Made in Richmond

Now that it’s been 10 (holy heck how did that happen?) months since I had a baby, I’m finally in a place where I can really, really talk about what it was like afterward.

I don’t mean the physical pain or the exhaustion, which, in retrospect, weren’t that awful for me because I was blessed with a very easy baby. And Percocet. Lots of that.

Now I’m talking about my feelings.

When we were in our childbirth class, our instructor mentioned that if you’ve struggled with anxiety or depression, you’re something like 85% more likely to experience postpartum depression. Being someone who fits quite neatly into that category, I made sure I thoroughly educated myself on the symptoms and knew what to look out for.

When we brought JR home, I can surely say that I went through the baby blues. There was much crying and hand wringing and fretting and “oh my God what have I done”-ing for a couple weeks until my hormones leveled out. And never did I experience what would be classified as postpartum depression. Most of the time I was happy – tired and sometimes crabby, but mostly happy.

I was also scared out of my ever-loving mind. Not because I didn’t think I knew what I was doing. I did know what I was doing. I knew I was more than capable of taking care of my baby. But, I was sometimes paralyzed by the fear of The Bad Things That Could Happen.

My mind constantly raced with thoughts, not of terrible things that I thought I might do to the baby, but with terrible things that could happen to him or us: SIDS, car accidents, house fires, cancer, intruders, carjackings, abductions, me falling down the stairs and hitting my head, leaving him alone in his crib, starving, for hours until someone came home to find us. It became almost crippling at times, not enough to make us shut-ins, but enough to make me contemplate it.

Luckily, this was of thinking has kind of phased itself out. I still have my panicky moments, but I’m sure all mothers do. I never felt that I needed medication, but it might have reached that point if I hadn’t somehow, blessedly, snapped out of it.

Now you’re probably asking, why are you putting this out there? I’m doing so because I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one who has gone through this very specific brand of postpartum anxiety. I just never came across anyone else going through it while I was, too. I didn’t know what to call it or how to even begin talking about it. Hopefully by me saying this, someone else will.