Episode 1XX – My postnatal depression after surrogacy

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Welcome back, or if this is your first time, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series with me, your host Anna McKie. This podcast series is usually formed from the interviews I host in the regular free webinar series on Wednesday nights. Those one hour webinars will take you through the surrogacy process in Australia. You will hear from a surrogate or parent and there are opportunities to type in your questions and we will try to answer them.

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You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org. This episode is different. This episode is a blog post that I wrote at about seven months after the birth of my surrogate baby, Baker. When I wrote it, for some reason I also decided to record it as a video of me speaking out loud. For most people, hearing and seeing yourself on video is overwhelming. For some context, in my other work as a high school math teacher, I do flipped learning,

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and have created over 200 videos teaching maths, mainly on the content for year 11 and 12 higher level maths. So I’ve gotten used to hearing myself, I guess. And this was before I started the webinar and the podcast series. Needless to say, I’m used to the sound of my own voice now. Reading my blog post out loud was so cathartic. It’s hard to describe. It was as though I had a dark demon sitting in the corner of my soul. The shame from postnatal depression.

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But by speaking my truth, it was as though I shone a light into that corner and it wasn’t dark anymore. I felt lighter, not ruled by my past from when I was unwell. For extra context, in January 2025, I received my autism diagnosis. That has been quite a journey in the two to three years of waiting for that diagnosis and has allowed me to look back on my past with a different lens of neurodiversity.

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Motherhood seemed to flare up my neurodiversity. I imagine I would have been more compassionate towards myself during surrogacy if I know what I do now about how my brain works. In the show notes, I’ll put links to my blog and Katrina Hale’s guide that I mentioned. Okay, time to dive in. I hope you enjoy this episode and please share it if the opportunity arises. My name is Anna McKie and I had postnatal depression

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after I birthed my surrogate baby. Gosh, even getting to the point of saying that out loud has been a long time coming and it’s a hard thing to come to terms with. I’m writing this seven months after the birth of Baker, the surrogate bub that I birthed for his two dads, Matt and Brendan, who are also in Adelaide with me. This is a long read. Come with me down the rabbit hole if you have time. It’s a chapter in a book and a reflection piece for me.

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Why am I even writing this? This is a question I’ve been asking myself for a while. Is it presumptuous to assume anyone would want to read about it? Why would I want to go back to the bottom of the pit and relive my experiences? Why not just move on? I have decided to put my thoughts down for these reasons. To publicly thank those who helped me through the worst of it. To collate my thoughts so I can compartmentalize them and therefore move forward.

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to bring an idea for different language to this topic, to hope that it might help one future surrogate speak up when she is struggling, to take a leaf from Brené Brown and show my vulnerability. I have shame around this topic, but in trying to unpack that, I realised that the shame comes from a place where I fear it will disconnect me with people. But I need to flip that around, because to truly connect with people, I need to be authentic, vulnerable,

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and tell my story with my whole heart. So here goes. Some background on me. I basically had postnatal depression after the birth of my own two children, but I never officially got diagnosed. My own kids were four and six at the time of Baker’s birth. I put lots of strategies in place leading up to the birth of my son, as I didn’t want to go back to the place of struggling after the birth of my daughter. I breastfed both children for 12 months.

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and had a positive year of maternity leave the second time round. In the mandatory counselling in surrogacy, we talked about my previous struggles, but we didn’t create an action plan for how to check in with Anna after Baker’s birth. Why? I put it down to me or surrogates in general being determined women and we’re confident that we can handle whatever surrogacy throws at us. The counsellor we used for our mandatory counselling did a fine job.

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But due to my articulation about what strategies we had in place to combat potential PND, post-natal depression, we never fully unpacked my previous struggles. Nor did the counsellor have a breadth of experience for being able to recognise and probe previous PND. Whereas I shifted to Katrina Hale for ongoing counselling once pregnant and after birth. And she has much more experience with the full spectrum of surrogacy. We went for the cheaper.

