With a long history of anxiety, I had every intention of not letting anxiety get in the way of birth and parenting. In fact, I spent most of my pregnancy doing everything I thought was ‘right’ to plan and protect my mental health in postpartum. Unfortunately, I was so focused on postpartum that I couldn’t see the anxiety escalating throughout my pregnancy.

Welcome to Perinatal Stories Australia. In this first episode, I share part one of my own story and talk about what happens when, unfortunately like me, maternal mental ill health actually begins in pregnancy.

“I don’t want anxiety to get in the way of birth.”

This was my response to the facilitator of the Calm Birth class when she asked each of us in the room what we wanted to achieve from the class.

I always dreamed of motherhood, so falling pregnant felt like that dream finally coming true. Given my history with mental illness, I truly wanted to savour this happiness and to prevent anxiety from impacting my life as a parent. So I thought I was doing everything ‘right’ to protect my mental health by seeing both a psychologist (through Gidget House) and an obstetric social worker (through my hospital).

But that didn’t stop me from experiencing this constant unsettling feeling that the happiness would be taken away somehow, or that something bad would happen to me or my baby.

On the one hand, pregnancy was the happiest I’ve ever felt in my life, but on the other hand, I was also the most anxious I’ve ever felt in my life.

There were just lots of very little moments that compounded until the anxiety was bigger than it had ever been. I was so focused on the upcoming postpartum, I was really in denial about what I was experiencing during pregnancy because I was just finding new ways to try to control my anxiety and convinced myself that I was coping.

There were so many signs that things were only getting worse - insomnia, near daily panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, avoidance, fear of leaving the house, constant researching and reassurance seeking, combusting into tears when I thought about birth - it was so obvious and it was smacking me in the face, yet I couldn’t see it until it was too late.

Everything just felt so out of my control and the uncertainty of birth (and postpartum) really sent me spiralling.

On the day I gave birth, I cried the whole way to the hospital, I cried while I was filling out all the paperwork, and I cried through the hallways to the operating theatre.

Every person in the room was so lovely and supportive. I didn’t lose much blood. The c-section was textbook. My baby had perfect Apgar scores.

And yet none of that mattered.

I was the most anxious I’d ever been in my life, lying on that table. My body was in that room but my mind was trying so hard not to be there, trying so hard not to think about what was happening to my body.

I was so anxious I couldn’t even think about my son who had just been born. All I did was ask how much longer it would take, so I just gritted my teeth and closed my eyes through each panic attack, and waited for it all to be over.

My husband was so worried about me that he refused to hold our newborn son when offered, because he didn’t want to leave me alone.

I can’t explain the pain of having my anxiety get in the way of birth, despite my intentions at the Calm Birth class and despite trying so hard throughout my entire pregnancy to prevent this.

Even more so, my anxiety got in the way of my parenting. My very first act as a mother and I’d already failed my son because I couldn’t control my anxiety enough to hold him. To make the pain even worse, my anxiety got in the way of my husband’s parenting too.

For the first ten minutes or so of our son’s life, he wasn’t cuddled by his mum or dad, he was held by a stranger. All because of my anxiety.

And I guess I haven’t quite forgiven myself for this yet.

To be continued…

Listen to the full episode:

click for my postpartum story