First transmitted on Channel 4 in December 2007

This heart-warming, two-part series follows two mums as they discover how to do something most mothers take for granted – fall head over heels in love with their babies.

Baby blues, antenatal depression or postnatal depression, if left untreated, can damage the mother's relationship with her children – and one in six women are known to be affected by mental distress during pregnancy or following childbirth (source: MIND 2006, 'Out of the blue? Motherhood and depression).

Help Me Love My Baby follows two brave women who confront their fears, admitting they feel anger and resentment towards their babies, not a loving bond. Their journey is an emotional, but ultimately uplifting, one. Working closely with parent-infant therapist Dr. Amanda Jones, they unlock psychological clues, buried deep in their past, allowing them to repair the bond with their own babies. Along the way they learn to unlock the hidden code of baby behaviour that will help them forger a deeper bond with their child.

The fact that post-natal depression can create a 'wall' between mother and child is a difficult topic to confront. As Amanda says: 'For a mother to express negative feelings towards her baby… it's just a taboo. And it makes it very hard to ask for help. But in my experience mothers that I meet are grappling with very difficult and hostile feeling towards their babies, which they feel awful about.'

Zoe (28) may look like a model parent to outsiders, but the reality is very different: 'I don't think I can cope at all – I wish I'd never had her, I resent her… I haven't enjoyed one minute of having Izzy.' Zoe and her partner Dave were both delighted when she got pregnant with Izzy, so Zoe's reaction to their new-born daughter came as a shock to them both.

Born six weeks premature and with jaundice, Izzy's mum Zoe struggled to feel anything other than numb when she first saw her. Feelings of guilt mixed with an overwhelming sense that she did not have a connection with her baby. After six months Zoe feels so negative about Izzy that she keeps her at arms' length. In turn, Izzy avoids her mother's face – like all babies she gets upset by stressed or blank faces, and copes by turning away. When she gets upset, she can't look to her mother for help – turning her into a grizzly and unhappy baby.

Slowly Amanda starts to unlock Zoe's secrets of an unhappy childhood, a troubled relationship with her own mother, and the fear of raising a clingy child. Through cuddles, play and intense eye-contact, Amanda helps both mother and baby to develop intimacy and an emotional attachment. Zoe learns what Izzy's body language and cries mean, helping her to respond and understand her daughter.

In a remarkable transformation, over a year of filming, Izzy begins to respond to her mother and Zoe begins to feel a powerful maternal bond. They learn a blueprint for their future, and hope their fragile bond will grow stronger in years to come – as Zoe says: 'It's more precious for me now because I didn't have it before.'

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