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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
In an emotional debate in the House of Commons in October 2023, then MP Theo Clarke broke down in tears as she described being rushed into emergency surgery after the birth of her daughter, terrified she was going to die. Amazed at the public response, she quickly realised that although birth trauma is a huge issue, there is still a real taboo around speaking about it. In the UK alone, it's estimated that up to 30,000 women a year suffer bad experiences during the delivery of their babies, with one in twenty developing post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. Despite this, substandard maternity and postnatal care is too often tolerated as normal. In Breaking the Taboo, as well as telling her own story, Theo presents the experiences of mothers and fathers from different backgrounds that show the undiscussed realities of birth trauma. She also shines a light on what it is like to combine motherhood with a career as an MP, revealing the shocking way new mothers are treated by our political system – something that has serious implications for our democracy. A gripping memoir of a new mother's experience combined with a powerful call to arms for change, this urgent book will start a conversation that is as essential as it is overdue.
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“Equal parts shocking and poignant, this captivating book outlines the bold reforms so urgently needed in healthcare services and shines a light on women’s real-life stories and experiences of traumatic birth. Vividly written and packed with deeply moving accounts of the impact of birth trauma, Breaking the Taboo is a vital insight into the scandal that is the postcode lottery of this country’s maternity provision. Put a copy on the desk of every MP.”
Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party 2007–2015
“Breaking the Taboo is a gripping, courageous and urgent account of the extraordinary experience of becoming a mother while serving as an MP and a damning indictment of how we treat new mothers. Theo has started the much-needed #MeToo movement for inadequate maternity care. Essential reading for all about how life can begin in a maternity system that we as a society should be ashamed of.”
Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence:On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood
“A painfully honest, important testimony to traumatic birth – vital reading for both parents and policy makers.”
Rory Stewart, former government minister and co-host of The Rest is Politics
“Breaking the Taboo is a book that truly touched my heart. Theo Clarke brings a much-needed voice to the experience of birth trauma and, in doing so, offers a sense of comfort and understanding that many of us are missing. If you’ve carried the weight of a difficult birth, this book will help you feel seen and heard.”
Louise Thompson, broadcaster and author of Lucky: Learning to Live Again
“Breaking the Taboo is a jaw-dropping insight into the postcode lottery of maternity care in the UK. Theo’s account of what it is like to be a new mother and an MP at the same time left me reeling – as did the descriptions of the birth trauma suffered by her and the other mothers who have so bravely shared their stories. Inspiring and powerful, this is a must-read.”
Dame Andrea Leadsom, former Business Secretaryii
“As a clinician committed to supporting women who have been affected by birth trauma, I pay tribute to Theo and all the women who have shared their stories for this powerful new book. It’s essential that we break the silence around birth trauma so we can learn from these experiences and do everything possible to ensure that every woman receives the high-quality care she deserves.”
Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
“Breaking the Taboo is a brave, personal and at times brutal account of how Theo’s own experience of birth trauma led to her groundbreaking campaign to protect new mums. It also offers a fascinating glimpse into the reality of pregnancy and early motherhood as a politician during one of the most turbulent periods in recent British history.”
Justine Roberts, CEO and founder of Mumsnet
“I wish Theo hadn’t had to write this book, but I’m so glad she did. We need to move the needle on maternity and post-partum care, and it starts with vital stories like this one.”
Stacey Halls, novelist and bestselling author of The Familiars
“Breaking the Taboo is a powerful personal account of being a new mother experiencing birth trauma. Theo charts our work together in Parliament to break the silence surrounding the subject and correctly identifies the serious need for a #MeToo movement around birth trauma. Her moving and candid book will help to spark much-needed change.”
Rosie Duffield MP, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma
“This book does not stand alone. It is one part of the positive action taken by a courageous campaigner and mother, together with the huge number of women she has created a platform for. They have all been able to tell their stories and telling those stories will lead to change. This book should be widely read, especially by those who can help make that change.”
Penny Mordaunt, former Leader of the House of Commons
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For my daughter, Arabella
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‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there.’
Theodore Roosevelt
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Contents
Foreword
For more than ten years, the UK has seen a significant decline in the quality of maternity care provided by the NHS. A significant contribution to this has been the austerity measures imposed by previous governments. This decline has been outlined through a number of independent investigations and reviews, and following on from the publication of these independent reviews, maternity services find themselves the topic of media headlines, which are followed by an outcry from the public, professional organisations and Members of Parliament. Calls for change are echoed by families across the country, and the NHS workforce are motivated to implement urgent actions to improve the quality of the service they provide.
As time passes, the findings of independent reviews fail to be fully implemented due to a lack of oversight from a government that previously endorsed them. This can be witnessed through a series of reports, such as ‘Invisible: Maternity Experiences of Muslim Women from Racialised Minority Communities’ and the reports on East Kent, Morecambe Bay and Shrewsbury & Telford NHS trusts. The period in which these investigations were published spans the xiicourse of a decade, yet they have all produced similar findings. My biggest concern is that over the course of the past ten years or more, maternity service provision has continued to struggle and as a result of this, more women and families have suffered the consequences.
On 13 May 2024, the already known state of the UK’s maternity service provision was once again highlighted. Theo Clarke, former MP, published a report titled ‘Listen to Mums: Ending the Postcode Lottery on Perinatal Care’, which added to the ongoing national conversation about the widespread failings in perinatal services. The media reported the shock felt by politicians, health professionals and families at accounts they heard of women enduring painful, undignified treatment, sometimes without consent.
