I missed three birthdays in one week. It’s not that I forgot about the birthdays, it’s that I forgot what week I was in. This was the point when I realised I might have post-natal depression.

This was not the baby blues – I wasn’t blue, I was red. I didn’t feel like crying, I felt like screaming; I didn’t feel like curling up in a ball under the covers, I felt like bolting and never looking back; I didn’t feel like driving fast, I felt like driving fast over a cliff. You get the picture – blue is too passive to be my colour. This is the reason so much red has found its way into my child’s wardrobe – it’s a matter of projecting.

My gynae became a colour victim too – I see red when I’m not getting my greens – for making all of this possible. I had tried blaming the baby, my husband, my hormones, my motherhood. It wasn’t working. The gynae, conditioned to field hormonal abuse, suggested I phone the PND (post-natal depression) Hotline. This hotline evidently mirrors its SLAs on the 911 switchboard – I left a desperate message but no one ever returned my call.