant she was foaming at the mouth at this stage so they rang her an ambulance and started suctioning all the foam out of her mouth and put an oxegyn mask on her we were rushed to hospital but by the time we got there she was almost back to herself but was kept for 2 nights for observations I spent all that time crying too it was the worst fright we ever got but thankfully it turned out to be something small again she has silent reflux she was given different milk that thickens when it hits her stomach so it's harder to bring back up and she has been more or less fine since thank god but after she came out of hospital I was so afraid to be alone with her all I would do was worry about it happening again and I would cry constantly. It was so annoying and frustrating because at a time in my life I was supposed to be at my happiest I couldn't enjoy it. I was afraid to be alone with her so I would ring friends or family to stay with me while tim worked I then started getting nervous that I would hurt her and I would cry over that and I was afraid to tell anyone incase she was taken off me I felt useless and got really down over it and then started getting suicidal thoughts which scared the life out of me because if anyone knows me my biggest fear is dying.. so I thought this cant be normal I must be suffering from post natal depression so I went to my doctor and explained everything to her. She told me I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder from the horibble delivery and my hormones and everything that had happened since she was born and I was given medication I used to take for my anxiety which helped me so much and im still on them but like my doctor said to me I was very aware of my feelings and emotions which was a great thing but now to get up and get on with it and it was the best thing she ever said to me I just had to work on getting better for my children's and fiance sake and my own sake. And it's been a struggle but I'm so much better now and can't honestly believe it's almost a year. Charley has brought so much joy to all our lives she's walking since she was 10 months and has loads of words already she's very clever and amazes us everyday. She adores her big sister and my fiancé. My poor fiance had an awful time watching me go through all that but it has brought us so much closer and we are planning our wedding for next year I can't wait to marry him he's the most amazing person inside and out. Why I'm telling ye this is because mental health is so important and without my family and friends I would not have gotten through the year so if you or someone you know is going through something there is help out there and things will get better I know there are alot worse off people than us but our experience was so frightening all the same.. onwards and upwards now though. I can't wait to see what the future holds..

Thanks for reading
All my love
lorz xxx