My first baby, Sebastian was born at the end of 2016, I had had an amazing pregnancy and can honestly say I felt better pregnant than in other times in my life. Although my birth recovery was hard (I ended up with a c-section at 42 weeks as baby was breech and decided not to turn or come naturally!), I revelled in the energy, joy and adrenaline I was blessed with as a new mother in the first few months with a newborn, even though I was feeding him every two hours, night and day.

Things changed when Seb was about five months old. I started feeling unable to tolerate the cold, particularly in the morning. Granted it was winter, but I would wake with freezing cold hands and feet and really struggle to get warm, even in bed. My encouraging postpartum weight loss suddenly seemed to reach a plateau, I was gaining not losing weight and all of a sudden my hair was falling out in handfuls, blocking my drains and sticking to everything, even ending up in my baby’s nappy. I felt anxious and a sickening tiredness swept over me that I was unable to recover from, even when I did sleep. All of a sudden I was struggling, not enjoying motherhood, unable to keep up with the demands of my now-mobile baby, normal household chores and simple outings to the supermarket. I felt exhausted.

We were moving house around that time so I assumed it was just stress, it was a difficult time for us being so far away from family support. My husband was managing our business, I was taking care of Seb and we would both pack bits of the house in the evening, trying to race against the clock of our looming moving date. I cried most of our moving day. I had become so unwell and exhausted I could barely function, our new house was less than a mile away and I pushed our baby in the stroller back and forth from one house to the other using the basket to transport any extra bits from our house, depressed, wondering why on earth my body felt like it was held down with lead. I felt like I had been poisoned.

However, I thought this might be normal for a new, breastfeeding mother of a very energetic child, and that I just wasn’t adapting to it. Weight gain (breastfeeding does make you crave carbs), hair loss (isn’t some post-partum shedding normal?!) and exhaustion (synonymous with sleep deprivation). But then my arms and legs broke out in horrible bumps, I got stinging eczema around my eyes and I stopped being able to taste my food. I couldn’t concentrate on a simple conversation about the weather and while my husband always joked about my terrible memory, I was forgetting everything from appointments to the dentist to names of my family members. The fatigue was unlike anything I had ever experienced, if I missed the chance to sleep while Seb napped I would cry in desperation wondering how I was going to get through the day.

Eventually I went to the doctors thinking I must have a vitamin or mineral deficiency. I had bloods drawn Friday afternoon and 9am Monday morning, the doctor called me in and revealed I had become severely Hypothyroid with my TSH over 100, higher than my doctor had ever seen, apparently.

I was dumbfounded. I had developed an overactive thyroid when I was 17, told I had Graves Disease and was put on thyroid-supressing medication for six months, after which I was told my thyroid function had returned to normal and I was discharged.

Looking back now it all makes sense. The next almost two decades of my life after being discharged from my endocrinologist saw constant fluctuations in weight, unexplained fatigue, persistent gastrointestinal issues which seemed to rule my life, acne, constant thirst and urination, periods of depression and anxiety, brain fog, achy joints and a host of other odd ailments that made me feel “off” most of the time. I went to the doctors often, and usually I got the impression they thought I was a hypochondriac or a nuisance. They looked at everything independently, and I don’t remember them testing my thyroid. If they did I never thought to ask to see the results.

I feel certain now I have had thyroid antibodies for over two decades which have gone up and down depending on my lifestyle at that time. How much damage they have done to my thyroid I won’t know without a scan, I’m almost too scared to have one and find out. I’d rather believe my diet and lifestyle interventions, along with my methods of using essential oils to rejuvenate my thyroid tissue will help bring it back to a state of normal. I know it’s going to take some time but thyroid tissue can regenerate; our bodies are amazing at healing when provided with the right environment, and I have every hope mine will.