Joyce Fegan: Maternal mental health is not solely a mother’s issue — it's about all of us

'What role are the village, or the State, playing, or not playing, when it comes to maternal mental health?'

In 2021, there were 58,443 births. There’s a ripple effect there, for partners, newly pronounced grandparents, siblings and friends.

When you leave hospital after treatment or surgery, recovery and convalescence are paramount, and promoted, both by the medical community and your own. There’s an unquestioned understanding that you’re not in a position to be of service to others, the opposite in fact, and the length of time it takes to “get back on your feet” is certainly not limited to a single day. We’d laugh at that.

And yet, when women give birth, either vaginally or via caesarean section, they are immediately in service to another being — scars, tears, bleeding, leaking and trauma aside