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In 2021, Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP) are aiming to raise £10,000 to fund their work through their Miles for Mums and Babies appeal. I am taking part in the appeal by walking/cycling 500 miles between 1st July and 14th November 2021. These dates are important to me as I was first admitted to a Mother and Baby Unit on 1July 2017 and I finally came home for good on 14th November 2017. 

I suffered from postpartum psychosis and severe postnatal depression and anxiety when my daughter was born. I was helped to recover through 2 stays in Nottingham Mother and Baby Unit (MBU). MBUs are amazing places. Mothers are cared for alongside their babies. They are staffed 24 hours a day by mental health nurses and nursery nurses and they care for the whole family. Nottingham MBU saved my life when I was at my lowest and helped me to learn to be a Mum to Lucy. 

I was lucky. There are only 22 MBUs in the UK and they are small facilities with just 169 beds nationwide. There is only 1 MBU in Wales, which opened in 2021, 2 in Scotland - in Glasgow and Edinburgh and there is no MBU in Northern Ireland. I was lucky to be given a bed in Nottingham, 40 miles from my home in Sheffield. Some mothers have to be admitted to MBUs 100s of miles from home and others are never offered a bed in an MBU at all and are treated in a general psychiatric ward, without their child. It is almost 500 miles from the most northerly MBU to the most southerly. I chose to walk/cycle 500 miles to represent this distance and to raise awareness of how far Mums have to travel to be treated. 

APP campaign for Mother and Baby Units (MBUs), so that mums affected by postpartum psychosis can receive the treatment they need without being separated from their babies. They support mothers and their families to understand postpartum psychosis during the illness and throughout their recovery and works to raise awareness of this serious maternal mental health illness to medical professionals and the public. 

Anyone can get postpartum psychosis. It is a serious condition but it is treatable and mothers do recover. I volunteer with APP to raise awareness and to say thank you to those who supported me. I can now say it was not my fault that I got ill and know that my 4 year old daughter is kind, funny, inquisitive and was not affected by it at all. She knows Mummy had a poorly head when she was born but has no memories of my illness. 

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