Mothers, as well as a few fathers, who experienced postnatal or antenatal depression (whether diagnosed or self-identified) or significant distress or anxiety over the perinatal period gave a range of explanations of what they understood perinatal depression to be, and discussed the reasons they thought they or others experienced it.
Several parents linked antenatal or postnatal depression to past experiences of mental health issues such as depression or anxiety, or to difficult experiences earlier in their lives including childhood sexual abuse, the loss of a parent, or difficult family relationships. They felt that this history made them more 'likely' to experience perinatal depression.
Melanie, a mother of one, said: ' ... a lot of really unresolved lifelong issues have all come to a head now in my life. I think I just had the wrong idea about what [depression] was and I probably had it for a long time. It just really intensified in the postnatal period for me'. Sila had experienced depression on and off for many years, often manifested as anger, including after the birth of his first child. He attributed these feelings to childhood sexual abuse, his father's murder, and a difficult relationship with his stepfather and said: 'I still carry those scars'.
Chelsea, a mother of one, said her psychologist's explanation of how her 'predisposition to anxiety' had made her vulnerable to experiencing postnatal depression 'made complete sense'.
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So I had seen a psychologist probably about five years earlier for a few months after I'd quit my job, and I'd been with that company for about eight years, so it was a big shock to the system to leave that sort of mother-ship sort of thing, and sort of walk away and start something new. That was quite scary, so I had a lot of anxiety that she sort of helped me with. I didn't need any medication or anything like that. We just sort of worked through it. So when my doctor sort of was seeing that I needed something a bit more than just seeing her now and again, we decided that I'd go back to see my psychologist. So we organised that, and I started seeing her. And I guess I sort of kept on just sort of unravelling. I guess it's really the only way I can sort of describe it and, she was great. It wasn't until I sort of reached my worst point where she sort of said okay I think you may be suffering from postnatal depression.
One of them - my psychologist actually explained it really well to me before I sort of reached my worst point. You're kind of - the everyday before you have a child, you're sort of tracking along, and because of my predisposition to the anxiety I might be tracking along a little bit different - a little bit higher than someone else would be, and then you bring all this other stuff into the mix, and then you just go through the roof. Whereas another person might just - "Oh okay, it's a speed bump." And that sort of made complete sense to me. So yeah, so this was a big speed bump slash cliff [laughs] that - or hill I should say - that we had to climb.
Other parents felt that a family history of mental health issues was part of the explanation as to why they had experienced postnatal depression. Zara whose parents had been diagnosed with severe mental health issues and brother with Asperger's Syndrome said she 'didn't have much of a hope of coming out of that kind of a family environment without having mental health-related issues'. She experienced postnatal depression following the births of both of her children, and had recently been diagnosed with dysthymia.
Several parents referred to challenging life circumstances in pregnancy and / or early parenthood as contributing to the distress they experienced. These included moving house, experiencing financial strain, migration, health problems (their own or a family member's), relationship breakdown, family violence, and lack of support. Several families had moved far away from one or both sides of the family, including Chelsea who said: 'my family doesn't live close by so I didn't really have that support network. My husband's family [are] in [state name]. So we didn't really have someone to just come over and help tidy up the house or just help out - it was just overwhelming'.
Cecilia felt the depression she experienced after her daughter's birth was closely related to her relationship breakdown with her daughter's father.
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I guess I don't really know. If someone says to me, if someone asks me did you have postnatal depression, I probably wouldn't know what to respond, actually. I probably would say I don't know. So I have - on the one hand I'd say yeah, I think I did experience depression after my daughter was born. I don't think I would have experienced that depression had the relationship context been different.
So, I guess my understanding of postnatal depression could be people in - you know, even a woman in a couple, an otherwise very awesome supportive relationship, experiencing depression and maybe it's more to do with a chemical imbalance from hormones after birth and a real sort of chemical concoction that's gone a bit skew-whiff in otherwise healthy, normal, fine person.
