Happy Place
Louise Thompson: Maternity care is bleak! Mental and physical scars of my traumatic birth
26 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that offers different perspectives through different life stories. And today I'm chatting to Louise Thompson.
Post-traumatic stress disorder will sadly plague me for the rest of my life. At its worst, it looks like traumatic flashbacks, which can be triggered by anything. You know, it's the smells, it's the sensations, it's the condensation on the window. that can trigger me into feeling really scared. I have moments where I feel dissociated and I can not smell or taste or hear or even see that well.
And then I have other moments where I can smell, hear, taste too much so I'm very, very, very sensitive.
I'm actually recording this introduction in my kitchen. So that's why it might sound a bit echoey, but also it is pissing with rain outside and my cats are all zooming around me. So if you hear any strange noises, lovely listeners, that's where you can picture me. Fig is usually... Fig's my kitten, by the way, if I haven't bombarded you enough on Instagram with pictures of her.
Chapter 2: What traumatic experiences does Louise Thompson share about her birth?
And she will kick about anything like a football. Jewellery, keys, bits of tissue...
just rolls of sellotape it's all up for grabs but I hope you're all well wherever you're listening to this I learned an interesting lesson this week and it's one that it's definitely not the first time I've learned it and it's quite a big overarching lesson that I had to learn I mean the big ones are the ones that we need to keep learning right so last week I felt really shit not as shit as I did say 13, 14 years ago but
But I felt really low. And sometimes that is essential. And I could sort of feel myself fighting it for a few days before, which is exhausting, sort of trying to resist hitting a big low. But actually, what I remembered and relearned was that sometimes when you get either rock bottom or you just hit a low point, you've got no choice but to surrender. And in that moment, that is what I did.
I was just like, well, I just feel like shit and I'm not coping well with what's going on in my life and whatever. And from that low, that sort of surrender, actually came a bit of peace. And it's given me the opportunity to see things from a different angle, approach things with a different mindset. Like, it's been sort of extraordinary.
So although nothing much has changed, everything's changed in terms of how I'm looking at things. I don't know how long it's going to last. I might feel like shit tomorrow. Who knows? But as I record this today, I'm feeling pretty good because I let myself reach that low.
So if you're feeling utterly shit at the moment or you're resisting a big low, as long as you feel supported enough, I'd say go with it and let yourself feel your feelings, essentially. As long as you've got good people around you that can support you if needed or friends you can pick up the phone and talk to, it's no bad thing.
And often it gives us an opportunity to reset, start again, think of things differently. So that's the headspace I'm in.
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Chapter 3: How does PTSD manifest in Louise's daily life?
And I was actually in that headspace when I recorded this brilliant chat. God, I love this woman and I love this chat. Let's talk about Brilliant Louise. So Louise started her career on Made in Chelsea. She was one of the OGs. Way back in series one, but she has done so much since then.
She's gone on to become an author and a podcaster and a really powerful voice around incredibly important issues, including ulcerative colitis and birth trauma. We talk about so many things. We go off on some really interesting tangents and ones that I hadn't necessarily planned for.
You know, I do a fair bit of research for these conversations, but you never really know in which direction they'll turn. So we do start talking about the realities of maternity care in the UK. In my research for this chat and through looking at the brilliant work Louise is doing, I sort of had really no idea how bleak it is in the UK maternity care.
And that's no fault of the brilliant midwives and obstetricians and doctors and nurses who work in that environment. It's a systemic issue. And you'll hear more about that in this chat. We talk about her fertility journey. If you follow Louise on Instagram or TikTok, you'll see that she's been talking very openly about this recently, which I think is a brave share.
And the fact that, well, I don't want to say too much, but if you know enough about her fertility journey, you'll get up to speed with where she's at.
in this moment during this chat and also how her own trauma and god she's been through the ringer has led to immense growth and that i think is just such a brilliant part of the trauma conversation that is less often had right let's do it here's the show So Louise, we've already, before beginning this podcast, decided we're going to move to a desert island and open an animal sanctuary.
Was that what we landed on? Beautiful. I would love that for our span. Before we do that, we have got a whole load of stuff to chat about. Now, having followed bits of your journey, you're in a really interesting place at the moment. For one reason, you had a big, big week the other week where you put forward a petition to the UK Parliament.
And this is all in order to appoint a maternity commissioner. This is very big, important work. Can you tell us what that role would mean to, well, women and men out there? Because it would affect everybody and benefit everybody. How would that affect us?
Thank you, Fern. Yes. So about two months ago, a lady called Theo Clark, who's an ex-conservative MP and me, got together and decided that we wanted to create a petition. We didn't realize it was going to take two months for it to be approved, but it now is. And I think that it is fairly crazy that in this country we don't have a maternity commissioner.
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Chapter 4: What therapies has Louise tried to cope with her PTSD?
And you say it should be something that has been considered really regularly and discussed in Parliament really regularly. Instead, there are regular reports and inquiries into the problem, but nobody is actioning anything. And I think like the birth inquiry, which did come out in 2024, set a long list of recommendations, which were things like properly educating birthing parents,
creating more mother and baby units for parents that have suffered, six week checkup postpartum for mothers as well as the babies, adequate funding for midwives, obstetricians and anaesthetists to recruit them, train them and also retain them because I think the retention rates are really poor at the moment. And I get loads of
Ex-midwives who are probably in the generation above us used to love their career and stuck around for 20 odd years, who might have children who have tried it and are just not treated with adequate respect. And so I think that there's a huge problem. And, you know, the government spend more money. paying out medical negligence cases than they do on the care in the first place.
