A mum from Northern Ireland is helping other struggling women after she decided to seek help for her own mental health.
East Belfast woman Andrea Murtagh volunteers at The Parent Rooms, formerly known as We Are Pangs.
It was set up to give new and expectant mums isolated at home the guidance and help they needed.
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The mother-of-two, who is expecting her third baby in July, has now set up her own business teaching some of the skills which she says helped with her own mental health - including online journaling and meditation workshops.
She has helped over 50 women through these workshops, inspiring some of them to start up their own businesses and has also published her own book.
Andrea told Be : "I suffered myself with my mental health so got involved with supporting other parents, mostly mums.
"It boosted my confidence to share my story with people. It began with blogging and then I started to train so I could teach people the skills that helped me through what I had gone through."
The East Belfast woman added: "Looking back, I can see that I have always struggled with my mental health but didn't do much about it or address it when it was just me. I just kind of got on with it.
"After I had my first baby, I really wasn't well but I couldn't see it. I took me until he was about 9 months to ask for help. During that time I did the whole, 'Is it just me? Am I a terrible mummy? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my baby?'
"We'd go to baby classes and all the other mummies made it seem like a breeze, but they were probably going through the same.
"I realised it wasn't just me adjusting to motherhood, there was something really not right with me. I reached out to my health visitor and GP.
"It took a while but I can see now... you don't want to tell them exactly how you feel as you don't want them to know how bad it is. I feared they'd take my baby away or something horrible.
"In the end, I ended up going privately to counselling and that was the start of my journey to heal what was going on at that minute and heal what had led up to that point - things from my past that I never really addressed.
"They came to the surface when I had a baby."
Andrea wants to other mums to know that "GPs and midwives are there to help you".
"They are not there to trip you up and catch you out. Asking for the help is probably the best thing you can do for your baby," she said.
"It is not just about you anymore. You are doing the best for your children by asking for the help. You can't be the best mum to your children if you are not looking after yourself."
Meditation and journaling helped Andrea and she now been running these workshops for about a year and half.
Andrea has also launched a 'Practical Magic' course for busy women who would love to journal and meditate, but feel they just don't have the time. This course combines the spiritual with the practical, so includes things like meal planning, batch prepping and time management.
The 38-year-old added: "I found that mums were wanting to do this stuff but never got the time.
"They would go, 'Awk, I never get the time to myself', so it is ways to practically find time for yourself, which is a major help to mums.
"It's things like meal prep, planning your day, finding wee blocks of time here and there - because people feel overwhelmed.
"If you go to someone and say you want to do something to improve your mental health, they'd say to get up an hour earlier and meditate or go to the gym and all of these things just aren't accessible to mums with very young children.
"I couldn't and it made me feel like a real failure. I felt like, 'What's wrong with me? What am I doing wrong?'"
Andrea added how it helped knowing that other mums were in the same situation as her.
She said: "It's like everything when it comes to mental health. It's knowing that it's not just you, which is a massive help in itself.
"What I wanted to do was create a course that teaches you how to find even just five minutes in the morning which can make a massive difference. It's starting with something small that can build as your children get older."
The mum-of-two said her work is part of her own recovery.
"It gives me back my purpose.
"A lot of mums I work with are struggling with that shift in identity. When you become a mum you often lose a sense of who you are as you are not doing what you enjoy anymore.
"You can lose that sense of self. The most important thing with women I work with is for them to find themselves.
"It might not be the old self they were before, it might be a different self."
To find out more about Andrea's courses and workshops, visit thereallifehack.co.uk.
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