'I thought my kids were aliens and wanted to hurt my baby - it's not Lindsay Clancy's fault

'I thought my kids were aliens and wanted to hurt my baby - it's not Lindsay Clancy's fault WARNING DISTRESSING CONTENT. EXCLUSIVE: Lindsay Clancy is standing trial for murder in the US after killing her three children in the grips of postnatal psychosis, according to the defence. Here, UK mum-of-three Ivana Poku shares her own experiences, telling The Mirror, "It could have been me" Locked in her bedroom, her baby son strapped in his bouncer in another room for his safety, Ivana Poku was floored by the terrifying urge to hurt her child. "It was like something possessed my mind. And I just felt that strong need to do something to him," she says. "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. "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 Ivana now believes she was suffering from was postpartum psychosis. Ten years on, the mother-of-three has been following the devastating case of Lindsay Clancy, an American woman who killed her three young children before trying to kill herself. She is currently on trial for murder. Clancy does not deny killing her children, but her defence argues she was suffering postpartum psychosis and that she is not criminally liable for their deaths. Prosecutors, meanwhile, allege Clancy instead made a calculated decision to intentionally kill her children - Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, who was eight months. Postpartum psychosis, a rare condition which affects one in every 1,000 mothers in the UK, is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes after birth. It can warp a person's sense of reality, resulting in delusions, hallucinations, mania and low moods. In severe cases, it can result in a mother causing harm to herself or others. Ivana, 42, is all too aware of how close she came to following the same path. "It could easily have been me," she tells the Mirror. Before her nightmare began, becoming a mother had been a lifelong dream for the author. "I used to say, 'When I have a baby, I can die, that's all I want to achieve in this life'." It was not long after divorcing her first husband that she met her then-partner, now-husband, Yaw, in 2016. After just a few weeks of dating, she fell pregnant with twins. Ivana, who was then based in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, shared: "I was scared of the unknown, of the change, but I felt guilty about it because I thought I should be happy." The birth was a traumatic one, with an emergency C-section at 34 weeks after a bleed. Her babies, Henry and Mason, were immediately whisked away, and it would be another two or three days before Ivana was allowed to hold her newborn sons. Reeling from shock, Ivana was alarmed to feel no "special bond" with her children. For two weeks after the twins' birth, the family stayed at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the four of them cramped in a small, windowless room. "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, one day, Ivana began having upsetting, 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. "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." While Ivana was deemed physically well enough to leave the hospital, inside, she was a "complete mess". The first few months as a new parent proved to be a rollercoaster. "I would cry all the time, didn't see any point in anything. I would just watch people outside going about their lives, and I remember that feeling, 'What's the point? Why do they live? Why are they rushing? Why are they having fun? There's no point in anything'." As her undiagnosed depression spiralled, 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. On that terrifying day when she locked herself in the bathroom, she felt like she was in a video game, being 'controlled' by something other than herself - a classic sign of psychosis, something she knew nothing about. "I had been told about depression, but not about psychosis at all. During the midwife checkups after birth, it was all about physical recovery, how is your bowel movement? How is your pain? "And then they had this questionnaire in front of them, and they would ask me questions like, 'Do you have thoughts about harming yourself or your children?' And I was like, 'No!' I can't imagine someone actually says yes even if they do, because there is no warmth, no empathy, a mother needs to feel safe to open up about these kinds of things. "So it's very, very common that these things are missed. I've heard many, many stories since when mums were failed by the system. They even sought help, and doctors laughed at them. I heard instances like that, and it's just horrible." The court heard that Clancy, described as a "very nurturing, very loving" mother, did try to get help. She sought treatment for mental health problems from multiple providers and even checked herself into a psychiatric hospital - just days before killing her children and trying to end her own life. Her legal defence has been supported by her former husband, as well as her mother and stepmother. According to multiple witnesses, Clancy's mental health deteriorated after the birth of her youngest son. "She had insomnia. She was losing her appetite," her mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, said at trial. "She was very anxious and sad." When asked by a defence attorney 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." "She always wanted to be a mother, have many children, and I felt it was the best thing that ever happened to her," Paula Musgrove, Clancy's mother, also testified. Musgrove said her daughter's mental health began declining in October 2022, around three months before the deaths. "Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I'm really sick. Something is wrong," Clancy wrote in a text message shown to the jury. "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, her daughter came to her and Clancy's then-husband, Patrick Clancy. "She told us she had thoughts of harming the children," Musgrove told the court. She also testified that Clancy, a nurse, "would say to me, 'This isn't me, I've never been like this before.' And I would agree, because she wasn't". Clancy's lawyers argue that she was overmedicated before her alleged psychotic break, which was, they say, exacerbated by undiagnosed postpartum depression. She was prescribed 13 different psychiatric medications in the months leading up to the killings, the court heard. The defence also says that Clancy's medical team failed in its duty of care towards her. A separate civil case has been brought by Clancy and her former husband against several mental healthcare providers. Two of them, whom she visited before the killings, also testified during this trial. For Ivana, Clancy's apparent helplessness feels all too familiar. Not understanding what was wrong, the mum struggled to tell anyone how she was really feeling while in the depths of psychosis. "Something takes over your mind, that's how it felt," she says. "It's not you anymore". The feeling of 'being controlled,' she says, was 'strong'. "It doesn't happen more than once. You either do something as Lindsay did, start getting better, or tragedy happens. I don't think there is anything in between." Hitting her rock bottom in that bedroom, Ivana finally confided in her husband and a close friend, a step which gave her the courage to open up to other mums in her friendship group. She quickly realised she was far from the only one struggling. Thankfully, postpartum psychosis is highly treatable, and a full recovery is absolutely possible with the right support. Dr Julie Hammond, an NHS GP and specialist in women's health, explains: "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." Their detachment from reality means that in many cases, the patient might be unable to recognise that they are ill, meaning loved ones are usually the ones who spot that something is wrong. Explaining the main signs to look out for, Dr Hammond says: "Not needing sleep is one of the key things that we advise people to monitor, because we know that sleep in general can also exacerbate underlying mental health illness. "You may also notice that the woman may be speaking a lot faster, that their thoughts may be racing, that when they're talking, their speech may be disconnected, so they're talking about very random things that they're struggling to connect together, and you're struggling to follow what it is they're speaking about. "They may be very agitated or energetic. They might also be confused, or paranoid and suspicious about people around them. They may also start saying things that are out of character as well." Ivana, who now lives in Fife, Scotland, is doing well, having received treatment and written a book, Motherhood - The Unspoken. She also runs an award-winning blog called Mumsjourney. As well as having a strong relationship with her 10-year-old twins, she and her husband have also welcomed a third child, four-year-old Yaw. The mum is still on anti-depressants and suffers from a generalised anxiety disorder, but she's worlds away from where she once was. Speaking happily about her family life, she says, "Now it's the way it's supposed to be." Ivana feels great sympathy for Clancy, who she knows will be "punished forever, knowing what she did". Sharing the defence's view that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her children, Ivana says: "It wasn't her fault." If you are affected by anything in this article and need support, contact Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP) at www.app-network.org, call the The Association for Post Natal Illness on 020 7386 0868 or visit their apni.org, or contact the Samaritans on 116 123, email them at [email protected] or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch Do you have a story to share? 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