I Am Still Alive.

I am still alive.

I just haven't posted anything new in my blog for a really long time.

I contemplated just ending the blog.  Still am.

But I got the urge to blog this evening as I was putting away the groceries.

What about?

Postpartum Anxiety.

Did you know that it existed?  Well guess who has it - ME!  Joy oh joy. (/end sarcasm)

I had never heard of postpartum anxiety before, only postpartum depression.  I had postpartum depression after I had Ari, so I knew I'd probably have issues with it this time around.  I did everything to prevent it starting from the second Karys was born (well, not the SECOND....I was still open on an operating table, but you get the idea.)   I still don't understand why I have this after my second pregnancy but not the first.  From my research, it seems that postpartum anxiety really seems to manifest roughly 4 months after giving birth. 

And all was going well until my little Kare-bear was around 4 months of age.  And oddly enough, that corresponds to about the time I stopped blogging. There's probably a connection there.  Anyhow.

That's when I noticed that I was having some crazy issues.  I kept worrying about my mortality.  As in "What if something happened to me? Who would take care of my babies?"  To demonstrate how ridiculous it was, I would worry about walking down the stairs, because what if I fell and hurt myself and had to go to the hospital, then who would take care of my babies?  Or I would worry about what if I was in a car accident and had to go to the hospital, then who would take care of my babies?  And of course there was always the underlying fear of dying in which case who would take care of my babies?

I know, it sounds irrational.  I knew it was irrational.  I still know it's irrational.  But nothing I did would stop these thoughts from happening.  I'd mentioned this to my doctor and he upped my anti-postpartum depression medicine.  While it helped with the depression, it was not helping the anxiety over my mortality.  

It was getting rather bad, to the point where I did  not want to walk down stairs lest something happen to me, or go outside, or drive anywhere, or anything that could possibly result in me somehow ending up in the hospital and away from my babes. I'd force myself to do these things of course, and nothing would happen other than me worrying the whole time. I'd lose sleep worrying about it.  It was very debilitating. 

Case in point, driving to my next doctor's visit the entire ride, no matter what I did I could not get over the anxiety of being away from my babes and from worrying about who would take care of them if something happened to me.  I played the radio, sang along to the songs, told myself I was being irrational, tried to block the thoughts from my mind and NONE of it helped.  And even waiting to see the doctor I was worrying about this! After all, what if my blood work came back and it was something tragic?  My blood work (as usual) was fine, but I was stressing out like mad over it!

So of course, I told my doctor about all of this and I am so thankful that I have such a wonderful doctor who CARES.  He prescribed medicine for the anxiety and told me to take it as needed and that it works quickly.  I didn't want to take more medicine.  I didn't go to the doctor to get another prescription.  I just went to find out the results of my blood work and update him on my postpartum depression.  But I couldn't continue to exist in a constant state of worry about my mortality.

So I took the medicine.  And it helped immensely and immediately.   It was amazing how well it worked.  I could feel myself relaxing, untensing, my thoughts on mortality fading away.  Even if I forced myself to think about it, the thoughts went away when I stopped thinking about it.

And so that brings me to today, thinking about how far I've come from just a few weeks ago and realizing that I should probably blog about it so that there's more information out there about this.  Mothers already have enough to worry about. The last thing we should have to worry about is postpartum anxiety.  And just like with my issues with adenomyosis and my infertility issues, maybe there's someone out there who will be helped by this post as well.