Agreeing with what Paul said a few weeks ago. Psychosis hits hard and it can hit very early.
My psychosis was not well diagnosed, coming after a long labour and a forceps delivery of a very large baby that also left me with "a well scarred perineum" - a third degree tear on top of the forceps damage
but it was obvious that something was badly wrong and this was picked up at five days - extreme agitation, utter and near total sleeplessness, and they tried various drugs in increasing doses - they started with little pink ones and they tried yellow ones then blue ones before transferring us both to the mum-and-baby psychiatirc unit at eight days. The horse tablets dose that should have had me asleep for 48 hours put me out for 2 hours, and that was with horrendous nightmares. I think that was when they knew something odd was going on.
They took away the clock in my room because they thought i was trying to keep myself awake working to a schedule: that was when i got really disoriented and worried. That was so unnecessary. Then they took away my baby-nail-scissors (OK how sharp are they.) I was wierd but no i wasn't suicidical. That did upset me.
One problem for the medics is that the condition is sufficiently rare that even the gynae registrar hadn't met it before, so he couldn't really guide the SHO, and it was a bank holiday weekend so there was nobody more senior about. Even the registrar was a locum. I will never forget that the SHO did sit up all night with me in my room; She really did her best.
They were trying to let me keep on breastfeeding but the exhaustion put paid to that in the end anyway. I never got home in between. I was 24hours away from compulsory ECT but thankfully the drugs worked on time.
I was hallucinating by this stage and doing all sorts of bizarre things, but who knows whether the cocktail of drugs made it worse? Certainly by the time i had to make up babyfeed bottles, i couldn't read the small print because of visual complications which it turned out were side effects of the antipsychotic medicines. If only somebody had told me that! If only the junior doctor on call had read the book and given me an antidote to these symptoms in time! The psychiatric consultant who interviewed us when i was transferred gave me an intravenous shot of the antidote before she even talked to me and within ten minutes i could walk straight and get my neck out of its crick position, though it was several days before my eyes got sorted.
The good news is that it does get better; i was back at work at four months and off all medication. At the time it was desparately frightening though and i pray for all of you here and your families. My faith has been a tremendous support through it all and during my recovery, which is just as well because my husband left me within three years. Apparently 70% of marriages cannot cope with the stress this does to you but don't despair. The hardest to cope with in hindsight must have been my loss of confidence in myself. He also lost confidence in me that really destroyed the relationship. You might be not be a believer but when you have crossed the line between what your senses show you and what your brain knows must be there, it all makes nmore sense. For instance hot water coming out of the cold tap, or voices coming from a room you can see to be empty. It's scary. It alters you whole world view of what really is, what you can prove, and what you just think you saw. That's one thing i hate now at work if i have to fill in accident forms etc.
So many things could have been done better, from medication to communication between professionals, from poor discharge planning to better follow-up and support. My GP didn't even know i had been transferred, nobody told him. I wish this forum had been around then and it seems the drugs have come a long way too.
