As A Maternal Mental Health Expert, Lindsay Clancy’s Story Broke My Heart

Content warning: discussions of a traumatic birth experience, postpartum anxiety, and child death.

In my work as a marriage and family therapist, I have worked with individuals, couples, and groups struggling with fertility, pregnancy, miscarriages, parenting, and all of the mental health challenges that can accompany those journeys. While Lindsay Clancy’s trial and its aftermath play out in front of us, I think about them — but I also think about me. Some of her diary entries that were shared in court felt uncomfortably familiar, like I could have written them myself. My clients have said the same. The common themes of guilt, shame, and emotional overload still live within all of us.

After giving birth to my son in 2016, I remember my dear (British) husband asking when someone was going to come around to see how I was doing. I was confused. I told him that the only people coming were well-meaning friends and family. But any professionals who knew what they were doing, they were only coming if we paid them. When he told me that in England, everyone was entitled to free visits from medical professionals for help with lactation, healing, or anything else they needed, I was a bit floored. I probably cried, but I cried about everything in those days.

I thought that birth would go according to my very specific, idealized plan. I had a relatively easy pregnancy, other than having to monitor some fibroids and an alarming craving for donuts. But when the day came for my baby to be born, and in the weeks after, everything went haywire.

My birth plan — caring doula, birth without medication, special playlist, massages from my husband — went out the window. I was a few days late, and my doula had been up all night with another client and fell asleep in the hospital parking lot. I was in excruciating pain and eventually asked for an epidural, and the last thing I wanted was anyone touching me. The baby’s heart rate was dangerously low, so I conceded to an emergency C-section when my doctor told me the baby may not survive without it. The whole experience was just terrifying. What I ordered (the smooth, beautiful experience that was all natural) was not what I got.

In the days and weeks following, I felt so unlike how I expected to feel. I am a perfectionist; I had my postpartum all planned out. After my natural, easy birth, my little girl and I would go everywhere in matching outfits. We were going to be so cute.

Even though we wanted to be surprised by the baby’s gender, I just knew in my heart I was having a girl. I did not.

I was also shocked to have to recover from a major surgery that did not allow me to bend over, get in and out of bed without extensive maneuvering, or even pick up anything other than my new baby. Even that was a challenge.

Worst of all, I was not myself. Formerly a bit of a Pollyanna, suddenly I worried about everything all the time. I was nervous about how I carried the baby, that I would accidentally drop him, that he wasn’t growing, that I wasn’t producing enough breastmilk, that we weren’t bonding because I had been recovering in surgery instead of doing meaningful skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding. I cried constantly. I recall standing in front of the fridge trying to figure out dinner and worrying that one of my closest friends was never going to meet my baby because she had to go out of town right before he was born. It was completely irrational and I had no logical reason to believe that this was true, but everything felt so uncertain and unpredictable in a way that I had never experienced.

I was also just exhausted, in a bone-deep way that felt as if it would never end. When Clancy’s diary entries were shown in court, I was taken aback by something she wrote: “I'm so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to find something physically wrong with me.” I remember looking forward to my surgery to have my fibroids removed, thinking that I could finally get some uninterrupted sleep in the hospital.

I endured this anxiety in unintentional isolation for months. I remember being so vague about what I was experiencing and somehow expecting people to read between the lines when I said things like, “This is harder than I expected,” or, “I’m so tired and I worry about everything.” There was no direct ask and people didn’t always know how to help, or that I even needed support.

It felt vital for me to keep up the appearance of being a happy, well-adjusted mother. I’ve had clients express similar sentiments and be embarrassed to admit to me, their therapist, that they were struggling with feelings of incompetence or overwhelm. So when prosecutors suggested that Clancy was clearly not experiencing postpartum psychosis because sometimes she was able to do regular things, like play with her children and take them to doctors’ appointments, it felt deeply inaccurate. Appearing “fine” is often by design and can be a real forced effort. Using it to dismiss someone’s experience is counterproductive and potentially dangerous.

Once I was able to be really honest about my mental state postpartum, people stepped in and it made such a difference. My husband, mom friends, and therapy groups were incredible during that time. Recalling the relief I felt then added to my heartbreak while watching Lindsay’s trial; she asked for help over and over and, in her case, it just wasn’t enough.

Of course it is important to clarify that women can have very different perinatal experiences that occur on a spectrum. There’s the “baby blues,” which 75% to 80% of women experience, but is very mild, lasts less than two weeks and goes away on its own. There’s postpartum depression and anxiety, which occur in about 15% of pregnancies, have more moderate symptoms, and may require intervention. Then there’s postpartum psychosis, which is a severe medical emergency, and occurs in only 0.1% to 0.2% of pregnancies.

What is true for every person who gives birth in America is that we as a society do not give them the support and care they need. We do not talk about all the things that might happen in an effort to prepare us and normalize this unpredictable, seismic shift that we go through in the perinatal process. We do not develop research and protocols to address perinatal mental health in the way that women deserve.

My colleague recently pointed out that even though the rate of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is much lower than that of postpartum psychosis — 0.04% of live births — decades of safe sleep campaigns have successfully ensured all new parents understand the best safety practices to limit this risk. SIDS used to be much more common, but because research and focus was given to the issue, it increased our understanding, and countless lives were saved. In fact, within a few years of safe sleep campaigns being introduced, SIDS rates dropped by 50%. Imagine if we did the same with perinatal mental health issues. And it can’t stop there.

We must also acknowledge the disparities some mothers face when they choose to have children in America. We have seen many tragic stories of Black mothers dying (at three times the rate of white women in the U.S.) during the birthing process or afterwards when their concerns and their pain were ignored. Lindsay Clancy’s case is also the main reason we now know about a Black mother, Latarsha Sanders, who was also put on trial for killing her children.

Latarsha stood trial in 2022 for the same charges, in the same county, with the same judge as Lindsay, and with the same defense of postpartum psychosis — only Latarsha never got to present evidence of her mental health history to the jury. She never had people in matching T-shirts defending her outside the courtroom, no GoFundMe set up in her name. She received two life sentences with hardly any attention or support. The courts recently decided to award her a new trial that can include her medical records, but we likely would not know her story without the attention paid to Lindsay Clancy’s trial. Now we know her name, and she will have another chance to plead her case, but at such a terrible cost: more lives destroyed because society refuses to acknowledge that not all of motherhood is rainbows and unicorns.

We all deserve help, support, and care postpartum. After all, if we can’t get mothers and babies into this world safely and give them all a chance to thrive, very little else matters.

If you need help or resources related to postpartum mental health, call the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262). You can also call or text Postpartum Support International at 1-800-944-4773, or call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In an emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.

Dr. Patrice Le Goy is a licensed marriage and family therapist and international psychologist. She is also the research chair of Maternal Mental Health Now and the board chair of Open Paths Counseling Center, as well as the host of Like-Minded with Dr. Patrice, an award-winning mental health podcast.

Patrice lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two children, and their massive dog who is definitely part wolf. You can follow her on social media @drpatricelegoy.