'I ended up in a psychiatric ward as a new mum'

Ten months after her son was born, Laura Guckian felt she could no longer cope - and had to take drastic action

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As many as one in five women experience mental health issues such as depression or anxiety during pregnancy or in the first year after childbirth, according to the NHS. Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, which runs from May 5-11, emphasises the importance of discussing this with research revealing 92 per cent of mums admit to struggling with their mental health postpartum.

Laura Guckian admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital just 10 months after her son Leo was born. "My world was falling apart and I fell apart too," the 39-year-old mum told us.

She had Leo in 2016, during the "peak" of her marketing career in Dublin and not long after tying the knot with husband Brendan Guckian, now 38.

"Life was amazing and everything I heard about becoming a mum was, 'This is going to be the best time of your life,' so I was really excited," she said. "But nothing about what I thought motherhood should look or feel like matched my reality. I felt like the worst mum in the world and carried extreme guilt.

"The first three days of motherhood, I was bawling my eyes out, feeling like a failure. I thought, 'I'm doing it wrong - there must be something deeply wrong with me,' I didn't understand why motherhood felt so hard and I felt completely alone. Health professionals say that if you're struggling with your mental health, which I so clearly was at the time, it impacts bonding. I was led to believe I wasn't bonding with my son.

"I couldn't see anyone else who looked like me. Everywhere I looked on social media, there were happy mums. Nobody was talking about the fact that they couldn't bring their baby for a walk or, like me, couldn't leave the house with my baby - he was so unwell with silent refluxso that feeling just got worse and worse."