This book tells the story of how Theo, following her own traumatic birth and birth injury in 2022, realised her own experience could be a potential catalyst for change. Theo set up an all-party parliamentary group into birth trauma. Before launching the cross-party inquiry, she initiated the first House of Commons debate on birth trauma in Parliament’s 1,000-year history.
In the last third of the book, Theo gives parents an opportunity that they were not given by the NHS – a chance to be heard. Their first-hand accounts describe the overwhelming psychological and physical toll arising from poor maternity care. As a midwife of thirty-five years and through my various roles in chairing maternity reviews, I am all too aware of how many maternity services are frequently failing mothers, their babies and staff working in maternity services on the ground. But having been exposed to such experiences does not diminish the heartache I felt in reading the accounts of families that have been let down by the NHS. Too often, women are not listened to, procedures are carried out without consent and women are left without the support they need postnatally. xiiiThe perinatal workforce are struggling to keep up with the demands and pressures they are facing, there is not enough staff to provide the service that mothers and babies need and many midwives and obstetricians are leaving their jobs as a result of burnout. Those who remain are often overworked in an underfunded, under-resourced environment. Professionals become traumatised by what they have witnessed and are offered little to no support to help them navigate these difficulties.
Theo Clarke’s book is a sobering read, highlighting once again known structural problems that are difficult to resolve but integral to remedying the declining trajectory of maternity services provided by the NHS. My sincere hope is that there remains a will to change perinatal care for the better; now, let us work together to make it happen.
DonnaOckenden
May2025xiv
Preface
I had never heard the term ‘birth trauma’ before I suffered my own. I had not planned that campaigning to end the postcode lottery in maternity services would be the focus of my time as a Member of Parliament, but that was the journey I unexpectedly found myself on after I gave an emotional speech in the House of Commons. I shared my experience of emergency surgery following the birth of my daughter and how terrified I was that I was going to die. I was amazed by the huge number of women and families who wrote to me sharing their own stories. There remains a real taboo about speaking about birth trauma, and the debate I led in Parliament – the first in British history – started a long-overdue national conversation on this issue.
I would like to dedicate this book to anyone who has suffered from birth trauma. It was harrowing to read the evidence presented to the first birth trauma inquiry in the UK, which I chaired in Parliament in 2024. Afterwards, I continued to receive further testimonies, both from this country and overseas, and the desire to publish many of these new stories was a key driver for writing this book. I want to ensure that their voices continue to be heard by xvithe government so that maternity care is improved in this country, and I also hope to issue a call to action to other countries around the world to do the same. It is worth noting that while the issues surrounding birth trauma are present across the country, the Birth Trauma Inquiry mainly focused on NHS England. To balance this, I have included two stories from the devolved UK nations in the final part of the book.
I want anyone who has suffered from either physical or mental challenges since having a baby to know that they are not alone. I didn’t recognise many of the symptoms of my own birth trauma at first. I didn’t know where to find help and I felt too ashamed to ask for it, so I know how tough it is to talk about such a difficult and sensitive topic, but therapy for my mental health and specialist care for my birth injury have helped. This is the first time that I have shared in detail my own experience, symptoms, recovery and the physical and mental health challenges I suffered as a new mother. I hope that this book will point others in the direction of where they too can find help to heal and recover from their own birth trauma.
I owe a huge debt to the many individuals and organisations who have campaigned tirelessly on this issue for many years before me. Particular thanks to Rosie Duffield MP, who co-chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma with me and supported me in leading a genuinely cross-party national campaign to effect policy change. Also thanks to the Birth Trauma Association, who first introduced me to other mothers who had been affected, helped me to understand the scale of the problem in the UK and acted as secretariat to the Birth Trauma Inquiry. Their chief executive Kim Thomas wrote the official report, provided policy briefs for the parliamentary committee and helped with collating and reading the huge volume of submissions for both the inquiry and this book.xvii
Many other groups and individuals have also advised my campaign, including Mumsnet, MASIC, Maternal Mental Health Alliance, Make Birth Better, birth injuries campaigner Gill Castle, midwife Donna Ockenden (who led the independent review of maternity services for the government at several hospital trusts) and Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology. My thanks also to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), who helped me to collect stories in the field of global birth trauma from women from as far afield as Afghanistan, Guinea and Yemen, who rarely have their voices heard.
My final trimester, labour and the period of recovery from my own traumatic birth, in the summer and autumn of 2022, coincided with a turbulent and extraordinary moment in British history, with the UK experiencing three Prime Ministers and two monarchs within just four months. While memories can be incomplete, I have tried to recall as much as I can about this and to be honest about my experiences. I have referred to medical notes, diaries and the news where it was possible to do so. I also wanted to share the experience of what it was like to give birth, be a new mother and recover from a difficult birth while also working in the unique job of being an MP. The House of Commons Library believes that I’m only the fifty-sixth female MP to give birth while elected. I have seen how the lack of female representation in Parliament contributes to women’s health often being ignored in government policy. We need to achieve gender parity for this to change. It is also essential to make Parliament more family friendly, in order to better support new mothers.
