Ignoring Daily Waves of Anxiety

During the end of my 2nd trimester I started to feel regular “waves” of anxiety. These are best described as quick, full body shakes. Often with blurred vision, dizziness or a tingling feeling. I didn’t think much of them at the time because they seemed related to stress at work (12 hour days) and limited time to prep for the baby. As I was able to spend more time prepping for baby (finishing registry*, prepping the nursery, labor and delivery classes) I thought these feelings would subside but instead only got worse. I also remember an extreme feeling of jealousy seeing or knowing women who were on their 2nd/final pregnancy. I so badly did not want to have to go through all of this again. 

Then in the 3rd trimester, when the baby started kicking and moving more, my anxiety got really bad. Much of my anxiety manifests in my stomach, so every time the baby moved I would get a wave of anxiety and it was awful. This made me start to resent all baby movements and consistently be uncomfortable because my baby moved A LOT. It also didn’t help that no one seemed to believe that these baby movements and anxiety could be linked. 4 different doctors in my OBGYN practice said, this was the first time they’d heard something like this. 

Fast forward to 36 weeks pregnant when friends and family were constantly checking in and asking how ready/excited I was for baby. While I would make jokes and say, “so excited”, in reality, all I felt was scared. Newborn phase was a journey I knew would be difficult but couldn’t prepare for at all. The unknown being such a trigger for my anxiety, made my feelings even worse. I did then have 2 phone sessions with a counselor at my OBGYN practice to check in on my mental health. I liked talking to this counselor and she did help a bit with my anxiety feelings but looking back, I don’t think she was trained enough to support someone like me who was really struggling. We talked about focusing on some of the joyful things of newborn life and gaining confidence that I would be a great mother. However, going into delivery day I was still having daily anxiety waves. I was feeling very overwhelmed and on how the labor & delivery would go, fearful we wouldn’t have a healthy baby and scared that parenting would be too hard. 

On Day 1 in the hospital, we had some hiccups; the IV was placed 3 different times with 1 burst vein, the baby had a murmur in utero (but disappeared after birth like the doctors said) and the epidural was difficult to get in. However, on day 2 it finally felt like we’d passed all the major milestones until baby which meant I was finally coming to the end of my pregnancy journey. This was when I felt, for what seemed like the first time, excitement to meet my baby girl. On day 2 around 1030a we were ready to push. I pushed for about 15 minutes but the baby's heart rate was dropping so we needed to move along quicker. My OBGYN came in, did a tiny tug with forceps and then baby Riley was laid on my chest 😊. 

This was only the start of my postpartum anxiety journey though… 

Looking back now, I can tell that my perinatal anxiety was really bad and I wish this was recognized sooner and managed better. Earlier recognition/diagnosis would have allowed me to enjoy more of pregnancy but also help me better prepare for what was to come. If there is any emphasis put on the mothers mental health, it is usually only postpartum. But this means we’re leaving women hanging for an extra 9 months and also missing opportunities to better prepare and manage for postpartum support.