After years of fertility treatments, Toronto mom Flora Babakhani became pregnant when she was 44 years old, Tragically, on Jan. 14, 2022, two months after she gave birth to her daughter, Amber, Flora died by suicide due to undiagnosed postpartum psychosis.
“Our health system failed her terribly,” says Samantha Stanclik, who, with friend Meredith Durksen, is initiating a walk in St. Catharines to raise awareness of perinatal mental illness. The event is called Flora’s Walk.
“Perinatal is a word that I didn’t know the meaning of,” said Durksen. It refers to the time, usually a number of weeks, immediately before and after birth.
Durksen is a new mom with a nine-month old daughter. “I work in the mental health field for the Canadian Mental Health Association here in Niagara, and I am also a registered psychotherapist working through my master’s right now,” she said.
“The reason for organizing Flora’s Walk, for me,” says Stanclik, “is the lack of conversation around perinatal mental health and how difficult it can be to access the proper support, even when you are actively trying.”
Stanclik, a personal support worker at Niagara Health’s St. Catharines hospital site, works with women and babies, and is the mother of two girls, a two-year-old and a four-month-old.
“I thought I was well prepared for motherhood when, in reality, the transition was one of the hardest things I have experienced,” she said. “The immense pressure we put on ourselves and the guilt we place on ourselves as parents is overwhelming sometimes.”
She found herself struggling with breastfeeding and discovered accessing support, especially during a pandemic, difficult. “I’m not sure who cried more through our breastfeeding journey, my daughter or myself,” she said.
“When I finally stopped putting that pressure on myself, I quit breastfeeding and sought counselling to let go of the guilt associated with it. I started to feel a change for the better.”
However, it took nearly a year from the birth of her daughter for Stanclik to experience an improvement in her mental health.
“If I had known about all the wonderful businesses and support that I’m learning about as we make connections planning this walk, I feel like things could have improved earlier on,” she said.
Even though it is the second year for some communities, Niagara region’s first Flora’s Walk will start from the Neil Peart Pavilion at Lakeside Park in St. Catharines on May 6. Over 15 different businesses and agencies will be there, including therapists, doulas, Maternal Health Niagara, lactation support, and yoga and fitness studios.
The event “got much bigger than we thought, because, as moms, our minds are pulled in a lot of different directions,” said .
Both Durksen and Stanclik’s husbands, childhood friends from Niagara-on-the-Lake, have offered their support and will volunteer their time for the event.
“None of this was on my radar until I became a dad,” said Kyle Durksen. “After experiencing my wife give birth to our daughter, I’m amazed at how surface level the conversation is around becoming new parents. There is a biological and psychological metamorphosis that occurs and nobody stops to ask ‘how are you handling this?’”
Steve Stanclik has “seen, first-hand, how hard it can be to find the right kind of care.”
“Everyone is constantly checking on the baby, rightfully so, but mom seems to fall through the cracks,” said Samantha. “Just asking how you’re feeling at an appointment for the baby isn’t enough to pull out the struggles one (mother) might be facing.”
“We need a national strategy, a deep conversation about what to expect, what to watch for and although ‘Healthy Babies Healthy Children’ has this conversation before you are discharged, which is wonderful, it needs to continue at each well-baby appointment too,” said Samantha.
The Healthy Babies Healthy Children program is funded by the government of Ontario and delivered by local public health units.
The Canadian Perimental Mental Health Collaborative (CPMHC) is non-for-profit organization founded in 2021 by moms Jaime Charlebois and Patricia Tomasi, who each suffered from perinatal mental illnesses. The co-executive directors met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his office on Parliament Hill to commemorate World Maternal Mental Health Day, and to talk about the need for a perinatal mental health strategy.
According to the CPMHC website, a National Perinatal Mental Health Strategy should include universal screening and timely access to treatment. Their goal is that by 2032, federal, provincial, and territorial governments will have passed and implemented appropriately-funded policies and legislation that are providing people timely access to perinatal mental health services thereby substantially reducing perinatal mental illness in Canada.
People interested in attending Flora’s Walk can meet at 10:30 a.m., May 6, at Lakeside Park in St. Catharines. Opening remarks begin at 11 a.m. and the walk commences at 11:30, from Lakeside Park to Rennie Park, across the bridge to Jaycee Park and back to Lakeside Park. Closing remarks and prize draws occur at 12:30 p.m.
“What happened to Flora shouldn't happen to anyone else. We need to do better,” said Samantha.
Read more on Flora’s story at floraswalk.ca.