Baby Removed at Birth Support

[Mumtobe799]

Hello

This is extremely controversial and I feel embarrassed posting but I’m looking for a bit of help. I am due to give birth within the next few weeks and after Social Services involvement throughout my pregnancy, I have been told they will be removing my baby at birth. Baby will be placed with their Dad under an interim court order whilst assessments are ongoing.

Does anybody know what removal at birth actually means? My baby and I will need to stay in hospital for a few days, is it likely I will be able to stay with them or will they likely split us up? These are questions I have asked Social Services but they will not give me an answer.

I would like to breast feed; is this something Social Services have to support as it is in the best interest of baby. My baby is being removed due to mental health concerns, no issues around substance or alcohol abuse so that being in breast milk isn’t a worry.

If anyone with any legal experience or people who may have gone through or know someone who has gone through something similar can help I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

I’m so sorry you experienced post-partum psychosis too.

I am on medication which controls it to a degree but with the stress of Social Services involvement and knowing it was likely they would remove at birth since around 20 weeks I have been extremely stressed and barely slept which is a massive trigger for my symptoms. There are times when I have been awake for 5-6 days with no sleep at all.

Unfortunately my psychosis symptoms meant I tried to hurt myself (and therefore baby) as I thought people were trying to harm me. I’m still quite confused, feel all muddled up and don’t know who I can trust.

I’m currently on Aripiprazole but may change to something else after birth depending on the breastfeeding situation.

I'm glad you have a positive relationship with your first born. In all likelyhood you will have a warm and loving relationship with your new one when the time is right.

When you think about it, so many of us have wonderful close relationships with our aunts and grandparents and they are usually not the primary full time care giver when we are newborn. Take care of your health foremost.

Nobody is going to judge or blame you for this, Mumtobe, it isn't your fault you are ill, it could happen to any of us.

My heart goes out to you. I hope and pray you will be allowed to feed your baby for a few days but I have no experience so can't say for sure. However as it has been deemed the best thing for your baby by medical experts, it sounds hopeful. The team will be putting the baby's health before anything else.

This is a heartbreaking situation for you. May you recover before too long and, when you are well again, have much contact with your little girl or boy. Your love for your child shines out of your posts. x

Hi, I'm a midwife.

I'm so, so sorry that you're going through this.

At my trust, cases such as yours means a 96 hour stay in hospital. SS can't make an application to the court until baby is born, and this takes time. Also at my trust, mum and baby stay together but are supervised by a social worker 24/7. A social worker then removed the baby when it's time.

You can breastfeed and the hospital staff will support you in doing this.

@Mumtobe799 what a heartbreaking situation for everyone involved! I am so sorry this is happening to you and your family.

I am a midwife and have had dealings with social and children services and involvement in removals at birth/during the postnatal period, and also with maternal postpartum psychosis. However, I work in a different country, so processes and law will work differently. It also depends a lot about your individual case and circumstances.

The paramount concern in these cases is the physical and psychological safety of the baby. There will have been an assessment of this risk in your case, which should be ongoing as peripartum psychosis presents and can and does change quickly and often unexpectedly.

In some of the cases I was involved in, it was possible to keep baby and mum in contact during the first days postpartum by having family members stay in a different postnatal room with the baby, and facilitating visits and breastfeeding so there would always be a support person plus a health professional present with mum and baby.

It will really depend on the kind of presentation the psychosis has. Some women can focus the psychotic incindents on themselves or the environment (self-harm, non-aggressive hallucinations) but not be a direct risk for the baby, while others can develop very dangerous mental ideations in which they see their baby as a monster/satan/a stranger, and hence be a real danger to them. This is at no stage their fault, but as I said the priority is to protect the baby, who is completely helpless and is also not at fault.

Some suggestions for you regardless of outcome: I would recommend, if you're not doing it already, to express colostrum starting as soon as possible. These syringes of colostrum can be frozen and given to your baby later, by you or the chosen guardian. Even if traces of the drugs are present in the colostrum, often they can still be used, because certain medications which cause withdrawals are better "dialed down" than completely and suddenly eliminated. In some of our babies with withdrawal symptoms, the mother's milk was actually preferred for this reason. Although this, of course, will depend on the specific drug and amounts taken.

I would also recommend you to fully collaborate with the team and be very honest and open with them. Having intrusive thoughts, feelings and hallucinations (both visual and sound related) are expected in someone with psychosis. Telling the social services will not afect the plan negatively, in fact being honest and sharing your symptoms fully and openly will create an environment of trust that will allow the whole team to assess you more efficiently, follow the symptoms and identify asap when they are receding. If you hide your symptoms this will be much harder and you may get distrusted to the point that, even when the symptoms disappear, the team may need more time to confirm this.

