I am a father of two children. After the birth of my second child, I was affected and hospitalised with postnatal anxiety.
Having never had any mental illness before or after this experience, I can say this was by far the scariest experience of my life. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
This is my story of how postnatal anxiety got the better of me and how I recovered from it.
During the birth of both our children, I was employed at a company that gave a generous six weeks of paternity leave to secondary carers. Each time, I combined this with my annual leave and implemented an ingenious system of “baby shift work” to allow my wife and myself to get a solid eight hours of sleep. My wife would look after the children from 5am to 1pm, then I would take the graveyard shift from 10pm to 5am.
This system worked perfectly with number one. It also worked for number two, until at five weeks everyone in the family got sick. My wife was so sick that she was out of action, so my responsibilities increased. Our newborn got one thing after another; first, a cold that gave him elevated temperatures before I could treat him with paracetamol. Then gastro spread throughout the house - we all got that. My wife couldn't drive after her C-section so I needed to manage the hospital and doctor's visits, in addition to doing the graveyard shift.
I was instructed that if the newborn's temperature went above a certain threshold due to any of these infections, I needed to take him to hospital. Night after night it came close to the threshold. He was snuffly and had difficulty breathing comfortably.
I was socially isolated, dealing with this without the support of anyone else in the small hours. It was night in, night out with little to no social contact and no time in the sun.
Caring for a sick newborn in late every night, anxiety became the norm for me. Ruminating about the future when trying to sleep. Would I have to go to the hospital in the next hour? Would the newborn be ok? Should I be doing something now? How will I cope with all this when my leave is up and work resumes? How will my wife cope?
“The fear I had been experiencing was so intense that my brain had identified the emotion of anxiety as a threat. I had gone from postnatal anxiety to anxiety about anxiety.”
A feeling, which I now know was intense anxiety, slowly came over me. I couldn't stop fidgeting, couldn’t sit down or communicate with people like I normally did. Friends offered to help by bringing meals and looking after the newborn, but this intense feeling didn’t go away. Constant and intense anxiety makes you feel cocooned in an invisible cylinder. You can’t connect with anyone and they can’t connect with you. Eventually, I lost the ability to sleep completely, which compounded the already stressful situation. I totally lost it one night and went to the hospital who gave me medication to help me sleep.
After that, I went on a six-month antidepressant program, combined with a temporary bridging script of sleeping pills. The antidepressants initially made things worse, for four to six weeks as I went up on them. My brain chemistry was changing and making the anxiety worse. I continued ruminating 24/7 - what if these antidepressants don’t work? I can’t work like this - will my family be on the street? Will I ever be able to sleep properly again?
The fear I had been experiencing was so intense that my brain had identified the emotion of anxiety as a threat. I had gone from postnatal anxiety to anxiety about anxiety. Like putting out a fire with gasoline, my brain dealt with the anxiety from these thoughts by flooding my system with adrenaline and cortisol. This gave birth to more anxiety. So, a nightmarish infinite loop of ever-increasing anxiety was born.
When the antidepressants finally stabilised, they gave me much-needed relief. Over the next six months, my brain calmed down from being hypersensitive to anxiety. I knew the antidepressants were required, and was grateful that they worked, but I hated being on them. They replaced my anxiety with blandness and a sense of mediocrity, severing all the highs and lows of life from my conscious experience. Monday mornings were the same as Friday night drinks. Everything was the same: bland. I also packed on 30kg from antidepressants, as they affected my satiety signals. During that six months I never felt full and overate. I was kind of apathetic about it emotionally.
Therefore, I was extremely keen to get to the next stage: being ready to wean off the medication. I learnt strategies to manage the impending sensation of anxiety. For me, the most effective strategies were acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation had sounded like New Age clap-trap to me, before I looked into it. However, after I found out that it was evidence-based, I did one hour a day, and it really helped.
“Watch the feelings, don’t try to judge, analyse or change them. Just observe them and let them run their course. ”
With all these tools at my disposal, I came off antidepressants very slowly, over 14 to 16 weeks. I was able to diffuse the anxiety as it returned. During the weaning process, I did experience three very short, but rather intense, panic attacks. Even though they were intense, I was able to implement the strategies I had learnt: realising that “it’s just a feeling and they can’t hurt you”; watch the feelings, don’t try to judge, analyse or change them. Just observe them and let them run their course. I diffused these anxiety attacks in this manner, and they went away, never to return.
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Recovery was an ongoing process. I had a little bit of residual sleep anxiety, here and there, for around a year too. The residual sleep anxiety mainly fed off the occasional bad night's sleep. With each successful night of sleep, the sleep anxiety slowly blunted to a point that is barely existent now.
So if you're struggling with the self-perpetuating merry-go-round of postnatal anxiety, know that it’s temporary. It will end. I can’t say when, as every journey is different, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Often the most painful experiences are the most character-building, especially with the right support. As an example, I recently used the strategies I learnt through this experience to quit alcohol for one year straight. That idea would have been unimaginable before kids. The insight I got from this experience really helped me become a stronger and healthier person.
Looking back now, when my anxiety was in full flight, even holding my second newborn made me feel uncomfortable. At first, I felt on some level that we had broken our happy family by bringing number two onto the scene. Before that, I would always take number one out on many father-and-son days; after, I felt completely broken. Life was golden and happy with one, and I feared it had been destroyed with two.
Now, after my recovery, my mindset is totally different. I have bonded with my second just as much as my first. I couldn’t imagine life without either of them! They give me so much joy and are the centre of my existence. We go out all the time on boys’ trips to the arcade, on train rides, ferry trips and all sorts of things to give Mum a break. Sometimes we all go out as a family too. I’m deeply involved in making memories with them and love every minute of it. Life is golden and happy again with two!
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