Hayley is a wife and mum to four children. Hayley lived with depression and anxiety, feeling something wasn't quite right when she was 21, after just having her first baby. During her fourth pregnancy in 2018 when her mental health difficulties reached a crisis point, Hayley accessed the Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Services. Throughout her recovery, she became involved in raising awareness of perinatal mental health difficulties. She is helping to shape and develop the local perinatal mental health services through engagement work. 

 

 

Hayley now has things in place that help her, “My moods can be easily affected, if I watch the news and it’s quite stressful or sad, that can affect my mood. But it is helpful knowing that works the other way as well. So if I listen to uplifting music, that helps make me happy. So I’ve recently got a radio which is now in the kitchen. We’re spending so much more time in the house now. I’m making the most of having music on all the time.” 

 

Learning in lockdown, what things she will carry on doing. “In the future, I’ll certainly be planning less. When I was unwell, everything was a massive struggle; just being upright was a massive struggle. It was a coping mechanism to plan something to do for the next day. Even if it was a tiny thing, like, get up and unload the dishwasher, that was my thing, We’ve got a wall planner, and I started planning the days on there, so I think that’s how I got into it. I suppose now; I don’t need to hold on to that anymore. So now I can let that go a little bit and be a bit more relaxed about not having things to do. So I’m certainly not going to be over planning.” 

 

Take a listen to this week's New Piglet Podcast with Hayley.