Katie Brown and her son Lucas
Interview by Tracey Spicer, One2OneConversations.
Katie Brown is a journalist, yoga teacher, infant massage practitioner and mother of three. Her tumultuous journey through work, motherhood and post natal depression has become a book, aptly titled 'Mother Me'.
TRACEY SPICER: Hello
KATIE: Hello Tracie
TRACEY: Thank you so much for talking to us today. The first thing I wanted to ask... I started reading your book, and in it you say you were the classic career girl. What was your life like before children?
KATIE: Completely different to now. I was always very ambitious. I wanted to be a newsreader funnily enough. So I thought "how do I become a newsreader, I go into journalism". I went to university and worked on my local newspaper in the UK for a couple of years and then I worked on a national magazine in Britain. Then I did some travelling and came over to Australia and did some work over here on a weekly magazine as Features Editor. I became a magazine editor and I just loved it. I was always out, going to events and launches and had a very vibrant social life. I hardly knew what my house looked like during the day.
I was very interested in health and when I was in the UK I did an aerobics instructors course. The only part of that that I really like was the 'wind down'.
TRACEY: (laughing) So is that what lead you to yoga?
KATIE: Yes. I also a massage therapist course, which I enjoyed but it wasn't quite me. Then when I came over to Australia and I did a Yoga Instructors course, which I really loved. I combined the kind of mad, frenetic journalism with doing yoga and teaching yoga, which was very nice.
TRACEY: So how long after you got together with Alec did you start thinking about planning your own family?
KATIE: We actually met quite a long time ago now, I was 23 and I'm now 37. For us, I think we both knew that eventually we would like to have children. I wouldn't have wanted to be with somebody that just didn't want to have children. We didn't really talk about it particularly, only that we had big ideas of having 3 children eventually. So, we were together for 6 years before we got married and then married for about 6 years before we had children. It wasn't something that was first and foremost in our minds when we first met.
TRACEY: So what was your first feeling then when you became pregnant for the first time?
KATIE: I was so excited. I remember going to this Travis concert, it was bizarre because I had just done a pregnancy test that day, and I was sitting in the concert and the lead singer (I cant even remember his name) said "someone in the audience has just found out their expecting a baby". It was bizarre like they were talking right at us. Then they went into this beautiful song 'Flowers in the Attic'. It was amazing and such a special time. It was also tinged with sadness because my mum had just passed away about 6 months earlier.
I am an only child and my mother tried desperately to have children. She was a little older and also suffered with preeclampsia, so she was advised not to have any more children. So I was incredibly close to my mum and it was very important to me that I have children and my mum would have been the most amazing grandma. It was difficult as well because I so wanted my mum to be involved at that point and obviously she wasn't able to be.
TRACEY: It must have been so sad during your pregnancy, being a happy time but feeling the loss so acutely?
KATIE: Yes, I was. After mum died I was very busy with work and with the pregnancy, and it was only after I had Lucas that it all kind of hit me. But I also felt that it was the circle of life, and I did find some comfort in knowing mum was partly responsible for me getting pregnant so easily. I thought it would be very difficult.
TRACEY: And also part of her character and part of her genes have been passed onto your children so it is the true circle of life. You mentioned before that a lot of this hit you after you had Lucas. Tell us about your emotional journey once you had him?
KATIE: I just find it mind blowing to be honest with you. I had always been quite competent in everything. I thought that if I work hard at everything I will be able to achieve it. I felt so innocent. I had this little baby and one midwife was telling me one thing, someone was telling me something else. I had no idea breastfeeding would be so difficult. I felt like I was being a bit of a punch bag. I was just trying to do the right thing, yet it seemed to be quite difficult to do that.
I had Lucas, and the one thing I thought with depression is that I wouldn't connect with him, and yet I did. He was the absolute light of my life. I just adored him so much and I never had a problem connecting and bonding with him. It felt like that was the only part of my life which was going well.
Every other part of my life, suddenly being in the house all the time, playing the role of housekeeper, was difficult. We seemed to share a lot of that before Lucas was born, but now it seemed I was in the house all the time. Suddenly mess was worrying me, and wasn't something I was blase about anymore. Most of my friends, at that point, were working or didn't have children. The ones that did have children didn't live close by. I didn't have that family connection. My career that I had been so focussed on suddenly fell apart. My boss at the time said to me that my job was full time or nothing.
TRACEY: That must have felt like a brick in the face!
KATIE: Oh it was horrible; I just didn't know how I was going to cope with it. I didn't want Lucas to have full time care, and I couldn't even get it even if I'd wanted it. I was also the main wage earner in our relationship, so there was a lot of pressure on Alec to get another job. That affected our relationship.
I wasn't sleeping very well. Looking back, Lucas was a wonderful baby. But I would feed him in the night, and then I'd be awake thinking about things. Then I would think "gosh he's going to wake for another feed soon". So I became really, really tired and wasn't able to think clearly. Then I was also thinking "oh my goodness I'm a pre and post natal yoga teacher and I'm supposed to have it together here". A lot of the yoga I already knew was really beginning to help me.
