On the final day of Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2025 with the theme being Reflect and Rise we are grateful to Suzanne, one of our lovely volunteers, for this blog post reflecting on her experience of maternal mental health.
I’m not sure which is more difficult as a parent, the toddler years or the teenage years!
I’m Sue, and I volunteer for a couple of hours per week providing weekly support calls to mums who are pregnant and/or have young children. I am a mum myself, with two boys aged 16 and 19 who love to sing and play their music … really loud!
Of course, these 2 boys, who now tower over me height wise, were once tiny babies who both weighed less than 7lbs at birth, the oldest suffered with colic for what felt like an eternity and the youngest would often wake up from his daytime nap in a right grump.
As toddlers, the eldest would never sit still, and seemed to have more energy than you can possibly imagine whilst the youngest was quieter, with slightly delayed speech – probably because he couldn’t get a word in edgeways with his talkative older brother. These challenges were of course balanced with times when they were adorable, their smiles, their first words, their achievements learning new skills.
I did, however, find motherhood difficult, especially balancing it with working 4 days a week at a tech company. My husband and I were lucky to have supportive family close by, but I constantly doubted whether I was doing parenting ‘right’. I became unwell in 2017 with chronic anxiety and mild depression which knocked me off my feet, requiring me to take several months off work. At the time, my boys were 10 and 7 years old. I knew very little about mental health conditions, but through treatment which included Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), I realised that I had been struggling with anxiety for years. The constant over-thinking, questioning my abilities as a mum, feeling guilty and giving myself a really hard time if my parenting wasn’t up to some imaginary standard that I imposed on myself. I was on constant alert fearing what other people thought of me as a mum, as an employee, as .. anything. I constantly feared being judged.
So, let me answer the question which I posed above, which did I find harder, the toddler or the teenage years? For me, it was the years when my babies were young that I found toughest. Partly that was due to the tiredness and the fact that parenting babies and young children is immensely hard work. Partly, it was because meeting up with friends was difficult as we all had little children. But it was also because my mental health wasn’t at its best, and I didn’t know how to recognise that, or where to turn to get support. I didn’t even know what support I needed. If only I had known about Mothers for Mothers.
I am now a certified Mental Health First Aider, with a lot more knowledge and understanding about mental health. I still work at the same tech company, and my boys seem to be turning into kind responsible adults – so I must have done something right! The time is right for me to now support other mums through Mothers for Mothers which I really enjoy doing. Some mums need to unload their week of stress, and I provide a supportive ear to enable them to do that. Others need a bit of reassurance that they are doing a good job, and I can help them to realise that they are. I have been able to look back on tough times and realise that I did my best in that moment, and that’s all that anyone can do.