Finally, I hope that this book helps to lift the curtain on what it was like to be a backbench MP running a campaign to effect change. It was a huge collective effort to improve government policy xviiion maternal health. I pay tribute to former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for responding to my call for a new comprehensive national maternity strategy and to former Health Secretary Vicky Atkins for adding birth trauma to the Women’s Health Strategy. I hope that current and future British governments will implement in full the recommendations outlined in the Birth Trauma Inquiry so that no mother endures what I or others in this book did. Despite losing my seat in the recent general election, I continue to campaign to ensure that all mothers in this country and around the world get the care that they need and deserve. This book is a testament to them for bravely sharing their stories with me.
PART I
2BECOMING AN MP AND MOTHER
Chapter One
Pregnant in Parliament
My political journey began when I was first elected in the Boris Johnson landslide in December 2019 to the Stafford constituency, a West Midlands seat in Staffordshire. I had stepped into the shoes of my Conservative predecessor Jeremy Lefroy, who I knew well from our time together volunteering in Africa.
The election campaign was dominated by my party’s pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’, but within 100 days of becoming an MP, the first cases of Covid-19 had been diagnosed in the UK and the country went into lockdown. It was a fraught, tense period, and I felt the weight of the responsibility of representing my constituents during a global pandemic. I spent much of my time attending daily briefings with the Department for Health and Social Care as they worked out how to save lives. I lobbied for my hospital to have more ventilators, dealt with patients being discharged from hospitals to care homes, grappled to understand the endless new emergency legislation that Covid generated, advocated for funding through the furlough scheme to prevent businesses from going bankrupt during restrictions, resolved individual pieces of casework from weddings being cancelled to schools being closed, and worked with the local 4council on operational logistics for the new vaccine rollout across Stafford.
It was a huge challenge to be a new MP during such an unexpected crisis. There was no job description for what I was expected to do, and I never knew what the next day was going to entail. I was also always expected to vote with the government and if I failed to do so and broke what was called a ‘three-line whip’, it could result in expulsion from the party. The only way around this was for me to attend a local event in my constituency or be overseas so that I couldn’t be in Parliament on the day of the vote. Very rarely and only if there was a specific local issue that I had raised with the whips – who acted like prefects in a boarding school, enforcing good behaviour – in advance could they choose to ‘slip’ me, which meant I had permission to miss a vote for a constituency visit, but this remained unusual.
The government liked to keep us on a short leash, especially our new intake of Conservative MPs, who they found increasingly hard to manage. We were seen by our older, more experienced colleagues as too independent, unruly and ambitious to make our mark. This was mainly a reflection of our intake’s demographic, with many of us elected for the first time and a significant proportion having worked outside the Westminster bubble. I had spent the previous few years as chief executive of not-for-profit organisation Coalition for Global Prosperity, which worked to tackle global poverty and was backed by the Gates Foundation. I had experienced first-hand the poverty and suffering in many parts of the developing world, which had shaped my view that Britain should be a force for good in the world. I had slept in refugee camps as far afield as Uganda and Bangladesh, visited water and sanitation projects in India and Sierra Leone and campaigned to improve global policy on 5everything from girls’ education to deforestation, in order to help the world’s most vulnerable people.
I had always believed that it was a good thing for legislators to have had real-life experience before politics, so I was pleased that my intake of MPs was so varied and included former teachers, entrepreneurs and lawyers. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic we spent many months separated as we worked from our constituencies and voted remotely, which made networking with colleagues and building relationships difficult. I was very grateful that I had several friends who were already elected to lean on for advice, such as Tobias Ellwood who helped me prep for my first speeches in the Chamber and Tom Tugendhat who let me hot desk in his office until I could open my own.
I also set up the ‘109’ WhatsApp group for my intake to communicate with each other privately, which clearly put hackles up in the Whips’ Office and labelled me as a future troublemaker – something that was only compounded when I ran the slate to get our intake elected on to select committees by block voting, much to the annoyance of older MPs. I joined the International Development Select Committee, continuing my interest in foreign affairs, and got involved on issues that affected my constituency, including HS2, farming and defence.
I gave my maiden speech within a few weeks, as I was chomping at the bit to be allowed to speak and I was unable to ask a question to ministers on behalf of constituents until I had delivered it. I remember vividly jumping up and down for the first time on the historic green benches as I tried to catch the Speaker’s eye and how nervous I felt as I delivered my first speech live on television during the Queen’s Speech debate on global Britain. I have always been a big supporter of women’s rights, so my first question in the 6Chamber was about period poverty in schools, and I enjoyed watching the older male MPs squirm with embarrassment, which made me chuckle. It was an important moment in my career and I was proud of myself for being the first ever female MP to be elected in my constituency. My feminist credentials obviously struck a chord with some of my younger residents – I remember visiting a local primary school in Ranton for World Book Day, where one of the young girls, aged around nine or ten, had dressed as a suffragette with a coloured sash with ‘Votes for women’ written on it. I beamed when she told me that I had broken the glass ceiling in Stafford and that she planned to be our next MP.