So I guess I really identify mine as, you know, the whole life context going on and then having a baby in the midst of all that, well, it was just never going to work, sort of thing. Yeah. But I mean, that's still, I guess, a type of depression and it was postnatal after the - my child was born, so yeah. So I guess maybe for those reasons I never considered having drugs or medical, sort of intervention, because I really saw it as relationship stuff and wider emotional things that needed to be worked through, which has seemed right for me, yeah.
Mishi, an immigrant mother from Pakistan, was able to safely leave her marriage after migrating to Australia. She had experienced depression in pregnancy and early parenthood due to family violence.
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He used divorce as a tool from the first day of our marriage life. No not only his parents and he as well, my ex-husband as well. And gradually I am getting I was getting fat and you know in pregnancy it is hard for every woman to maintain your body. But my husband didn't understand these things. And because of my ex-husband's behaviour I was so upset and really depressed you know. And he said to me - sometimes he said to me, "I don't like your hands, your face, your foot, you are ugly woman", and he said like that. But I think so I am not ugly and I don't like you.
And his parents said like that. And his parents said to my ex-husband, "Why did you like her and why did you marry her?" And after pregnancy my mother-in-law took a lot of work from me in the kitchen 10 hours, I would stand 10 hours washing the utensils, cooking. Cooking for - after for lunch and dinner - separate, separate. And I cook, I made breakfast for every people what they want and in the evening tea as well. And at night after I cleaned the kitchen, whole kitchen and after this she said to me, "Go to your room now."
And my nine months was very terrible because of my husband's behaviour and his parents' behaviour. And after my doctor said to me, "You didn't take anti-depression because this is not good for your child."
To take drugs, to take antidepressants?
No, because my doctor said, didn't give any drugs on that time. She said to me, "You have to think good - you have to think good things and then it is good for you," - but you know it's hard when we live with these people. It is very hard for you to think good - to live happy and think good things, you know. And my doctor - after my delivery my doctor said to me, "Please you have - you have to all that time happy otherwise it is not good for your daughter. And otherwise it - it's - you put - this is not good for your daughter you know? You didn't look after her very well, if you take depression".
My doctor said - said to me, "You have to bear all these pains because of your daughter. If you go ... " - you know in our country in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan divorce is a stigma.
That's why nobody likes - like divorce, to take divorce you know? That's why our parents said do not - said to the - especially girls, "You have to bear all the pains and your husband is your life and you live for him". You live your - in your husband's house and that in your husband's house you know? But after my divorce I - I thought all these things are wrong. Our culture, our people saying like this are very wrong. They do a wrong with the girls, with the women. You - those women suffered these things. This is not good. Yeah that's why.
Some parents experienced a matrix of difficult circumstances. Melanie, a mother of one, had several miscarriages before conceiving her baby and three weeks' bed rest during pregnancy for a possible shortening cervix. During her pregnancy her mother was diagnosed with cancer and had lung surgery a week after Melanie's baby was born. Melanie and her husband started a new business and moved house when their baby was still young. Melanie started a new course and job, and when her baby was ten months old she had another miscarriage. As she said, there were ' ... just so many factors that - I felt the odds were really against me'.
A number of parents who experienced postnatal depression had babies with reflux (gastro-oesophageal reflux), 'colic', or asthma. Reflux usually meant very unsettled babies who had difficulty sleeping and feeding, or who vomited or cried frequently. This was very distressing for most parents and increasingly difficult to cope with as exhaustion 'set in'. Michelle experienced postnatal depression partly as a result of a very 'stressful' start to parenthood - her son had reflux and an allergy to cow's milk protein, Michelle had low milk supply and difficulties breastfeeding, and she had also had a difficult labour, emergency caesarean and post-operative complications.
Deb felt her postnatal depression was related to her second baby vomiting constantly, as well as her decision to start a university course.

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Then when we came home we had some issues with breastfeeding, and that was really hard to find support for that in our area, because we sort of dealt with the outpatient clinics. And [laughs] she was vomiting. She still vomits, but she basically threw up all day, every day, projectile vomiting. And then it was really hard to try and find out a diagnosis for her. Basically it got to the point where paediatricians just said, "Oh, we'll just wait for it to stop. We'll just wait for her to get bigger". So, yeah, that was really tough. It was really hard.
