The system didn't fail Lindsay Clancy

Trigger warning: this includes mentions of suicide, suicidal ideation, death of children, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis. Please read with care <3

If you are having thoughts of suicide please call 988 or head to your nearest emergency room. If you are in need of postpartum support visit https://postpartum.net/get-help/ or call their hotline at 1-800-944-4773. Mental health challenges in pregnancy and postpartum are medical conditions that are treatable.

The murder trial for Lindsay Clancy started last week and it has shone a light on the consequences of our country’s refusal to provide any level of support to parents. It starts at the trying-to-conceive phase in which almost half of Americans lack the education on how fertility works and goes through college.

Throughout 2022 Lindsay reported suicidal ideation, told her family she heard voices telling her to kill her three children, and suffered from severe insomnia. She was prescribed 13 medications over 4 months, visited the emergency room multiple times, and voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric facility. 19 days after checking out of the psychiatric facility, her husband came home from running errands to find his three children dead and his wife bleeding and paralyzed from three suicide attempts.

This is an incredibly tragic situation, especially given how preventable it is on so many levels.

The refrain echoing across social media is “the system failed Lindsay and her kids”, and I’m curious what system they’re referring to. From my personal experience, even with the ability to pay out of pocket, getting treatment for postpartum complications is next to impossible because there is actually not a system.

While other countries send parents to facilities with chefs and nurses after the baby is born, have midwives that conduct home visits within the first week, provide professional-led support groups, and give paid leave, the US sends parents home after two nights with instructions to come back after six weeks (at which time most moms have to return to work) where we are given a verbal four question Cosmo quiz to assess if we’re ok.

At 34 weeks pregnant with my first child, I told my OBGYN that I was in fact not okay mentally. My doctor referred me to a support group that cost $500/week, didn’t accept insurance, and had a months long waitlist. After six weeks of fighting with insurance, waiting on workplace benefits, and being met with multiple months-long waitlists or unresponsiveness from providers, a friend finally referred me to https://postpartum.net/get-help/ where I finally found a therapist (if you’re in the DMV here is who I saw) with certifications to manage perinatal complications and had availability.

I had the financial means to pay out of pocket which isn’t accessible to most Americans, especially those who are preparing for the financial strain of unpaid maternity leave and birth costs.

This wasn’t a system. This was a game of wack-a-mole. It was no one in the system that referred me to the eventual site, it was a friend.

Later as postpartum hormones went crazy and I couldn’t find time to meet with my therapist and there was an antibiotic shortage and a supply chain shortage and a formula shortage, it was once again other moms and not a system that helped me find medication for my son’s ear infection and mailed me the hypoallergenic formula they were able to find across the country—not a system.

When there is no system, things like the Lindsay Clancy case happen. When there is no system, we end up with a generation of parents that is so overwhelmed it impacts children’s well-being.

Without a system, I leaned heavily on other moms. In fact, in the isolation of COVID postpartum I started to feel like the other moms were the only ones who cared, and started questioning if the “system” actually didn’t want our kids to survive. So when those same moms who were sending me formula and providing me support I couldn’t find anywhere else, started questioning vaccines I listened. I questioned. I disregarded medical advice. Until one of my best friends who is an emergency room doctor intervened. But most moms don’t have a best doctor friend paying close enough attention to rescue them from the MAHA pipeline.

A lot of testimony centers around how normal Lindsay seemed. The husband claims she seemed so normal that he left her alone with the kids for two nights (even though she had previously told him about suicidal ideation and was on multiple medications and suffering from such severe insomnia that they slept separately) and went to brunch with his friends while she cared for the kids. People are perplexed at how someone who seemed so normal could actually be suffering from as severe of a mental health crisis as the defense claims Lindsay was.

While I wasn’t dealing with anything as severe as Lindsay and was able to get treatment, people are always surprised to hear how much I struggled. I was throwing parties, I was hanging out with friends, heck I got promoted at work! Because when women do anything less than power through, it’s seen as a massive failure. So we power through. We do everything we can to appear normal on the surface.

While we’re on this topic, let’s also discuss the bar for dads which this trial has shown us is on the ground. Below the ground. I don’t know what was going on in that house, but him very publicly living his regular old life (brunch, ski trips, work trips) while his wife begged for help tells us something.

And I have a confession here. When the lawyer read about how grateful Lindsay was that her husband got up with the kids so she could sleep and get well I thought “wow what a devoted dad and husband”. I was applauding this man for doing the most minimum thing as a father! It’s so deeply engrained that even I’m over here with heart eyes for a man who is willing to get up at night with his own baby!

When the expectations on moms are this heavy moms lose. We white knuckle our way through postpartum and returning to work and sleep training so we can perform at work and debilitating anxiety and unhealed bodies. We get crushed. We lose faith in the “systems” that exist.

And then people wonder why moms are leading the MAHA movement.

The villains in my story are not the doctors or my husband who had less expectations on him. The villains to me are as follows:

1. Insurance companies that make it so my doctors could only spend 15 minutes at a time with me. Who refused to cover mental health. Who have created a system that makes it next to impossible for practitioners to provide quality care during pregnancy and postpartum.

2. The policy makers who hold power to actually do something about this such as: regulate the insurance companies, fund healthcare, fund mental healthcare, create government funded programs that exist literally everywhere else, fund paid leave.

So, let’s get out there and support the hell out of each other because no one is coming to save us.

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

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