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and convenient option for mandatory counselling. I wish we had paid for Katrina for our mandatory counselling, but as a team, we all decided not to. Ultimately, I would love to see the surrogacy counsellors in Australia have the opportunity to share their experience with each other more often so they can learn from each other and strengthen their craft. A suggestion for teams here, ticking the box with a cheaper, convenient option with mandatory counselling with a less experienced counsellor.

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is a risk. It might be okay but surrogacy is all about relationships and connections so if any team member is struggling and we never know when these struggles will crop up it will make things quicker and smoother later if you have a history with an experienced surrogacy counsellor. The birth of Baker was amazing. Have a read of my birth story or watch the photo slideshow I’ll provide link for that. The week after birth was a once in a lifetime for our team.

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We then started to ease into life after surrogacy and we had a plan for how to do that. We saw each other every day for a week, then moved to every second day and continued to ease off as was comfortable for everyone. So where did it all start to unravel? Those first three months post-birth are really a blur for me, as I know they are for the dads too, as they were adjusting to life with a newborn. On a side note,

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It’s worth teams discussing the possibility of postnatal depression for the IPs as well. These surrey babies are very wanted children. They have been dreamt of for years, but they bring monotony, sleep deprivation and cries that are hard to decipher. So it’s inevitable that there will be times that the parents are challenged and quite frankly, hate. All team members need to make sure they have support and reach out for it. It’s easier said than done though.

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And this is where we all need people who are tasked to check in on us and to ask both the surrogate and the now parents, are you OK? I was expressing breast milk, EBM, for Baker and did eventually make it to the two month mark post-birth. I had an app that kept track of this and I pumped 21 litres over 191 pumps for the little man. Express breast milk is a mammoth amount of work and one that I’m proud of doing for Baker.

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but also for my own physical recovery. For those new to the benefits of breast milk, for the birth mother, expressing milk releases the happy hormone oxytocin. Looking back with my own two kids, breastfeeding for a year produced oxytocin many times a day. However, with Baker, as I weaned from expressing milk, the little hits of happy hormones reduced and my big crash came at that two month post birth mark.

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Katrina Hale helped me to unpack this and we then felt that my fourth trimester really started at that point and therefore lasted three months until I was five months post-birth. I definitely felt like the fog lifted at five months post-birth somewhat. My suggestion for teens, if the surrogate is planning on expressing milk, take note of when she starts to reduce the number of times a day or when she completely weans as there will be a natural drop in oxytocin.

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which means her body needs to adjust to life without that happy hormone hit. Some women will cope better than others, but checking in with each other and being on the front foot for all team members with this conversation will help. But I’m treading water here with everything I’ve written so far because diving down into how it really went is hard. Perhaps those reading or listening have had their own struggles in life and can relate.

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Maybe you too have struggles with postnatal depression or anxiety or mental health challenges, or maybe you’ve had fertility struggles or cancer or other life challenges where you spiral down into a pit. This experience has taken me to my deepest pit and I wish I could sit alongside that Anna, put my arm around her, let her cry and reassure her

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that she will climb out of the pit eventually. Okay, at the six week post-birthmark, I wrote the following message to a small group of surrogates, and it was my first moment of reaching out for help. This is my first thanks to those with whom I felt safe, Amanda, Charmaine, and Madeleine. Thank you for your friendship and kindness, your warmth and security, for listening and gently suggesting. Here’s what I said to them.

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I’m not okay. But I also don’t have the emotional capacity or time to explain it all in detail. Or the time to do a post and then reply to all of the kind comments. Could you direct me to some posts I could search for where other surrogates have said they are struggling and the elders have shared their support so I could read those posts? In a nutshell, I’m teary, cry every day, bloody hormones.

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I want more time in my day to do the things on my list, but never enough time. I want to see the boys and people, but I also don’t want to carve that time out. I feel a bit lonely in this journey. I’m not alone, but I feel lonely. I miss Matt and Brendan and being so important to them. I’m taking lots of packets of breast milk down tomorrow morning, so that will be good to see them all, I guess.