I think the experience of being so sick and I ended up having to have three blood transfusions in the hospital after she was born, and I think that was what made it hard this time to bond with her. Because it was completely different with my son. It was just the complete opposite experience. And - I'm doing uni now, which I wasn't doing when he was born. But that felt like that was something which was - because by distance, that was something which was good to do - it was nice to do that. But, with the second one, it's harder to manage your time better, especially when they need to be held upright for 24 hours a day. But, we got there.
[Before we had children] we lived in a little, one-bedroom flat. It was really green [laughs]. Everything was green. The walls were green. The floors were green. We had a routine before we had our son and then I guess it just continued on and it was just a big shock to the system to have a baby [our second] that was so in need. She needed to be held constantly and we have an ergo carrier and basically someone had to be wearing her or holding her, because she was vomiting. And that was really stressful. That was really, really stressful to be constantly covered in spew [laughs].
Like, I didn't want to kill my daughter, but I also didn't want to have to hold her constantly.
Unlike her first baby,
Erin's second baby had 'colic' and was 'fussy'. She thought she may have had postnatal depression at this time but didn't seek help.
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Yeah, he was lovely. But he was so very unlike my - unlike my daughter, unlike my first child. He was very demanding. So he was a real shock. You know, I guess you could say he was - he was like a real baby, you know, because she wasn't. She was just, you know, amazing. I'm not saying he wasn't amazing, but he was just like what you would expect a newborn to be. He was demanding, he cried, he didn't sleep, he was fussy, he had colic, he had everything. You know, it was all fun and games with - with that child.
And I think that I did have a bit of postnatal depression there, but I'd never got it diagnosed. I felt sort of ashamed, thinking that, it was like I would be admitting that it was a weakness. Like, I wasn't coping, but I couldn't - I couldn't talk about it, because I - yeah, I felt ashamed. You know, here I was, I had this new baby and, you know, I was supposed to be feeling happy and elated and I just didn't. All I wanted to do was cry and - which I did, a lot, but by myself, not so that others could see. And I think to make things worse, that was when my friend that was on maternity leave and her husband, who took his paternity leave that time, which ended up being really fun, but they decided to move out of our town.
And when they left, that was my support network and I just felt like I was flailing, because I had no one. I couldn't talk to my husband's parents. Even though they lived close by, I just felt, well, it wasn't - it's not the same as being able to talk to a friend and I didn't want them to judge me. So I just sort of sucked it up and - and - yeah, it wasn't good. For a good year it was - I was living, you know, two lives basically. This internal struggle that I had with myself and on the outside that I was showing everyone that, you know, I was a happy mother of two, you know, where I really - I wasn't. I was - I was miserable.
Several parents commented that particular personality traits had seemed to make having a baby more challenging and possibly contribute to perinatal depression. These included being 'planned', 'organised', 'career-orientated', 'independent', liking 'control', 'high achieving' and finding it difficult to ask for help. As Sara L, a mother of two, reflected: 'they say the more organised you are the more likely you are to get postnatal depression because you can't organise things [with a baby], and I'm a very organised, I have a routine for everything, I'm a very organised person and I think [my son] just broke it. My routine went out the window'.
Elizabeth said her 'high achieving' personality and 'textbook' transition from school to university to career came 'crashing down' when she became a mother. It also made seeking help for postnatal depression very difficult.
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And I guess I felt there was a stigma attached with having a mental health issue as opposed to a physical health issue. I was very happy to be vitamin D deficient, very happy to be iron deficient. I wasn't very happy for someone to say you have postnatal depression because it felt like a personal failing, and coming from a - you know, a high achieving background, doing well at school, doing well at uni, getting a good job and then - and then all of a sudden you fall in a heap and you have to say actually, I'm not coping. That was - it felt like a personal failing, like there was something that I wasn't doing or something that I was doing wrong, um, that led me to where I was.