In Parliament, I was kept busy on bill committees scrutinising legislation line by line, which I must admit was not always my favourite activity. I spent hours listening to oral evidence sessions on technical aspects of trade, agriculture or building regulations, with hundreds of pages of briefs. It became impossible to plan my diary too much, as things constantly changed due to urgent meetings with ministers being rescheduled or votes being called. The division bell would ring at the most inconvenient times – I could be in the middle of a select committee hearing, speaking on a panel with my local chamber of commerce, giving a tour to constituents or speaking to my partner Henry when I’d have to apologise and leave immediately to go and join the stampede to vote. One minute I’d be talking potholes and the next I’d be in the queue standing next to the Prime Minister. Occasionally I’d get held up on a call and would have to run to make it to the Chamber, so I decided to ditch my high heels and took to wearing flats or even trainers. When we were on a three-line whip to defend the government’s legislative programme, I didn’t dare even go for a short walk in St James’s Park, which was 7just in front of my office, in case I didn’t make it back to vote within the allotted minutes before the doors were locked.
One of the highlights of my first year was being appointed by Boris Johnson as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Kenya, which meant I would also visit Nairobi to undertake trade deal negotiations on behalf of the British government to help deliver the Economic Partnership Agreement. My appointment came after I had several challenging encounters with the then Chief Whip Mark Spencer about upcoming contentious votes. Mark asked me outright what I wanted in order to support the government and six months later I was appointed to what I had asked for. Clearly there were some advantages to being seen as a troublemaker so early on.
It was a constant struggle to balance personal commitments with being an elected representative. During Monday to Thursday, I would spend time in the House of Commons and on Fridays I would be in my constituency office for my regular surgery and local meetings. The weekend would be dominated by constituency events, where I enjoyed village fetes, ‘families day’ at the army base or civic services with the mayor or borough council. However, one of my greatest challenges was attempting to work my way through the never-ending list of invites and trying not to let down any businesses, charities, schools or voluntary groups in Stafford. The only way to do this was to rotate around the constituency, trying to offend as few people as possible.
It also became increasingly difficult to get away to see my partner Henry, who lived several hours’ drive away in the Cotswolds and was still getting used to being in a relationship with a politician. My job had changed significantly since we had first met and he found the long hours and hectic environment tough. It felt like my job was 8always present and often in the way of our relationship and it was impossible to escape it, as even when we stayed with friends and family they commented on that week’s drama in Westminster. Politics was a lifestyle, not just a career. It was intense, demanding and frustrating at times, but I also found it hugely fulfilling, especially when I could genuinely make a difference to people’s lives – mainly when I picked up a local issue to resolve through my constituency surgeries.
It was halfway through my Parliamentary term, in 2021, that Henry and I got married. Early on we decided to try for a baby, as Henry had turned forty and I was only a few years behind him. I will admit that I had never been obsessed about having a baby. If I hadn’t met my husband then I might never have had a child, as my career had always been of paramount importance to me.
I hadn’t studied politics at A-level and my university degree was in English literature with history of art. My first interest in politics was in foreign affairs, which was kindled by debating at school and being sent to the United Nations aged sixteen as youth ambassador for the UK at a Global Young Leaders Conference in New York. I was asked to deliver a speech in the General Assembly in front of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which was a huge honour and something I will never forget. I was inspired by the thought of international leaders coming together to tackle global problems, but I also thought that many British politicians were self-serving and completely out of touch with the public, and I was not a member of a political party.
I despaired during the election expenses scandal. However, it was this crisis that galvanised me to door-knock in a general election campaign for the first time and I decided to support Rory Stewart, 9then a new prospective parliamentary candidate who was running to be an MP for the first time in 2010 up in Penrith & the Border. This gave me my first real insight into political campaigning as, with no prior experience, I found myself helping to organise his street stalls, driving him to debates across his huge rural constituency, doing research prep for his hustings, arranging visits for the press and VIPs and attending visits with him, from farmers affected by foot and mouth disease to local business owners who were struggling. I then went on to support Prime Minister David Cameron in the NOtoAV campaign at the Alternative Vote referendum and delivered my first political speech with future Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng at Guildford Conservative Association. I had only two hours’ notice that I would give the speech; no one on the senior leadership referendum campaign team could attend so I stepped in at the last minute. It was a baptism of fire and accidentally set me on the long road to becoming an MP.
Despite being elected to Parliament in my thirties, I had already campaigned for over a decade in support of the Conservative Party and had fought two exhausting general elections in the safe Labour seat of Bristol East in quick succession during 2015 and 2017 alongside setting up my own arts business. When I finally reached the House of Commons, I worried that having a baby while elected to public office would hold me back in my peer group, as there was a risk that I would never be promoted or become a minister if I took any time out. I had never noticed my age too much before, but the NHS described me as a geriatric mother given that I was over thirty-five. For the first time, I was conscious that I would be an older working parent. If I did manage to have a baby, then it would be much later than my own mother, who had me in her early 10twenties. Given that I had usually already worked a full five-day week by Wednesday evening, I also knew these hours were not going to be sustainable with a baby.
Most of the politicians on my side of the House either had older children or didn’t have any at all. Very few had had a baby while elected and I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to the few ministers who had. Some MPs on the Labour benches had had a baby while elected, such as Harriet Harman, Tulip Siddiq and Stella Creasy, and I read what they had to say about the challenges they faced.