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The girls pointed me in the direction of posts of other surrogates that other surrogates had done when they were postnatal and reading about the experience of others was helpful as I realised that all of my feelings were normal. If you’re in the Australian Surrogate Support Group, use the search function and type in Amanda Meehan post-birth and find a post from the 18th of March 2018. I had had

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one counselling with Katrina Hale at the five week post birthmark and that was a positive and helpful session at the end of October. In that week we had two other debriefs, one with our midwife team as a final session with the group practice and one with our hypnobirthing educator Lauren. After these catch-ups I remember this deep sense of peace that in the long term the dads were not going to abandon me, that they had been the same

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steady the whole way through our sorrow dating, pregnancy and beyond. And they weren’t going anywhere. But assimilating this knowledge with a postnatal brain is another thing. I was wobbly, but not all of the time. I was muddled, but then also going into a month of exam marking. I marked external math, year 12 math exams in November, and I birthed Baker at the end of September. It was good to use my brain for the marking.

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as it helped to remind me of who I was and what my brain was capable of. But in hindsight, maybe it was too much. Adelaide also went into a short six-day lockdown, thank you Woodville Pizza Shop, and this threw me into a spin too. My brain didn’t handle that uncertainty well at all. At seven weeks post-birth, mid-November, the dads hosted an event called a Sip and See, where people come to sip champagne and see the baby.

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Baker had had his six week immunisations at this point and it was a chance for Brendan’s interstate family to meet Baker. I wrote about this in a message to another friend from the surrogacy community, Zoe Steffen, who is a mum through surrogacy. And I said this to her, on the whole, it was a good day, but it was a hard day for me. Very emotional with lots of tears. As we say, feel the feels, don’t fight them. So I didn’t. Looking back, that weekend felt

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almost like an out of body experience. Now I’m through it. I feel like those hormones took over my body and brain. Loading the Esky of breast milk was such a challenge. 40 packets of about 200 mils each was a once in a lifetime delivery. I’ve started to wean now. So although there will be a bit more breast milk, it will never be an Esky like that. As I put each packet into the Esky, and I know this sounds dramatic, but it was how my brain was thinking.

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It felt like I was lowering a coffin. I could barely see what I was doing from the tears and my fingers were burning from the freezer cold of the packets. I asked husband Glenn to take a photo because I wanted to remember the hard times of surrogacy. When we arrived, Glenn and Matt loaded it into the freezer and I stood there and cried and cried, sobbing and probably wailing like a bereaved woman. I couldn’t help it. Brendan came up to me.

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put his arm around me and ask what’s wrong. I couldn’t answer, so he hugged me. I asked for a second hug after, and I still couldn’t articulate what was wrong because it wasn’t a quick answer. So I walked away after the hugging was done and the freezer fought. One of their gay mum friends, Catherine, helped to facilitate cuddles with Baker a bit later, and I’m deeply grateful to her for that. I gathered up my kids, Emily and Ewan,

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and Catherine suggested we go into the lounge where it was quiet. As I sat on the couch, ready for her to pass Baker to me, my heart exploded or broke. I was crying as I wrote that to Zoe too. She hugged me as I cried and the cry was a deep sobbing thing. My body collapsed into her shoulder and I let it all out. I think she understood and recognized that I needed that time.

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Baker then started to cry, so I picked him up. Catherine had put him on the couch while she hugged me. And then my focus was on him. Glenn was there too and helped to navigate Emily and Ewan to either side of me to see Baker. I decided to sing to Baker. There’s a special song I’ve been singing to my kids, usually at bedtime, since they were born. And so Baker has heard it in my tummy. I have been looking forward to the day that I sang it to Baker.

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and Sunday was that day. I sang it through tears as I held him in my arms. That’s what is happening in the photos I’ve shared. When I started, I swear his eyes changed as though it was accessing some memory in his brain. And even if that’s not true, I’m telling myself that’s what happened. I also noticed his dummy sucking pause and then the pattern of sucking changed. It was a very special moment for me.

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He’s not my child, but he is the baby from my body, the baby I grew. After these cuddles that day, I think I felt a deep peace in my body. Those hormones eased and although there are still tears, they come with less anxiety. One analogy I found myself creating relevant to mental health is that if I arrived on Sunday with a broken arm, people would be able to see that cast and understand why I might be upset.