It will be very hard and there will be ups and downs. But peripartum psychosis IS self-limiting, and you will be well again.

Best of luck and all my best for what is to come ❤

Thank you so much for this reply.

My hospital has said 72 hours for baby and myself. As baby is going to the Dad will he be able to pick baby up instead? I think I would feel so emotional with a Social Worker who I actively don’t get along with removing my baby.

My midwife is advocating for my parent’s to be supervisors as they regularly look after my first child with no concerns and it would give me more support if I was to become unwell.

In your trust do EPO’s or PPO’s happen often? This is my concern, police walking and taking the baby.

I'm on aripiprazole too, for maintenance, and I find it to be less effective than other medications I've been on, but it leaves me more functional IYSWIM. The paranoia can be really tough, I withdrew from midwife services at one point over it because I had a manipulative midwife and my brain convinced me she'd earmarked my baby for another family somewhere. I think it's our brains going into overprotective mode for the baby, but obviously it's actually really bloody unhelpful when your brain makes you do things that don't put you in the best light to other people. I'm presuming they've already had you on olanzapine and quetiapine as those are first-line? I found those more effective but not as great for day-to-day functioning (the tiredness was real).

Have you also spoken to the Family Rights Group about your legal rights e.g. your rights to information about the process? In my case SS were involved because my PPP was part of a permanent condition (bipolar disorder).

AFAIK from MIL who was a midwife and from others who have had babies removed at birth, they usually do it when the mother and baby leave the hospital but IDK if that will be the same in your case as I'd imagine they'll play it by ear depending on the risk to the baby.

Thank you so much

Unfortunately in this pregnancy (around 20 weeks) I experienced psychosis that was focused negatively around my pregnancy.

I still have psychosis focused around my pregnancy but it’s changed to where I feel extremely protective and the hallucinations I experience are actually focused around protecting my baby intensely.

I will definitely try and collect some colostrum.

I couldn’t take Quetiapine or Olanzapine as I was getting restless legs. Aripiprazole doesn’t cause restless legs but I also find it less effective but easier to function daily.

I’ve read every forum on FRG but never contacted them. I guess I am lucky in the sense my baby is going to their Dad and sibling, not a foster carer with a view to adoption so I will have the opportunity to be a proper Mum at some point.

I understand the paranoia. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about people and their actions towards me. It’s so hard to distinguish what is real and what is not right now, especially as I just cannot sleep.

I desperately need sleep or I know I’ll get ill but my body won’t switch off.

I have no advice, but I saw your thread on trending and I just wanted to send you a big virtual hug and a handhold, it sounds like such a difficult situation and a very cruel illness. Lots of love to you OP xxx

Oh that's a shame about the first-line meds. Really hoping you manage to get some sleep tonight or at least in the morning. I'm sure you already know this but it's not your fault that you can't sleep. I get really mad at my brain around this time in the morning and have to remind myself that I can't help it. I won't suggest any of the useless things that just don't help when you have a medical condition stopping you from sleeping.

As a pp said there is no court order yet because they cannot get one without your child actually being born.

With regards to what happens after your child is born - this will depend entirely upon the risk they feel is present - so if they feel that there is a risk you may harm your child in anyway you will not be left alone with the child.

Also although the breast milk is important it won’t trump the safety of your child - so again it all depends upon the level of risk

Also something to bear in mind - once you give birth anything could happen to you from a MH perspective ie things may or may not escalate significantly for you

If no one will tell you what is going to happen in the immediate aftermath of birth this could be because, A - they don’t want to say in case it puts you at further risk of harming yourself or baby or B - because they are seeing if your MH improves and if it does then you might be given supervised access like a pp has mentioned above

im sorry that you are experiencing this and I hope that there are other resources out there for you on the management of your illness.

Just wanted to say I hope it works out best for all of you. Hugs.

I have an important meeting early on which is why I can’t sleep I think! Thank you, if the mental health team suggest a hot drink and ‘just lie down’ one more time I think I will scream.

I understand this. I think there is a level of concern that I could ‘not get to birth’ IYSWM?

I know they won’t leave me alone with baby as there is that risk of post partum psychosis and I understand that. I just hope they let my family stay with me so I can have time (and they can have time too) with baby.

What a nightmare @Mumtobe799 !

The paranoia will be real to you and it is understandable you have no idea who to trust. My recommendation, although it will be very hard, is to trust EVERYONE involved in your care, even force yourself to trust them if necessary. Not because everyone is 100% trustable, but because your psychosis will mean you cannot know when it's your real instinct or paranoia playing up with you. In this very difficult time of your life, you have much better bets trusting others with the care of your baby and yourself, than trusting your own brain, which will be impaired in a way that affects all your process of understanding the world, yourself and others.

