New, expectant and bereaved mothers will soon be able to access support through dozens of new mental health hubs, NHS leaders have announced.
NHS England said that maternity services, reproductive health and psychological therapy will be brought together under one roof thanks to 26 new hubs being set up across the country.
NHS England said that 10 sites will be up and running within months while the rest will open by April next year.
New mothers who experienced difficult pregnancies and births during the pandemic feel the move is long overdue. Many report traumatic experiences, and wish more support had been available for them at the time.
Helen found out she was pregnant in May 2019, and continued to struggle due to anxiety which was triggered by the pandemic the following year.
Her baby boy arrived on 2 February, but things quickly deteriorated for her when the first lockdown began.
“My parents and siblings all came to visit us with their families, and some friends met our baby too,” she told i.
“However, within a few days, I was in pieces, crying most days, feeling like we’d made a big mistake, and that I couldn’t make our baby happy. He just seemed to cry all the time.
“This was coupled with growing anxiety about the pandemic – there was talk of not being able to meet up with people socially, I had to queue (with baby in his pram) for almost two hours one day just to get in to the pharmacy, and I started having to visit multiple supermarkets just to find the right brand of formula milk for him.”
This was a low point, she added.
Helen and her baby stayed with her parents for a few days, just before the ‘Stay at Home’ order, and they suggested she contact her local perinatal mental health team.
“They were obviously very stretched because it took a week or so to be able to talk to someone, but once I did, I was offered support straight away.
“I was allocated a care coordinator, who called me twice a week to start with – we’d just talk, she’d ask how I was and encourage me not to start with ‘Well, the baby…'”
They developed coping strategies so she could have some time to look after herself and do activities she had enjoyed before becoming pregnant. She was also on antidepressants at the time and credits them for helping to raise her mood enough to be able to cope with her thoughts and feelings.
She received this support for the first six months of her baby’s life.
“It wasn’t anything like the service they would have provided in non-pandemic times, but it was a real help knowing that there was a trained professional on the end of the phone who knew me, and knew my circumstances, whenever I needed to talk.”
However, some feel even less optimistic about the help they received.
Katheryn suffered a miscarriage two years ago with her husband, but became pregnant again within five weeks. She had previously been on antidepressants but came off them when they began trying to conceive, and asked for this to be noted on her medical file.
Seven weeks into the pregnancy, she noticed she was bleeding. It was hard not to imagine the worst, especially as her husband, Tim, could not join her for the scan due to Covid restrictions. Luckily everything went okay.
While she had planned to have a home birth, this became unfeasible due to slight complications. High blood pressure in the run-up to her birth, along with her waters breaking early, meant she needed monitoring in hospital.
Suddenly she was faced with questions over whether to be induced, and again, could not rely on her partner’s presence for comfort.
“My husband was allowed with me once I was induced,” she told i. “It was a long, slow process, and after six or seven hours I asked for a epidural. They tried three times before managing to do it, and when we got to the pushing stage and [the baby] got stuck.”
“We were then whisked away into theatre,” she said, where there were attempts to birth the baby with the ventouse, and then using forceps.
“I lost a lot of blood, though I didn’t know it at the time,” Kathryn said. “My husband remained with me while they got me to eat but was then taken away from the ward. I felt very unwell and frightened. I was dozing off with my baby and scared I’d smother her.”
When she asked for help, she said the midwife told her: “What do you want me to do? I can’t breast feed her.”
“I felt that at this point I needed support and care but was left feeling scared and alone,” she said. “No one had the time to listen and understand what was needed.
“We struggled to feed, mainly because no one told me that my blood loss would make it difficult. Subsequently my baby developed jaundice and had to have phototherapy.”
While she received more medical advice, she was still lacking emotional support, she said, leaving her feeling lost and hopeless.
Claire Murdoch, NHS England’s national mental health director, said: “Every woman has a unique experience with pregnancy and motherhood and some will need extra support to cope with mental health issues that can range from anxiety to severe depression, so I am delighted that mothers across all areas of the country will be able to access this help if they need it.
“The NHS is here for everyone who needs help and the expansion of specialist care through the rollout of these maternal mental health services will strengthen the services already in place, enabling us to improve the quality of care and outcomes for many women.
“I would encourage any mum who needs this support to come forward safe in the knowledge that her mental health and wellbeing are of paramount importance and she should not feel ashamed of accessing the help she needs.”
As well as offering psychological therapies for new and expectant mothers the clinics will also provide training for maternity staff and midwives, NHS England said.
Both new mothers welcome the new support hubs that have been announced, but wish it had been available earlier, when they and countless others needed the help.
While she said it was a “step in the right direction”, Helen worries if 26 centres will be enough.
“I think this support is overdue,” she said, but “the postcode lottery around maternity care during the pandemic will have led to a lot more women experiencing anxiety during pregnancy and worrying about their support circles once the baby arrives.
“On top of that, the world is just generally a more anxious place now too.”
Kathryn agrees.
“The support announced is great news but very overdue given the trauma mothers have been through during the Covid pandemic,” she said.
“Support such as this should have been available much earlier and I plan to have a birth reflection with the hospital to process my experience.”
For now, with her baby just eight weeks old, she’s working to adapt to her new life with a newborn.
“I am hopeful not to be back on medication, but I know this might be a possibility,” she said.
Additional reporting from PA.
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