Ivana Poku, a mother-of-three from the UK, has spoken exclusively to The Mirror about her own experience of postpartum psychosis, saying "It could have been me" as she follows the trial of American mother Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing her three children.
Poku, now 42, described a terrifying moment when she locked herself in her bedroom, strapping her baby son in his bouncer in another room for his safety, after feeling an overwhelming urge to hurt him. "It was like something possessed my mind. And I just felt that strong need to do something to him," she said. "I had Henry on my lap, and he was smiling; he wasn't doing anything bad, but I had this sudden urge to hurt him. And it freaked me out, so I went to the bedroom, and I locked myself in."
She added: "I strapped him in the bouncer, and then I called my husband in tears because I was scared of myself and I didn't feel safe around the kids. The sad thing is I didn't know what I was dealing with."
What is postpartum psychosis?
Postpartum psychosis is a rare condition affecting one in every 1,000 mothers in the UK, linked to stress, sleep deprivation, and hormonal changes after birth. It can warp a person's sense of reality, leading to delusions, hallucinations, mania, and low moods. In severe cases, it can result in a mother causing harm to herself or others.
Clancy does not deny killing her children - Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, who was eight months - but her defence argues she was suffering postpartum psychosis and is not criminally liable. Prosecutors allege she made a calculated decision to intentionally kill her children.
Ivana's descent into psychosis
Ivana, then based in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, met her now-husband Yaw in 2016. After just a few weeks of dating, she fell pregnant with twins. The birth was traumatic, with an emergency C-section at 34 weeks after a bleed. Her babies, Henry and Mason, were whisked away, and it was two or three days before she could hold them.
For two weeks after the twins' birth, the family stayed in a small, windowless room at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). "It was the worst time of my life," she said. "I thought I would go crazy because the twins cried all the time, we didn't get any sleep, so it was a drastic change to our lives, and I didn't cope well with it. I cried with them."
Then came intrusive thoughts about hurting her babies. "I wouldn't do it, I knew I wouldn't do it, it just brought me comfort in that moment, 'Oh, wouldn't that be amazing if they died and we had our lives back'. But it was just a thought. I didn't feel like I would actually do it. I was hoping they would pass away," she said. "And then eventually it escalated. I had suicidal thoughts, urges even. I was desperate to just go because I saw it as the only way out. But it still didn't click like, 'Oh, it's depression,' I just felt like I was failing."
Her thoughts began to warp. "Sometimes I saw the twins as aliens. I was angry with them that they would come between me and my husband, that we wouldn't have time for each other anymore. So I wasn't the glowing, happy mum I thought I would be," she says.
Clancy's case and the trial
The court heard that Clancy, described as a "very nurturing, very loving" mother, sought treatment from multiple providers and checked herself into a psychiatric hospital days before the killings. Her mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, testified: "She had insomnia. She was losing her appetite. She was very anxious and sad." When asked if Clancy had been "interested at all times in trying to get better and see doctors", Susan Clancy said: "Very much so... she was begging for help."
Clancy's mother, Paula Musgrove, testified that her daughter's mental health began declining in October 2022, around three months before the deaths. She read a text from Clancy: "Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I'm really sick. Something is wrong. I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don't know how I am going to get through the day. It's just really scary, and I don't want to be alone."
A month before the killings, Musgrove said, Clancy told her and Patrick Clancy she had thoughts of harming the children. Clancy, a nurse, would say, "This isn't me, I've never been like this before," Musgrove testified.
Clancy's lawyers argue she was overmedicated before her alleged psychotic break, exacerbated by undiagnosed postpartum depression. She was prescribed 13 different psychiatric medications in the months leading up to the killings, the court heard. A separate civil case has been brought by Clancy and her former husband against several mental healthcare providers.
Recovery and hope
Dr Julie Hammond, an NHS GP and specialist in women's health, explained that postpartum psychosis is highly treatable with the right support. "What people sometimes struggle to understand is that when someone is experiencing psychosis, what they are seeing, hearing, or believing feels very real to them," she said.
She advised monitoring for signs such as not needing sleep, speaking faster, racing thoughts, disconnected speech, agitation, confusion, paranoia, and out-of-character statements.
Ivana, now living in Fife, Scotland, received treatment and wrote a book, Motherhood - The Unspoken, and runs an award-winning blog called Mumsjourney. She has a strong relationship with her 10-year-old twins and a four-year-old son, Yaw. She remains on anti-depressants and suffers from generalised anxiety disorder, but says, "Now it's the way it's supposed to be."
She feels great sympathy for Clancy, who she knows will be "punished forever, knowing what she did". Sharing the defence's view, Ivana says: "It wasn't her fault."
