My Daughter has a physician friend, a Pediatrician, who specializes in the Fourth Trimester. The time after childbirth – the messy, sleep deprived time when you wake and wonder where you left the baby. The breast abscess time. The confounding, mind numbing onslaught of well-wishers and casseroles.
There is no checklist for new moms; no course curriculum, no nursing visits, no lactation specialists at the ready. At least not in the US, unless of course you can afford help. And if you cannot, too bad. Maybe your mother moves in? The Flapper flew to the Berkshires when the Bride was born. I remember her showing me how to wash the baby’s hair in the sink. Since I’d had a C-section, I needed her help. She had never nursed her babies because the post WWII culture pushed formula and bottles on new moms, so I relied on Bag Balm and a La Leche League phone number.
When I was a newborn, my Father was dying in the dining room from a glioblastoma. My Mother’s doctor blessedly told her she didn’t need to sterilize the bottles, she could just wash them. I wonder who was helping her back in our Year of Living Dangerously. Did my Nana move in? Kay tells me that my crib was in her room.
Other countries have a wide-ranging social network humming along when a baby comes into the world. Parents get many months of paid leave for that first year of life; nurses show up at their home every week. In Finland, the government delivers a Baby Box full of supplies that doubles as a bassinet.
“Currently, the average length of maternity leave in the 27 EU member states is 23.5 weeks. However, some countries go far beyond this minimum requirement. In fact, several EU countries offer over 30 weeks of paid maternity leave, as well as additional parental leave, paid paternity leave, and flexible work arrangements to support families. One of the most notable examples is Sweden, which offers a total of 480 days of paid parental leave, of which 90 days are reserved for fathers. This approach recognizes the importance of shared parental responsibility and aims to promote gender equality, as well as offers financial and social support to families.” https://openpublichealthjournal.com/VOLUME/18/ELOCATOR/e18749445325867/FULLTEXT/
In the USA, 10 days of maternity leave is covered and on average, mothers return to work after 10 WEEKS.
Lindsay Clancy was a Labor and Delivery nurse. She had experienced postpartum depression after the birth of her first two children, and started to spiral again after her third baby was born in 2022. Because of her deteriorating mental health, she admitted herself to two different hospitals; one an out-patient program for postpartum depression in December 2022, and another as an in-patient in January 2023. They discharged her. She was preparing to go back to work, but on January 24 she heard voices telling her to kill herself and her children. She strangled them with exercise bands in her basement, then climbed to the roof of her house, slit her neck and wrists and jumped. Clancy is now paralyzed.
She called two suicide hot lines leading up to that day. She saw a few different doctors and had been prescribed too many psychiatric drugs. I know nothing of the relationship she had with her now divorced husband, or whether her in-laws or parents tried to help her. But I do know that at SIX months, after not sleeping for more than two hours at a time with my second baby, I woke up from six hours of uninterrupted sleep and promptly told Bob he didn’t need to admit me to a hospital after all. And I was serious, but I laughed.
Women in pink tee shirts have been showing up outside Clancy’s courthouse in Plymouth, Massachusetts. At first it was just a few, now there are hundreds in support of a mother who slid slowly from postpartum depression into full blown psychosis. How else could we explain what she did? They say the system failed her. Yesterday the defense asked for a mistrial because yet again, the prosecution brought up Clancy’s Roman Catholic faith. The request for a mistrial was denied. Her lawyer said:
“It’s the same thing again: talking about religion, talking about heaven, talking about killing people and the impact or the effect that it would have on Lindsay, as well as her children.”
One in seven women experience postpartum depression. Postpartum psychosis affects up to two women every 1,000 births.
There are civil suits against the mental health providers who treated Clancy in the works, filed by her ex-husband. If she is convicted of murder she will be sent to prison without the possibility of parole. If she is acquitted by reason of insanity, she will be sent to a psychiatric hospital. In my opinion, this was a mistrial from the very beginning. It is a Greek tragedy come to life, and the press is the chorus. When our country treats the needs of mothers and their children, of families, as a priority, when we support women instead of building a grand ballroom. Waging war against Iran and subverting our own rights at the ballot box.
I have a theory that the fourth trimester lasts a long, long time. My garden gate before a walk.
MountainMornings 