Postnatal anxiety, depression & OCD, Mother Baby Unit, intrusive thoughts – Cleo’s story

Today’s episode is a playback episode from the early days of the podcast – when it was run solely by Chelsea. In this important conversation, Chels was joined by Cleo (she/her), who is now a mother to two beautiful boys. 

Cleo spoke with Chels back in 2023, just after her first son had turned one. Before becoming parents, Cleo and her husband lived busy lives socialising, DJing, and wining and dining their way around Geelong. 

Having always struggled with her mental health, she thought postnatal depression may be likely, so Cleo put plans in place for pregnancy and postpartum support. She was in the Midwife Group Program, had a planned c-section organised to ease her anxiety, great support from family and friends, a freezer full of food, regular appointments with a psychologist and a baby that mostly slept at night but, Cleo says that even then her mental health still declined.

In our chat, she speaks candidly about her experiences with postnatal depression, anxiety and OCD, and intrusive thoughts. She also speaks openly on her positive and life changing experience of being admitted to the Mother Baby Unit, where things started to gently improve. This is such an important topic – thank you so much, Cleo, for sharing your story with us.

CW: Postnatal Depression, Anxiety and OCD, Intrusive thoughts, Admission to Mother Baby Unit (MBU).

*Please note that the episode involves mention of specific intrusive thoughts from 41.50-43.56*

If the contents of the episode bring anything up for you, we encourage you to visit the support services listed below:

Beyond Blue: ⁠https://www.beyondblue.org.au⁠

PANDA: ⁠https://panda.org.au/⁠

Lifeline: https://www.lifeline.org.au/

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The podcast theme music was written by Hagan Mathews and produced at ⁠⁠⁠@sleeplessfootscray⁠⁠⁠.

This podcast was recorded on the unceded lands of the Taungurung, Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung/Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. We acknowledge that sovereignty of the lands on which this podcast was recorded was never ceded and pay our respects to the original storytellers of this land.