It reached a point when we were on holiday and we had a really bad row about something quite insignificant, which almost lead to us breaking up. At that point I thought to myself "I have got to see the doctor about this". I didn't think I had depression because I actually wasn't depressed. I had no problems getting up in the morning, but I felt quite anxious. But apparently post-natal anxiety is part of post-natal depression. So the 'not getting back to sleep' and the 'feeling anxious' was part of post-natal depression.
TRACEY: That's interesting, I've never heard of that being discussed a lot. I have heard a lot of women say they don't think they have post-natal depression because they don't have the classic symptoms but a lot of them do have the anxiety.
KATIE: Yes that's right, and obviously there are degrees of post-natal depression. Every mum has some kind of anxiety to a certain level, but it can get out of hand if you don't address it.
TRACEY: So how did you manage to pull yourself out of this hole?
KATIE: I did go to the doctor and I was prescribed antidepressants, which I was reluctant to take. But I did take them because at that point I needed them. It still didn't help me because I didn't want to have to rely on taking a tablet. I knew that I had to change things fundamentally. So I started to look at my life and where I was putting my priorities. I realised I was focussing a lot on my baby, a lot on my career, work and finances. But not so much on my emotional health. So I drew this pyramid in my mind that emotional health was the most important thing, then my physical health, then my relationship, then my baby, then my home and then my work and finances. If those things weren't in good shape and going strong, I wouldn't be able to do a decent job anyway. So everything had to shift around for me.
I used a lot of my yoga practise and speaking to lots of people that I knew through my work and as a yoga teacher and journalist. I came up with a lot of my own exercises as well. So things that would help me sleep. Things that would help me relax. Things that would help me discuss things with Alec in a rational way. I kind of developed a manual.
I knew there was a book in this manual. I spoke to a friend of mine who put me in touch with a publisher. So I had a coffee with a publisher, not thinking things would happen so quickly. They gave me a deadline to right this book and shortly after I discovered I was expecting my second baby. So it was really full on. In the end, after an extension on the deadline, it took 2.5 years to write the book.
TRACEY: And did you find that, after you had your second baby India, you felt the post-natal depression coming on again with all these other expectations?
KATIE: Yes, I was very worried about it. And it did come back because I found that I still hadn't addressed it properly. Not as severe as before, but at that point I resolved to really make some strong changes and take it quite seriously. Really look at my nutrition, and every other aspect of my life. Virtually write myself a prescription. I have included this in the book.
Basically, for 30 days write down how you are feeling, if you know what stage of your menstrual cycle you are, what you've eaten that day and what's gone on for you. Over a period of time you can really start to see a pattern evolving. You can see it yourself and address it yourself or you can use this and take it to a counsellor or a nutritionist or anybody you feel you need to see and then it can be an extra tool and you can start making some changes.
TRACEY: That's a wonderful idea because a lot of us think we're doing the right thing but if you write it down and do it for 30 days then look back, you think "oh gee" or "that wasn't very good" or "I didn't do very much for myself emotionally or nutritionally that week".
KATIE: A lot of the yoga that I do really applies to motherhood. Detachment, having faith, going with the flow. You can look at it objectively. Quite often, you'll get a niggly headache and you'll be so busy that you don't really notice perhaps what lead to the headache. Our bodies are amazing, they can tell us what is wrong but we are so often not listening to our bodies. We take a tablet, then quickly go pack a school lunch or make some cakes, or whatever we do. So if you do this for 30 days, and really address things, you can almost unpeel the layers away and you realise "oh I'm getting that tension and I'm not sleeping very well because I'm worried about our relationship", or something else, you can actually see what is causing that. Then you can address that and everything else tends to fall back into place.
TRACEY: Now you have the beautiful Leonardo as well, so three children. The perfect family. How do you find you are coping with everything now? Are you able to use the tools in your book for yourself?
KATIE: I am, but like every mum, it gets really busy and frenetic, particularly now as the book's just come out. I was just thinking yesterday, I must go over the book again. When I was writing it, the book was totally applying to me because I was in that space. But I do need to go over it because life balance is always changing and evolving. So one part of your life might be in great shape one week, then the following week not so much. So you can go back and use the book to help this.
I am going to go back to my 30 day program because I am thinking that I want to be a bit more present with my children. So I will go back over the parenting and physical tools.
TRACEY: It's a wonderful book, full of fantastic advice. What's the one piece of advice you would give a woman who is going through what you went through a couple of times in the depths of that post-natal depression and anxiety?
KATIE: Well, its kind of two fold. It's always hard to give just one piece of advice. Look after yourself emotionally, that is so important. The other thing is really understanding about sleep. I found the most amazing sleep expert for the book and it was so interesting just understanding about baby sleep cycles and about my own sleep cycles. Then you can adapt your routine accordingly. Then you can have some good sleep hygiene.
TRACEY: Thank you Katie Brown
Interview courtesy of One2OneConversations. In the event you enjoyed this conversation, visit their web site at www.one2oneconversations.com
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