When Victoria Warnes gave birth to her son Wills in the United Kingdom in 2017, everything went without a hiccup. “It was a calm, planned C-section, totally straightforward.” A few weeks later, things started to get more difficult when her husband had to go to Australia for several weeks for work. Warnes’ eldest daughter Olivia, aged two at the time, needed a lot of attention, and with a lack of sleep due to feeding Wills at night and keeping young Olivia entertained, Warnes was under a lot of stress. Instead of seeking extra help, she took it all on herself. She would take her children to the park during the day, pushing Wills in the buggy so Olivia could run around. On one of these walks, about six weeks after giving birth, Warnes noticed chest pains. She experienced them again when she was running up the stairs at home. Being 35, fit, active and healthy, it was perplexing. A girlfriend urged her to see a doctor. Actresses’ deaths remind us heart attacks are No. 1 killer of women X-rays and ECG tests did not detect anything abnormal. But a cardiologist at a private hospital did a CAT scan that revealed a major tear in the coronary artery going into the right side of her heart . Her heart was under massive stress, with the collapsed arterial wall causing a 97 per cent blockage. Without surgery, she could have died. “I was dumbstruck. I have always had good health. I thought, ‘How on earth has this happened to me?’” she says. The doctor diagnosed her with spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or Scad, a rare heart condition that cannot yet be predicted or prevented. While Scad is responsible for a small percentage (about 1 to 4 per cent) of all heart attacks , it is the cause of about one-third of heart attacks in women younger than 50. It’s also the leading cause of pregnancy-associated heart attacks. According to the UK-based charity Beat Scad, which aims to raise awareness of Scad among health professionals and patients, there is no known cause of the condition. Some potential links include female sex hormones, the rare blood vessel disorder fibromuscular dysplasia, connective tissue disorders, extreme exercise and extreme emotional stress . Pregnancy and post-partum are also a factor. Most Scad patients are not pregnant, but 50 per cent of all coronary events after childbirth are due to Scad. Most cases – 90 per cent – are young to middle-aged women. After Warnes hurriedly packed a bag and arranged childcare, her husband drove her to Harefield Hospital in West London, a specialist heart hospital with a dedicated heart attack centre. There she had an angiograph followed by angioplasty – a balloon stent was inserted into the collapsed artery to reopen it and support the arterial wall. “It was a real learning curve for someone like me who normally lives life at 100 miles an hour,” Warnes says. “The experience was life-changing. I knew I had to do something with more purpose. I thought, OK, what am I going to do now?” After a successful career in advertising, she realised she had a new calling: to help prepare parents for the aftermath of childbirth, which so many say leaves them feeling overwhelmed. She left her job to train as an antenatal teacher so she could “get under the skin of what new parents needed”. With a midwife and a doula – who provides emotional and physical support to a mother-to-be during pregnancy and childbirth – she wrote training programmes for parents and designed the course content. Two years ago she founded her platform, Our Baby Club, which she describes as modern antenatal care. “We offer courses which are like antenatal classes with a massive dollop of life coaching,” Warnes says. “We don’t want to scare parents, but neither do we want to romanticise birth and parenthood. It’s vital that antenatal classes prepare parents not just for a personal shift in identity but also within their relationships. “We want parents to be tooled up to navigate this change before their baby is born so that it doesn’t come as such a shock and they can discuss and plan in advance how they might work through it – however their birth and feeding journey develops.” Chinese-Canadian mother opens up about postnatal depression in memoir Warnes recalls feeling “judged” and “like a failure” after the birth of Olivia during antenatal meet-ups because she struggled with breastfeeding and she didn’t have a vaginal birth. Her aim is to help parents realise that there is not just one way to raise a baby, and to guide them in advocating for their birth and parenting choices. “We don’t use words like ‘natural’ and we don’t only talk about breastfeeding . There are many other options which we present without judgment or bias.” I just wish I had been able to do this course before becoming a parent myself, and I would not have put myself under so much pressure Victoria Warnes, founder, Our Baby Club Our Baby Club offers group classes or one-to-one sessions online and in person with 22 teachers now trained in the UK. In 2023, the platform is set to expand its in-person reach overseas with more teachers, with Hong Kong and Australia top of the list. The platform also offers a three-month teaching qualification for would-be trainers, which includes a diploma in antenatal practitioner education certified by Fedant (the Federation of Antenatal Educators), a regulatory body. The platform enables participants to become part of a teaching community and they can choose to train under their own brand or that of Our Baby Club. Postnatal depression can hit mothers years after giving birth There has never been a more acute need for greater mental health support, including maternal mental health support, says Dr Lucy Lord, an obstetrician and founding partner at Central Health Medical Group in Hong Kong. Lord highlights that the incidence of suicide during pregnancy and the postnatal period is now estimated at 1 in every 25,000. According to Mind HK, a Hong Kong-based mental health NGO, 54 per cent and 37.1 per cent of women experienced perinatal anxiety and depressive symptoms, respectively, in at least one antenatal assessment in Hong Kong. For Warnes, the feedback from the more than 700 parents who have completed the Our Baby Club course assures her that her experiences have been put to good use. “Our focus is not just on the birth but on the parents, their transition and their emotional well-being,” she says. “I just wish I had been able to do this course before becoming a parent myself, and I would not have put myself under so much pressure.” Like what you read? Follow SCMP Lifestyle on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . You can also sign up for our eNewsletter here .