'After I gave birth, I didn't want to hold, feed or be near my baby.'

Soon after Rowena Rogers gave birth to her first child, Evelyn, she knew something was wrong.

“Straight after I had my emergency C-section… I realised I didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel like I wanted to be near my baby and didn’t feel any need to want to bond with her,” said the 31-year-old.

The Western Australian mum was excited leading up to the birth, but just after Evelyn arrived Rowena had an “odd feeling”.

“It was like this sudden thing in my head. It’s like a wall came down and all of a sudden I just felt the complete opposite of what I was feeling coming up to having her. It was very scary and caught me off guard,” Rowena said.

Because of the long, tedious labour and stressful birth, Rowena put it down to sleep deprivation. After four days she headed home to see if things would feel better.

“On the way home from the hospital I didn’t even want to sit in the back seat with her, which seems so horrible now but I didn’t want to be near her,” she recalls.

"I felt that this thing had been shoved in my life and I didn’t know what to do."

The afternoon she arrived home she started to notice some physical symptoms.

"I couldn’t feel my hands; I couldn’t feel my legs I couldn’t feel I basically felt like a brain floating in the air. I thought maybe they’ve done something wrong and maybe they’ve messed up the epidural."

Rowena went to the hospital, where tests were run and the doctor suggested it might be post-natal depression.

"It all made sense. I didn’t want to be near my baby; I didn’t want to hold her. It was begrudgingly that I fed her and held her because I just didn’t feel the need to," she says.

"I think a lot of it, which I came to later, was because I felt guilty about the way she was brought into the world. It wasn’t an easy birth; she was in distress, I was in distress, and so I think subconsciously I didn’t want to hurt her any more. I didn’t want to mess it up any more.

"She didn’t come into the world the way I wanted her to or society feels that she should come into [the world]. It's supposed to be this big happy thing and you're supposed to feel great afterwards and it just wasn’t like that at all," she said."

Rowena saw her GP and was referred to a psychiatrist by the next day, where she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and post-natal depression. Evelyn was only four days old.

"I wouldn’t hurt her.  I didn’t have any feelings of needing to hurt her or myself. But the anxiety would just wash over me and I'd start panicking feel sick and I'd vomit," Rowena recalls.

"I was lucky my husband was lucky enough to have six weeks off work."

Rowena's treatment started with six weeks of intensive therapy. Things started to improve over the next few months with regular psychiatrist visits and medication.

It wasn't all smooth sailing; Rowena couldn't sleep and spent nights pacing her bedroom. "I felt completely alone and like a failure because I was going through this and I don’t want any other mother to ever go through that," she said.

It wasn't until she discovered Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia (PANDA), a non-profit, self-help organisation that provides support to mothers affected by post and antenatal mood disorders - that she felt less alone.

"If I had PANDA, I could’ve called them up and used their fantastic hotline that was available. I didn’t know about it at them time and wasn’t till later down the track [that I got their help] when I had a bit of a setback and sort of started feeling quite low," says Rowena. (Post continues after gallery.)

Rowena has shared her story to raise awareness for Perinatal Depression and Anxiety (PNDA) Awareness Week (13-19th November) and PANDA's work.

According to PANDA, three out of five callers to their helpline waited more than four weeks to seek help, despite the recommendation that people seek help if symptoms persist for more than two weeks.

Their research shows the perception of "what people think" is an enormous hurdle for new parents who are struggling.

“The majority of callers report that they feel shame about their condition - a feeling that is compounded by the idea that they are not meeting their own expectations as a mother,”  said PANDA CEO Terri Smith.

Rowena is now pregnant with her second child and feels "on top of things".

She's not worried about her second birth because she now has the support she needs.

"You're never alone," she says.

"There’s always somebody to help you."

PANDA offers counselling through its free National Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Helpline (1300 726 306, Mon-Fri 10am-5pm EST). Visit www.panda.org.au