A MUM-of-two who attempted suicide after battling postnatal depression is hoping to travel to America following her success in a beauty competition.

Lucy Franklin, the current Mrs Teesside Galaxy, is hoping to secure a transatlantic trip for the 2020 international pageant when she competes in the national final for Mrs Galaxy.

After battling with her mental health, the 23-year-old is now hoping to share her experience of what she describes as the "horrific disease" to help other women who may have been through similar experiences after giving birth.

Mrs Franklin had her first son, Jude, in 2017 and said he felt like "someone else's baby" and she would cry "every single day for weeks" when she brought him home.

Just four months after his birth, she fell pregnant with her second son, Noah, and her anxiety and depression returned.

"I never got an official diagnosis as I tried to just deal with it. I felt like I was taking care of a stranger's baby.

"I would beg my husband daily to let me put Noah up for adoption, I begged my friends to let me come and see them so I could have a night off whilst my husband took care of the kids. I would love being out but I would dread returning home.

"My poor husband felt like I was destroying the family, I would be so selfish and not want to take care of either of the children."

Mrs Franklin said she felt "ashamed" of what she had done and thought people would think she was "attention seeking".

"Things started to click that I had to make a change. I was told for the first time that it wasn’t my fault that I was sick. I was told that I could recover and that being overwhelmed was okay.

"When I started feeling better I signed up for Miss Tees Valley. I came third and raised £1,200 for Zoe’s Place baby hospice during the run up. After that pageant ended I signed up to Mrs Galaxy and I am in the national UK final in March."

She is now hoping to find a sponsor to help pay her fee for the pageant.

"I want to show that you can get better and you can get back to yourself again. I also want partners to be able to seek their own support and know that their partners illness isn’t their fault but it’s also not their partners either.

"I want to help the family dynamic, so a family can go through the horror of mental illness and come out of the other side."