Marcelle Cooper realized something was amiss when she gazed at her adorable, laughing baby, yet felt an unsettling void.

Years prior, Cooper had endured the heartbreak of six miscarriages, navigated the challenging journey of IVF, and explored various alternative treatments, all in a determined quest with her husband, Steve, to welcome a child into their lives.

Remarkably, a year after they ceased their efforts, the North Sydney couple was blessed with their “beautiful miracle girl,” Skye.

“She was perfectly healthy and thriving,” Cooper shared.

“We were enveloped in our love bubble; it was an extraordinary time, and she hit every milestone with ease,” she recalled.

“But around the 12-week mark, I came tumbling down, like a brick wall.”

Cooper describes the emotional rollercoaster of having tried for a baby for so long, and then deciding to stop trying, only to then fall pregnant unexpectedly and carry a baby to term, as being completely overwhelming.

“You so desperately want answers, but there are none to give,” she said.

“There’s the hope and the grief and the anxiety and the shame, and that real feeling of failure, and almost desperation of like, ‘my body is meant to be able to do this, why can’t it?’

“We were broken, we were worn out physically and emotionally, and we sort of came to a place of surrender and acceptance.”

The couple then spent a year travelling and rekindling their relationship before Cooper unexpectedly fell pregnant again, but found she was immediately anxious.

“Given my history, I pretty much just resigned myself to the fact that I was just gonna wait for (another) miscarriage, essentially.

“And then she actually arrived and she was this perfect baby.

“I was like, ‘oh my God, I don’t know what to do. I can’t stuff this up… I’ve got to do right by her’.”

Adding further pressure, Skye was born during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning the Coopers could not have visits from family.

“It was just the two of us battling away, and we had absolutely no idea what we were doing,” Cooper said.

“It was just this devastating feeling of ‘this poor baby deserves so much more than me as her mum’.”

At that point, Cooper knew she needed help and had a telehealth consult with her GP, who referred her to the Gidget Foundation.

Gidget Foundation Australia is a not-for-profit organisation that supports expectant, new and potential parents who may be experiencing perinatal depression or anxiety with specialist care, including up to 10 bulk-billed, face-to-face, individual psychological counselling sessions for clients referred by their GP with a mental health care plan.

“It was just an instant sense of relief,” Cooper said.

“I was so ashamed and felt so guilty and like I was such a failure and I thought I was the only person in the world that ever felt like that.”

She began fortnightly consults with a Gidget clinician, via videolink due to the on-going pandemic.

“They really grounded me and it never felt overwhelming… it was so self-paced.

“My clinician would give me little micro goals… really focusing on the little wins which felt really good.

“I felt like I could share my worries with someone without feeling like I was burdening my loved ones because they felt quite helpless as well.”

According to Gidget Foundation, one-in-five mums and one-in-10 dads will be diagnosed with perinatal depression and anxiety.

“We, currently at Gidget Foundation, the largest supplier of services, only support 4.5 per cent of the 100,000 people that get diagnosed (annually),” Gidget Foundation CEO Arabella Gibson said.

“So we know that there’s roughly 95 per cent of people (who) are either trying to source out a private psychologist, which is rare and hard to find with specialist skills, but also probably going without, so we know that the demand is really significant.”

Early intervention is critical to changing the trajectory of families experiencing perinatal depression and anxiety, Gibson said.

“Having a baby, the identity change that brings, the responsibility that brings, the pressures, financially, personally, from a relationship perspective, there’s so many changes that we go through, and I think if we can support people through that process, we can save them a lot of heartache.

“So many people will go on for years feeling horrific and terrible and resorting to drugs, alcohol, gambling, whatever, when in fact, if we got in early, got them the support they need, gave them the tools and talked through the issues, we could actually capture a whole lot of heartache within a matter of months and have them back on track again.

“I know that probably sounds really simple, but in actual fact, it is that simple, because there is still a stigma around perinatal mental health, because it’s meant to be a time of joy but actually it can quite often be incredibly challenging and the weight of bringing a new human into the world can be very heavy.”

There are now 39 Gidget Houses across Australia – including the latest location which opened at Stockland Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast last week.

The Gidget Foundation was named after a young mother who took her own life while experiencing postnatal depression.

“(Gidget) had the beautiful marriage and the beautiful home, and the great job and the beautiful friends and everything like that,” Cooper said.

“It doesn’t discriminate.

“Asking for help isn’t a weakness, that’s the strength, and that was definitely the scariest and most courageous thing I did.

“But it wasn’t until I did reach out that everything changed.”

Baby Skye is now about to turn five, and will start school next year.

“She’s so caring and she’s super sensitive to everyone else’s feelings,” Cooper said.

”We look at each other sometimes and we’re like, wow, this little human is so lovely.”

Gidget Foundation Australia is not a crisis support service.