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from the physical recovery and also emotionally. But when it’s hormonal and inside your body and people can’t see it, maybe they struggle to understand why we might be struggling. I happened to chat lots with Matt and Brendan’s family on Sunday and they were so, so supportive. We’ve spent time together over the last two and a half years and I’m so pleased we have because they were my village on Sunday. So then, a week and a half after the Sip and See,

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I had an opportunity to meet with Matt and Brendan at their house one evening and unpack that event. I had brought a lot of anxiety to that event and it was very visibly emotional and hormonal. The focus of that day shifted to me when it should have been a celebration of their passage to parenthood and celebrating the extended village meeting Baker. I had weighed up if I should even attend or not. And even when walking,

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towards their house, I paused with Glen twice as I wasn’t sure I should go in in the state that I was in. If I wasn’t there, then I wasn’t celebrating my friends who are now parents, but being there in the state that I was in, unfortunately didn’t allow the day to be properly celebrated. Matt and Brendan and I unpacked all of this that Thursday night and it was hard, so very hard. As a team, we have gotten really good at conflict resolution.

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And I think I knew in my heart that if we were to move past that, we had to discuss it. The guys were amazing. They were trying to read me as to whether or not we should talk about it because they knew the fragile state I was in. They had been up and down with their thoughts about that Sunday and they brought their honesty and truth to our unpacking discussion. It was hard. But I think we all agree it needed to happen at some point if we were to move forward.

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I didn’t get it right that Sunday and I apologise and I apologise here again. Not many friendships have the strength to be able to work through conflict like that but we did.

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So after that Thursday night discussion, Friday dawn, and I was tired from a late night and I guess I had a shame hangover. I dropped my kids off at school and went into my workplace, my school, to just be around some colleagues. My work colleagues have been amazing as they’ve written this whole surrogacy journey with me. A shout out here to Lauren, Anne and Kerry. So that Friday morning I bumbled into school, but most people were busy or absent.

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So feeling lost, I went back home again. Cue crash number one. I remember lying on my bed, crying and crying with a mountain of wet tissues piling up on the floor next to my bed. My brain was analyzing the lengthy conversation with Matt and Brendan from the night before, and I was feeling overwhelmed with shame. My brain was going in circles, analyzing, crying, just wanting the thinking to stop. I wanted to sleep.

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I wanted my brain to stop. I wanted to get off the spinning hamster wheel that was in my head. I wanted to sleep and stay asleep so that I didn’t have to listen to my brain. I was lost. And although plenty of people in our lives say, reach out if you need help, give me a call. I felt like a burden. I didn’t want to contact anyone because I’m sure they were busy with their lives and it’s not their job to help me. So who could I burden?

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was there anyone where it was part of their job to help people? That’s how I was thinking about it. Yes, I remembered fellow surrogate and GP in Tasmania, Anna Chilcott, a beautiful woman with whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person a year before. So I sent her this message and I have her permission to share our conversations. I said, Anna, I think I need help.

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I think I need to start a conversation about medication or antidepressants. Is the first step to make a time with my GP? I’m nine weeks post-birth today. I’m lying in bed, bawling my eyes out, running through all the people I could lean on and tell them this. And although I know I have support if I need it, I don’t want to burden people. I guess I feel I could burden a GP, which then made me think of you as a friend, as a surrogate, as a doctor.

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And maybe I would ask you what the first step would be. I don’t want to hit send on this message, but I need to, I think.

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I then managed to have a nap and as always, I felt a little better after sleep. And Anna replied this to me, don’t underestimate the physiological hugeness of pregnancy, labor, birth, breastfeeding, expressing, then stopping. This hugeness has the power to unearth deeply buried stuff from the caverns of your brain and the hormones render you super vulnerable. Get thee to the GP.

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Just tell them, I have postnatal depression. I have a past history of postnatal depression. I would like medication and maybe see a psychologist. A good GP will take over from there, ask the appropriate questions, prescribe appropriately and set the wheels in motion for helping you move through this. The other thing I almost always do as a GP in this situation is check some basic bloods for reversible.

