Working through it: Birth trauma and PTSD

The importance of empathy in the workplace after a traumatic start to parenthood.

My second son, Elliot, was born 10 weeks premature at the start of the first COVID lockdown. It was a terrifying time when nobody had any answers and the virus was, for so many, a death sentence.

A placental abruption meant there was risk to life for both of us and Elliot was delivered via emergency c-section. He was immediately placed in an incubator and taken to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). I didn’t hold or touch my baby.

Due to COVID, the NICU had a policy of one parent per baby, meaning that, apart from his traumatic delivery, the first time my husband and I met Elliot together was the day we brought him home from hospital – two and a half months later.

A traumatic birth, 11 weeks on the NICU, six months of strict shielding with a premature newborn and his not-yet-two-year-old brother and it’s not surprising I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

People often speculate that my trauma was compounded because of COVID, but when I speak to other neonatal parents, who had their children before the pandemic, there are common points of trauma that are nothing to do with COVID:

o   Watching invasive medical procedures and life-threatening events (not just for your baby but others on the unit)

o   Getting to grips with the harsh reality hidden behind medical terminology

o   The gut-wrenching feeling of leaving your baby every night

o   The guilt when you are with them of not being with your other children (if you have them)

o   The well-meaning, but oh so painful, questions from friends and relatives about when they’ll come home, when you don’t even know if they’re going to make it through the next few hours.

Elliot had been home with us about three months when it dawned on me (on about loop 50 of our garden) that my then employer hadn’t, perhaps, provided the response to my situation that I felt I deserved. Granted, like the rest of the world, they had been tackling the early days of COVID, but they hadn’t told me to stop writing handover notes when I was sat at the side of an incubator watching my baby have yet another invasive procedure. A member of the Senior Leadership Team hadn’t thanked me when I had given three hours to help them with what could have been a negative public relations issue and they hadn’t really asked how I or Elliot was. The lines of communication, I felt, had been very much one way.

After some rumination, I told my husband that I didn’t want to return to work there. I loved my immediate team but had been left feeling aggrieved by the SLT and didn’t want that to seep out into my relationship with my team – it wouldn’t have been fair to them or me.

I remember the concern of my husband and friends when I applied and interviewed for my role at Manchester Metropolitan University. Was taking on a new role and having to onboard remotely due to COVID wise given all I had been through? My mind, however, was set and I started work as a Head of Marketing in December 2020, nine and a half months after Elliot’s arrival.

I had originally planned on a ten-month maternity leave, so this was, in my mind, just weeks shorter than what I had anticipated. It was absolutely the right thing to do for me, as an individual, and my family, to get us back into some form of routine. After all we had been through, we were all in desperate need of it. But the comment “I’d have thought you’d have wanted a longer maternity leave to spend time with him” was has left a lasting sting.

The Neonatal Care Act, which comes into force from April 2025, includes a new entitlement to additional paid leave from work when a baby is in neonatal care. This provides parents with choice about when it is right for them to return to work, without fear of financial pressures mounting up on top of everything else. I want to point out that it is the choice element that is important here. It wasn’t right for me and my mental health to have an extended leave. If you have a neonatal parent in your team, please don’t make assumptions about when they wish to return to work.

One in seven babies born in the UK will require neonatal care. It’s not uncommon, unusual and it perplexes me why, in most workplaces, we’re not better prepared for supporting colleagues going through it. I mean, one in seven!

What I wish i’d be told when I returned to work…

1.     Don’t avoid the topic – ask me about it. Neonatal parents have likely spent weeks and/or months advocating for their baby in hospital and, as a by-product, we become pretty good advocating for ourselves. If we’re not comfortable talking about it, we’ll tell you.

2.     After a neonatal stay, we may have desensitised ourselves to a lot of the trauma we have seen/experienced. This is a coping mechanism. While we may seem matter of fact and ‘OK’, don’t presume there has been no impact. The fact I could talk eloquently about what had happened bore no correlation to my mental state.

3.     We may be back at work and nothing much may have changed here, but home is a different story. Neonatal babies may require ongoing hospital visits, may have life-long health conditions that need exploring and understanding. Personal relationships might be under pressure too. Behind the scenes there is likely a lot going on. We’ll get our work done (being a neonatal parent makes you robust if nothing else) but flexibility and trust as we navigate our new normal is appreciated.

4.     I received trauma therapy from Spoons, a charity that supports Greater Manchester’s neonatal families. Four years on, I am still able to tap into it when needed. Not all areas are fortunate enough to have a charity like Spoons so, it is worth seeing what organisations you could signpost colleagues to, as well as understanding what support is available via your employee assistance programme.