And that's what's so alarming. And so there clearly needs to be this huge shake up to tackle a lot of these problems for women because it's becoming a systemic issue. And yeah, I just, I really, really hope that we can get our foot in the door. And look, I mean, I have very little experience when it comes to politics. So it's something that I'm interested in.
and I'm reading more about, but it's definitely not my space.
But you're bringing the heat and the attention to it. That's very important. It's all very well and good, and rightly so. Theo, who you're working with, will have that knowledge and that background, but equally we need voices out there speaking about it, and we need the attention on it. So I don't think I'm sat here expecting you to know everything. political agenda that's out there.
I just think it's a subject that... Well, women's health in general, I think the... The general sort of feeling is that women need to just suck it up and get on with it, whether it's hormonal health, sexual health, menstrual health, going back to when you first start your periods. We're just meant to crack on with things and get on with it. And this is the extreme of that.
The most severe outcome is, you know, somebody, a mother not making it to be there for their newborn baby. That is the severe end of a problem that seriously needs looking at.
Absolutely. And I think that there has been an issue, obviously, amongst women's health, because largely the houses of commons have been made up of men. Now I think that, you know, there's a bit more equality. I think 40% of politicians are women. So we're kind of on the cusp of like this pretty major change.
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Chapter 5: What systemic issues exist in UK maternity care?
Or the radiator pops. Radiator pops. But it literally, I can feel it go like... There's this huge wave and it hits and it just goes, floods through my whole body. And I think... And then I go, okay, no, that's fine. That's a sign that I'm alive. It's all right. My senses are still all over the place.
So I have moments where I feel dissociated and I can not smell or taste or hear or even see that well. And then I have other moments where I can smell, hear, taste too much. So I'm very, very, very sensitive. I have this awful nerve pain that is something that I'll be left with probably forever. And also, I suppose I've reached a place now where four years down the line, I think, you know what?
I really don't want what happened to me to dictate the rest of my life and what my family unit looks like. And so we have reached a point where... My partner and I feel like we would like to be able to give Leo a sibling because we're really close with our siblings. And I have been left with some fertility. So I don't have a period.
You know, there are a lot of things that make me feel like less whole and human than I used to be before. It's not going to be an easy journey. I have decided to try and freeze some fertility while we then still continue to kind of like work on our mental space because this has affected Ryan actually almost worse than it's affected me. especially when it comes to growing our family.
I think for him, he's just like, why would we risk anything? I cannot go through that again. I cannot be the sole parent again. I can't afford to have some big shift that means that I'm gonna regress and be scary again and not know who I am and not know where I am and have panic attacks all the time. So for him, he's like clinging on to any stability.
And then I juggle this hard thing where I think, gosh, we're so lucky because I survived.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does Louise face in her fertility journey?
I'm here and I do have a good standard of living. I've also got the most amazing child. He's so beautiful. But then also growing our family is our legacy and it's our right. And I should have been allowed the human right of having a safe and dignified birth, which would have allowed me to
leave procreation to chance where you know i could have sex with my partner and maybe maybe have another baby you know and that's not you know i know that fertility struggles are a very real problem and you know we are facing a population crisis there are many reasons why people are leaving having kids until much later in life and and so infertility is an inevitable
reaction to that so I'm absolutely not alone in this infertility journey our circumstances are just really different because you know of just like the scarring that I've been left with yeah and it feels it feels actually quite like
it feels quite nice just to be able to like talk about it and just quite like liberating because it is, you know, when I first worked with therapists quite early on, and I say early on, but probably like at the two year postpartum mark, they would say, oh, you know, if you like, have you thought about having more kids and how does that make you feel? And that must be desperately upsetting.
And I was like, no, like, don't be ridiculous. Like, I absolutely couldn't think about any of that. And I think that there were just different milestones that they were holding me to. Maybe they had other clients who were, you know, reaching that sort of like conventional two year mark and thinking, oh, maybe we'd like to have another child.
But it's so it's not something I can't sit here and say, like, I've yearned for this forever. for a really long time. We've only just felt good enough to kind of think about it. And yeah, I've done an IVF cycle. I've actually done two. I did one when I was really, really busy. That's another thing.
Obviously, I'm sure loads of people have come on this podcast to say make a plan, God laughs, or whoever laughs, whoever you believe in. There were times when I wanted to do it before and then something else really hideous would crop up in my life, like some other major trauma to have to deal with, some perforation or a surgery. And so it was always put on pause. And then...
Because I have this bowel condition, I'm on quite a lot of different medication. And some of that medication, there's just not been enough research around whether it's safe to carry kids. But that wouldn't really be the main thing for me. But also, they don't know whether it's something called teratogenic, which means that it can pass on to the child.
And they don't know at what cellular level that could be. So I've had to work to... this like program where I can switch medications basically it feels complicated and like really deep to me but when I say it out loud people are probably like so you switch medication but I'm like but for me switching medication it's huge means like but that medication was working and like if I switch off it
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Chapter 7: How is Louise advocating for maternity care reform?
I'm going to have a bath at 5pm or before the kids get back from school and not feel horribly guilty or judged by anyone for doing it. We're all...
trying to do too much at one time and then we give ourselves such a hard time for just stopping I mean the the thing you have to deal with when you stop of course is the bombardment of thoughts and and worries or it might be stuff from the past how do you what's your mental way of
I don't know whether it's quieting those thoughts down or just being able to arrange them into some sort of organized group so you can methodically deal with them rather than it just being brain noise. Gosh, there's so much that I could talk about.
Gosh, I feel better knowing that you also have the same struggles.
Mate, I'm on the run all the time.
In January, it's just this constant battle of like, but do I need to have a really solid start to the year?
No.
No. Fuck it. I don't. I can literally just coast and be irrelevant and insignificant. I just want to be an ant for like a little bit.
Guess what?
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