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aggravating factors such as iron deficiency, thyroid dysfunction, which are both overrepresented in postnatal women. So I did. I booked in for my GP on the following Tuesday morning, the 1st of December, and Katrina Hale also managed to fit me in for that same Tuesday. Both the doc and Katrina basically said the same thing.

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But my brain is used to the social volume or noise that surrogacy brings with all of those appointments. Now that the social noise has disappeared, it’s quiet and my brain is searching for noise that isn’t there. It perceives the silence as a threat. Perhaps imagine we’re a tribe of animals and the noise of the tribe disappears. That might mean there’s a predator. But no, no predator for me. Just my brain adjusting to less noise.

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and back to our own family of four. He prescribed mitazapine or Axit and a blood test to check iron and thyroid levels. So the start of December was the beginning of the change for me in terms of seeking help. However, it probably got worse before it got better. Perhaps it’s overkill with sharing these messages, but I want to document them for myself to look back on and all the insights that helped me move forward little bits at a time.

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Another amazing woman, friend and surrogate who touched base with me at just the right moment is CJ Crystal. I explained to her that I was now in antidepressants for the first time in my life and was feeling a bit resentful that in my head at the time, surrogacy had broken me to the point of finally needing meds. Her reply was this. So I feel like the first thing I need to say to you is that needing antidepressant medication is not a failure.

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It’s not resultant from anything you have done. What if things had happened in this order? One, you gave birth and your hormones change. Two, your body does not regulate those hormones as it should and you develop a chemical imbalance of hormones in your body. Three, as a result of the chemical imbalance, you feel sad, emotional and anxious. Four, because you feel anxious, you think, why could I be anxious?

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And of course your mind goes to the thing bothering you at the time and it’s videos, photos or contact. Thing is, people don’t just become depressed. There are things that happen which prompt a physical and chemical irregularity in the body which heightens sadness and worry into depression and anxiety. So medication is not a failure. Please remove that from your mind. If you had a kidney infection, you’d take medication.

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If you had diabetes, you’d take medication. So maybe don’t attach the stigma here. CJ really helped me to start to understand that it wasn’t my fault. My second crash was the following Thursday, the 10th of December. Again, I had wandered into school, into the school I teach and was chatting to colleagues. There were two little things that happened in quick succession and it rattled me. Looking back now, I can see that I was fragile.

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and not resilient in my ability to brush these things aside. That ability to sort of roll my eyes at someone or banter back was gone for the time being. As I write this seven months post-birth, after five months on antidepressants, I can feel the change. I can feel that I don’t bottom out anymore when something unexpected happens. I have this ability to take a breath, probably swear under my breath too.

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and then move on to finding solutions. So now for my ugliest part. My third crash was Christmas Eve. My husband, Glen, had gone back to singing in the Cathedral Choir in 2020. So he was out singing the 7pm service and then Midnight Mass. We had had his family gathering during the day and I was left with my own two kids to put to bed on Christmas Eve. I was struggling.

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I’ve contemplated whether or not to share this next fact as it is covered in a giant blanket of shame. I had had some wine at lunch, but now I continued to drink. I wanted to numb the world and numb my brain. I wonder if my own kids or even Baker might read this in years to come. And that’s a confronting feeling. But I guess I’m here to be honest and tell my story openly.

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Our whole street does Christmas lights, so the kids and I walked the street for that. I was weirdly able to turn on social pleasantries to say Merry Christmas to all our neighbours. But once home, I was an ugly mum that night. Grumpy and just wanting them to get to bed so I could be alone. Once they were in bed, my only memory is of being huddled up on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, crying.

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drinking some more wine and wanting my brain to stop. I remember pulling at my hair as a physical means of telling my brain to stop spiralling. I wasn’t sure if I was suicidal or not or even what that meant. I didn’t want to sound dramatic by saying that because I didn’t want to undermine those that are really struggling. Katrina has helped since to help me see that I was really struggling.

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I was one of those people. These were suicidal thoughts, but they weren’t plans or actions. Nonetheless, I was not in a good place. Glen called me between services while I was sitting in the corner of the kitchen on the floor. He asked if I wanted him to stay home the next morning instead of singing. I said, yes. I’m so glad I did. I couldn’t have managed our small family Christmas gathering without him there.

