A friend recently posted on facebook about how her daughter turned one and she felt like the worst was over in trying to protect her baby from harm and she could let out a big sigh of relief. And I could totally relate.
Admidst the fluff and bragadocius picture posting on facebook (which you can find plenty of here) it sounded like the most real, heartfelt, non-whiny, thing I had read since who knows when.
This prompted a lot of thoughts over the anxiety I felt about my own little one and how that was compounded by postpartum depression that manifested itself (wildly) as anxiety.
I would hear about “new moms” and how they would be so anxious about their babies and think, “Phew! Good thing I was a nanny, an Aunt, a church nursery worker, and the second oldest of seven siblings to boot. I won’t have a problem with that!”
Think again.
I was the most anxious mom I’ve ever seen. Maybe this was because the other people hid the crazy side of their anxiety behind closed doors and I was right there, helplessly watching and experiencing myself implode.
Or maybe it was just me.
It started right after our daughter’s birth. The insurance paid for an unecessary night in the neonatal intensive care because I couldn’t sleep without someone watching her. When they wheeled her out of our room, I imagined her being coo’ed over by a team of coffee sipping nurses at the brightly lit staff station just across the hall. I was horrified to find she was two corridors away, in one of the darkened rooms behind locked double doors (that I had glimpsed in my many laps around the hospital during stalled labor) hooked up to a heart monitor, and alone, for those 3 1/2 precious hours that we slept.
She roomed in for our remaining two nights (I had a c-section), and I napped during the day after my husband pinky swore not to take his eyes off of her and to wake me if he had to go to the bathroom.
I needed him to pull over when we were almost home from the hospital so I could jump out of the car and expose our daughter to the freezing air while I pulled back the blankets to check her breathing. I was beside myself. The same with our first unbearable one hour drive to see family, until I wised up and only ever rode in the backseat where I could constantly monitor the baby.
I didn’t sit up front again for a year.
When we’d only been home a day or two, I called my mom {sobbing}, “They didn’t check me out! Nobody knows if I can do this! There should have been some kind of certification! Why didn’t anybody come to the house and just make sure?!”
It was weirdest things that got to me. The constant feeling that my daughter was going to die, just stop breathing. Even though I have recognized my entire life, or thought I recognized, that God is in control (not me), I was caught up in the idea that the only way to be sure my daughter stayed alive was to watch her. And watch her I did.
I’d sit up at night just staring at her until somewhere around 3a.m. Or until my husband would roll over and say, “OK, time to put it up.” As if it were that easy, like stashing a toy away for the night. (These days, he’s the one checking on her if he’s up in the night, or before leaving for work in the early mornings, adjusting blankets, and worrying about the temperature. But before that bond set in, I felt all alone in the constant worry about whether our child was OK.)
Sometimes I couldn’t bear it, so he would put our newborn in the chosen sleeping apparatus of the week (that’s a whole nother blog post), and then tuck a sobbing and exhausted me into our bed….oh, I put him through so much!
It is amazing how little sleep I survived on those first several months. And when I did sleep, I had crazy ideas about staying dressed in case she stopped breathing and had to be airlifted to the hospital. I had visions of myself that I couldn’t shake. Weird stuff. Irrational. I’d bank on finding myself bra-less and barefoot in a brightly lit emergency room with only my shirt and panties as they told me she didn’t make it. I’d feel helpless thinking about how I would get our tiny daughter safely out of the upstairs windows in the event of a fire…and imagine clamoring over the roof with her tucked in my shirt.
I don’t swear on my blog. I don’t. But it was torturous. And I’ve been through a lot of a lot in life to compare this to. It was…hell.
And as one anxiety decreased another one would quickly manifest to take its place. Like whether she’d choke on something (I wore out some knives and blenders preparing this girl’s food I tell you and had perpetual piles of tiny objects that I’d collected from around the house – if you needed a battery or a paper clip you needed to find my stash).
Or I’d worry she’d drown in the bath tub. Or die in a car crash. Or fall down the stairs. Or be stolen from our living room while I cooked dinner. Or be clawed by the talons of a hawk when she was on the deck. Things it feels wrong to even put into words.
