Pandemic and Postpartum Anxiety

The Irony of this title has me feeling a little uncomfortable even as I write it. “Pandemic and Postpartum Anxiety….” If you had told me as little as a year ago that these two would be my current reality, I would have laughed. Hard. A year ago from this day I was riding the high of being four months postpartum with my son. Exhausted, but loving every dirty diaper, spit up in my hair, without a care in the world. I have no issue admitting that I was one of those moms you loved to hate. Toting her four-month-old to wineries in a wrap carrier, already a few pounds less than what my doctor liked to call “fighting weight.” I wasn’t sleeping more than a few hours a night, but I was glowing. 

Physically, I had zero issues postpartum. I constantly heard how lucky I was to have my health and the health of my son. I listened to so many birth stories during my pregnancy and beyond, that it made me feel like I had to keep mine fairly secret. Ramsey was born out of a hospital setting in a highly regarded birth center in San luis Obispo. He was born peacefully in a tub, after spending most of my 30 hour labor in water, at home, or at the center. He breastfed like a champ, other than the occasional painful latch, and we were sent home to settle in a mere three hours after he was born. If you didn’t hate me a little after the bit about the wineries and the weight loss, you might now and I’m ok with that. This will all come full circle. 

Fast forward to month six postpartum. People often say that there will come a day after you have a baby when the fog lifts and it’s generally around this time. The baby blues have passed, your body has recognized that little to no sleep is the new norm, and a routine is more or less established. I had a hard time identifying with this. I was coping with the lack of sleep, learning to adjust to “baby brain” by creating notes and checklists for myself everywhere, and was connecting with my baby exponentially more every day. The fog for me wasn’t cute, it wasn’t temporary, and it wasn’t outwardly apparent. That was by far the scariest part. Baby brain and baby blues are comparable to a marine layer of fog. It settles near the coast in the morning and generally burns off, exposing the sun, by early afternoon. Imagine having to delay your morning cup of coffee until noon, after only getting a few hours of sleep. This is the postpartum fog. Postpartum anxiety and depression are a dark, tumultuous storm. They’re unpredictable in every way, and they’re darker than I could have ever imagined. 

Intrusive thoughts are common in the first few months postpartum. We’ve all had them to some extent… those worst-case-scenario, doomsday ish thoughts that give you a quick shiver and then dissipate. Anyone who struggles with an anxiety disorder knows that these thoughts can often run rampant, and cannot, without any shred of hope, be contained. Now imagine that these thoughts are directed towards the one person you love most in the world (hey, maybe this person is you right now, that’s fine too!) It’s normal to worry about GERD and ear infections and things like, “Is my baby gaining enough weight?” It is not normal to worry about the 1,000 and one ways in which this perfect, helpless, little earth angel could die. All. Day. Long. 

I didn’t ask for help until month nine. Let me repeat that louder for everyone in the back. Nine Months. Nine months of lying awake in bed while my baby slept soundly, researching the symptoms of Leukemia, or wondering if tomorrow’s trip to the pediatrician would be the day that we got into a fatal car accident. It didn’t stop at the intrusive thoughts. At one point every diaper change sent me into a fit of rage. I screamed into pillows. Threw anything I could get a hand on across the room. I left him in the bassinet to clear my head for a few minutes at the suggestion of many articles I had read. Through all of the rage, exhaustion, and dark, dark moments of desperation, I didn’t shed a single tear. It was when I came to this realization of numbness that my aha moment was clear. I saw my doctor immediately and began taking a mood stabilizer the very next day. 

Maybe you’re wondering how this has anything to do with the current COVID-19 pandemic, and I’m here to tell you that it has everything to do with it. I set a goal for myself to be completely weaned from the mood stabilizer at fourteen months postpartum, six months after beginning to take it daily. I’m currently almost sixteen months in, with no end in sight. I know you probably think that I’m one of those moms carrying around a gallon of hand sanitizer and worrying about my child being one of the .0001% of toddlers to end up in the ICU from the virus, but that isn’t the case at all. Postpartum anxiety doesn’t make you dumb. I have the wherewithal to understand basic statistics and deductive reasoning. What I don’t have the ability to do is stop myself from spiraling. My small business is struggling like so many others, and my husband is working more hours for reduced pay. We have plenty of resources and support to not just survive, but thrive, and I lay awake at night wondering what it would be like to lose everything. What would it be like to co-sleep while nursing in a homeless shelter? What if we have to quarantine when I’m giving birth to any subsequent children and I’m forced to separate from my newborn baby for days or even weeks? Did I mention that I’m not even pregnant? 

I hope if nothing else, you see the irony in the title of this post. There are so many uncertain, unnecessary thoughts and opinions swirling around in our world right now, especially for those of us that are fortunate enough to be raising children. Postpartum anxiety is like a pandemic in every sense of the word. There’s no telling how or why it affects some of us, while others are untouched. It’s something that we need to be more comfortable talking about, but because there is no easy fix or cure (you have to see the similarity here) it continues to silently spread.

pan·dem·ic

/panˈdemik/

Adjective

A pandemic is a global outbreak of disease. Pandemics happen when a new virus emerges to infect people and can spread between people sustainably. Because there is little to no pre-existing immunity against the new virus, it spreads worldwide.