As
we exit Mental Health Awareness week I have noticed a plethora of informative,
enlightening, brutally honest and sometimes extremely moving, articles
highlighting the subject across social media. Perhaps one that piqued my
interest the most was an article regarding post-partum mental health, in
particular focusing on parents who did not have the expected birth experience,
and for whom things did not ‘turn out ok’ in the end. The article (which can be found here http://community.fireflyfriends.com/blog/article/post-diagnosis-who-looks-after-special-needs-parents?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=post-diagnosis-who-looks-after-special-needs-parents&utm_content=post-diagnosis-who-looks-after-special-needs-parents) inquired ‘Who looks after such
parents?’ The answer, in my own personal experience, is nobody.
I don’t think anybody would disagree
that support for parents following trauma should be offered as soon as
possible. However, due to an extremely underfunded and overworked NHS, this
support is rarely forthcoming. My daughter Elin was born ‘flat’ in 2008
following an epic and exhausting labour. All hell let loose as soon as she
arrived- my husband was told to pull the emergency red cord above my bed and we
waited anxiously amongst the chaos for a cry that never came. We saw only a
flash of marble-white flesh as she was bundled onto the resuscitation table next to my bed and
‘worked on’ to no avail, before finally being whipped away and attached to life
support, whilst we waited in an empty room not knowing anything for what felt
like a lifetime. Her Apgar score was 0 and she was put on a ventilator in SCBU where she stayed as we watched and waited for 11 days until she was
finally able to breathe unassisted.
The Midwives who had attended the birth
were offered counselling sessions within a week. We were never offered counselling,
though we did have the where withal to request it ourselves. I was told that
due to high waiting lists we could have an appointment through MIND for
December (it was July). So instead we navigated through the following months of
horror completely by ourselves: a month on SCBU; then home to a simply crazy
number of appointments; massive professional input; weeks spent in and out of
hospital; zero sleep; administering several medications a day; tube feeding; watching
Elin have seizures daily; open surgery at Alder Hey and finally receiving a
devastating diagnosis of severe Cerebral Palsy due to lack of Oxygen she had
suffered at birth.
During those dark months we simply
survived from day to day. We tried to support one another as our own hearts
broke inside us without a second thought for counselling. In many ways it was
easier for me, people asked how I was. I was the Mum, I was the one who had
given birth and most people understood how awful it had been. But the effects
on my husband were equally far-reaching and Dads often seem to be forgotten in
post-partum trauma discussions. My husband suffered horrendous PTSD and
flashbacks after watching me give birth and observing the ensuing nightmare
unfold. It was he who was forced to leave Elin and I in the hospital alone as
he informed family and friends of what had happened. It was he who drove home
to an empty house and put away the Moses Basket, convinced we would not be
needing it (he later told me he drove back to hospital after doing this but never
made it- he turned round, drove back home and put the basket back out. He
wasn’t ready to give up on our girl). It was him who was warned in grave voices
by the doctors that our baby may not make it as I was bathed and medicated in
my room, oblivious to these discussions. The first time he saw our daughter
through the glass of her incubator, surrounded by machinery dwarfing her tiny
frame, he was alone. To say he was traumitised would probably be an
understatement. So we both struggled through our emotions after bringing Elin
home.
I remember one particular time when I
just couldn’t get up from the bathroom floor where I had crumpled. I simply
thought I was going to die of grief. Yes, perhaps we could have sought private
counselling but it quite literally never occurred to us. Once we brought our
baby home from the SCBU there was too much to think about and our own mental
health was the last thing on our overflowing to-do list as we cared for a very
sick baby. We needed someone to talk to,
to suggest we get help and explain the far-reaching effects of trying to deal
with what we later came to understand as PTSD without professional support.
I regularly wonder if we had started
counselling in that first six months after Elin was born, would we have had the
emotional tools that might have made the following years of devastation perhaps
that little bit easier to handle?
Any parent who has received a
life-altering diagnosis for their baby in the days or weeks following the birth
needs help, it really is as simple as that. An SEN parent friend of mine succinctly explains it ‘It’s like they say this is
what your baby has. This is your life now, so deal with it’.
Post- partum/post diagnosis mental
health support is SO IMPORTANT!! The healthcare professionals such as the
Midwives should absolutely be offered counselling after trauma, but so should
the parents. It’s time to find the funding. It’s time to redress the balance.