I think, and this may be particularly to do with my background as being, you know, high achieving and always doing well and - and priding myself on doing well. It felt like I wasn't doing well, it was the opposite of that. You know, it's like coming home with a D on your maths test, it - you know, it's - on the test of parenting how you're going, 'Well I'm not getting an A-plus because I'm not coping and you know, I'm crying all the time and I don't want to be around my kids all the time, and I can't manage to do everything I need to do. I can't clean the house and tend to a crying baby and shower,' and so I felt - I did feel like it was an admission that I wasn't getting the A-plus and that's very difficult for someone that always strives to - to get the A-plus. So it was hard to admit to myself and hard to admit it other people, absolutely. So that's why you have your happy mask, and - and perhaps don't, don't tell people how you're really feeling or how you're really finding it.
I had no, no mental health issues before I had kids at all, nothing. I was at school, did really well. I went straight from school to uni into a law degree, worked really hard to get great marks, straight into a, you know, a job. I was - so I just, I had this I guess textbook sort of high school into uni into work career, and - and then it felt like it all just came crashing down once I had babies.
Fred who experienced depression before and after his second child described himself as very 'goal-oriented' person. He reflected on how this had made adjusting to parenthood more difficult.
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I've also been highly motivated, highly driven, highly goal-oriented. And most of the goals and targets that I set I meet. It's when I don't meet them that the opposite thing happens when I start to feel really crap about myself. And what we've noticed is that we're missing more and more of our goals and our expectations in life as we have children, because funnily enough they get in the way. [laughs]
And that's the same for my partner as well. I mean, she's highly motivated and we don't have small dreams, we have big dreams and with everything that we've ever dreamt of doing we've achieved so far. So it's just a bit frustrating when we can't quite get the things that we want now, and we do beat ourselves up about it.
A couple of mothers referred to the idea of perinatal depression as a biomedical illness. As Elizabeth said: 'I guess I felt there was a stigma attached with having a mental health issue as opposed to a physical health issue. I was very happy to be vitamin D deficient, very happy to be iron deficient. I wasn't very happy for someone to say you have postnatal depression'.
While in a mother and baby unit,
Anna remembered a nurse telling her to treat herself 'more kindly' and to think of postnatal depression as equivalent to a broken leg.
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With the post - when I was first sick I - there were certainly feelings of, 'It's my fault', but as I got better I realised that it was just the hand that was dealt in life, it, you know, it's an illness that I - it doesn't discriminate, anyone can get it. It doesn't matter what background you come from, it doesn't matter what socio economic status you have, education level you have, anything you could name.
In my journey I've met women who have had postnatal depression and it - it just happens and there are - there are some risk factors, but the puzzle really needs to go into place and then you happen to be the one to get it. And I was fine with that. But because I did hold onto this feeling that it happened, it's over, I'm fine. When I got sick again that really kicked me hard because I thought, well it must be more than just postnatal depression, it - I don't have the strength to do this again, I know how deep this is going and I - I haven't had enough time to recover.
I remember when I was in the Mother and Baby Unit, lying in bed, actually being really upset that I wasn't helping with my daughter. And I had a nurse come in and she said, "Look if you were lying here right now and you had a broken leg because you were just in car accident and we had to do everything, sure you'd be angry, sure you'd be upset that you couldn't do what you were doing, but you wouldn't beat yourself up about it, because it would be a physical condition, even though this is a physical condition as well. But because it's something that's accepted in society it's like, she's had an accident you can't look after her child, versus something's wrong with her brain she can't look after her child. You will - you would be treating yourself far more kindly than you are right now".
And the same applies to medication, there's still a lot of stigma associated with the medication and you know, 'Aren't you strong enough to do this by yourself without the help of medicine?' and you - again you look at it and you go, okay if I told someone that I had blood pressure issues, they'd be like - and I have to be on medication for the rest of my life, they would say, "Ah bad luck, you know, don't worry, at least you know the medication's there". I've made a choice that I want to stay on the medication for the rest of my life because I don't want to risk having a relapse.
