The Midwife Chair Sat Empty

It's three in the morning. The baby has finally settled. Her mother hasn't.

She sits on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap and can't say why she's crying. She loves this child more than her own breath. And something in her feels like it's slowly going under.

She has heard there's a special midwife for moments like this. Someone who won't flinch. Someone who'll say, you're not failing, you're not alone, and we can help.

But in some Irish hospitals, that chair is empty.

The Journal reported this morning that Portiuncula in Galway and Portlaoise in Laois have no perinatal mental-health midwives at all. At Portiuncula, recruitment is underway. At Portlaoise, there's a consultant psychiatrist for less than a third of a week.

Five more hospitals offer this care only from Monday to Thursday: Kerry, Tipperary, Waterford, Letterkenny and Sligo. A mother's darkest night doesn't check the calendar. Sometimes it comes on a Friday.

Marie Sherlock, the Labour TD who received the figures, called it "desperately serious." Then she said the quiet part plainly: "We hear sweeping statements that perinatal mental health care is available across the country. It is not."

The Government says the funding is there and the hospitals need to fill the posts. Budget 2027 promises one more of these midwives at each of the thirteen smaller hospitals. That's good news, and it should be welcomed. But a promise for next year doesn't sit beside a frightened mother tonight.

Maybe you remember a night like that yourself. Or your sister does. Or your mother did, long ago, when nobody had a word for it.

What would it have meant if someone had simply walked in, sat down, and stayed?

Valuing life isn't only about the moment a child is born. It's about the woman holding that child afterwards, and whether anyone notices when she starts to slip.

Somewhere tonight a baby will sleep safely in a mother's arms because someone sat in that chair. Let's make sure the chair is filled.

Source: The Journal, 12 October 2026