Darlington mum opens up about birth trauma in the hopes others will too
We're shining a light on what women are facing before, during and after labour
Last updated 1st May 2025
A Darlington mum who had a traumatic birth is hoping her story will make others open up about their own.
All this week we are shining a light on what women are facing before, during or after labour.
Up to 30,000 women experience birth trauma each year and around 1 in 20 will experience PTSD.
23 year-old Millie Lester says her son Albie was born premature during the Covid pandemic in 2020: "Everything turned into a blur. Albie was born at 10.45pm and I remember at 6am me and Will still hadn't been asleep, we sat up watching a moth fly around the room all night. It hadn't gone in at all that we'd just had our baby at 25-weeks.
"When Albie was born he was whisked off straight away and Will manage to run over and take a picture of him as he was being resuscitated and seen to by the medical team. He was taken into NICU and we didn't actually see him for 14-hours, so we weren't shown any updates.
"Because of those Covid restrictions, we didn't hear anything so we spent those 14-hours not knowing whether ultimately he was alive and I think that's something I'll never be able to get rid of, that feeling thinking is he healthy? Is he OK? Is he here? That was extremely traumatic.
"Because of Covid my partner Will wasn't allowed in the ambulance so I went through with a team of professionals that were absolutely amazing but they weren't the baby's dad. I didn't have that personal support there with me and everyone was there for baby, but I needed someone there to support me.
"I struggled until about this time last year to leave Albie. I've got a really great relationship with all of my family but I couldn't leave him with them. I was trying to manage doing my degree at the same time as having Albie but I actually couldn't get to uni because I couldn't leave him with anybody.
"It wasn't until last year that I realised actually this has had a long-term effect. I do struggle to leave him, I do struggle when he is unwell so when he has a normal cold I go into an automatic kind of fight mode and I think he's going to be really poorly."
She has been receiving mental health support from a charity in the Tees Valley.
Lottie King is the chief executive of Leo's Perinatal and she says it is important for people to open up: "Birth trauma is something that we see really high rates. We routinely screen now for birth trauma symptoms and PTSD symptoms. Often there's so much focus for these parents or if your baby's been born early or sick that that birth experience is often pushed to the back.
"Certainly in the last couple of years it's something that's more to the forefront of people's minds and sometimes we see that on paper, it might have looked like a straightforward delivery but to that parent it might've been incredibly distressing or stressful or upsetting and some would deem it as traumatic.
"Trauma is completely subjective to you, so it's your experience. You might look at someone else and think 'they've had it worse' and almost diminish your own, but if you're feeling like it wasn't what you wanted and it was upsetting, then you are having that kind of mental health impact as a result of it."
Lottie has set up a new division of Leo's called Birth Trauma North East because of a 'huge gap' in the market. It is a community interest company which offers private therapy due to long NHS waiting times: "We did some research and obviously from our own experience and the experiences that we've gathered from families across seven years, we kind of thought 'where do other people go for birth trauma support?' There isn't really anything outside of if you went to your GP. Some people can be signposted but again, those waiting lists are very long because they're so in demand.
"Birth trauma is more spoken about now. There was the enquiry that came out last year and we just thought there's so much more discussion online and on social media about this, but actually if you're identifying your birth as traumatic, stresssful or distressing then where do you go? And we kind of wanted to plug that gap."
Find out more about Birth Trauma, including where you can get support.