And I do get asked the question, "Well what's the matter, can't you do it by yourself?" And when I do explain to them like that, you know, "Would you ask me that if, and I came to you and said, I - look I've just found out I have a blood pressure issue, I'm going to be on this medication for the rest of my life, you wouldn't be asking me this question". And that's the biggest thing that for people to look at mental illness as an illness that happens, happens to be affecting your brain. And therefore just be kinder to yourself about that. And if we all do that then the stigma will naturally disappear, and - which is the reason why you know, I'm willing to speak up and say it's all right to talk about it because it's another medical condition.
Many parents talked about aspects of contemporary life they felt contributed to their experiences of postnatal depression. These included growing individualism (making families more isolated), smaller family sizes and delayed childbearing (meaning that many new parents lacked experience with babies or children), and unrealistic or rigid ideals of motherhood.
A few commented that society had become very 'individualistic' and felt this made postnatal depression more difficult because parents felt isolated or reluctant to ask for help. As Kirsty, a stay-at-home mother, said: 'I think my generation have been raised to be independent and it's reinforced in the workforce because those sort of qualities that to further your career in the corporate world, in my experience don't work in parenthood. That was certainly my biggest downfall'.
Michelle linked the prevalence of postnatal depression to the lack of 'community spirit' living in a large city, and the 'shame' many new parents feel in asking for help.
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I think my paediatrician told me actually that probably about one in three of his patients have actually gone into the perinatal unit. So it's really common and you find the nurses sort of say that as well. They say you know, "I bet you like all the people that claim to be coping are not actually coping at all," and it's very sort of high, a high sort of figure like one in three people or one in four people actually develop it. It's just ... I think it's a lot to do with society and the pressure and also you know they say it takes a village to raise a child and just getting that help - you know, you do need to have that help there.
But you know because we're not living in a village in the Philippines or [laughs] in Columbia or something where they do have like that family unit around to help, you know, we're sort of very sort of you know dependent - there's only two people and you know you can't just have two people, or it's very difficult to just have two people look after a child. You have to have that outside help as well. Yeah.
So that's probably why the figures - like you know the ratio is so high. Yeah probably because we live in a big city and everyone's sort of you know just very much out for themselves and it's not you know that big community spirit I guess. You know we're just ... and it's just that, I suppose that shame in asking for help as well and just feeling that you have to sort of cope all the time otherwise you're less of a person and yeah it's just - I mean I - it's just that perceived - I guess just an individual perception not - not necessarily what they think, but, what society thinks but it's just that perception.
Related to this, several mothers commented on how many people had little exposure to babies or children before becoming parents as a result of smaller family sizes. They felt this could lead to unrealistic expectations of early parenthood (see Expectations of parenthood). Some new mothers in this situation who found the experience more challenging than expected (particularly if they lacked social support) felt their struggle to 'cope' was a 'personal failing', which in turn could contribute to postnatal depression. Elizabeth, a mother of two children, described discussing her preconceptions of parenthood with 'reality' with her psychologist and commented: 'We don't have a lot of young children in the family so a lot of my perceptions came from what you see in movies and on TV, which you realise is not what real life is. So going to talk to someone was really, really helpful in that regard'.
Elly felt being 'unprepared' for the life changes a baby would bring was part of why she experienced self-identified postnatal depression, and reflected on some of the reasons she thought new mothers might struggle to adjust to parenthood.
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But, yeah in terms of my expectations I think it was really just that - I had no idea how life-changing it would be, I really didn't and you hear people say, "Oh your life will change forever", and you, you take that on board. I was sort of like, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, of course it will', and I've had other big changes in my life, but this one is outside your control I think is the difference - the baby is the priority whereas other times you - you're able to sort of prioritise, you have more control over it. I have control over the things that happen at work, I'm able to influence them but with a baby, yeah, it's their way, it's not your way.
