Fatima's Story

I'm Fatima.

I'm a mother to two boys here on earth and a daughter up in heaven.

I'm an Australian Lebanese Muslim, I'm a scientist and academic, and I'm alsothe director and founder of The Still Nest.

Becoming a mother was an exhilarating experience.

Nothing really prepared me for the moment of when I looked into my baby's eyes and had him right on my chest and a blessing that was quite beyond my wildest expectations.

There are some beautiful elements of coming from a big culture where family's so important, but for me, when I went through it, I felt that it came with a lot of interesting revelations.

So there was quite a expectation that lots of family wanted to be part of the journey, and it was really hard to sort of navigate what was sacred to us as a family unit and what should be shared with the rest of our family and community.

I guess I first started noticing changes in my mood after the first couple of weeks of when that euphoria of birthing sort of starts to dissipate.

So I was really riding that high for a lot longer than most, I think, and then it just really crashed.

When I became a mother for the second time, it was a completely different experience.

I knew that my baby had passed away in utero.

I was expecting that when I met my baby for the very first time that I would be in complete ruins.

However, because I had to go through the normal birthing process, I was actually thrilled to meet my daughter.

That's not really an experience that most people talk about, but in the initial moments of meeting them, they're alive and they're your child and they're your baby, and all those normal feelings that you have towards connecting with them are still there.

But it wasn't really until the pregnancy after loss where I really hit my absolute lowest.

This time for me was quite intense.

It was a very distressing time just carrying my baby through to the nine months after they were born.

I spent several days not sleeping, just watching them breathe and wondering whether if I put them to sleep that they would actually wake up.

That's when I knew that I can't keep going on living like this and I reached out to my counsellor who had already helped support me through my still birth.

So accessing support for me during my first journey into parenting wasn't really an option.

It wasn't something that was done in our communities.

I guess a lot of these things were kept behind closed doors.

There's a lot of shame and stigma attached.

I guess what I'd want to say to parents is be aware that the next stage can actually have some episodes of mood disorders or can be challenging in someway.

And the more awareness that you have, it's going to actually lower the barriers for you to go out and seek support.

The quicker we normalise it, the better it is for families to grow and prosperand for parents to actually show up as their best selves for their children.