Be honest on maternal mental health
Personal experience with birth showed futility of feeling ashamed
Last week, I wrote an editorial on the need to talk honestly around the subject of maternal mental health. Only, I wasn’t really very honest. Or more to the point, I was a little “economical with the truth”.
For while I talked with passion about the need to change the conversation from breasts, bellies and the like and focus more on the need for honesty around maternal mental health needs, I failed to mention my own experience as a new mother who needed maternal mental health support.
So let’s start afresh, with an honest column that puts maternal mental health where it belongs — centre stage, not hidden with shame or embarrassment.
My story starts some 17 years ago (spoiler alert — it does indeed have a happy ending with my now 17-yearold son the eldest of three children, all of whom I love dearly).
Back then, however, I did not know there was a happy ending to come, in fact I don’t know I thought it was possible.
On the outside — all looked good, happily married (second spoiler alert — we still are!) and expecting our first child, we owned our own home, had a dog, a cat, even a couple of rabbits and we were both employed in jobs that enabled us to afford life’s necessities and even a few luxuries at times.
On the inside though, this pregnancy was not our first — we had experienced the rollercoaster of grief that comes with several miscarriages and while everything was going fine with this pregnancy, I couldn’t shake my inner sense of impending doom.
Put bluntly, with each miscarriage having occurred later than the one previous, I couldn’t quite believe I was going to end this journey with a baby to take home.
Add to this the fact that while the rest of my antenatal group were happily making birth plans involving an iPod playlist (there was no iHeart radio back then), massages, essential oils burning in the background and perhaps some whale music or yummy snacks, my birth plan was already determined — a surgeon, a scalpel and the need for a spinal — in other words, a C section.
As one of the sadly high number of women globally (6 per cent of women according to the United Nations) to have experienced a particular kind of assault some years previously, I was scared my mind and body wouldn’t cope with a “natural” birth and so had opted for the surgical option.
Now I am older and wiser, I of course know what matters most when it comes to birthing your child is having a healthy baby and a happy mother, but back then I felt re-victimised by the whole thing, especially when other people spoke negatively about people being “too posh to push”.
I had a wonderful and supportive midwife, who recognised my fears and supported me throughout. Because of the reasons behind my C section choice, I was given an appointment with the maternal mental health team in the lead-up to my son’s birth.
They were also greatly supportive and so it should have been all okay.
And it was. Our son arrived a tad earlier than planned (technically making that planned C section an emergency one after all) and he was born healthy, happy, and a good weight.
There was a brief moment however, when a reaction to a drug I was given led to me panicking and feeling scared which meant the maternal mental health nurse on duty was informed.
And so it was, that about 20
hours after our son was born, as I was proudly introducing him to three of my work colleagues, all women in their 40s or 50s, a member of the maternal mental health team bustled into the ward and loudly announced themselves.
“I gather you need mental help,” she said.
Underslept, emotional, unsure I was ever going to be able to change a nappy on my own, let alone feed this tiny infant I was suddenly responsible for, I was mortified.
Here were my colleagues who, I presumed, had taken to parenting flawlessly, getting an insight into the mess I was. I angrily told the poor nurse she clearly had the wrong room, the wrong mother, and she left. My colleagues were also mortified and tried to make me feel better.
“Of course she was in the wrong room, you are fine,” they kindly, but mistakenly, agreed.
We pretended it was all fine, the nurse had been in the wrong room, and I was obviously okay.
And I was. Eventually. With a supportive and incredibly understanding husband, my parents, a team of professionals and so on, I was able to safely navigate my way through those early days of parenthood and I can look back on them with joy.
I wonder though, what would have happened if my colleagues and I hadn’t pretended.
What if they hadn’t acted as though that nurse hadn’t walked in, but instead had encouraged her to stay. What if I hadn’t said she was mistaken, but instead, in front of my colleagues, told her exactly what I was feeling right then?
I guess I will never know, but I can hazard a guess.
The sky wouldn’t have fallen in, the world wouldn’t have ended, and no one would have judged me for seeking help at what is, for every new mother, an undoubtedly tough time.
Instead, that journey I made, from terrified new mother who wasn’t coping, to a happy mother of three, would have been just a little bit easier for me, my husband and our infant son.
Maternal mental health isn’t something to hide, it isn’t something to be ashamed of and it isn’t something to pretend isn’t an issue. Please, talk to your friends, your colleagues, anyone and everyone, about the importance of being honest with ourselves and each other, when it comes to maternal mental health.