Health-related anxiety in the perinatal period

As a new or expecting parent, it’s understandable to experience some worries about your health or your baby’s health from time to time, especially in those early days of parenting.

Just as we may have concerns about how many layers to dress baby in or whether we are eating enough iron, it can be challenging to manage concerns relating to health or illness.

It’s common to experience some health concerns at any stage of your life, including the perinatal period.

(Illness anxiety used to be called ‘hypochondria’ however this term has been updated to reflect a more human approach and sound less like a clinical label).

• Excessive or constant worries about your or your baby’s health.
• Worries that are out of proportion to the realistic chances of you or your baby having a serious health issue.
• Frequently checking yourself or baby for signs of illness.
• Asking other people for reassurance that you or your baby are okay.
• Worries persist even after reassurance from health professionals and medical tests show nothing is wrong. 
• Excessive unhelpful behaviours such as body checking, seeking further medical tests or obsessively looking at health information online.
• Feeling so distracted by worry that it gets in the way of doing the things that you want and need to do in your day.

• Those who are healthy.
• Those who are experiencing real yet unexplained symptoms.
• Those who have existing and diagnosed medical condition/s. 

Health-related anxiety is not about whether your physical symptoms are real, but about how anxiety about those symptoms is impacting you and your life.

• Our relationships with our babies, families and friends.
• Our finances.
• Our capacity to attend to tasks around the home or at work.
• Our mood and sleep.
• The amount of time we have for self-care.

However, sometimes our earlier life experiences can lead us to develop increased health concerns, particularly during the perinatal period when we have new responsibilities as a parent.

Some of these past experiences might include:

• Perinatal loss
• Use of assisted reproductive technologies, such as IVF.
• Birth related trauma
• Being diagnosed with a significant health issue (currently or in the past).
• Family members or others around you experiencing serious illness (currently or in the past).
• The death of a family member or someone else you know.
• Having family or friends with health-related anxiety.
• Distressing information online or in the media.

Helpful health rules or assumptions generally keep us well, such as brushing teeth twice a day for strong teeth and gums. However, if these rules or assumptions become inaccurate and/or inflexible they may become unhelpful to us.

An example of an unhelpful rule or assumption might be, ‘My baby will get sick if they eat anything other than homemade pureed food’, or, ‘If I don’t get to the bottom of what’s wrong with me then I might become terminally ill and unable to look after my child’.  

• Suddenly becoming aware of normal bodily functions that might develop as part of pregnancy such as tingling and numbness, or changes in heart rate.
• Experiencing pain or discomfort with a symptom that you didn’t know was part of pregnancy, like restless legs at night.
• Being in contact with people or children who are unwell.
• Your baby crying continuously for no good reason.
• Receiving unclear or unusual results on a medical test. 
• Upcoming medical appointments or scans.
• Reading posts on social media about other people or their children (especially those who are pregnant or new parents) experiencing health issues.

• Excessive negative health-related thoughts.
• Excessive time and attention spent scanning your body for symptoms.
• Constant checking and reassurance-seeking behaviours.
• Constant safety vigilance, for example checking on your baby all night and being unable to sleep or relax yourself.
• Avoiding certain triggers, like visiting a medical clinic or shopping centre if you’re concerned about being infected with an illness.