Although you feel broken,
keep going.
I went through a very dark
phase in my life and
I still had to go to work.
I still had to do what I needed to do.
I think it all began when
I had met my son's father.
We had started a
relationship quite fast and
I got pregnant quite early as well.
And we thought we would just start a
relationship due to me being pregnant.
They there was verbal and there was
also physical abuse.
As well, so
our relationship was just toxic.
At an extreme level.
To the point where there was one moment
in our relationship where we had
a physical altercation, and
I had fallen on my stomach
while I was pregnant and I
had to go to hospital.
When I was eight months pregnant,
my son's father, he decided to leave.
He broke up with me via
text and he left for
Australia and I think that forced me
into a very dark place.
Because I knew that
I was getting close to giving birth and
I was going to be entering
motherhood as a solo mother and
it was nothing that I wanted.
So I did have suicidal thoughts.
I did have very dark thoughts.
There are certainly high rates of
postnatal depression
and antenatal depression
in Pacific mums here in New Zealand.
Antenatal means before giving birth.
So that's during the pregnancy, postnatal is
afterwards, and perinatal covers both.
So postnatal depression
is more than feeling stressed.
It's actually a medical condition
where your brain sort of
runs out of the chemicals it needs to
keep going or runs low on them
and so things which are quite
usual, like sleeping and eating
and thinking and concentrating
and remembering and even loving people
just all don't work
as they usually do, so
it's not something
that you just deal with
and get through, like the stress
of a crying baby,
a barking dog and a moaning
husband who all need feeding,
you feed them all to get on with it, and you feel better.
With the depression
you later crumple into a heap and
just not be able to do it.
OK, my name is Mele'ana Wickham.
I am 28 years old
and I am a wife to Jamie and
a Mum to two girls, Esther who is three years old
and Shiloh, two years old.
When Esther was born,
it was just magical.
Everything in my life had
just felt complete.
I was just in a really happy place.
Everything was happy and
it took a lot for me to
get annoyed about anything.
And when Shiloh was born,
it was quite the opposite.
I was instead of being happy
of my newborn baby, I was afraid of her.
At first I didn't know how to
deal with it.
It took a year for
me to realise that
that after Shiloh was born
that I was going through postnatal depression.
and I had no idea at the time
Because of that,
a lot of things changed.
I mean, I changed as a person.
You know, I wasn't the happy,
happy Mum, happy life person.
It was quite the opposite.
I think that my biggest fear was
just being afraid of being alone.
'Cause I grew up
in Tonga, growing up in Tonga
when you have a baby, you're
just surrounded by families.
You know people just come in uninvited
and they help you and
they do things for you.
And I guess I had always wanted that.
And when Shiloh was born,
I desperately needed that.
And because I didn't, I didn't have that.
I was afraid to be alone at home because
I thought, what if I can't do it?
You know this...sorry.
There's just no one.
You know?
After awhile I just,
you know, I started looking
up stuff and I read about what a
lot of mums were going through and I
remember my midwife
mentioning postnatal depression
so I decided to look it up.
It was like reading a description of myself on the internet.
I still wanted to keep
it quiet because I thought
I'm a strong person.
I can, I can work on this.
I can heal, you know
I can do this on my own.
Why do Pacific mums have such high rates?
Social economic deprivation
makes you more likely to develop
postnatal depression, extremes of age
like being a very young mum
or very old mum.
So under 20, over 40
you're more likely to develop depression.
But that's probably not quite
enough because also we know that
in New Zealand, Pacific Peoples,
specifically New Zealand born Pacific people
have more anxiety and depression than
any other group.
My son had arrived,
it was like,
it was like, God still saw worth in me to stay.
And it was a message to me personally.
That he still loved me, although I felt alone
Although I felt
I did have support around me
I still felt alone
but I felt like I could continue forward.
When I get into some
very low moments, I tend to
isolate, but in this experience
I had to do the opposite.
I had to be surrounded
by positive things, positive people,
and I do have quite
very good quality friends
that I can count on one hand.
who have been a great support system
for me, as well as my mother
who was also solo mother as well, so
she could definitely relate to
me on that level.
I had like a spiritual pull in a sense,
that I was drawn to nature, although
I work in nature, it was like
I was pulled to just go
and walk, and it’s something so simple
like people who don’t really understand
probably thinking
like, ‘you just went to nature and walked?’
And that's exactly what I did.
So I just started walking
in nature and I
just keep walking every weekend it became a ritual.
I think the biggest thing was
I'm not a person that talk
about feelings and things.
'cause I grew up
in a place where
we don't talk about our feelings.
You know it's not about you.
It's about the family as
a whole and because of
I've always had that mindset that
it's not about me, it's about
it's about everyone together.
And because of that
I never talked about it, even to Jamie.
I didn't want him to think
I guess at the time I viewed it as weak.
I didn’t want him to think that I was weak.
That I couldn't do my job as a mum
so I kept it quiet and about a year,
a year went past and
I thought I can't take this anymore
so I just went up to him and I said, hey,
we gotta rethink this marriage.
I don't think,
and he was shocked because he had no
idea what was going on and I guess I
just expected him to read my mind or.
read what I was going through and
from then on
that was the beginning of it.
That's what led to us talking more
and more about what it was, what
I was going through.
Last year we went
we did couple counselling and
I found that talking about it
to someone random and
just opening up and then asking questions
and you just telling them
it just helped a lot.
You know just letting things out.
Even if it was to a stranger.
I'm very content with my life right now.
I have a awesome husband.
Who respects me on every level.
He has been a part
of my healing as well.
Yeah, I just definitely love,
I'm very blessed.
Definitely speak out, as hard as it is
sometimes I think it's
the most important thing to do
is just talk about it.