Yes, there are risks in putting your trust fully in others you don't know, or may even dislike. But the risk is much bigger trusting a brain which is hormonally impaired due to the illness. Social workers do, in their great majority, go into their work because they want to protect babies. You will have a team of several people involved, so the risk of one of them not deserving your trust gets diluted. If you force yourself to trust the team, you also take a massive responsibility off your shoulders: your baby's care and needs will be covered by others, and you can focus on healing yourself. I cannot stress enough how important this is.

If you had had an accident and were immobilised in bed, unable to care for your baby physically, you would have to trust baby's care on others too. This is the same thing. Your brain has been damaged by a medical condition. You need to trust others to care for baby while you heal yourself.

Please let your team, and the baby's dad, take that responsibility and decide what amount of contact is appropriate until you are well. There will be a lot of pain and suffering for you emotionally, but it will pay off later, when you are healed, and can be yourself again. That time will come. And then, you will be able to look back at this period as "that horrible time in the past".

Keep fighting. Better times will come ❤

Thank you.

I just know the Social Worker hates me. The reports she writes about me reads like I’m a crazy axe murderer who actively wants to harm people and children.

I also feel like my children’s Dad wants me to die before I give birth because he blames me for putting the baby onto him. It is going to cause a lot of damage to his work and livelihood and I feel awful about that but there’s nothing I can do.

It might sound crazy (and I am not suicidal at all) but it’s awful knowing my death would actually fix a lot of problems.

You will be able to breastfeed at contact with your child , but they will be bottle fed by the foster carer/ dad otherwise . as soon as baby is medically fit to be discharged, the social worker will remove baby from the hospital and place with dad/ carer. Contact will be arranged for the week you are released, likely in a contact centre.

Can I not express milk to give to the Dad?

Why can’t Dad collect baby from hospital as opposed to a Social Worker?

Why will contact have to be in a centre even though I see my older child at my property with their grandparents?

Op

Do you mean you are concerned they might put you to sleep and give you a c-section and remove baby that way?

I know you find this impossible to believe but your SW does not hate you - many people disagree with what their SW writes about them (she must have written about your strengths too?) however if she feels like you may present a physical risk of harm then she needs to put in writing why she thinks that could happen - otherwise there would be no need to write reports if everything was great!

Your ex really should have worn a condom if he did not want another child. There is a chance that you may get better and be able to play a bigger get role in your babies life than you currently believe.

The pp who said about placing your trust in others is definitely giving great advice. They are the ones who shoulder the burden, let them do that, let them think about it all.

I do hope you get specialised support - have you looked online for charitable organisations that can support you? I’m certain there are ones that deal specifically with your diagnosis.

I’m concerned they will remove baby immediately after birth. If I have a spinal c-section, either let me hold them for a minute or not at all and then take them away. If that was the plan I think I’d rather be put to sleep and not meet baby as I don’t think I could cope with baby being taken away and and be lying on an operating table unable to move at all.

The social worker finds one of two ‘strengths’ but they are far outweighed by lots of negatives.

I am under a specialist perinatal team for mental health at the moment but as I won’t be primary carer I will be discharged after birth so unfortunately won’t receive any specialist support after birth which is really disappointing as I still have the same risk factors and illness that women who keep their children have.

I think these professionals often forget women like myself have actually been through a pregnancy, birth and hormones are almost surprised if you’re emotional.

@Mumtobe799 those questions posed to Womble - she doesn’t actually know how it will play out - it depends upon a number of factors

the babies father poses no risk and based on that you should feel secure that when your baby leaves hospital it will be with dad -

I am certain that all being well with the drug situation you will either be allowed to breast feed or express for your baby

I am certain that supervised contact will be organised for you - it can be down to a number of factors about who, where and when

You could ask about that at your meeting - they may have been thinking about it already or they might not know yet - maybe everyone wants to see how you are after you have had your baby? That would be the most sensible thing to do.

You being well, any mother being well is the most important thing so that they can care for their children

Sadly op MH services can be appalling whatever your needs - the system is dreadful (well most of the time!)

what is your sleeping pattern like on a daily basis? You are in hospital now? Do you have to remain there?

OP was a mother and baby placement not a viable? The only thing I can suggest is that you ask to see a care plan and you can utilise your solicitor or baby Guardian if SS are not forthcoming.

I do not get on with baby’s Dad and we have not spoken for a long time but he is a good Dad and poses absolutely no risk to baby or our older child he also cares for, social services also agree with this. Even though I don’t get on with Dad I would much prefer baby to leave with him than a Social Worker.

I can understand why they are hesitant to give a plan. I could bounce back quite quickly but I could also become severely unwell and need a hospital admission at a mental health hospital again.

I guess no one knows and that is part of the problem.