It was a horrible way to live.
At a time when I should have had unfettered joy (I did) in taking care of our baby, the thing I’d wanted and waited for my whole life, I was perpetuallfy exhausted. Not just by round the clock breastfeeding and the demands of a newborn but by my own racing thoughts, wild imaginings, and inability to rest.
And this lasted for a lonnnng time. I’m really only now, at 25 months post partum, able to see it forming up to be a season in my life. One that hopefully came, and fully went. Because when I was in the thick of it, I just thought it was the new normal.
But if it went, there was no definite ending….just a gradual realization that it was waning, and then that it was gone, kinda. With only the occasional outcropping of irrational fear born out of my intense love for this little person. But these days it’s more of a matter of “taking every thought captive”, self-discipline, and “thinking on good things”. Tools I already had in my arsenal during post-partum but which were somehow, short of crying out to God, unavailable to me.
I still worry about my daughter. I still have fear, described as lack of faith in God….so I have lack of faith as well. With Muffin turning two there’s more than enough to make my pulse race. But I don’t dwell on the fear. And while I still get stray irrational fears that I have to reign in (OK, a lot of irrational fears), I can catch it now, like I did this afternoon.
As I fought sleep, my exhausted daughter fell asleep in my arms and the slow moving ceiling fan made me think of Miami days. I recalled jumping off my bicycle to back away from an alligator emerging from a tiny pond beside a paved trail in Tropical Park by my grandparents’ house…I hate alligators. And I shuddered to think about that alligator chomping a not so quick kid like me…or a baby like the one in my arms. And that led to thinking about every alligator experience I’ve ever had, too many, and how I’d save my baby if…
Stop. Enough.
Like my friend on facebook I’m making a public proclamation: The worst is over. I’ve survived. Big sigh of relief.
My hope in sharing this is that some mama, right where I *was*, will know that while the end may not be in sight, there is one, or at least something that looks like the end.
And if this sounds like the most real, heartfelt, (and hopefully non-whiny) thing you’ve read since who knows when. That’s only because…it is.
-RM
17 Comments
Debbie Myers
I went through the same thing with my first born. He is 14 now and I still remember leaning over his crib to watch him breathe and waking up in a panic and running to his room. Thanks for being brave enough to share. The more we tell our stories the less alone others feel.
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Thank you Debbie! I can’t IMAGINE if she slept in another room…The hallway would have been my new bedroom! As it was she slept in our room with an angel care monitor…and I still had all this going on. So you’re saying it was only with the first born? So there’s hope? 😉
Debbie Myers
There is hope! I slept with him In my arms the first three months, but would put him in the crib for naps. God very clearly told me to give him over to him and stop worrying, so it took a lot of prayer, but I got through it. Just be aware of all the forms of post partum depression. I had it each time, but differently. I found that being aware helped me cope better. And it sounds like you have a lo Ely husband to look out for you!
Debbie Myers
*lovely
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Aw…nothing like a sweet baby asleep in your arms! I’m glad you (and *we*) got through it!
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Thoughts shared by another mom that I thought would be helpful:
I know those fears and thoughts that you discussed in your blog. I also sat in the back seat for a year, unless I was the only driver, and worked on plans just in case a tragedy occurred.
I’m sorry to hear about your suffering…because it is total misery to feel that way all of the time. You are a strong, and courageous Mom for waking up, facing the day and continuing on through your extreme fear.
I have actually dealt with anxiety all my life because I have general anxiety disorder. The degree of anxiety tripled after my pregnancy and I was not prepared for it.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. It helps to hear from those who have gone through similar issues. We each need to boost this info along to women whenever possible.
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Shared on facebook:
I haven’t dealt with postpartum anxiety so to speak, but I assure you I could relate when reading….and I laughed – not because I thought you were crazy, but because of my own similar thoughts….the hawk really got me giggling……hadn’t come up with that one yet! I’ve imagined what I’d do if a bear came in our back yard (we live in [town]), a fire was in our home, I drove the car off a bridge, my kid face planting in the oven when I’m checking on dinner, severed fingers from slammed doors, intruder enters while I’m in the shower, tornado survival plan (shoes? strength to hold everyone while the wind is sucking everything away), etc.
