I Was a Nurse Working Nights as a New Mom. This One Detail About Lindsay Clancy’s Case Stood Out To Me

Trigger warning: this article discusses child death; postpartum depression and anxiety. If you or someone you love is struggling with postpartum mental health symptoms, please call Postpartum Support International at 1-800-944-4773 or text “Help” to 800-944-4773. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Nurse.org.

Like many people, I have been following the Lindsay Clancy case with a mixture of horror and sympathy. On one hand, hearing the details of the way Clancy’s children died at her hands is unfathomably awful. And on the other hand, hearing the anguish that Clancy dealt with as a result of postpartum depression, anxiety, and suspected psychosis while quite literally begging for help is also heartwrenching.

The jury, as many in the country, is tasked with deciding if this is a woman who suffered from a break from reality so great that it led her to kill. And while I am grateful to not have to decide such a fate myself, I will say that one detail about Clancy’s case is haunting me:

Lindsay had been a labor and delivery nurse working nights.

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During her trial, her now ex-husband testified that after each of her children’s births, Lindsay had expressed ongoing and worsening anxiety as her time to return to work approached. By her third child, she was practically beside herself with worry about going back to work.

She worked as a labor and delivery nurse, a job she had held since around 2014, and at the time of the deaths, her ex-husband testified that she had planned to return to work one or two shifts a week. He added, almost as an afterthought, that when Clancy had worked night shift (through at least her first two children, per his testimony), the couple had a babysitter about 12 hours a week. He stated that the babysitter stayed with the kids while Clancy slept.

At that statement, I had to take a moment to pause, because what?

A babysitter for 12 hours a week to allow Clancy to sleep during the day while her kids are presumably home does not seem like remotely enough time to me. Sleeping during the day is hard enough, but add in kids in the same living area as you, and I would bet anything that Clancy was not getting adequate sleep on those days.

Although her ex-husband worked from home too, and presumably helped with the kids, when I heard that testimony, I felt like no one was understanding what that actually meant for Lindsay to be working night shift and trying to sleep during the day with her entire family home and only up to 12 hours of help per week, especially during the years she was pregnant. 

As a former night shift nurse who worked nights while going through four pregnancies in six years, I know how difficult it can be to work nights and parent, be pregnant, and breastfeed.

I did not have help during the day with my first baby, and I vividly remember at one point, after being awake for 72 hours straight, sitting against the wall with my daughter as we both cried together. I could not see straight, think straight, or take care of her, and I called my own mother in desperation, hoping for a few hours of rest.

Working night shift and trying to sleep during the day without adequate childcare took a toll on my own mental health. I suffered from postpartum depression and anxiety with nearly all of my children, and while I never experienced the break from reality or medication challenges that Clancy’s legal team argues she did, the sleep deprivation I experienced truthfully felt like something akin to torture. I drove home so many mornings completely unaware of how I arrived in my driveway, and I went 48-72 hours regularly with no sleep.

Sleep disruption is closely linked to postpartum mental health disorders, and the relationship runs both ways. The disorders themselves can cause sleep disturbances, and then not sleeping enough can worsen the postpartum mental health disorders, including psychosis. 

And let’s face it: the little sleep night shift nurses do get during the day usually is not the same as sleeping at night, so you’re constantly adding to a rising sleep debt that feels impossible to overcome. 

I remember it so vividly that it makes my stomach churn to this day. There is absolutely nothing like the toll that extreme sleep deprivation can take on your body and mind, and for someone already at risk of a postpartum disorder, I can only imagine how much any added sleep deprivation affected her.

At the time of her children’s deaths, Lindsay had not yet returned to work (their youngest child was 8 months old when he died), but for a night shift nurse who was pregnant with that many young children in a short span of time, and without much help at home, it can certainly take years to recover from extreme sleep deprivation. And even the stress of knowing you have to go back to work and dreading that upcoming night shift is a feeling I well remember… could that have been on the back of Lindsay’s mind as well?

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Her defense has pointed to the sleep deprivation of her final months, but I have not heard anyone ask about the years of night shift sleep debt that came before it, and it’s hard to grasp what that does to you until you have lived it yourself.

I have lived it, and I know many other nurses who have, so I am curious:

Do you think the fact that Lindsay was a night shift nurse impacted her symptoms?

And as an even broader question: should we, as nurses who know how hard it is to juggle night shift with pregnancy and parenting, be more honest about the toll it can take on our health, mental and physical, and advocate for better resources for maternal health, specifically for night shift nurses?

It’s a conversation that I know no one had with me, and I often felt like I just couldn’t “hack it” as a night shift nurse, but looking back, what I was asking my body and mind to do was a near-impossible (and dangerous) request.

No one can survive, let alone thrive, in the midst of pregnancy and parenting and breastfeeding and night shift without adequate sleep, and maybe that’s a conversation that nurses need to have more. Maybe moms and parents who are going through pregnancy and new parenting and breastfeeding deserve more resources and support, or at the very least, an honest conversation about the potential risks night shift can have on their mental health. 

🤔Have you been a night shift nurse while pregnant or postpartum? Do you feel it took a toll on your health?