Dear readers,

I am a brand new first time mum. I had to have an emergency c-section on the 22nd of September. My gorgeous little boy came 5 days early. Me and my boyfriend were thrilled to finally be parents and supported each other to look after our son for 5 days in the hospital. From the 22nd September to the 27th.

I am a woman who unfortunately has long standing mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, adjustment disorder, emotionally unstable personality disorder and recently diagnosed PTSD. I recently for the past 2/3 years have been trying my hardest to manage my mental health in a much better way, than I previously have done, by reaching out to my mental health teams, as and when I have felt I have needed support. Prior to trying harder to cope better with my mental health, I felt too depressed before reaching out for help & I have had previous events of suicidal behavior.

Although I have had suicidal behavior. I have never been resuscitated, I have never nearly died, never caused myself serious harm, never been sectioned, and never caused any harm to others physically either. 

When I was pregnant, my midwife raised concerns to social services due to the fact I have "long-standing mental health issue's" - I was referred to a department within social services called the pre-birth team and my social worker wanted to arrange to meet with me weekly to run her assessments. However, I don't feel these were carried out to the best of her ability, as if she had been more thorough with the assessments, and included more mental health assessments, she would of discovered that I am a woman who feels complete unconditional love for my son and want nothing more than to do my upmost and absolute best by him as his mother with all the support I can possibly get.

She must of made the decisions to escalate my case because I had some video call meetings over Microsoft teams and a decision was made to put my unborn child under a child protection plan and the reason mentioned why during that meeting was due to "unintentional neglect due to mental health" basically. I cannot help the fact I have had long standing mental health issues since early adolescence. My mother was the one who helped me get support from professionals by expressing her concerns to them regarding me in the first place. Now because I have long standing mental health, (that in many of my friends eyes) is minor in comparison and is not as serious as other peoples mental health situations. I am suffering while my child is in foster care, not being able to look after him full time, only having contact, whilst waiting to be placed in a residential assessment unit. 

As I have previously mentioned, I have adjustment disorder. So the pressure of being in a brand new environment, brand new faces, brand new rules, without as much freedom all the while being constantly supervised will cause added stress, due to the pressure applied and impact my anxiety and depression more so. As I have recently discussed with a friend about my situation, she mentioned that she feels my situation is certainly not as bad as far worse experiences that others may have had to suffer. She also expressed to me as an outsider looking in, she also agrees that social services applying this type of pressure that is unnecessary in her opinion is more likely to cause added stress and pressure which could set me up to fail as a mother anyway. In which case social services would indeed think they were right to start with. She also said to me even she feels and I have many friends that would also agree with this, that " I would of been a lot better off coping, learning and settling into motherhood at home, just like any other normal mum would do" 

Unfortunately I don't have very much family support but there are also families in a similar situation to myself and I can appreciate where they may need their friends, mental health teams to provide sufficient support, or to have a health visitor check in regularly ect. I'm sure there are many mothers out there looking after children without much support as it is in this modern day and age, that cope fine. The plan to have support by the community, and to have the support of my own mum who is in her 60's alongside my boyfriend was discussed with my social worker and she seemed like she was open to the idea. Then I went into labor and an interim care order was granted by the court due to my son being under a child protection plan. 

All I want is to be able to bring my son home and have the support of a health visitor, my local children's center, my mum, my boyfriend and my mental health teams. That alone is probably more support than most mothers may have. So I am absolutely confident that I can look after my son under those circumstances. I feel this situation I am under is a very exaggerated one where I am put under pressure to increase stress to set my up to fail when these stressful circumstances are indeed unnecessary.