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In the meantime, before Glenn got home, I had two friends check in on me, Zoe and Merindah. Merindah gave birth as a surrogate five weeks after me, so we have ridden the waves of life after surrogacy together. I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone, especially on Christmas Eve. My memory of these messages is sketchy, and perhaps my brain has blocked out a lot of detail as a means of surviving. What I have taken a snapshot of

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is that Zoe and Merindah saved me that night.

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Through messages, they talked me up off the floor. They got me moving.

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If anyone has ever experienced a similar situation, you’ll understand the depth of gratitude I have for these two women that night.

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It feels like a gift that I can never repay.

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We managed Christmas with just my mum and dad over for that day. They were super helpful and knew to some level that I was struggling. Glen and I worked well as a team and I cooked us all a roast. In the evening, I turned on my phone because prior to that, I didn’t have the capacity for any happy Christmas messages. Matt and Brendan had tried to call a few times and wrote to check in.

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I began a message back to them and it just poured out. I had enough sense to me, in me surprisingly, to not send it straight away. I have learnt to sleep on these things. It was an ugly message. They were celebrating their first Christmas as a family of three and interstate with Brendan’s family. So although I wanted to share my word vomit, I didn’t want to disturb their special time together.

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As I reread over that lengthy message now, I feel such shame. It’s ugly to read over because the that wrote that was in the middle of a storm. I was lashing out at them and perhaps trying to push them away so it was easy for them to say, gosh, we’ve had enough of Anna and her madness and to walk away. But they didn’t. True to their word, they stayed with me. They acknowledged my hurt.

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They wanted to make sure I was safe and make sure I was prioritizing my own mental health. They could see that I wasn’t well, but they didn’t run away. I’m just going to share a few snippets of that message. How frequent my crashes are, how often I’ve wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there. The tears, the not thinking straight or ability to sequence tasks. I understand why you might read this message and say, F it.

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and delete me. I’d like to delete myself from Life2 quite often recently. So many times I have been in tears contemplating calling Lifeline, running through the list of people I could reach out to for help and not wanting to be a burden to anyone. Contemplating wanting to go to sleep and not wake up. Wishing I’d never done surrogacy for this mental turmoil I’ve been in for three months. Feeling like it’s not worth it.

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This has been my reality for these last few months. I’ve hated it and hate myself and hate the grumpy mother I’ve become. I feel like a shell of a human being most days and it’s dragging me down and down.

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These are some snippets from that message to Matt and Brendan on Boxing Day. It would have been a horrible message for the dads to receive at Christmas. But why do I share this? I guess for my own reminder of how messy my brain was and to see how far I’ve come within a few months and with the help of medication and regular counselling. To shine some light into the dark corners of these memories and to stop running from the shadows.

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And only just now as I write that, while Googling the background of that concept of light in darkness, am I reminded of the meaning of Christmas, a time of rebirth and to welcome the light into our world again. I’m struck that my turning point happened at Christmas and I’m thankful to those that brought light to me at that time. Thank you, Matt, Brendan, Glenn, Merindah, Zoe and Warwick.

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I’m going to use this opportunity to also thank those people. One of my many keepsake messages from Merindah. That’s surrogacy to me, riding the wave, the gnarly wave. And we need to do what we can to reach the shore and make it safely back home. I’m out paddling in the ocean with you Anna and I’ll help any way I can to see you get back home. Warwick Scott.

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He’s a gay dad to be in Sydney and he and his husband Jason have become friends over the years from the surrogacy community. Warwick has checked in on me regularly and he did so again on Boxing Day before I sent the message to the dads. He helped to delay my sending of it and he helped me to see it from a different angle. Having friends in surrogacy is so important because we need both surrogates and IPs as friends to help us navigate through.

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I encourage surrogates to make friends with other IPs and IPs to make friends with other surrogates. You need these friendships built up over time so you can lean on them in times of need. Warwick would regularly send me messages, sometimes to share photos of cooking and to remind me that I am awesome. To which I asked one day while feeling flat, but why am I awesome? His reply, you are just Anna McKay.

