Isabel Webster says what you’re thinking
ISABEL PHOTO: STUART MITCHELL. OTHER PHOTOS (‘KIDS MEALS’ AND ‘SPRING CLEANING’ POSED BY MODELS): ALAMY, GETTY
GIVING BIRTH MADE ME PSYCHOTIC
There was a certain comedy to the start of my labour. I’d been induced and things were happening more quickly than we’d been warned to expect. We had to fight to convince the midwives my contractions were less than 10 minutes apart, making me eligible for pain relief. After multiple unsuccessful entreaties, they agreed to hook me up to a monitor, and to their surprise, I was right! I was finally allowed some drugs. Many hours later, things got serious.
My son’s oxygen levels were dropping and we had to get him out. Instead of a C-section, three adults heaved behind one another, like a tug-of-war, on a pair of forceps clasped around my son’s head. His shoulder had got stuck in the birth canal after his head had been delivered. This is called a shoulder dystocia and is an obstetric emergency.
The crisis was averted using an expert manoeuvre – for which I am hugely grateful. William was crying, a sound that filled me with joy, but I could see my baby’s perfect face was bruised and bleeding. His birth had caused Bell’s Palsy – facial paralysis – which doesn’t always improve. Fortunately it did, but his face is permanently scarred. I felt like I’d just lived through a car crash. But funnily enough it was from this point on that the hell really began.
The aftercare was non-existent. We had to stay in hospital for several days and I began to lose my mind. William wouldn’t settle anywhere but on me, but we’d been warned that co-sleeping could lead to sudden infant death syndrome. So, I stayed awake, afraid to sleep in case my precious baby died.
People must have thought he had! I walked around the hospital with tears streaming down my face. I am sure I experienced some psychosis. They were the worst days of my life. But nobody spotted it. I suffered months of crippling postnatal anxiety with no professional support. This week a devastating MPs’ report into ‘Birth Trauma’ estimated that 30,000 women a year have experiences like mine – many worse. Authors of the inquiry called for a system where ‘poor care is the exception rather than the rule’. How can it be, in 2024 Britain, that tens of thousands of pregnant women are walking into hospital healthy, and 1 in 20 develop PTSD? Maternity deaths are at their highest levels
