I just gave birth during lockdown. I’m lonely, anxious and I can’t get the mental health support I need

At my first midwife appointment, when I was 14 weeks pregnant, I was told I was high risk for postnatal depression. I had been living with bipolar disorder for five years, and had also been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder; postnatal depression, therefore was likely.

I was admitted under the perinatal mental health team throughout my pregnancy, and luckily had good care from them throughout. I would see the perinatal psychiatrist once a month and also had someone to check in on me more regularly. I was allowed to stay on my medication, and it was frequently reviewed throughout to make sure both me and my baby were safe. It was, I would say, a good experience.

But I only spent six weeks of my pregnancy in lockdown, after the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK. It happened just after my baby shower, at 34 weeks pregnant. Things suddenly changed: my partner was no longer allowed to come to my scans – which I had frequently due to having gestational diabetes – and when I gave birth via caesarian section, he had to leave as soon as I was moved to the postnatal ward. After that, he was only allowed to visit his baby boy once a day, for an hour, wearing full personal protective equipment. I remained in the hospital for three days, alone.

The first few days of motherhood were very different to that which I’d imagined and expected. There were no visitors, no flowers, and nobody holding my baby bar me and my partner. There wasn’t the shared excitement there was supposed to be.

It’s been a difficult ride, and it’s been hard knowing both mine and my partner’s family have been aching to hold our son. And that’s made it all the more difficult to manage my own mental health too.

I haven’t developed postnatal depression, but I have developed postnatal anxiety and maternal obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The OCD causes me to suffer with intrusive thoughts that can be incredibly distressing and leave me feeling like a terrible mother. The postnatal anxiety has me constantly worrying that my baby is, or is going to become, sick. It’s been especially hard during the pandemic, knowing that we are all at risk.

And while I’ve been suffering, so has my mental health care. Things are different now.

Due to the pandemic, there are no more face-to-face appointments. Despite this I can still only get one appointment every six weeks on the phone – and only because I was already under the perinatal mental health team. For other women who haven’t been identified as at risk during their pregnancy, it’s different. It’s harder. It’s a case of trying to get a GP appointment, and then being put on a waiting list.

I know I’m lucky to have that mental health care, and I don’t mind having phone calls instead of face-to-face appointments, but having to get through six weeks between each check up is hard. I have nobody keeping an eye on me, and I am currently having to pay for a private therapist just to get through each week just to have that help, those reassuring words, that sense of normality.

Isolation is only adding to the difficulty. Motherhood isn’t meant to be this lonely, and during a time like this I feel new mums need that extra support. In the usual world we would have family members and friends supporting us and helping to keep us sane – but now it’s a case of doing everything on our own. The longer it goes on, the lonelier it gets.

Before the pandemic, accessing help for your mental health was easier, despite the mental health services being the most underfunded sector of the NHS. You were able to see your GP, to be referred for help on the NHS, even though the waiting lists are long and it can take from weeks to months to years to actually get that help. But, at least you did have that GP support and they could discuss medication options. If you were in a crisis, you could go to your local A&E for immediate help from the on-duty mental health team. But all of this is different now.

Face-to-face GP appointments are being done on the phone now, yet you still have to wait for an appointment as if it was a physical one. They’re more hesitant to prescribe medication when they haven’t seen you in person, and, being under the perinatal team, they’ve refused to even look at the medication I’m on because they don’t want to contradict anything my psychiatrist says. But I can get an appointment with a GP more quickly than I can the perinatal mental health team. And so, I just feel stuck.

And as new mums, many of us feel as though we can’t go to A&E if we do feel we are in crisis. The risk of catching the virus is too overwhelming, and we have newborn babies to look after. There isn’t enough evidence to say how the virus affects infants, and we don’t want to take that chance.

In the “normal” world, we’d have so much in person support. Midwives would be coming out to our homes during the first couple of weeks postpartum. Health visitors would see us regularly, to weigh our babies and check up on our progress as a new family, either at home or at a local community clinic. All of this would happen between the more regular mental health appointments.

Now there’s less support than ever, but the need for it is only increasing. We need to know we’re not alone. Having a baby during lockdown is a terrifying experience, and there should be more help on hand to help us deal with it.

I know that for me, I’m just trying to do the best I can. But I know deep down I really need the extra support. I need something more frequent, something to help me as I still settle into motherhood, and so do other new mums struggling with their mental health.

New mums are lonely right now. We are missing out on so much. We better postpartum mental health care. We need something frequent. Something regular. Someone to tell us it’s all going to be okay.

And we need it now.