Emma Jane Unsworth
Credit: Alex Lake
I’d always imagined having two kids. Not in some clichéd 2.4 children way, but rather because I come from a family of four and my siblings were such an intrinsic part of my childhood I wanted to give that gift to my son.
However, when my husband and I started talking about the possibility of a second child, a huge factor in our decision was the fact I suffered awful postnatal depression (PND) after the birth of our son in 2016, and I was absolutely terrified about it coming back. By this point our son was three; we’d just got our sleep back, we felt like a (mostly) functional and portable little unit, and things were generally on an even keel. It was stupid, surely, to throw a curveball into that new-found calm? PND remains the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It struck when my son was a month or so old, and lasted for about a year. I was lost in a dark wilderness, isolated from everyone I knew and loved, including my husband. Inc