I received emergency mental health care after having a baby – but new mums won’t be as fortunate

For three years after giving birth, I thought that the “newborn glow” was a fiction. As far as I was concerned, when women talked about the overwhelming joy of becoming a mother they were simply lying – to themselves, and to everyone else.

And then I had a second child. My youngest daughter came out into the world quickly and easily and brought with her the most exhilarating burst of gladness, a whole-body rapture at her presence and a deep euphoria that lasted for weeks. They hadn’t been exaggerating, I realised; this is exactly what they had meant all along.

It was only then that I understood just how unwell I had been the first time around, even though I was blind to it at the time. It was then, too, that I realised how the timely intervention of NHS doctors to get me the mental health support I needed had saved me from falling off a precipice.

Now, new figures unearthed by the Labour Party reveal that approximately 20,000 women just like me are being left adrift, waiting an average of 19 months for psychological care during the most vulnerable period of their lives. Some women are being abandoned altogether, with more than 11,500 who sought care for postnatal mental health problems not getting any support at all after they had been assessed. This is a moral as well as a political crisis: the mental health of a mother doesn’t only affect her life but the social and emotional development of her child.

Of course, I had expected the arrival of a child to be a difficult, disruptive time. I knew my life would change when I stepped over the threshold from an independent, autonomous adult to a full-time carer for a tiny newborn. What I hadn’t anticipated was quite how difficult it would be physically, for both me and my new baby. I suffered a long and painful labour, with almost every drug and intervention it’s possible to have, leaving me with a 14-stitch episiotomy scar which still causes occasional discomfort six years on. Breastfeeding was difficult, extremely painful for the first 12 weeks, and my baby was so, so miserable.

Being screamed at by a helpless newborn for 16 hours a day is definitely a cocktail for unstable mental health. And when I struggled to be heard by medical professionals when I feared my baby wasn’t well (it transpired, months later, that she had multiple allergies and I needed to carry EpiPens) it tipped over into severe mental distress. But I couldn’t see it myself.

When my daughter was seven months old, I published a column in this title talking about what to expect as a new parent. “Everyone will try to diagnose you with PND…” I wrote. “It’s great news that those working with new parents are alert to the needs of women whose mental health suffers badly after having a baby. But not every woman who cries in public in the first few months of parenting has clinical depression – it’s just tough being a first-time mum.”

I couldn’t accept what was obvious to others. Two months after that article appeared, doctors intervened to ensure I had emergency mental health treatment. As a mother of a child under one, I had an urgent referral for counselling, with my first appointment within two weeks of a paediatrician insisting I get the help I need. That immediate support made a huge difference; it turned my parenting journey around and gave me and my family the confidence that we had the tools to get through what had been the trickiest year of our lives.

Today, mothers of babies are still in a priority category for mental health care because of the important role they play in the development of their child, but despite that are suffering intolerable waits for care or are being dismissed altogether. Only six years ago, I was found urgent help within a fortnight.

If you want to see how far our country has fallen in such a short time, look at how we treat our most vulnerable. Child poverty is at record levels, more than 140,000 children will spend Christmas homeless and now new mothers and their children are left to cope with the pain and anguish of a mental health crisis alone, in the crucial months and years of their development.

Access to ante- and post-natal healthcare is a postcode lottery after more than a decade of public sector cuts, and without specialists supporting pregnancy, birth and beyond, the warning signs of postnatal crisis can be easily missed. I had certainly missed my red flags.

This is not only about valuing motherhood, though that is so important. If a government cannot find a way to fund support in the first crucial 1,000 days of a child’s life, the state will pick up the costs every month throughout their adulthood.

A new administration is expected next year, perhaps as early as the spring. A first principle should be to support the people on whose daily, exhaustive efforts the very future of this nation rests.

If you need support or resources; Pandas, a charity which offers hope, empathy and support for every parent or network affected by perinatal mental illness (call 0808 1961 776), Support for Mums and Families, Association for Post Natal Illness (helpline open 10am-2pm – 020 7386 0868 or email info@apni.org), Best Beginnings or Tommy’s, which offer free support and information for women and families at any stage of pregnancy or after birth