08/26/2026
A LETTER FROM OUR FOUNDER 🤍
I've been following the Lindsay Clancy trial closely, and honestly, it's hard to put into words because none of this feels like it belongs in a caption.
Before anything else: what happened to Cora, Dawson, and Callan is a horror. Three children - five, three, and eight months old - are gone, and their deaths are the center of this story, not a footnote to it. Nothing below is meant to explain that away or make it smaller than it is.
I grieve for them, for their family, for everyone who loved them, every time I think about this case.
And it's because I hold that horror so fully that I can't stop thinking about you too...
the moms I sit with on my couch, the late-night feeding calls, the appointments where you cry because the baby won't take a bottle and you've got weeks (or days) left before you're back at work and you don't know what you're going to do...
worried because your baby won't latch or you have ni**le trauma that makes your toes curl every time they eat.
Not because your situation is the same.
It isn't.
But because I keep seeing some of the same struggles being discussed in this trial sitting quietly in rooms with mothers who are still here to get help. I've heard versions of these struggles more times than I can count.
The sleep training you never wanted to do, but did anyway because your body was running on fumes.
The guilt over weaning this baby earlier than you nursed the last one, like it's a scoreboard only you're keeping.
None of that is small. None of that is “just being a mom.”
It's the weight of trying to keep a tiny person alive on no sleep while everyone around you keeps saying you're doing great.
What breaks me about her case isn't just the tragedy of losing three children... it's hearing testimony about how desperately she was struggling while trying to get help.
Lindsay was screened using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, with testimony showing significantly elevated scores.
But we've also heard testimony raising questions about gaps in her care, including the lack of thyroid and hormonal blood testing by some of the psychiatric providers treating her.
She sought help repeatedly.
In the four months leading up to the deaths of her children, she was prescribed 13 different psychiatric medications by multiple providers... including antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, sedatives, and a mood stabilizer... while she continued struggling with symptoms and medication side effects.
Experts in that courtroom disagree about what those symptoms meant, whether Lindsay was experiencing postpartum psychosis, and what role her treatment or medications may have played.
That is ultimately for the jury to weigh.
But listening to all of it, I can't help asking: did anyone ever step far enough back to look at the whole mother.....
her mind, her body, her hormones, her sleep, her medications, and everything she was trying so desperately to communicate?
That's the part I can't stop thinking about.
So here's what I need you to hear, from someone who sits with postpartum families for a living: intrusive thoughts are not a character flaw.
Feeling hopeless or out of control after having a baby is not weakness.
There can be physical and mental health factors involved, and you deserve to have your concerns taken seriously.
ADVOCATE for yourself.
Ask questions.
Ask whether labs are appropriate for you.
Advocate to your provider whether your thyroid, hormones, medications, sleep, and physical health could be contributing to what you're experiencing... not just your mood. Advocate, advocate, advocate!!! Talk to your partner, a friend, someone to help you and to help you advocate for yourself.
And if something in you feels dark or out of control, please don't try to white-knuckle it alone.
Call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline - 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262)
Free, confidential, 24/7, with counselors trained to support pregnant and postpartum families.
Advocate for yourself.
Keep asking questions when you know something isn't right.
And more than anything, I wish Cora, Dawson, and Callan were still here.
- Courtney Deitch, IBCLC
Founder, Honeysuckle & Pearl
