Written by Sam Chadwick and modified from her personal blog
We returned from our 3-month expat to Sweden at the very end of July and lived the next few months in limbo a little bit, uncertain about future living situation and jobs.
About two weeks before we departed Sweden, I started worrying a lot. Worrying so much that I got worried about the worrying. That’s how I first described it, I think.
Many of the worries were about my daughter. I couldn’t help thinking about and dwelling on nightmare scenarios. I thought she would be kidnapped while we walked around the city. I thought someone would come up behind and attack her while I carried her on my back in the carrier. I thought we would get caught in a revolving door and be squished. That the ceiling would crumble and fall on her crib. It’s like everything was a big, scary what if. What if we fell over that railing? What if she fell and got stabbed with a fork? And it was getting to the point where I was just plain worried about having these thoughts, and they wouldn’t stop.
Why was my brain doing this? I worried about why I almost constantly went over these awful ideas in my head. And it wasn’t just in my head; I began feeling physically anxious, and sick to my stomach. Then I had actual panic attacks. I was self-aware enough to realize that’s what was happening — but it was really very terrifying. Like maybe I’m having a heart attack.
Mine happened while lying in bed at night. Waves of tingling panic, getting hot then cold, nausea, racing heart, wondering whether I should go to the hospital. Even when I wasn’t having the bad thoughts, I felt generally anxious, like pins and needles on my skin, for no apparent reason. I could forget about it for sometimes hours at a time but it always returned. Distraction was all I knew to do to try and avoid it, and that can work temporarily but tends to make it come back worse.
I would say it bothered me more than half the time, and so after a couple weeks, the struggle with anxiety started making me depressed. Why couldn’t I shake this? Would I ever feel normal again?
I resolved to see someone when we got home about what I was now referring to, when I talked to my husband, as my “mood issue.” I’m not sure why I didn’t feel like I could reach out to another friend or family member. I guess I felt like I needed to see a professional first? But not finding support from people I’m close to probably just made it worst.
So I went to a therapist specializing in perinatal mood disorders (a much more apt term, I believe, than the typical “postpartum depression”). I was a giant ball of anxiety, perched on the edge of her couch, describing what I’d been experiencing — until I started just completely sobbing. I had not seen that coming. I guess I cried of relief, and of fear. Perhaps the admission that I had a real, clinical problem – and the validation from her that it actually was, and that it was ok, and that help was available. But after all those tears (I cried more later in the car), I felt more relaxed than I had in weeks!
I had felt pretty strongly at some points that I might need some medication to help me, and I did see a nurse-midwife about those options. But in the days following that first therapist visit I felt so much better. Just learning about the physiology of what was happening with all that cortisol in my body (aka the “fight or flight” hormone) helped me figure out how to tolerate and calm it. Even though I knew that other people suffer from this kind of thing (the midwife called mine “garden variety anxiety and depression”), it still felt very lonely and helpless at times, which is just a terrible, scary feeling.
Another thing – the first week I noticed something was off, we had also just recently “night weaned” my daughter — meaning I abruptly stopped breastfeeding her in the middle of the night. My husband got up with her at 2 or 4 am for a couple weeks and offered cow milk or water when she wanted “mommy moke.” After a few weeks of my anxiety, I had almost forgotten about the weaning – until the therapist and nurse-midwife both said they thought it could be part of why I started feeling this way, given that chemical change in my body. Now I am even more committed to the gradual weaning process as only my daughter and I can work out together.
If I had been doing the wrong things before seeing the therapist (trying to distract myself and ignore it, keeping it secret, not going to bed until I was overtired, letting the worry consume me) now I was spiraling in the opposite direction – and feeling better and better.
Therapy helped as well because she asked me to do exactly the opposite of what I would have known to do myself. She didn’t tell me I could just kick this anxious feeling. She asked “what would it be like to just sit there, in your anxiety?” I would describe all these physical sensations leading me to worry that I probably had some serious health problem. “
What if that feeling is just anxiety?” I was never as honest as I was sitting on her couch. It was not uncommon for me to be chipper or chatty, holding it together, until inevitably some certain question from her, or something I heard myself say in response to her coaxing, and my entire facade would unravel, leaving me shaking and sobbing and…relieved.
My other “medicines”: Yoga. Seriously yoga. Fish oil. Essential oils. Crying. Quitting caffeine. Routine. My amber bracelet. Mindfulness meditation.
I have had a lot of tough months since that, ups and downs.
I’m writing this because I need other people to know about it. This has got to be SO MUCH more common than we all think. But we don’t like to talk about it. I sure didn’t.
Pregnancy, birth and motherhood affects our brain and body chemistry so much, but I also know that many people close to me have experienced similar problems and it’s not a just a postpartum issue. I’m really thankful to the handful of people who have revealed their own similar struggles to me so that I knew I wasn’t alone and that I had someone to go to.