More bumpiness

Oh dear. Today started so well - and continued in the same fashion, with a trip to the park and lots of fun - but ended rather badly, complete with blood and tears.
Fear not, I did not flip out and set about my child, but she did fall over in a very dramatic fashion, flat on her face on her plastic shape sorter, and the result was a huge lump, lots of blood and even more tears. Oh dear.
Luckily this time the tears were confined to toddler ones - last time she hurt herself I ended up sobbing with her about my failings as a parent and guilt at not having protected her.
Anyway! Back to the world of a PND-er....
This week's rant is another website one, and yet again I've lost the link - one of these days I will get organised. It was on askamum and was a discussion about PND where one of the clearly less-enlightened members suggested that the reason more people are diagnosed with PND now is because they like the attention.
Yes, you read that right. She believed that people faked the symptoms of this hellish condition so they would have something to talk about at their coffee mornings - 'jumping on the bandwagon' was her exact phrase.
At the risk of sounding as dramatic as my daughter (I do wonder where she gets that from!) I was so angry after reading the whole discussion that I couldn't think of anything else for a good half an hour.
It's akin to those comments like 'I know she says she has depression but I saw her the other day and she was laughing so she must be fine'...not that laughing was something I did much of in the dark times.
It's easy to see now how far I've come, and today was a great example as most of our fun involved just Tasha and I, but that doesn't mean for a second I don't remember exactly how I felt back then.
I remember not feeling able to get out of bed, let alone the house, and spending hours just crying and crying.
I remember dreading Tasha waking up because I would have to deal with her and I just didn't know where to start, and thinking I had made a horrible mistake.
And I remember how liberating it felt to realise others had been through the same thing - had also wished they could give their child away - but were now enjoying the challenges and crises of parenthood.
I can honestly say I've never met a single person who can fake those sort of symptoms, or who would even want to (although I have just watched the 9/11 faker so am not so sure.....)
And luckily I've never met anyone who has been anything but supportive when I have revealed my struggles/issues/demons - to my face at least. Some people have unwittingly made comments which perhaps reveal hidden prejudices; a good one this week was 'She was threatening violence but I know most mental people do that...' but I like to think that I can present them with a human face of mental illness to challenge those views.
Right - that's enough for now - just time to sort out the kitchen before Mark gets home...or maybe I should conjure up some trauma for a bit of attention... ; )