I'm Fine (and other lies): Postnatal depression, motherhood, and trying to actually be fine

(Paperback)

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I slept through my first labour.Eventually a midwife woke me. 'It's time to push,' she said, pointing to the machine that was monitoring my baby. It showed contraction after contraction, spiking and declining with mountainous patterns like the heart rate machines on medical shows. Beside the machine was my husband, Steve's, face, watching me closely, complete with massive eye bags from worry and exhaustion; it appeared that while I'd been sleeping he'd been on high alert. Taking one for the team, you could say, which was only fair because apparently I was about to push an entire human through my hoo-ha.

With her career down the toilet, a husband who was never home, a baby screaming non-stop and her cries for help falling on deaf ears, Megan Blandford spent years saying, 'I'm fine'.

Spoiler alert (not really): she wasn't fine.

Megan sank into postnatal depression and anxiety, with a highly negative inner voice leading the charge in the battle for better mental health. Until Megan faced a life-changing question: What if the enemy inside isn't the enemy after all

I'm Fine (and other lies) is a touching true story of motherhood: the challenges it presents, and the hope that can be found within it.

'I could kiss this book.I'm Fine (and other lies)was such an unexpected wonder...I'm Fineis the Mother's Day read we all owe ourselves. Beautifully written, moving and powerful, it is a challenge to the stigma of not just postnatal depression, but all mental illness. I am so very glad I read this uplifting book and I look forward to more writing from Megan Blandford.'Robert O'Hearn, Booktopia

Reviews

"Motherhood is hard. Read this book. It will help. And if you still need more help, please please ask. It's out there"
- Caroline Overington, journalist and author

"An intensely personal and heartfelt story of one woman's journey through depression to find herself - she like so many women, was so critical of herself as she transitioned into motherhood, and struggled to ask for help and be heard. I hope this helps other women free themselves of their own negative internal voice long enough to get help."
- Anne Buist, psychiatrist and author

"I could kiss this book. This brilliant and incredibly candid book woke me up, making me reappraise all the mothers in my life and wonder how many struggle to cope and how they could have been helped. This is not a dry book offering self-help and useless facts, but a memoir of a harrowing experience described with honesty and humour. And so she delivers a spectacularly frank book that lets sunlight into all the dark places. As she describes her depression she tells it as a dialogue, her depressed doubting self heckling down every moment of positive help or chance. Therein lies some of the best writing on depression that I've ever encountered. In this book there is no fat narrative padding, no indulgent pain-porn or wallowing in the suffering. I'm Fine (and other lies) leaves you with this thought: the secret to coping is to not hide. As a testament to the strength and fragility of mothers (and the burdens they carry in plain sight that we choose not to see), perhaps I'm Fine is the Mother's Day read we all owe ourselves. Beautifully written, moving and powerful, it is a challenge to the stigma of not just postnatal depression, but all mental illness."
- Robert O'Hearn, non-fiction specialist, Booktopia

Author Bio

Megan Blandford is an author and prolific freelance writer. As a well-respected voice on mental health and parenting, Megan writes for Sunday Life, Essential Baby, Kidspot, SBS, Whimn, Daily Life, Body+Soul and Headspace. Megan lives in country Victoria with her husband, two children and far too many animals. She is, currently, actually fine.