‘What did you just call me?’ I stormed into the kitchen, trembling with fury. My husband, still focused on his lunch, answered with maddening calm: ‘I called you “mental”.’
That was all it took. I clenched my fist and brought it down on the kitchen counter with full force. Unfortunately for me, it was granite. The granite prevailed. Even so, I hit it several more times, as if persistence might improve the outcome. I have no memory of the words that followed, only that they were spectacularly unprintable.
I was, in that moment, a woman hijacked by hormones. A few months earlier I had given birth to my third child — three children under the age of three — and my days had shrunk to nappies, one-handed attempts at scrambled eggs and the relentless demands of small babies. Nights were a blur of breastfeeding and doom-scrolling through online forums about baby sleep apnoea.
I was lucky not to suffer from postpartum depression. But I absolutely experienced postpartum rage, and it was usually sparked by my husband’s offhand rudeness.
In ordinary life, I might have laughed it off. During those months, it felt as though bitterness had been poured directly into my bloodstream. A small advisory note for men: comparing your hormonal partner to Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter is unlikely to end well.
Even women who have never had children may recognise the sensation of hormones staging a monthly takeover — leaving you suddenly tearful, furious, fragile or all three before you have had time to understand why.
That shared understanding is part of what has fuelled the wave of female sympathy for Lindsay Clancy, the American nurse who killed her three children — Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan — in 2023. After strangling them with exercise bands, she cut her own wrists and tried to take her life by jumping from a bedroom window. She survived, but is now paralysed and uses a wheelchair.
Lindsay Clancy, the American nurse who killed her three children, has received an outpouring of support from women after saying she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis
Last week, after seven days of deliberation, the jury was still unable to reach a unanimous decision on whether she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis, and thus not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge declared a mistrial.
Never before has a criminal trial so divided millions of people – with a line scored between the sexes. Clancy sympathisers are largely female, with most women I have talked to seeing her as a desperately sick mother whose pleas for help had not been heard. Throughout the trial, hundreds of women gathered outside court wearing pink outfits emblazoned with ‘She Needed Help’. One of them, 41-year-old Melissa Merrill, voiced what many feel: ‘She’s in her own hell. She lost all her babies.’
Meanwhile, men congregate in the camp believing her to be a cold-blooded murderess.
Tellingly, the one juror who refused to agree a verdict that Clancy was not guilty by way of insanity in the murder of her children was male.
The division is scored through my own home. My husband’s view is that Clancy should be locked up with the key thrown into the Atlantic. He is appalled I should feel differently: ‘How can you have any sympathy for her?’ It’s the question baffling many men: women are meant to be the caring sex – why do so many want a child killer treated with compassion?
It is because women know two things that men don’t. First, we know the way that hormones can alter mood and personality.
Postpartum psychosis (which Clancy’s defence argued she suffered from) is caused by a severe drop in oestrogen and progesterone after childbirth – a free-fall which can cause extreme insomnia, hallucinations and mood swings. While the vast majority of women never suffer from this, many know what it is to ride a hormonal rollercoaster. Twenty to 30 per cent will experience moderate to severe Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS); a condition which can be so serious that it’s been used in criminal defences for decades.
Women know the way that hormones can dramatically alter mood and personality, writes Clare Foges, as well as how draining looking after a small child can be – most men do not understand
Something else the average man will not know is how isolating and exhausting looking after a tiny child can be. Yes, there are brilliant hands-on dads. But typically they go back to work after a couple of weeks. Most often it’s the mother waking up eight times a night, the mother Googling colic remedies at 3am, the mother whose identity has been swallowed whole.
‘But haven’t women been having babies since the dawn of time?’ ask the know-it-all blokes. Yes, but for most of human history it took a village to raise a child. In some non-Western cultures it still does. Meanwhile, in the US and UK, you have a night in hospital then it’s over to you, Mum.
This takes its toll. Meet a group of new mums and it won’t be long before you learn that about half are struggling: with severe sleeplessness, anxiety, depression.
Most will survive without doing harm to themselves or their child, but the memory of how hard those months were lingers – and in that experience, there’s a sliver of solidarity with Clancy.
If there is one small positive to come out of this horrendously sad case, it must be that women who feel they are losing their mind will be taken more seriously; not brushed aside or told this is just the ‘baby blues’.
Sorry Pam, I’ll never go slap-free
‘Natural goddess’ Pamela Anderson, 59, looked stunning without any make-up at the Venice Film Festival
No mascara or lipstick for Pamela Anderson at the Venice Film Festival, and didn’t she look lovely?
Pam, 59, has become the ambassador for bare-faced women everywhere, saying she eschews make-up because she doesn’t want to ‘play the game’ or look like a ‘cartoon character’.
To each their own, but I’ll be wearing eyeliner until the bitter end. It’s all very well going slap free if you’re a natural goddess, but not if, like me, you have the bone structure of a boiled egg.
Pillock of the week award goes to…
Hollywood hypocrite Andrew Garfield, who is worth an estimated £12million and stars in new film The Uprising, recently called the super-rich ‘soul sick’
Andrew Garfield, who says billionaires should be ‘scared s***less’ of his new film depicting the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England. The actor, worth an estimated £12million, also said the super-rich are ‘soul sick’.
He was speaking about people like billionaire investor Chris Rokos, who is leaving the UK for Greece. But last year Rokos paid £330million in tax, enough to employ 10,000 nurses.
It’s taxpaying billionaires like Rokos who have done more for the poor than any Hollywood hypocrite.
Mothers carry about 71 per cent of a household’s mental load, says a new study. Yep. Mum hasn’t just gone to Iceland. She’s ordered nappies, bought birthday presents, remembered school fancy dress day. Today, I was in trouble for forgetting to put a pound under my daughter’s pillow in exchange for a tooth. But last time I checked, I don’t have wings. Who designated me the tooth fairy?
Spot the Gallaghers’ copycat kids!
From left to right, Lennon, Donovan, Anais, Molly, Sonny and Gene Gallagher at the premiere of the new Oasis documentary, Don’t Look Back in Anger
Seeing the Gallagher sons at the premiere of the new Oasis film, I did a double take. Rock star sunglasses, helmet of hair… Have their dads been cloned?
They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – this lot are still growing on it.
Michelle Keegan shared a snap of daughter Palma with a wooden sign saying ‘18 months’. First, influencers gave us gender reveals and Christmas Eve boxes – now it’s half birthdays, too. Please no!
