The Early Infancy of a Parent and Baby Mental Health Unit: A Reflection

This article describes the experience of establishing a new parent and baby mental health unit, including challenges in the first year of operation. The article aims to narrate the experience for the purpose of informing other new mental health services and contributing to service development knowledge.

The analogy of the early infancy period is used to highlight the parallel process of adjustment, confidence and identity formation occurring as part of the unit development and by the parents who are admitted.

Key challenges are presented as “We had a baby and moved house at the same time”, “We had a baby with someone we just met”, “We had ghosts in our communal nursery” and “We were juggling the baby and the bathwater”.

The establishment of a new unit provides an opportunity to reflect on the complexity of building workforce, service and clinical capacity within the constraints of public health services. The challenges along the way have helped to build empathy for the experiences of the admitted parents who equally find that things have not gone how they have planned, while finding emerging opportunities for growth, resilience and change.