Sorry for slow acknowledgement - my January has also felt like an endurance sport, though for different reasons. At least spring is in sight now. Literal/metaphorical! X
Really appreciated the link about postpartum anxiety- I very much felt like I had my 6 week appointment where they ranked my depression level as mild and within a normal range of what to expect after the huge change of having a baby, and I never really felt all that depressed- what I was was extremely anxious for the first couple of months. Oddly going back to work and having my husband be at home with her for one month before she started coming to daycare at the center I worked at with me was what helped me the most. I have always struggled with anxiety to a degree- I have been to short term therapy a few times over the years to develop better coping strategies, but nothing prepared me for the intrusive thoughts and fears of being a new mother to a baby that I had wished for for so long. I definitely obsessed over her breathing (so much so that we actually put her in her own room at 2 months old and moved her out of the PackNPlay we had originally had in our room which seemed counterintuitive but I couldn’t sleep well when I was worried about every noise she made when she shared our room). But once she started daycare I became the more low key mom in some ways- I never worried about her scratching herself at school or when she had little falls while learning how to walk. It’s so interesting to see how our brains work- I still have anxiety of course, but my anxiety about my 4 year old is so different than it was when she was a newborn.
Thank you so much for sharing my prose-poem.
Sorry for slow acknowledgement - my January has also felt like an endurance sport, though for different reasons. At least spring is in sight now. Literal/metaphorical! X
Really appreciated the link about postpartum anxiety- I very much felt like I had my 6 week appointment where they ranked my depression level as mild and within a normal range of what to expect after the huge change of having a baby, and I never really felt all that depressed- what I was was extremely anxious for the first couple of months. Oddly going back to work and having my husband be at home with her for one month before she started coming to daycare at the center I worked at with me was what helped me the most. I have always struggled with anxiety to a degree- I have been to short term therapy a few times over the years to develop better coping strategies, but nothing prepared me for the intrusive thoughts and fears of being a new mother to a baby that I had wished for for so long. I definitely obsessed over her breathing (so much so that we actually put her in her own room at 2 months old and moved her out of the PackNPlay we had originally had in our room which seemed counterintuitive but I couldn’t sleep well when I was worried about every noise she made when she shared our room). But once she started daycare I became the more low key mom in some ways- I never worried about her scratching herself at school or when she had little falls while learning how to walk. It’s so interesting to see how our brains work- I still have anxiety of course, but my anxiety about my 4 year old is so different than it was when she was a newborn.