I found out that I was pregnant in December 2021 while I was in Parliament, which was unusual for a sitting Friday. I took a test in the toilets outside my office in Derby Gate, impatiently waited for the results and then took two more tests to confirm they were all positive. I was delighted, especially since I had miscarried once early on and I knew I was lucky to get pregnant without needing fertility treatment given my age. That weekend I went to my grandparents’ house in Kent, where I told Henry in person. It was tricky to hide the secret from my family over the holidays and to avoid the foods that the NHS advised against eating. I took to hiding cans of Appletiser in cupboards around the house, which I used to secretly replace the expensive Christmas champagne I poured down the toilet. I didn’t want to tell anyone until my twelve-week scan as I was worried that I’d lose another baby.
At the end of my first trimester, I began to suffer from bad morning sickness and it became a struggle to face the three-and-a-half hour commute from Stafford to London on a Monday morning and then do a long day in the office followed by evening votes. My new husband and I were separated during the week, which became increasingly stressful while I was pregnant. Henry still worked in Gloucestershire, where he was attempting to sell his house and find 11a new job, which would enable him to move up to my constituency full time and also be nearer his parents’ home in Staffordshire. We told our respective families just before Valentine’s Day, after our twelve-week scan, and they were thrilled for us both.
The next few weeks were busy with constituency work and International Women’s Day, for which I supported a large number of events including the 50:50 Parliament cross-party campaign to elect more female MPs. My morning sickness soon became all-day-and-night sickness and as my nausea worsened, I asked the Whips’ Office to be slipped to go home early. It was a Monday night and we had a vote on the Police and Crime Bill. By midnight, I felt so awful that I went to lie down in the Ladies’ Room near Central Lobby, a small room with sofas where female MPs can hang up clothes, read the papers or write correspondence. Next door was a small single bed and a shower.
I was vomiting badly and felt so ill that I didn’t feel well enough to get up to walk through the division lobby in support of the government. I requisitioned the bed and put a hastily written note up on the door, which explained that I wasn’t feeling well. I felt so embarrassed and I was mortified to have to have to tell my whip that I felt ill and had to sleep, given it was so late and they had refused to let me leave the parliamentary estate. I had always prided myself on being a strong and competent woman and now I was completely vulnerable and reduced to asking for help. The whips came to check on me and nodded me through each vote at 1 a.m. – meaning they vouched for me being in Parliament, so I didn’t have to walk through the voting lobby in person – after they had declined my request to go home. The government won the vote by more than forty. I was outraged, but my complaint to the Chief Whip was completely ignored.12
It became increasingly difficult to hide that I was pregnant, and in March 2022 we decided that I was going to have the share the news with my local Conservative Association and with my constituents in Stafford. I updated my chairman and drafted a statement for members to be sent first as a courtesy. I deliberately didn’t post anything publicly on social media, yet within five minutes of the newsletter going out, I had a call from the political journalist at our local paper asking for a comment. My personal life was suddenly news. It was a shock.
Chapter Two
Fear of childbirth
Throughout my pregnancy, I began to develop severe anxiety. My maternity appointments took place in London at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, in order to be near Parliament, but I planned to have my baby up in Staffordshire. I was concerned about the fact that I would be under the care of a completely new team who didn’t know my history. I also had several close friends who had shared with me the stories of their traumatic births, which ranged from life-threatening post-partum haemorrhages to suffering through stitches in stirrups with no pain relief. Some had also experienced terrible postnatal depression.
I have never shared this before, but I was referred by the NHS to a maternity trauma and loss care service prior to giving birth due to my fears of blood, needles and having an emergency Caesarean section. I had not previously done any therapy before I was pregnant and I’ll be honest that I didn’t think I would find it helpful. I was deeply sceptical that it would make any difference. Why pay to speak to somebody when you could talk to your family and friends for free? However, my husband was insistent that I try it 14as my phobias were extreme and my body would go into complete shutdown in terror.
I used to visit Terri, a specialist midwife, at the adjacent building to the hospital, in a small side room with two white plastic chairs. She was patient, kind, compassionate and never made me feel foolish. Terri talked me through my birth preferences and helped me to design a mental health care plan after she diagnosed me with severe anxiety due to my needle and blood phobias. She listened patiently when I told her about how I had panic attacks and fainted during blood tests and said that she thought I partly had negative associations with hospitals due to death, because the last time I was in the same hospital in London was to see my father when he died back in 2019. When I attended my antenatal appointments, memories would rush back when the lift stopped at the same floor as the ward where he died. Even though on a rational level I knew I was in a hospital and the doctors were there to help me, emotionally I was terrified of the white coats all around me and the beeping machines filled me with fear.
I was clear with Terri that I wanted to have a natural birth and to avoid any medical interventions. I had concerns about complications during birth and my greatest fear was having an emergency C-section. I requested in my birth plan that in this scenario, I would like to be put under a general anaesthetic as I knew I did not have the mental strength to be awake in theatre for an operation. I recalled to Terri the time I had been a volunteer in Sierra Leone and had ended up in a remote rural clinic in West Africa with my best friend who had malaria. When I went into the ward and saw women hooked up to drips, I had passed out on the floor and had to be carried unconscious to a bed by the patients, which was embarrassing.
My family and even my husband did not appreciate at first how 15extreme my blood and needle phobia could be and how I would actively avoid blood tests, as I would faint or have an anxiety attack. In routine appointments, I would feel dizzy when a blood pressure cuff was put on my arm or if doctors discussed ‘having a Venflon [cannula] in situ’ – it particularly stressed me out to think about one being put in my hand during labour. I became concerned about passing out during tests in pregnancy or having a panic attack in the hospital, which might affect our baby.
