'I was terrified giving birth, I thought I'd die'

Former Tory MP Theo Clarke was left traumatised and injured after a near-death experience during labour. Now she's pledged to prevent other women suffering like she did

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Having suffered a miscarriage, former Conservative MP for Stafford, Theo Clarke was thrilled when she discovered she was pregnant again in December 2021.

But her labour the following August turned into a traumatic near-death experience that left her with PTSD and permanent physical damage.

After discovering that an estimated 30,000 women in the UK suffer traumatic deliveries every year, Theo has launched a trailblazing campaign to improve national maternity services. But she broke down in tears when she stood in the House of Commons to talk about her harrowing experience of childbirth.

"To be honest, it was absolutely terrifying," she says of her labour. "I thought I was going to die. I thought I was never going to see my daughter again. I thought my husband was going to be a single dad. I don't think I was quite prepared for how emotional it was going to be to speak about it. It was very difficult.

"My birth experience was so harrowing and shocking both on the physical injury side but also on the mental health side. It's going to take me years to recover from what happened."

CHALLENGES

Theo, 39, suffered a haemor-rhage after her daughter Arabella's birth, and thanks to idealistic National Childbirth Trust antenatal classes, the challenges came as a shock.

"I wasn't remotely prepared for the experience of a long labour or being induced," she says. "Or being in the operating theatre after a major post-partum haemorrhage and losing a huge amount of blood.

"I remember coming out of recovery, having had this very major operation to stitch up my vagina for a third-degree tear. I remember lying there, paralysed from the waist down, hooked up to a catheter and an IV drip for antibiotics.