Comedian Laura O'Connell is a familiar face to Irish Instagram users for her tongue-in-cheek videos of midwives and public health nurses breezing around shocked new mothers.
Her clucky health professional persona is so convincing that she's regularly assumed to be a midwife or nurse herself, but they stem from her own experiences of new motherhood and postnatal depression.
Now she has joined forces with the National Women's Council of Ireland to call for better mental health care for new mothers, specifically a mother and baby psychiatric unit.
In this episode she speaks openly about her unexpected pregnancy at a time when her life was already in turmoil, wandering the streets of Bray with her new baby, and eventually seeking counselling from Nurture.
A psychiatric admission years later made her realise she had never dealt with the pain and trauma she'd experienced as a new mother, and the experiences of a friend she met in hospital showed her the difficulties new mothers face in seeking treatment.
The year of care campaign, with Aolish Gormley - The Deirdre O'Shaughnessy Podcast | Acast
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