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An awesome person with an amazing heart. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. And from Zoe. Oh Anna, I know exactly what that burnt out, tired and at capacity feeling is like. Sending you a huge hug. You probably don’t want to hear this, but they’re probably at capacity too. This part of the journey is so hard to navigate and I don’t know any team that has done it seamlessly.

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It takes huge energy to get through each day and week at this stage for all involved. You can’t build relationships when your brain is in chaos. You also can’t hear their side when your brain is in chaos.

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Altruistic surrogacy is one heck of a roller coaster. Although I guess all versions of surrogacy, altruistic and commercial, have relationships at their heart. The payment for surrogates in Australia is not money, rather it’s time and love. Since it’s the only version of surrogacy available to us in Australia, intended parents and surrogates often don’t consciously choose this model.

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There is a level of responsibility each party has to the other in terms of relationships for the interests of the child born from it. And it is challenging. Matt and Brendan have navigated these murky waters with me and I am deeply grateful to them that they didn’t walk away from me. I’m sure they were sick of me at times. Heck, I was sick of myself many times. Now is an opportune moment to mention some resources of Katrina Hales.

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I strongly recommend surrogacy teams who are planning or pregnant to discuss these suggestions. The document is called, Surrogate Post-Birth Emotional Needs, a guide for intended parents. So starting to tie things up. Dr. Anna touched base with me in early January and I wrote the following to her. Well, things probably got worse before they got better. Around Christmas, I hit some pretty dark patches.

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Now I’m feeling a bit better. I can see that I really wasn’t in a good spot. Oh, if only hormones and chemical imbalances could be seen and measured. I went back to my GP between Christmas and New Year and increased the antidepressant dose up one notch. The blood test results also showed slightly below the range for thyroid levels. So we have started on meds for that. Petrina Hale also kindly saw me over the Christmas break.

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And when she suggested another session the following week, and I asked if that was too soon, she said, you’re not in a good place, Anna. I’ll see you next week. I’ve now got a mental health care plan and get the rebates. So that’s less for the dads to pay for those sessions. I’m engaging with my employee assistance program again and starting up counseling with the lady I chatted to last year. So there’s lots of support in place.

38:10
I’m still a bit moody and up and down, but hopefully moving forward. I think part of the reason I hesitated to consider what I had as postnatal depression was because of the word depression. I didn’t necessarily feel depressed. I felt muddled, not able to sequence tasks like I normally could, slightly sad, slightly anxious, but I didn’t click with the word depressed. Made me wonder if other women have ever felt the same.

38:39
and made me think that postnatal depression might be better worded as postnatal unsettled or postnatal confusion or postnatal out of sorts or postnatal struggling. For me, if I ever chat to women in the future who are postnatal, I might share this analogy of mine as it describes what I was experiencing better, I think. But then it still helps me to accept that the medication that helps me to be less muddled.

39:06
falls under the category of postnatal depression or SSRIs, et cetera. And Dr. Anna’s reply, and again, I share this with her permission to get the insights from a GP who has also been a surrogate. The word depression is a societally loaded label indeed. It makes people feel very uncomfortable, but it is just a word, a label.

39:31
Depression can present in so many different ways and with such a broad variety of symptoms. The bottom line of this diagnosis is that your brain isn’t working properly. So that can manifest in such a wide variety of ways. Certainly feeling muddled, uncertain, indecisive, ruminative with impaired concentration. These presentations are very, very common in my experience. Irritability,

40:01
and lowered thresholds for general distress are super common without someone necessarily feeling sad or depressed or having suicidal self-harm thoughts. The bottom line is the drugs work for the vast majority of people. Never forget that the sex pituitary hormones affect every single cell in your body, including your brain.

40:29
Oestrogen soars in pregnancy and drops rapidly afterwards. Prolactin can also be a feel-good hormone. You stop breastfeeding or expressing and some people will absolutely crash. SSRIs or SNRIs totally put a chock in that spinning, spiralling wheel and give your brain space to stabilize, to reset. You will get there.