Henry was infinitely patient with me and took the time to come to as many appointments with me as he could. Even he was shocked at how extreme my blood phobia was when he took me to a routine appointment. He described to me that when I had a blood test, it was like I was having my arm amputated.
I spent months having mental health specialist care with the NHS to try to help. However, every time I went into the GP surgery or the hospital, I became hysterical, crying, hyperventilating and shaking uncontrollably. Every time it was the same and I began to ask in appointments if it was necessary to have another blood test. I outright refused to have the one for my gestational diabetes check. That day, it was a different midwife I didn’t know at the clinic who had no bedside manner and did not read my notes. I took the required glucose tablets and my daughter whizzed around inside me like a washing machine, but I didn’t end up having my sugar levels checked as I was in such distress they abandoned the test. I was so terrified and shaking so much that it was impossible for them to access the vein. My ultimate fear became that I might refuse a blood transfusion in the worst-case scenario of serious birth complications.
Terri taught me various breathing and grounding techniques as coping mechanisms. She told me to breathe in for five seconds and breathe out for five seconds or to look around and think of five 16things I could see, four things I could touch, three things I could hear, two things I could smell and one thing I could taste. She would ask me to relax different muscles by tensing them for five seconds, relaxing them and notice how different it felt when the muscles relaxed. I found it hard to concentrate doing these exercises and I felt foolish when I was asked to imagine standing on the beach and wiggle my toes in the sand or pretended to hold a mug of hot chocolate in my hands and blew on it to cool it. I was conscious that I was sat in a colourless box room humming with London traffic. I asked to open the window but was told that was not possible – it was kept shut to prevent suicide attempts.
In these appointments, my mind often drifted back to the endless to-do list I had waiting for me back in the office and I would criticise myself for wasting valuable work time by being at the appointment and taking time out for just a phobia. I had discovered that as a politician it was impossible to reach the fabled ‘inbox zero’, as correspondence would come in at all times of the day or night. I settled instead for ‘inbox infinity’ and tried to clear email messages and letters in batched times throughout the day. Between these times, I focused on important meetings or specific tasks such as reading a policy brief or writing a speech.
It felt like I was never going to get through all the tasks I had to do in Parliament and my constituency. I didn’t have the time to be pregnant for nine long months. I was tired all the time and found it difficult to cope with the late-night hours for divisions. It was not uncommon to get home at midnight on a Monday, after the long commute down from Stafford to London in the morning in order to be in the House of Commons for the Chamber to start sitting for debates and urgent statements.
The toxic culture in Parliament encouraged workaholism. Colleagues 17used to compete with each other and boast how they often worked an eighty-hour week, which meant they were not able to spend much time with their families. I felt that ministers looked collectively exhausted as they were so stretched for time and their government responsibilities seemed too broad. Even backbench MPs were expected to undertake a colossal amount of work every day and to view the workload as a badge of honour. It was depressing to see, night after night, colleagues calling their young children from the voting lobby to say goodnight as they missed yet another bedtime or parents’ evening. I desperately didn’t want to become one of them when my own baby arrived. My bump had become huge and uncomfortable and I constantly needed to go to the bathroom. All I wanted to do was lie down on the sofa in my office and go to sleep, especially in the evenings while waiting to vote, rather than tackle the never-ending in-tray.
Many of the relaxing strategies Terri taught me for my phobias didn’t seem to work, but one that seemed to help was smell. I’d walk past a barbeque and be transported back to sitting on the beach as a child, eating burgers on a clifftop overlooking a bay in Devon. Smells became acute for me during pregnancy, to the point that I avoided walking down the high street or past anywhere filled with restaurants. The different smells overwhelmed me, especially from Indian curries or Chinese takeaways, which usually I loved but would make me gag. Given that I had a such a good sense of smell, Terri decided we should try a scent that might help me during a stressful situation such as a blood test or labour. I opted for a sea salt perfume, which I would squirt onto a handkerchief, and kept a small bag of dried lavender in my handbag.
I also tried controlled breathing to help me let go of my anxieties. With each breath, I was told to imagine my worries dissolving or 18floating away. I would put one hand on my chest and one on my stomach, take a deep breath for seven seconds and allow my hands to rise gently, then I would hold the breath for two seconds and release it slowly again for eleven seconds. My worries didn’t disappear, but it did calm me down and allowed me to be more present within the room and stop ‘to-do’ listing in my brain. Touch was also helpful and I decided that I would bring a favourite cuddly toy, a lion, with me during labour.
I felt emotional and scared every time I thought about what would happen during childbirth. I tried all the strategies I was recommended over several months. I experimented with breath meditations on apps, practised grounding techniques. visualised safe places, made playlists of calming music and tried hypnobirthing classes. Very few of these techniques helped and I began to feel very stressed at how I would respond to being in labour. I was not given any medication; instead, the focus was on designing my mental health plan.
I never told any of my colleagues in Parliament. Politics was the worst environment for sharing vulnerabilities. Weaknesses were something to be exploited by opponents and I didn’t want any of them to know.