Just today I was pulling through an intersection and began thinking about being blindsided by oncoming traffic (car related scenarios are constant for me, even worse when I’m a passenger). Similar to you, a memory about my own childhood can drum up the “what ifs” for my own children, and after many things I dream up I wonder “how’d I even think something like that!”
For me personally, some of it is just plain ridiculous and some is rooted in a lack of faith, and while I ask the Lord to help me “take every thought captive” and trust in His sovereignty it is obviously an area in which I struggle. I’ve always been prone to this type of mental “drama”….playing out funerals and tragedies and bringing myself to tears…even before kids. These thoughts have yet to paralyze me, though I am a protective parent, but they definitely produce unnecessary anxiety and can delay my falling sleep if they enter my mind at bedtime. I hear ya’, girl!!!!
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Shared on facebook:
Hey! I’m your friend! 🙂 glad my picture overload was coupled with being real. 🙂 this whole time I have thought. ..Yay. .I didn’t have any postpartum problems. …well crap, after reading your words. .maybe I did/do. Is it normal for a mom to take the baby out in a stroller with Mase a golf club and a retractable saturated knife? I stay awake at night thinking about what I would do if I heard an intruder coming up the steps that separates me and my baby. There is a knife in my drawer next to my bed… What if I was in my baby’s room when I heard the intruder? Could I grab the baby and get out the dormer window in time to jump down to the first floor? Saturday we were hanging out and Pep Boys in the back of the store while [my husband] was at the cash register talking to the guy, I started daydreaming about what I would do if I heard gunshots going off at the front… I would just grab my baby and run out the back and leave [my husband] to defend himself. Maybe I do have some issues… Actually this is how my brain worked prebaby…kind of a Bourne identity overly aware of my surroundings and how I could fight in an instance if need ed sort of thing. Having my girl on the outside of me has heightened my defensive readiness. ..if that was even possible. This has largely been an inside, secret commentary for me. [My husband] has just laughed when I have leaked any of these thoughts. I have chalked it up to my childhood….but, I’d now like to think that my brain hasn’t been thinking like this just because this may be who I am. ..maybe the postpartum hormones, etc.. thanks for sharing. Thanks for supporting me since I told you I was pregnant over that joyful chat we shared.
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Shared on facebook:
I found this on my newsfeed today and was kinda surprised. I hadn’t read anything on postpartum anxiety before your blog. Thanks for writing and sharing with us Rachel:) I’m encouraged to see it being paid more attention.
http://www.wholemom.com/health-2/coping-postpartum-anxiety/
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Shared on facebook:
Rachel, this really hit home. I really had a tough time when my first was born. The crazy thoughts, the constant planning on “what to do if,” the really terrible scenarios that I worried about that were so completely random. I didn’t tell anyone. What if they thought I was too crazy to be a mom and took my baby away? I can remember so many nights that I watched to make sure he didn’t stop breathing.
And then like you said, one day it was just kind of…gone. I still worry but I have to keep myself in check. I still have completely irrational fears (like…my husband didn’t answer the phone. What if the house caught on fire while they were napping and the smoke detector didn’t go off and that’s why he didn’t answer?! Yeah. Crazy stuff.) But it’s better now. I could feel myself slipping back to that place when my second was born. I don’t know if it was the fact that I now had 2 young kids to take care of, but it wasn’t so bad this time around.
Anyways. Thank you for sharing. It’s something that really doesn’t get talked about.
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Shared on facebook:
Going to share in a mommy FB group I’m in. This topic comes up often and I think your transparency will be an encouragement to many who are struggling!
Amy Cuzzort
Good for you for being brave and honest enough to share your struggle. i’m so very sorry that you had to deal with that season of your life. I hope your story can help others!
Rachel @ Reflective Mom
Thank you, Amy. I do too. I think this might be the closest to sharing from “my heart” as you seem to do in all of your inspiring posts. (Maybe that’s why it touches people.)
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