Melanie’s story: Managing financial and emotional challenges in the perinatal period

I live in Perth with my husband, our amazing 7-year-old daughter, our two cats and two reptiles.

I am trained in early childhood education and have worked as a Special Needs Education Assistant, so I thought I would be well prepared mentally and emotionally to be a parent. But babies come into the world with their own little personalities and needs, and all the textbooks in the world couldn’t have adequately prepared me for the real-life experience!

Like a lot of families, we required fertility treatment to conceive our daughter. The impact of scans, blood tests, and appointments was taxing both financially and emotionally. I had a difficult pregnancy and felt sick and exhausted for most of it, and it meant that I was forced to take leave from my job in education in my first trimester. My husband is incredibly supportive and together we budgeted to manage on one income, but it was still upsetting to feel as though I wasn’t contributing to the household. I regularly had to remind myself that my job now was to prioritise self-care and rest, but still, those anxious thoughts would creep in.

I had that moment of instant love and adoration for our daughter the moment she was placed in my arms. She came into the world early, and quickly, and while I accepted that her birth didn’t go to plan, I had heard stories of women soon forgetting the pain and trauma of childbirth – the amazing biology of the human body, right? My body didn’t get that message, and I can still remember the whole experience like it was yesterday – the beauty of it, and the pain of it. It felt like my recovery went on forever, and I didn't "bounce back" like so many other new mums seemed to - especially since I wasn't sleeping well.

Our daughter was not an easy baby to settle, and the ongoing lack of sleep meant that I was regularly battling moments of anxiety. I would be constantly worrying about why she was crying, why she wouldn’t sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, if I was producing enough milk, if she had allergies, if we were making the right parenting decisions. It felt like my day-to-day life was spent constantly trying to problem solve, and I never felt like we could relax into a routine like other new parents seemed to. My husband worked FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) and while I have a solid support network, I still struggled with feeling like I wasn’t meeting all her needs - as well as my own.

I made a friend through my local parenting group, and she was living a similar experience with her daughter. She recommended a fantastic bulk-billed psychologist that talked me through my concerns, helped me with navigating my daughter’s health issues, and connected me with specific parent help programs that taught me more about building a secure attachment and strategies to manage my anxiety.

I joined our local toy library when our daughter was 8 months old, and that same awesome new friend had just become a member. I was tired of the clutter of being surrounded by toys that were hardly played with, and the environmental sustainability aspect of it resonated with us. Plus – toys are expensive! What I wasn’t expecting was how much I enjoyed being a part of a community – I felt like I had found “my people”. Not only did I have access to hundreds of toys that I could swap in and out depending on her interests and stages of development, but I met and made life-long friends with other parents who were going through the exact same struggles that I was. I chose a cheaper membership option that required some volunteering, and I used this time to make a coffee, chat with other toy library parents, and feel like I was making a meaningful contribution to the community – something I hadn’t felt since I had to leave my job during my pregnancy.