Chapter Three
Preparing for birth
As an organised person who likes to plan, I attempted the same approach with my pregnancy, failing to realise how impossible this was to do. There was no manual that could prepare me for giving birth and looking after a newborn baby; I could only experience it. However, I still tried, reading multiple books that people recommended such as ExpectingBetter, HowtoGrowaBabyandPushItOut, ThePositiveBirthBookand WhattoExpectWhenYou’reExpecting, with its month-by-month descriptions. I downloaded the Flo app to track how my baby was progressing in the womb, I read parenting blogs, I listened to podcasts and I rang friends for advice. So it was hardly surprising when I decided to sign my husband and I up for antenatal classes. I wanted to meet other local mums through the classes, to make some friends and to have someone to text for advice in the middle of the night who might also be awake with their baby.
I looked into the Bump Class in central London, but it was too difficult to attend their classes with late-night votes in Parliament. The Conservative whips weren’t going to slip me one night a week to miss votes and risk government legislation not passing. So I 20waited until I moved up to my constituency full time in June, six weeks before my due date. I had done some research online and the best option seemed to be the National Childbirth Trust (NCT). They ran courses across the country on pregnancy, birth and early parenthood, and I signed Henry and me up for Monday evenings, which included a specialist class on breastfeeding.
I paid £210, which was a lot of money, but I couldn’t find any free classes offered locally by the NHS either in Stafford or Stoke-on-Trent, where I would have my baby. It remained deeply ironic that despite my public opposition as the local MP, Stafford County Hospital’s freestanding birth centre had remained closed since Covid and I was unable to have my baby in my own constituency.
I chose to attend an NCT course in Stone, just outside my constituency, so local families were less likely to know who I was. I had become fed up with the increasing verbal and online abuse and how invasive and pervasive attacks on politicians had become. Along with other female MPs, I received more abuse than my male colleagues. I was tired of being shouted at while getting cash out of the ATM, being harassed while buying a ticket at the railway station or being harangued in the supermarket when I bought tampons or toothpaste. I always carried a panic button with me and the police had installed extra security in our constituency home, with a rapid response patrol car, after they had investigated a local resident for sending me threatening emails and trying to find out where I lived. I didn’t tell any of my NCT class what my job was and I hoped I would not be recognised as a local MP. The last thing I wanted on a pregnancy course was to be hassled about casework or controversial government policies.
The first class was in the local church in Stone in their community centre. Our female tutor was friendly and set up a WhatsApp group for us all to communicate. Life had begun to go back to normal after the 21pandemic and I was grateful to be doing classes in person after they had all moved online during Covid restrictions. Given I was pregnant, I remained vigilant about symptoms and continued to take regular lateral flow tests even though I’d been vaccinated as an expectant mother in a high-risk group. I didn’t want to risk becoming unwell.
Henry had finally sold his house in the Cotswolds and had accepted a new job in Staffordshire, which was due to start in a few weeks. When it began, he would move up to the constituency for us to live as a family. I became anxious about going into hospital, knowing that he was several hours’ drive away and that I was on my own if anything unexpected happened.
There were six other couples doing our course and it was the first baby for all of us. We were predominately in our thirties or early forties, most of us lived in the Stafford or Stone area and we found it easy to get on after the initial awkward introductions. All of us were unprepared for what to expect during birth and were keen to meet other local parents. Each of the pregnant mothers was very focused on preparing for the birth, but it became apparent that the same was not true of the fathers. The reality of the impending arrival of their babies only seemed to hit them all when our course leader asked them to install our car seats, which shocked them into realising that any of us could go into labour any day.
We had a fun group and we joked that we were on the course to ‘learn how to keep baby alive’, so we asked about breastfeeding, whether to follow a routine or not and if we should the wake the baby up to feed. We discussed suitable clothing for a newborn, how to set up a safe sleeping environment, how to swaddle, what to wear given the heatwave, what pain relief to ask for in hospital and what vaccinations the baby should be given.
Most of the rest of the course was practical advice, such as how 22to change a newborn nappy. Our instructor did a hilarious exercise with a doll wearing a nappy. Inside she had hidden bright yellow mustard. It looked completely realistic when Henry was summoned up to the front of the class to deal with his first explosion and we all burst into laughter. The mums were pleased when the dads asked during the course how to recognise the signs of labour, their role as birth partners and how to support us best after they returned to work, given paternity leave was only two weeks in the UK.
I was interested to hear about timings between contractions, when to call the maternity ward and how to wear a baby sling. We asked what to pack in our hospital bag and were told to bring toiletries, spare clothes, a telephone charger, a book to read and fairy lights. We shared our birth plans and I talked about requesting a water birth. However, there was barely any attention given to us as mothers on what might happen post-birth, bar brief references to a C-section, and induction was barely mentioned. None of us gave much thought to our own recovery post-birth or in the event of complications. The course was almost exclusively focused on looking after our future baby.
The class set me up with expectations that everything would be fine during labour, that I could completely trust the NHS staff in the hospital to look after me and that nothing would go wrong. I explicitly asked about what would happen if things went wrong in labour and was told I was unnecessarily worrying myself. Instead, I was sent a video of the newborn breast crawl. The YouTube description said underneath, ‘Your amazing newborn can crawl to the breast soon after birth. All mammals know how to find their food source.’ This greatly influenced my expectations about what would happen straight after the birth and I imagined my newborn daughter magically crawling up my chest to start breastfeeding.