I mean it's probably, you know, family networks are not as close and people aren't as exposed to having babies around them, living with them, like they might have been previously in having extended families living quite close together or in the same house and I'd never really had any experience with - with babies or young children other than holding a friend's for a couple of hours or something but - so, possibly. But also the - you know, society places lots of pressure on people to - women to be successful and juggle these - the things of motherhood and jobs and, yeah and the fact that I had managed a work - you know, be successful in my career but yet still not able to seem to be able to get into a shopping centre in a half way organised state.
You know, I had this feeling that of course everyone was looking at me and they would know that I was a new mother that couldn't get the pram together and didn't know where the baby change room was when of course they weren't but you have this feeling that everyone's looking at you and, and people are looking when you've got a very new baby, but not - not judging you so much. Yeah, so - yeah, I think there is - there's definitely some - some - some gap there missing but lots of women and lots of my friends put lots of pressure on themselves I know to sort of try to be everything or try to be lots of things.
Deb felt that a lot of informal knowledge about mothering or parenting had been lost due to becoming 'isolated' from extended family.

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In an absolutely ideal world, I think it would be excellent if you could go to a circle of women - and you could say, this is what's happening, and they could help you to figure it out. I think we've become so isolated from our aunts and our grandmothers and I think that the best thing has been to turn around and to ask my aunts and my grandmother and even like some of my mum's friends to get an experience off them. And, I don't have to follow everyone's advice, but I can take what I want from their advice.
I feel like it would be better to be able to obtain access into like a database of minds and be able to pull from other people's experiences. Because I know that if you're reading a fiction novel and you come across something and you go, 'Oh my God, that's what's happened to me in real life', it has to come from somewhere. You know, the author has to have pulled that from somewhere.
And I think in an ideal world you would be able to just get advice from people without feeling ashamed of what you're experiencing. Because most of the time, if you feel ashamed about something, like postnatal depression and you say, 'I'm experiencing this. I don't know what to do'. Most of the time someone will say, 'I had that. Something which really helped me was to have a bath with my kids every night and just have that experience. Just don't worry about anything else. Just get in the bath with them'. And, you know, I've started doing that and it has been really helpful for me as well.
Finally, many mothers were critical of unrealistic or rigid ideals of motherhood (particularly associated with breastfeeding), often reinforced by health professionals or other mothers. They felt mothers who were unable to meet these ideals might feel inadequate and that, again, this might contribute to antenatal or postnatal depression. Michelle recalled appreciating hearing at the mother and baby unit she attended that the idea that 'breast is best and if you don't breastfeed then you're going to deprive your baby' was one of the 'myths of motherhood'. Melissa who had an elective caesarean and bottle-fed her baby talked about having to 'explain' this due to people's reactions and said: 'I did feel very much in my mothers' group that I was the bad mum'.
Zara reflected on the 'skewed values' around motherhood and the choices available to mothers. She felt becoming a mother involved having one's status 'downsized', which was particularly challenging to 'educated, older' mothers.

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Being slightly older is also a factor. A friend of my mother-in-law, she was a midwife and she's got a few retired midwife friends. And one of them said to me whenever I visited a mum with postnatal depression it was usually an older mum. And I think that has a huge bearing as well because as older women you've led a full and complex life and motherhood pulls you into a state of deeply entrenched domesticity.
Or, back in the day when women had 40 days rest in bed and - it just seems like there's a really skewed value system ... placed on motherhood these days, despite all of the knowledge and awareness that we have and the extent to which we've been enlightened about gender and equality, it just doesn't get played out [in terms of] the value that's placed on it.
So for a woman who is educated, older, has led a rich and full life before [be]coming a mother, instead of receiving messages that are saying this is just as valuable and just as enriching and just as important as all the things that you were doing out in the world, before becoming a mother, you get the complete opposite. And your status gets completed downsized. And - that's really confronting.
