I am nine months postpartum, and while I am very lucky to have a healthy, happy baby, I have fought a hard, complicated battle with postpartum anxiety since I delivered our second baby girl.
I am sharing my journey not because I know what I am doing or because I think that what I am doing is the standard, but because if you are experiencing the same or similar feelings, I want you to know that you are not alone. There are resources out there; you do not have to endure this alone.
I have always battled anxiety, but after both pregnancies, my anxiety hit levels of excess.
With my most recent pregnancy and delivery, I remember walking out of the hospital (because I am stubborn to a fault and refused to have a sweet young nurse push me in a wheelchair), and as I stumbled/wobbled to the car, I noticed a lady pointed to the car seat, cooing over my newborn. Instead of being proud or happy that she thought my newborn was cute, I immediately felt a tightening in my chest and a need to hold my baby to me.
I mumbled loudly to my nurse, “I hate when people talk about my baby.” She looked at me strangely. “Because if they can see her, they want to touch her,” I replied. The nurse still didn’t get it. Feeling awkward, I tried to pick up the pace of my wobble and just make it home.
Since then, I have had that same feeling any time someone other than my husband and I hold my daughter. What if they are sick and don’t know it yet? What if their kid is sick and they are carriers, and pass it to the baby?
My mind races and my chest tightens and oftentimes, I just cry.
Like many cases of postpartum anxiety, my anxiety does express itself as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). My hands have cracked and bled from the ridiculous amount of times I wash my hands or sanitize my hands each day. My laundry has been excessive because I change my clothes every time I go someone/encounter someone, because of germs.
It’s an out of body experience to know you are being worried about nothing, but at the same time, you can’t stop it.
It was my husband’s and my anniversary and our sister-in-law offered to babysit. I bawled from the moment we got in the car until we drove fifteen minutes to the restaurant. It was then that I knew I couldn’t keep doing this. If anything was outside of my sterile home environment, I could not handle it. I somehow agreed to a Disney trip, and it was a major trigger — the people, the germs, running out of pre-made formula and having to use powder… It took me a good month to come back down from that trip.
I wish I could say I am 100 percent back to normal, that my worrying levels are stable, that my obsessive behaviors have stopped, but that’s not entirely true. I am working with a mixture of family support, therapy, and have tried medication.
But honestly, I think talking about it has been a huge help. If my anxiety levels are up, and someone asks to hold the baby, I try to be honest and express how I am feeling instead of just saying no. I don’t want people to think I don’t want help or that I don’t trust them with the baby or anything like that. Rather, it’s a me thing — something I am dealing with. This has helped me feel more understood and honestly, less guilty.
My postpartum anxiety journey has felt never-ending, but I finally feel it subsiding, lessening in small but meaningful ways. I no longer ask family and friends to wash their hands or sanitize their hands before holding the baby, and I have even left my daughter with family for increasing amounts of time.