Chapter Four
Final trimester
Once I was close to my due date, my doctor advised me to stop driving in case I went into labour alone in my car. I represented a market town surrounded by small villages and farmland in a rural constituency, so it was hard to get around on public transport. My constituency office manager James would drive to my house to collect me so I could attend events such as the opening of the new Shire Hall business centre in Stafford’s market square.
That day, the weather was unbearably hot. James was concerned I was overdoing it and made me promise not to stay longer than an hour. This project had been one of my key election pledges, which I had finally delivered after years of lobbying government for the funding. Even though I was heavily pregnant, I knew I had to be there given I had raised the £1.6 million needed to reopen the iconic building in the heart of Stafford. I had committed myself to the project so publicly because I believed it was key to regeneration of the high street and would encourage new businesses to grow. As I stood wilting in the heat, waiting to give my speech alongside the chief executive of Staffordshire County Council and other dignitaries, I realised that being an MP meant there was never a day off. 24I had no legitimate substitute like there would be in other professions, such as an acting CEO. Constituents wanted only to see me, in person, and if I sent a representative they felt fobbed off.
Two days later, I was relieved when the Conservatives held our local council by-election in Penkridge North & Acton Trussell, but it was a very close result, with the Liberal Democrats nipping at our heels. I felt guilty that, as his MP, I hadn’t been able to campaign more for the excellent local candidate Andy Adams, but I had found door-knocking in rural villages too exhausting.
Towards the end of my third trimester, I no longer felt like attending public events in order to be shouted at by residents and grilled on issues from antisocial behaviour to planning or the contentious proposed asylum seeker centre in Stafford. It didn’t feel like I got any time off despite being so close to my baby’s arrival, so I decided to skip the neighbourhood watch meeting with residents in Stafford one evening. The councillor was furious and rang me to ask why I hadn’t attended, but I was exhausted and my swollen belly felt too cumbersome to leave the house. I also pulled out of attending a fundraising dinner for neighbouring MP Sir Bill Cash, much to the organiser’s chagrin.
The expectations of what I could do while heavily pregnant were far too high. I struggled to read several hundred emails a day from constituents with urgent casework or respond to campaigners writing to me about policy, coupled with daily correspondence from the party, the Whips’ Office and my select committees. I simply couldn’t deal with the volume of work I usually did, which was on average twelve hours a day. My team did a huge amount to help me and I appreciated how much they stepped up, particularly my chief of staff in Parliament, Samantha, and James up in Stafford, but the buck stopped with me as only I was the elected representative. 25Everything important still needed my sign-off, and I felt that I was letting everyone down but also potentially causing harm to my baby by not resting more.
I tried to get ready for my daughter’s arrival by borrowing items for her nursery such as a baby light and a white noise machine. I sorted her second- and third-hand babygrows by age group into drawers, folded muslins and stocked the nappy changing station with antiseptic cream, nappy bags and wet wipes. I focused solely on items for my baby. It didn’t occur to me that I would need much support myself, given I was planning a natural birth. My assumption was that I would be walking within a few days, breastfeeding my baby straightaway and that I’d be able to look after her once Henry’s fortnight of paternity leave ended.
My anxiety subsided somewhat once Henry started his new job as an estate agent at James du Pavey in my new constituency. None of my family lived locally so I felt completely dependent on him for support. My father had died the week I got selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Stafford, my mother lived several hours’ drive away and my siblings were both down in London.
Meanwhile, my blood phobia had not improved, despite attending meetings with specialists for extra psychological support for months, and I would soon be giving birth. I was terrified that nothing had made any difference and I knew that they would want to take my bloods during my hospital stay. I was extremely terrified of ending up in theatre.
I was now so desperate to cure my phobia that I was prepared to try anything, however unusual the intervention. My husband recommended that I speak to an energy healer who specialised in past lives. I had never done anything like this before, but I was determined to get help. Jane offered me a Zoom session to read my 26chart and asked my higher self and my guides for permission to work with my ancestral energies. She asked me what topic I wanted to ask about and I told her my fear of childbirth and blood. I closed my eyes while she asked questions about whether the emotional blockages were in my past or present lives and whether it was on the maternal or paternal side of my family. Each time her pendulum responded to her with a yes or no, moving over the chart. I sat quietly and tried to concentrate on what she said, but I was sceptical about how useful this approach would be. The only reading I’d ever had was a palm and tarot session in a caravan on Brighton Pier years earlier.
Next, she asked how many years my trauma went back and probed the connected emotions that came up, such as grief, betrayal or low self-worth. She asked specific questions about childbirth and listed a number of emotions that needed healing within my family line. She then cleared my energy using my higher self. Finally, she said that someone had died or nearly died in childbirth several generations back on my father’s side. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I felt cold.
I was spooked by the whole experience and it made me wonder if there was something in my history that had triggered this extreme response in me. Months of specialist healthcare had made no difference and my phobia was so severe that perhaps there was something else going on that I couldn’t explain with normal science. Afterwards, I remembered that my father’s ancestor Sir Charles Clarke had been royal physician to Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, and had saved her life in childbirth. I knew the brief facts that he had been a notable surgeon and physician, but I had never properly focused on his history. I looked him up and discovered he had been a fellow at the Royal College of Physicians specialising in midwifery 27and in women’s and children’s diseases, which was highly unusual at the time. I didn’t know if there was any connection, but it felt like there might be. I slept deeply that night.
