09/11/2026
❤️🩹
I don’t know if Lindsay Clancy did it or not. I don’t know if she should be imprisoned or admitted or go free. Lots and lots and lots of people seem very certain one way or another, I am not one of them. Since I wasn’t on the jury, I decided I could free myself from having to be certain one way or the other regarding her guilt.
Of course, the jury didn’t get there either (thanks to that one guy, I guess).
So many opinions, so many confident assertions. A minority of them (I hope a minority anyway) are terrifyingly loud that if a woman could possibly do the thing Lindsay Clancy allegedly did then NO women should be trusted and women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. The leaps being made would make Mario and Luigi envious. (This is your reminder that men unalive their families at far higher rates than women… it’s just so every-day it doesn’t get this level of media coverage because men being aggressive and violent towards their children and partner isn’t shocking or able to be sensationalized.) A conversation contrived for an agenda that isn't actually caring about anyone, including Lindsay, her children, or others, it's just about control and power and hate.
I don't know how that even fits into all this.
But here’s what I do know…
Maternal mental health is isolated as an individual problem rather than a systemic one, allowing the structures that contribute to undermining maternal mental health to skirt accountability or make changes that would improve outcomes.
Lactation difficulties, including being unable to breastfeed when that is what is desired, impact maternal mental health outcomes.
Systemic barriers to lactation support are one of the ways that maternal mental health is undermined in society.
Social structures that create barriers to accessing lactation support and mental health support contribute to a lack of continuity of care in the postpartum period and increase the risk of harmful outcomes.
None of this is studied, discussed, or supported nearly enough and this is a social failing.
Society is complicit in this failing.
***See studies linked below***
I have experienced postpartum and prenatal mood disorders but I had a fully engaged, present, loving partner that advocated for me, invested, and supported me in getting help, treatment, and the recovery I needed. Through it all he was (and still is) an active hands on partner and parent who believed me and cared for me as though the crisis I was experiencing was just as critical as if it was a potentially lethal cancer. Not because he was afraid of what might happen but because he loves me and didn’t want me to suffer. I am not sure that without his advocacy, his investment in our family, his prioritizing of my rest and recovery, his hands on support and care, I am not sure that without his love and nurturing I would have survived. He mobilized others, poured himself into living "in sickness and in health," and when I was drifting unmoored in my own mind he never stopped being an anchor in reality through his love in action.
In that time I lost time. Sometimes hours, sometimes days, sometimes weeks, and even months.
During my first experience with a postpartum mood disorder I had intensely difficult breastfeeding difficulties. I had expected my second baby to be a smoother feeding experience where I’d come into my own confidently feeding my baby with the wisdom and knowledge I had gathered in my journey with my first. It was nothing like that. It was devastatingly difficult. Confusing. Confounding. Scary. My baby was labeled “failure to thrive,” I was told they couldn’t find anything wrong, my pain was dismissed as me being super sensitive and having low pain tolerance (excuse me, I gave birth twice at that point with no pain relief, once in my own bed at home to a baby born sunny side up), my baby’s projectile spitups were written off as an immature digestive system, and her constant crying called colic. I was fraying and the relief they said would change everything was supposedly only available in a can of formula.
At 4.5 months I switched to formula. Everything else continued except now she had terrible bowel issues and baby hemorrhoids and my pain was lower but still present.
Oh, and now the “baby blues” I had been just barely managing increased to death metal thrashing in my head and chest that I could never turn down or block out.
I seemed to be doing well to many. I was teaching and my students still loved me, I was cooking and seeing friends and cleaning and caring for my children and leading worship at church and having family visit and performing concerts and taking classes. Most people didn’t know.
I don't remember most of this time. I remember the bleakness I felt, the crushing emptiness I held within me.
I felt like I had failed and the shifts in my body were palpable as my milk dried up and I cried through my baby fighting the bottle and screaming in agony and her being inconsolable.
Until I had no more tears. Just screaming inside and out but I appeared silent. Spent. Lost.
Breastfeeding isn’t like other facets of baby care. It isn’t like picking a car seat or a baby carrier or bassinet. It isn’t even like making an informed choice on a birth plan or care provider. This isn’t a menu item of preferences. It is so much more than whether or not you're planning on giving your baby a pacifier. It is a biological response wired into our cells and through our nervous system.
How we support breastfeeding in society is a symptom of how we support babies and their parents in society.
Which directly impacts maternal mental health outcomes.
Lindsay Clancy was told by her health care providers to stop nursing in order to take certain psychiatric medications. She weaned on medical advice to treat her mental health.
I don't know if that was the right call, I don't know if that was the best course of action for her and her children. I DO KNOW that weaning is impactful and is not inconsequential. We DO KNOW that weaning has a chemical impact on the body and the brain. We DO KNOW that weaning when it isn't what is wanted is correlated with adverse mental health outcomes.
I do know breastfeeding and lactation support matters.
I don’t know what Lindsay Clancy deserves. I don't know what exactly happened. I don't know what to think about this specific case.
I do know that we all deserve better than the social structures that leave those with babies to fend for themselves and navigate a system that is designed to fail them.
