Meet The Instructor: Lucy

After 10 years working as a midwife, our antenatal instructor, Lucy, recently became a mother herself. I loved meeting up with her and her husband, Sam, and their baby, Gabe, just 5 weeks after he was born, and hearing about her magical moments so far. Lucy also shared some aspects of her journey that have taken her by surprise, including her struggle with intrusive thoughts, and her passion for raising awareness about this important topic.

Interview: Alex Kohansky

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How have the first few weeks of motherhood been for you?

Amazing and utterly incredible! Even being a midwife and seeing babies born all the time, it still blows my mind that this small person came from me and that we made him. The love that I have for him gets bigger and bigger every time I look at him - it’s wild.

Has there been one standout joyous moment?

So many! But the moment he was born was a big one. And knowing that he was our baby - I wasn’t the midwife handing someone else their baby. I remember Sam saying at the time, ‘He’s our baby,’ and that was my biggest moment.

I have always wanted to be a mother and loved babies and that’s probably why I became a midwife. There is no logic or intellect behind it - it was an innate feeling for me and I feel extremely lucky and deeply grateful that I have finally been able to realise this dream of motherhood.

What was your birth like?

I was preparing myself for a vaginal birth and was looking forward to experiencing labour and contractions firsthand after supporting so many women and birthing people through theirs. As it turned out, my baby needed to be born before labour started, and I had a semi-emergency c-section. We got to watch (nearly!) the whole thing and it was utterly amazing.

I generally had no expectations or fixed ideas for my baby’s birth as I’m aware that it’s so dependent on responding to the individual situation and information we have at the time. I just wanted us both to be safe and happy and, for us, a c-section is what we needed. As a midwife, I would have loved to labour, out of curiosity, but I’m equally grateful to have had a caesarean, as I’ve supported many birthing women and people through their caesarean births and now I have a lived experience of it.

For me, relinquishing control (as much as I could) early on was helpful. With the best will in the world, we can’t control birth - and that would be my take-home for anyone going into it.

Naturally, the birth of our babies can consume us during our pregnancies (and oftentimes after) and can leave us little space in our minds to consider life after birth. I am now constantly wondering how we can gently shift this focus or make it more balanced; to be able to better prepare ourselves for the joyous, wild, beautifully exhausting, and emotional times we have after birth, getting to know our new babes, our new selves, and our new lives!

Did anything about the birth take you by surprise?

I guess the sense of the enormity of the experience. I felt more vulnerable than I expected, and the sense of responsibility I felt when going through our options was greater than I imagined. Even making the conscious decision to have ‘no fixed ideas’ wasn’t easy - I realised that I was quite attached to wanting my baby to have some labour to allow him to prepare himself for his birth and entrance into the world. It is amazing what you focus on when given big information.

I found this particularly humbling as I was really living the experience I have supported so many families through. I remember saying that I wanted to be back up with the team in my scrubs as that felt like an easier place to be, rather than the one who had to actually make the decisions! But I also felt very safe and at home as I was lucky to be with my trusted and brilliant colleagues.

Other than that, the spinal (anaesthesia) made my legs feel quite strange, which was a surprise. I don’t recall anyone else having had this experience, so it may just be me?!

How about the postnatal period - has anything taken you by surprise?

One of the big things that I hadn’t considered was the intensity of my thoughts and feelings. Amongst all of the wild love I’ve been so lucky to experience, I’ve also experienced many very intrusive thoughts, which have been really unsettling and upsetting. An example would be questioning if I can go to sleep because of the fear of Gabe not being okay if I do, or me dropping him or, even worse, intentionally harming him. I was lucky these were fleeting in my mind, but they left me feeling really upset and frightened. Even in the knowledge that between 70-100% of new parents can experience these intrusive thoughts, it can still be a very lonely and frightening place to be.

Generally, with a newborn, there’s a lot of worrying about whether they’re too hot, too cold, hungry - those sorts of things - and when you’re tired, it can get quite overwhelming and slip into irrational and sometimes unmanageable thoughts. For me, it often happens at night — things always feel more overwhelming at night!

The way I manage it is to try and ‘talk myself down’ and acknowledge that these are just thoughts, that’s all they are, and try to work through it being as kind as I can to myself. I found sharing it with Sam incredibly helpful and important. It turned out he was having very similar thoughts and fears too. We were able to support each other and check in daily to see how and where we were both at.

Lucy, Gabe, Sam and some of their Bump & Baby Club friends

Talking about things like this is so helpful and important, as it’s so reassuring to know you’re not the only one. I was lucky to be able to share with Sam and I would urge anyone to please share with their partners, family, or anyone they trust. You will not be alone in this. There are also incredible online support services if anyone feels they need it and reaching out to your midwife, GP, or health visitor, if things persist and do not ease is really important. And there’s an infographic I found recently that’s helpful in understanding all of this (as an instructor, I love an infographic!)

So much brilliant work has been done to raise awareness around the issues of postnatal depression, however, we still have a long way to go. I feel deeply that we need to continue to highlight the incidence of all postnatal mental health disorders such as intrusive thoughts, postnatal OCD, and any other mental health concerns that both birthing and non-birthing parents can all go through to some degree.

Do you think these types of thoughts might be wrapped up in the intensity of the love you have for your baby?

Yeah, absolutely, that’s a really good way of describing it for me. It’s that awful feeling of, ‘what if…?’ This is your most precious thing ever, so every concern is amplified. Babies are resilient little beings but there’s a lot of responsibility for us parents. This, mixed in with a large dose of hormones and lack of sleep, can really amplify things. Sleep deprivation is a known form of mental torture! It is more difficult to find your point of logic when you’re exhausted. You love your baby so much and your reserve of reason is lessened, I think.

It’s great that you and Sam joined our Brighton antenatal course as regular group members! How helpful has your Bump & Baby Club group been to you?

It's been so, so helpful! I absolutely loved taking the course and being part of a group of expectant parents. It was invaluable for Sam, who is not a birth professional! Our antenatal instructor was my good friend, Kirsty, who was beyond wonderful as I knew she would be. One of our real take-homes from Kirsty’s brilliant classes were the postnatal daily check-ins, that reminded us to create a space for us both to express our needs and feelings at that time without judgment of each other. That has been so helpful.

To boot, we also met a fantastic group of people. It’s been really helpful on so many levels and I’m so happy we took part. Thank you so much Bump & Baby Club!

Lucy teaches antenatal classes at our Hove Club and Haywards Heath Club.

Me (Alex) and beautiful Gabe - thanks for the cuddle!