It’s Time to Talk About Postpartum
“So,” I said gingerly, picking over my words before letting them drop, “I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m kind of maybe going through a bit of a — like a malaise or something. I can’t shake this feeling of dread and I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is I’m dreading. But I thought I should mention it because, you know, I’m postpartum-y.”
My husband, keeper of all calendar dates in his mathematical brain, looked steadily back at me and said, “Well, it is about that time for you.”
He was right. One week before our first son turned six months, I started experiencing dramatic bouts of anxiety. I’d tumble into a pit of racing thoughts primarily featuring child abductions, home invasions, Swine Flu epidemics, SIDS, and car accidents. But that was just my jumping off point because from there I’d spiral out pretty much every horrible thing I couldn’t protect my baby from now that he was outside instead of in.
I wasn’t able to haul myself out of it.
Considering how hard it already was to schedule anything with a new baby in the house, the idea of booking a weekly session with a therapist seemed impossible which, of course, brought on EVEN MORE anxiety. But that scheduling stress was something I needed to push through if I had any hope of regaining control of my wild thoughts and moving on with my life. With the help of my husband, I did push through.
At my first session, my therapist told me I wasn’t in the throes of postpartum depression, which is what I assumed was going on, but instead I was experiencing something called “postpartum anxiety.” I didn’t even know postpartum anxiety was a thing, and also? I had been led to believe by fevered breastfeeding fanatics that breastfeeding warded off all that postpartum crap. I later learned that breastfeeding can help combat some of the postpartum anxiety/depression/psychosis, but not all. This is important to know. I was all set to ignore the signs of postpartum issues because I thought they wouldn’t affect me if I breastfed.
I originally went to the therapist hoping she’d write up a pill that would douse all my anxieties and we’d be done with each other. However, because I was still breastfeeding, she was hesitant to prescribe meds right away. I really didn’t know how talking about my irrational anxieties was going to help them go away. I already knew they were irrational, so what more could be said? It turns out that my cognitive therapy wasn’t just about facing the anxieties, but actually stopping myself from tripping down that thorny path of car crashes and the phalanx of strollers rolling out of my reach and into the busiest street in the world.
My therapy was about grabbing a hold of my brain, giving it a shake, and saying: “STOP THIS NOW.” The therapist told me to wear a rubber band around my wrist. When I felt myself spiraling, I was to pull back that rubber band and let it snap. “Not hard,” she reminded me over and over again. (To keep me from turning into that self flagellating monk in The Name of the Rose, I assume.) “It’s just a light physical reminder that you need to stop your thoughts in their tracks and turn them to something else.”
I wore colorful Goody rubber bands around my wrist. I coordinated them with my outfits. And with some rubber band swag I got years ago, my Wrists of Anxiety even acted as free advertising for Tomato Nation for a time. With time, patience, and talking, things slowly and carefully got better, and all the while I rubber-banded until I could steer my anxious thoughts away on my own, sans snap.
One week before our first son turned six months. That’s when it started before. That’s exactly where we are with our second son right now.
I didn’t necessarily expect to completely bypass postpartum anxiety this time around, but every aspect of my postpartum recovery with the second baby has been so different and KNOCK ON WOOD WHILE SAYING IT easier. I found breastfeeding to be easier, I healed faster, and I was back on my feet and out running again way ahead of schedule, so I guess I had lulled myself into thinking that if there were signs I would recognize them right away. I mean, I’m an old pro at this baby-having thing, right? I would look those anxiety spirals full in the face and then simply slip a rubber band back over my wrist to snap those pesky, postpartumy thoughts away.
Yeah: no.
A few weeks ago, I had what I now realize was an anxiety attack: racing thoughts, shortness of breath, and a feeling that I was losing control, all wrapped up in a tidy package of cresting nausea. And even more confusing to my current system is that the anxieties are very different this time around. Instead of the expected nightmarish apparitions of kidnappers and burglars, it’s career stuff, housing issues, and how I’m ever going to get the boys to sleep in the same room. Ridiculously mundane by comparison, I know, and yet they feel just as terrifying and just as insurmountable.
This is my plan:
I’m going to recognize these anxieties for what they are.
I’m going to put the rubber band back on.
I’m going to keep running because it has and does work serious mojo on my moods.
I’m going to give probiotics a whirl since a friend told me “good gut bacteria can help regulate serotonin” which might get my hormones back on an even keel
I’m going to tackle the “mundane” to-do list slowly and not let one item balloon into fifty other problems that are impossible to predict or deal with right away.
I’m going to get extra help if and when I need it.
I’m going to talk about it. Because it is important, and it needs to be talked about. For me and for others like me.
For the friends and family (MOMS AND DAD) reading this, YOU DON’T NEED TO FREAK OUT. I’m fine. I will be fine. I’m not on the brink of going Yellow Wallpaper on everyone, and that’s because I’m facing this all head on and I’m getting support.
No one ever has to go through this alone or unsupported. Talk about it and ask for help, because the help is out there: Postpartum Help International.
