*Disclaimer: This is MY story. Your postpartum experience may have similarities but if any postpartum (even up to a year) and pregnant women read this, know that it DOES NOT happen to everyone and you may have completely different symptoms or none at all. If you find any similarities through reading this know you can get help if you feel like any anxiety, depression or even excessive worry is interfering with your daily life.
I started battling post-partum anxiety and some depression with a nearly 3-month-old baby and as trials usually are, this has been the hardest yet one I will forever be grateful for. Never having experienced this degree of mental illness, or any degree for that matter, the symptoms of severe anxiety, excessive worry, panic and scary thoughts were completely foreign to me and as a first time mom I simply hadn’t heard many of these things could even happen. I had obviously heard of postpartum depression but I thought that meant you were sitting in your sweats all day crying. I’ve now learned there are several types of postpartum issues that are not congruent with that standard definition (not the sweatpants definition). Postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum PTSD, and postpartum panic disorders are common, yet very seldom recognized. I want to change that.
Every post and article I read while in the thick of this seemed to recount stories of women who had climbed out of the darkness. While I found these posts hopeful I wanted to know HOW they did it. Here’s HOW I did it.
- Admit what’s happening. I can now talk about “scary thoughts” as if they are just something that happens. That’s all they became ONCE I learned what they were and why they were happening. They were terrible, unwanted images mostly of harm coming to my baby sometimes at my own hand that manifested in my vulnerable postpartum mind and tricked me into believing how real they felt. They progressed from thoughts about harm to my baby, to thoughts of harming myself and even the feeling that I was indeed “going crazy.” This resulted in horrible anxiety that left me feeling depleted, terrified and panicked. My brain seemed to be spinning with “what if’s;” it would instantly make catastrophic situations out of simple worries and then the worries would spiral quickly to despair. Then I started worrying about the worry and having anxiety about the panic associated with them. I knew something was wrong. I knew I needed help.
- Face the fear and make a phone call. Call the OB, call a therapist, call a friend, call your mom, call your husband. Tell him you know you’re not OK even if you don’t know why. I got referred to a therapist who validated I wasn’t going to harm my baby and I wasn’t going crazy. She, along with self-help books, taught me how to face the anxiety and not deny, avoid or suppress the thoughts. That only makes them worse. I learned that because I KNEW I was not cable of the actions, no matter how big and bad the though SEEMED, it was the amount of distress it caused and not the content that was important. I then learned how to break the cycle by identifying what my major worry was at the moment I had a scary thought or other wave of anxiety. I learned how to peel back the layers on the new-mom fears. Simply put, I identified I was an exhausted, hormonally vulnerable, postpartum first-time-mom with expectations that I could and should be able do it all. I was scared to admit to anyone what was happening because I felt like they might think I was capable of those thoughts I had. Even if you’re scared, face the fear and make a call.
- Call in the troops. Your support system is KEY. My husband and my mom were mine. We had a code word. I would text either of them the word “Elephant” and that meant that I had a scary thought and I needed them to call and help me talk through it. They both knew every scary thought, fear and worry I’ve ever had. I also continued to surround myself with friends even when I didn’t feel like it. People help you feel “normal.” People will let you cry, people will validate your fears, people will lift you up. I would imagine that at least one other mother you know has experienced even a mild version of this but probably wouldn’t talk about it unless she felt someone else had it too.
- “Mourn” the losses of your old life. I feel like I did not process my new life as a mom. I had to “mourn” things I gave up like sleep, naps, my body, the amount of stress I can now handle and my independence. I’ve allowed myself to feel sad that I’m not the person I was before I had a baby. I have now learned these things are not necessarily gone forever and I can find balance. I also discovered I was completely overwhelmed by the thought of caring for another human being. This isn’t the type of overwhelm where you can just do less in your day because you’re doing too much, although that’s indeed helpful. This was a deep seeded fear of not knowing how to take care of a child that I was under the impression would come instinctively to a woman.
- Accept that healing will be a journey not a magic pill (although pills helped too). It is this cyclical healing that took me a while to grasp. I was of the belief that I’d just be cured one day. “You know what this is and thus you should feel better” was something I said to myself often. I wanted so desperately to feel better and I wanted someone to tell me how long it would take. I could gear up for the fight if I just knew when it would end. It will end. It. Will. End. Accept that it is happening but keep the faith that it will end.
- Once you stop the bleeding, find things that make you happy. Teach your brain that it’s OK to feel happy again. Walk, read, pray, talk, smell, play tennis, go to dinner, go to a movie. Whatever makes you feel happy do it. Take the simple joys of your new baby like her smile, her giggle and her discovering new things and when you feel that swell of joy, MEMORIZE IT. Call on it again when you’re feeling down, anxious or panicked. Then don’t stop these things even once you’ve identified what you think the major “causes” for this whole episode were.
I share this now simply because not many women do. I share this because if I had only known this COULD happen, I might have been saved from a lot of anguish. I share this in hopes that even one other woman can benefit from even one sentence of this experience.
Featured image by Eddi Van W