Honesty about the realities of motherhood, and proper NHS support, would go a long way

‘It is a stain on our country that from prenatal to postnatal care, we seem to fail women at every point of their motherhood journey.’ Photograph: Tetra Images/Mike Kemp/Getty Images

I appreciated the sentiment in Polly Hudson’s piece, but ironically I also felt that it still framed motherhood as a wonderful thing, which of course it is for many, but not all women (I confessed a deplorable secret about motherhood to a friend – and it changed my life, 3 February).

To fully tackle this issue, you need to look at a more rounded view of women’s experiences of motherhood, especially in those earliest days. For some women, it’s not just wanting to scream into a pillow every now and again, it’s feeling suicidal every day, having intrusive thoughts of harming yourself or your child, fearing sleeping in case they die in their cot and it’s your fault, or not leaving the house because you simply cannot put one foot in front of the other.