That's really hard to [sighs] accept and feel comfortable with and we shouldn't really - it shouldn't be accepted and we shouldn't be sort of made to feel comfortable with it. And I think for some women a strategy is just to go back to work as soon as they possibly can - which I did, to sort of recover that sort of feeling of value and self-worth in work terms. Or to embrace the homey mama thing where you take pride in a new identity, and not worry about the inequality that you're experiencing and just embrace the stereotype. Well not really the stereotype, [but] in a way that - that feels comfortable for you. So it's fascinating really [laughs]. For all the work that's been done for the feminist cause there's a lot more to do around motherhood.
So there's a lot of good books around it, but - I read 'The Mask of Motherhood' ... I read that while I was pregnant and I found it so depressing. I thought ... [laughs], 'This is not what it's going to be like, it's not going to be like that for me'. And I had to put it down - 'No, not reading this - [this] can't possibly be what I'm facing.' But in retrospect, it's spot on and thank God ... - thank goodness there's a book like that out there. Well it's strident, the tone is really strident and passionate. So you feel like - absolutely there's all these injustices that are going on and ... I just didn't really think it through. What I was facing, I didn't have any close friends that had become mothers recently who might have been able to shed a bit of light on the realities of it.
Tina felt that in her home country, Iran, women lost their 'feminine identity' once they had children. She disagreed with this, and appreciated gaining a 'very different' perspective' on Iranian cultural ideals of motherhood after moving to Australia.
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Three months after she was born exactly, three months and one week after she was born, we came here to Australia. I was too busy to think that I'm depressed, I got depression, but when I look back I find that, yes, I was depressed. I got depression, but everyone was too busy to look at me. My parents, my husband, my family members, they were all happy with the new member who was my little child. I remember that for the first three months that still I was in Iran I hated my little daughter, I hated. I could never - I could never show her my love because I thought, 'Wow, all these years I could live for myself, I had lots of time to do something nice for myself, but now see what happen? I have to feed her, I have to look after her, I have to provide enough care for her and no one appreciates'. I don't know. Maybe I should blame the society, the traditional society in which I grew up.
Anyway, women are always marginalised in, like I'm saying, traditional societies, so no-one appreciated you as a mum. They all looked at the baby, 'Wow, how nice, how cute she was', so I can clearly remember that I hated her. I remember that when she - the first three months after she was born, I was struggling with everyone. I was to find a way for myself, to find some free time for myself, like going shopping, watching movies and I just asked my mum to look after her - her grandchild. I told my mum, "Okay, now that you love her, you can look after her and I'm going to do whatever I used to do". But I know that it was a mistake, you know what I mean? I know that it is not fair anyway because she was born, a baby is born. She had no - she had no choice to decide whether she is going to be born or not, we decided. So, maybe it was my first responsibility and duty to look after her, but I guess I was just going to take revenge on all the people who surrounded me, like my husband, my mum, my sister.
Anyway, I was very lucky to come to Australia after three months because in Australia I had enough time to think, 'Okay, now who I am, what do I want to be, what do I want to do?' Living in Australia and staying in Australia gave me the chance to look at the future from a very different perspective. In Australia there was just me, my husband and my little daughter. There was no word of my family, they were very, very far away from me, so I had the time - I mean I had the chance to manage my time.
I remember that from the very first week I came here I subscribed to a women's magazine in Australia. Maybe that was a way to show my feminine identity to my husband, you know what I mean? So, I was very happy, I could show my husband, yes, now as a female, as a woman, as a mum, I can also have some time for myself, like spend one hour every day to read a magazine, your favourite magazine and I still do it, I am still...
It's not really happening in Iran, it's not really happening. Oh, in traditional families, no, it's not really happening. When you are a mum you have to do what - whatever you have. Some, you know, sometimes you see a lady who is very young, brilliant, slim, very good looking. But as soon as she is a mum, you can hardly identify her. She gains lots of weight, the way she dresses changes, the way she behaves, changes everything. The primary focus is on baby, which is totally wrong. Of course when - when you live in that context you cannot understand it, but as soon as you - you move far away and when you look from an outsider perspective, you have the chance to see what's happening really.
And I - that's the way I see it, I was very lucky because when I came to Australia I had the chance to compare a very different culture.