40:55
I hope that reading or listening to this helps at least one other person to know that it’s not your fault if your brain is struggling, if your brain isn’t coping. If you have a broken arm, you would seek help. If you’re feeling muddled, seek help, or at least start a conversation to put it on people’s radar. We can’t underestimate the impact from a mother nature point of view of birthing a baby

41:24
and they’re not raising that baby. Our brains know that the baby is with its parents and we are glad that it is. That’s what we signed up for in surrogacy and it brings us joy to know we helped our friends become parents. But this is what Katrina talks about when she calls it head heart hormones. Our head and our heart know that the baby is safe and loved, but our body is missing a baby.

41:53
Our body probably thinks the baby has died. Our bodies are grieving a lost baby. Our bodies aren’t joyful. They are navigating a postpartum period in opposition to our brain. The postpartum period for our body is confusing, sometimes happy if we express milk, but trying to adjust to not having daily cuddles with the baby, it grew and birthed. So there you have it.

42:23
This is my story. My name is Anna McKay and I am surviving postnatal depression after the birth of my surrogate baby. It sucked. I got help. And now seven months later, I can say I’m doing okay. Thank you for coming on this journey, this safari with me.

42:48
That was hard to listen to for me, but also part of my healing, I guess. I will also add that I am back on antidepressants and will be on them for life, I anticipate. Although I can manage life without them, it takes a lot of work to keep everything in balance. Once my son was diagnosed with ADHD and I was comfortable with him being on medication to help him focus at school, I realized that although there isn’t medication for autism,

43:17
There is help for my anxiety. So why was I trying to be a hero and not take the help which I know works for me? I want to talk about antidepressants more so we can normalise it. If you have any comments about this episode or are in need of support, please reach out to me through email, ana at surrogacyaustralia.org or through social media. Although Glenn and I have now separated, things are very amicable as we co-parent our children.

43:44
and I am very grateful for his support over the years, especially in those challenging times with surrogacy. Five years post-birth, as I convert this to a podcast, and I can say our surrogacy team is still good. We see each other a few times a year, and it is a normal friendship now. We have had a few bumps over the years, but it is a credit to our team that we can still have challenging conversations, work through conflict respectfully, and still be friends.

44:12
Having been a part of the surrogacy community for nine years now and watching other teams fall apart, I can see how awesome my IPs, Brendan and Matt are. They have been true to their word about an ongoing friendship, have spoken their truths when they need to be said, haven’t run away from tough conversations, and for that I am deeply grateful. Being IPs in Australia is a tough gig. Who would do surrogacy? It is crazy.

44:42
I am so glad we chose each other as a team and am grateful to have them in my life, to watch Baker grow up, to see them being wonderful dads and having them support me and my children Emily and Ewan too. I love you guys. Over the years I have received some beautiful messages of support regarding this blog post and I’d like to share one here. Mainly so I have it captured so I can listen back to. It’s an email I received from Katrina Hale.

45:10
I just finished reading your piece. It was fantastic. There’s zero need to feel shame. Shit happens. It’s how you respond to it that matters and your team hung in there and it worked out. Gritty, raw, honest, while also weaving in some great facts and theory and acknowledging the oh so important support you sought and were given from so many wise women and men in the surrogacy community.

45:36
What a great use of your own story to light the path for and help educate others. It’s your calling. Well done, Anna. I’m proud of you. Thank you for sharing. Again, you have nothing to be ashamed of, but talking about the shame you felt and still feel is incredibly important. You articulate the stigma and suffering that is part and parcel of the complex maze of mental health issues. You have nothing to feel ashamed of, but it’s okay that you felt and still feel shame.

46:06
It was an integral part of the experience. And then this final sentence which I have written down as I collect meaningful quotes. True acceptance comes when you are able to accept the parts of yourself that you find unacceptable. Thank you for listening to this long episode and please reach out if you have any questions or even just want to chat. If you’d like to see other recordings with photos, head over to our YouTube channel to watch other webinars.

46:35
you can head to surrogacyaustralia.org for more information about surrogacy. Also check out our Zoom monthly catch-up sessions, which are a great way to connect with others in the surrogacy community. As has become my catchphrase, it takes a village to raise a child. And in the case of surrogacy, it takes a village to make a child. So welcome to the village. Thank you again for listening.