Newsreader opens up about birth trauma experience and PTSD
Becky Lomas, who reads the news across Yorkshire, reflects on her experience.
Last updated 19th Feb 2025
Earlier this week, we revealed how 30 thousand women a year experience trauma before, during or after birth.
Yorkshire newsreader Becky Lomas has now opened up about her own experience with this.
In a rare interview where Becky was the other side of the microphone, she said:
"I had my eldest son in 2017 - he was two months early, and I was really poorly having him. I was in and out of hospital with preeclampsia, which can be fatal for mum and baby.
"I had a very traumatic emergency C-section and they whipped him away as soon as he was born to go down to intensive care. I didn't get to hold him or see him.
"That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, it goes against complete nature that your baby is taken away from you.
"Obviously, he needed to be and he needed the special care, but it was just dreadful that I was kept on a different floor, around mums who had their babies with them and he was away from me, and that led to me being quite mentally unwell after that.
"He was then transferred to another hospital, which I found really distressing as he went covered in wires and tubes, without me. I wasn't allowed in the ambulance with him so had to wait in the hospital we had been at, before being able to follow on in a taxi after a while.
"I felt a whole host of emotions during that time. What if he didn't know I was his mum? Or what if he bonded with the nurses and not me? I didn't do his first feeds or nappy changes or even dress him for the first time.
"Also the things I saw when he was in intensive care and the neonatal wards were traumatic and will stay with me forever.
Talking about her experience with PTSD after birth, she said:
"I found PTSD to be a funny old thing, it didn't present in a way that I thought it would.
"I found that I had great GP and I was really lucky, she'd say to me are you okay and every time I saw her I'd go 'yeah I'm fine'... she asked me, do you feel really jumpy and I said 'yeah if I'm sat at home on the sofa, I think there's somebody trying to break in the house all the time' and she said, do you know that's one symptom of PTSD, and I said I had no idea at all.
"I also was having really intense flashbacks which I didn't realise was out of the ordinary.
"I then went on to have a course of a therapy called EMDR, which helped me so much and really helped me to process the situation we had been in."
Birth trauma help
If you've been impacted by birth trauma, and want to see what help is out there, the Birth Trauma Association has email support and a helpline you can call. They can also provide access to a private Facebook group.
Bliss offers support for people affected by sick or premature babies.
And there's more information about birth trauma, and further links to support via Make Birth Better.
If you want to find mental health services where you are, visit the Hub of Hope.