I’m a SAHM to my 9mo son. My partner and I own a business, and prior to giving birth I worked there taking care of all of the management, admin, and cleaning tasks, which totalled to a 60 hour week. When I got pregnant we agreed that I would stay home with the baby for a year, my boyfriend would continue to work at our business full time, and we would split my tasks between us, bearing in mind that we would need to be flexible with what we could both take on week to week as we are the only two people who work at our shop. I was going to get things in order as well as I could before starting my maternity leave, but the little man decided to show up to the party 2 months early, and so we were completely caught off guard. I’ve been taking on as much as I can (mostly from home with admin stuff but I do go to the shop every morning- with the baby, so you can tell how that goes- to clean and set up for the day), and I am struggling hard. I’ve been kidding myself into thinking that I’m ok and that I will get on top of things soon, but my day ends without me realising and things are getting forgotten, and the business is suffering as a result.

My partner is trying to be sympathetic but I know I’m pushing the limits of his patience- he’s heard the same apologies and same “must try harder” speech too many times and while I always have the best intentions and am genuinely so sad to be letting him and our family down with my inability to manage my time efficiently enough, I am totally overwhelmed and feel like I don’t know where on the ever growing “to do” list to start. I still get some things done, but they barely scratch the surface at this point, which makes me feel worse as what I can manage to do seems to take ages when I have the baby or jobs for the house to work around.

Today a bailiff came to our shop while my boyfriend was there with a client. I ran into some difficultly paying a bill a while back as they needed my partners authorisation and it’s been forgotten or put off until “tomorrow” (which we all know never comes) ever since, and now the debt has grown and has been passed to someone else. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I am appalled that I’ve let things get so bad, but I don’t know what to do to fix things- short and long term.

I’m thinking if going to the doctor and finally admitting that my depression has become disabling and is causing other aspects of my life to suffer, but I’m not sure what they can do to help. I just need to manage my time better, manage my life better, but I feel like I am drowning.

I don’t know where to turn or what to do, but things need to change.

Any advice on any of the above would be greatly appreciated.