{"id":317617,"date":"2025-10-20T03:42:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T03:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/317617\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T03:42:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T03:42:25","slug":"i-gave-birth-to-twins-postnatal-depression-made-me-want-to-hurt-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/317617\/","title":{"rendered":"I Gave Birth to Twins\u2014Postnatal Depression Made Me Want To Hurt Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

After giving birth to twins, Ivana Poku battled postpartum depression<\/a> and intrusive thoughts\u2014now she helps other mothers understand that they are not alone.<\/p>\n

When her twins were just a few months old, maternal mental health advocate Poku, who lives in Scotland, was sitting at home alone with one baby on her lap and the other strapped into a bouncer. The afternoon was quiet until, suddenly, something inside her shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like something possessed my brain and my body,\u201d she told Newsweek. \u201cI felt this strong urge to hurt him.\u201d<\/p>\n

A small part of her\u2014what she now calls her healthy part\u2014recognized the danger. She quickly strapped the baby into the chair, ran into her bedroom and locked the door.<\/p>\n

Then she sat there, terrified of herself. In that moment, she realized something was terribly wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like you\u2019re sitting there thinking, \u2018Let\u2019s hurt my baby,\u2019\u201d Poku said. \u201cIt\u2019s not you. It\u2019s an illness and this is the symptom of the illness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Poku, who was 32 at the time, said that her mental health had been unraveling quietly since the birth of her twins. While she was never officially diagnosed with postpartum depression, looking back she believes it is obvious what it was\u2014perhaps even bordering on postpartum psychosis<\/a>. When the babies arrived, she didn\u2019t feel the rush of love she had been told to expect. Instead, there was numbness and guilt.<\/p>\n

“Postnatal mood changes are more common than many people realize,” clinical psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Shahrzad Jalali\u2014author of The Fire That Makes Us\u2014told Newsweek<\/p>\n

She continued: “About 70 to 80 percent of new mothers experience what we call the ‘baby blues’ in the first few days after giving birth. This is a short lived emotional period, the symptoms are mostly like tearfulness irritability mood swings\u00a0but typically resolve about two three weeks in at most six weeks.”<\/p>\n

“When these symptoms last longer or begin to interfere with daily functioning, we start to look at what we call postnatal depression, which is a clinical diagnosis. This affects roughly one in seven people worldwide,<\/p>\n

“It’s not unusual for mothers experiencing postnatal depression or anxiety to have intrusive or frightening thoughts, like feeling they may harm their baby or wishing their children weren’t there. These thoughts are deeply distressing and unwanted, and usually the mother would not act on it.”<\/p>\n

‘Inside I Was Breaking’<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t feel happy,\u201d Poku said. \u201cI thought that made me a horrible mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poku recalled how she missed her old life, felt disconnected from her new one and began to despise herself for it. \u201cThe silence was the killer,\u201d she said. \u201cI was pretending to be okay, but inside I was breaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her thoughts grew darker. Sometimes she would watch her babies sleeping and imagine if they never woke up. \u201cI\u2019d think,\u00a0\u2018If they died, that would be amazing,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The family had just moved to a new town. There were no friends nearby, no relatives to help and her husband worked long hours. \u201cMost of the time it was just me,\u201d Poku said. \u201cNo friends, no family, no support. That\u2019s not okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, she did not realize she was ill. \u201cYou don\u2019t know you have depression,\u201d she said. \u201cYou just feel like you\u2019re failing\u2014that everyone else is enjoying their babies and you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shame kept her silent. Though she was given leaflets and phone numbers for support lines, reaching out felt impossible. \u201cThey tell you to call someone, but when you\u2019re in that state, it\u2019s the last thing you can do,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

The turning point came when a friend dropped by unexpectedly and found her in the depths of despair. \u201cThere was no way I could hide it,\u201d Poku said. \u201cI told her everything, and she didn\u2019t judge me. That was so liberating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her husband\u2019s support also helped pull her through. He reminded her that she was raising twins alone, without a support network, and that struggling didn\u2019t make her weak\u2014it made her human. \u201cWhen I gave myself some compassion everything started to change,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Finding Purpose in Pain<\/p>\n

Poku’s change did not end with her recovery, but instead sparked a mission. She began speaking to other mothers and discovered that even the ones who seemed to have it all together were often quietly suffering too. \u201cI realized it wasn\u2019t just me,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I knew it was my duty to make a difference for future moms.\u201d<\/p>\n

She launched Mum\u2019s Journey, a blog where she writes honestly about the realities of motherhood, postpartum mental health and recovery\u2014and later published a book, \u201cMotherhood: The Unspoken.\u201d The book brings together stories from mothers around the world, offering what she described as \u201ca comfort hug in book form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poku also runs a course on preparing for postpartum emotional wellbeing, designed to help expecting mothers understand the challenges of new motherhood\u2014not to scare them, she stresses, but to make sure no one feels as unprepared and isolated as she once did.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had known those feelings were normal,\u201d she said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have struggled in silence. Proper education is essential.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is something that Jalali echoes. She said: “The most important thing is for a woman to know they’re not alone and that help is available postnatal depression is a very treatable condition. If a mother notices persistent sadness, loss of pressure, feelings of guilt or intrusive thoughts, she should reach out to a healthcare provider.<\/p>\n

\u201cSupport from family and friends is extremely important. It’s important for her to not be alone with the baby. And then compassion, no judgment. If you know someone who’s given birth, maybe check up on them. Maybe offer your support because it is a very tough time for a woman.”<\/p>\n

Today, Ivana Poku is a mother of three and maternal mental health advocate, mentor and writer, working to dismantle the stigma around postpartum mental illness. She is not a clinician, but her lived experience has made her a trusted voice in the maternal wellness community and a lifeline for women who see themselves in her story.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany mothers have told me I helped them more than a psychologist,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe because I\u2019ve been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you have a tip on a health story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about postpartum depression? Let us know via health@newsweek.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After giving birth to twins, Ivana Poku battled postpartum depression and intrusive thoughts\u2014now she helps other mothers understand…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":317618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[23494,13959,246,210,2252,1165,29674,517,4757,29679,16588,67,132,68,15649],"class_list":{"0":"post-317617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-babies","9":"tag-families","10":"tag-family","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-life","13":"tag-lifestyle","14":"tag-maternity","15":"tag-mental-health","16":"tag-parenting","17":"tag-postpartum","18":"tag-postpartum-depression","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-womens-health"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115404429756095438","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}