An Aghagallon mother-of-three who said she “didn’t care” that her baby wasn’t breathing in the delivery suite is now doing everything in her power to be the advocating voice for women with postnatal and perinatal depression.
That voice belongs to Emma Walsh, who today discusses her experience of perinatal depression with a “raw” and open honesty on her TikTok page – which boasts a following of over 13,000 people – EmmaLifeAfterPND… and it demands a listening ear.
And, she demands to be heard for the sake of all Northern Irish mothers.
When Emma was just 16 weeks pregnant she knew she was failing to bond with the baby her body was busily bringing life to. It was her third pregnancy and she never felt like this with the previous two.
Not only was she failing to bond, but Emma says the thought alone of bringing her son into the world filled her with dread.
Knowing that something was incredibly wrong, Emma brought her fears to the community midwives and she was accepted onto the perinatal team for support.
The team guided her through counselling, talk therapies and exposure therapies but she continued to harbour intrusive thoughts… that were mostly directed towards herself and her inability to rejoice in her pregnancy.
Then on March 25, baby Fintan arrived via caesarean section. He was lifted above the screen for mummy to get her first glimpse… but Emma wasn’t bothered.
When he was moved to an incubator – failing to take his first breath – Emma’s response was: “I didn’t care. I just thought ‘yep, that’s for the best’. Great!”
She describes having an almost out-of-body experience where she knew she should have been in a state of sheer panic but the panic just didn’t come.
Speaking to Armagh I, Emma explained: “As a mother knows they long for that first cry but I just didn’t click.”
On the run up to her labour, the perinatal team had asked Emma to outline her wants and wishes for her labour. Knowing that she was a mother struggling to bond, she asked them that if she hadn’t picked up her new-born son within the first two hours of life, she wanted him placed on her chest.
Thankfully, they didn’t make it to that stage.
Emma explained that in a moment of clarity – as a student midwife entered the room to pick Fintan up – a “massive rush of protection” took over her. She held him then and she has held him ever since.
She is consumed by love for her now 16-month-old son but still struggles “every day” with postnatal depression, describing it as a “process”.
Emma with her family
Looking back on her experience, Emma’s pregnancy was clouded by a depression she had no control over. So stricken was she, that she suffered panic attacks when trying to purchase a baby blanket from her local shopping centre on six separate occasions.
She was 36 weeks pregnant with no labour bag packed because she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
And today, she suffers all of the guilt associated with months of living under the oppression of that cloud.
But Emma has found strength in her experience and she’s using it to support other mummies like herself and to challenge the systems in place – or not in place – to ensure that Northern Ireland’s mothers are not served an injustice.
Explaining her advocacy work over the course of the last year, Emma said: “It was lovely to have had a positive reaction when my son was born but the reality is, for some mummies, they don’t have that.
“That’s why I am a massive advocate now, because I think the mental health system in Northern Ireland is broken.
“Now I do a lot of work in the community. I hold a weekly support group every Tuesday and it is free of charge to mummies who are experiencing the mental load of motherhood.
“They come, it’s a talking therapy. I don’t offer all the answers, because I don’t have them. It’s a place where you can be held and heard and that’s it.”
Emma has also been almost constantly engaged in fundraising to better support her mission.
Part of her fundraising ensures mothers receive access to “care packages” which Emma collates and hand delivers to those struggling with the “weight of motherhood”.
During her time advocating for support, Emma has taken a mother who had never received dental treatment to her first appointment, she has cleaned the homes of 19 overwhelmed mothers, taken women on walks and shopping… all in the hopes of guiding them through the throes of depression.
People often ask her, “What are government doing?”. And Emma says she just “doesn’t know”.
“If you talk to me about community support – endless. There is endless community support but also endless community need,” continued Emma.
“I am going to try and work on that and build that into something that I can go to MLAs with and say, ‘Listen, I have done the background, I have the statistics and you are failing us’.
“The end goal that I want is peer support advocates for maternal mental health and I don’t think this should be something that I have to fight for. It should be general knowledge.
“When you buy a remote on Amazon you are given a 10-page instruction manual. When you have a baby you are handed a baby and told, ‘All the best, look after it’.
“If you’re in crisis you go to A&E. I am going to A&E and I am going into A&E with other people.
“Yes, they deserve their mental health care just like any one of us, and I’m not saying that a mother deserves it any more than anyone else, but I can’t speak for them because I don’t have that lived experience.
“I have the lived experience of having intrusive thoughts and a child in my arms and it becomes a bed of crisis with an exclamation mark!”
Some of the care packages Emma has prepared for mothers
Intensely passionate, Emma continues to fight for a Mother and Baby Unit in Northern Ireland.
She fears the lack of one is the reason so many mothers fight post and perinatal depression in silence.
She added: “Do you know what the saddest reality is – and the reason I am so passionate? It’s because Northern Irish mummies do not face this because they are afraid they will be removed from their children and that’s the fact.
“The MLAs and everybody here that are failing us, are forcing us to live in a world where we are mentality not okay and then come back and criticise whenever something happens or children need to be taken into care or the system.”
Emma explains that if a mother in Northern Ireland finds herself in crisis with her mental health she is separated from her child and placed in a mental health unit.
“How can we expect mummies to flourish while they are separated from their children?,” she asks.
Emma says she has contacted “all” of her local MLAs and councillors seeking support as she attempts to challenge the care provision across the country. Regrettably, she says she has not yet received a response from any.
Unperturbed, Emma says she will continue to “shout it from the rooftops”, honoured to be in a position to make a difference to the lives of others.
She said: “I still live with postnatal depression every day but I am a completely different person now because of it.
“I know now that I had to go through it so that I could help others… and what a privilege it is to help others.”
Emma welcomes anyone struggling with the issues outlined above to make contact with her via TikTok at @Emmalifeafterpnd where she will help signpost women to the appropriate channels of support.
