‘Postpartum psychosis convinced me I had killed my daughter – we need to talk about it more’

Jade Lloyd has shared her story of how her postpartum psychosis led her to believe she had done the unthinkable in order to raise awareness surrounding the rare mental illness

A mother has bravely opened up about her battle with postpartum psychosis that left her utterly convinced that she had killed her newborn daughter for weeks.

Jade Lloyd, from Sherbourne in Dorset, was sectioned for four months after giving birth to her daughter, Penelope, in 2020. The 32-year-old suffered with extreme anxiety and intrusive thoughts, culminating in a terrifying episode in which she hallucinated that she had killed her own newborn daughter.

The mother-of-one said: “I became terrified that I’d killed Penelope, and that my husband was keeping me in the spare room to protect me from what I’d done.”

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Postpartum psychosis is a rare and rapid-onset mental health illness that affects around 1 in 1,000 mothers after giving birth. Unlike the milder mood changes of the more common “baby blues”, postpartum psychosis is a severe condition with symptoms including hallucinations, delusions, mania and mood fluctuations.

Due to the risk posed to the safety of the mother and the baby, postpartum psychosis should be treated as a medical emergency, with treatment often requiring hospitalisation of the affected mother. The birth of Jade’s daughter, Penelope, now five, had been a traumatic three-day affair.

While Jade and her husband had initially planned a home birth, Jade ultimately had to receive intensive medical intervention, with her daughter finally arriving via a Vontuse and Forceps delivery. “It was a far cry from what I had planned,” Jade said.

Soon after giving birth, what Jade had initially dismissed as normal mother’s jitters surrounding the safety of her child spiralled into a debilitating paralysis. She said: “I became too anxious to drive, or even go into a supermarket. One day I just started walking towards a train line and had my first suicidal thought.”

After her health visitor suggested that she was likely suffering with post-natal depression, Jade started taking antidepressants. “But they didn’t work,” she said, adding: “I started having intrusive thoughts about Penelope being harmed by myself or other people, I was so worried about her dying.

“I couldn’t sleep and then I began to feel like I didn’t need to sleep, I felt wired all of the time. I was so scared about what was happening in my head, and was worried my daughter would get taken off me.”

Jade’s symptoms continued to escalate and the onset of hallucinations brought her condition to a fever pitch. She recalled: “One night I flung myself backwards off the bed, and leant on Penelope.

“I got up and started hallucinating that I was John Legend, singing on stage. My husband called my mum and she came and spent the night with me in the spare room.”

It was this physical separation from her daughter which caused Jade to believe that she had killed Penelope. The next day, a doctor came to assess the delirious mother and referred her to a Mother and Baby unit (MBU) in Bournemouth.

Here, Jade was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She spent the first two weeks on the ward convinced that she was in prison for killing her daughter.

When doctors performed an ECG (electrocardiogram) test, to record the electrical activity of her heart, she grew terrified that it was the electric chair, and she was going to be killed. “I would go from being really distressed to be being really happy and singing a lot”, she said.

She spent one month in the mother and baby unit, alongside Penelope, where she was given anti-psychotics, and a sedative, to help her sleep. After being discharged, Jade fell into a “deep depression” which lasted for two years.

“I really struggled with knowing what had actually happened, and what was a hallucination,” she said. With a 50 % chance of postpartum psychosis recurring to those who have had it following another birth, Jade and her husband have since decided not to have any more children.

Since recovering, Jade has been raising awareness for the mental illness on TikTok in a bid to help others where she felt helpless. “After I came out of the mother and baby unit, I looked online, and there was no one talking about postpartum psychosis in a way I could connect to,” she said. “I felt like I needed to be that person, to help show mums that it does get better.”