We're Doing Okay
By Sarah Hauser
@sarah.j.hauser
“I have been anxious or worried for no good reason.” I grab a pen and circle, No, not much.
“Have felt scared or panicky for no very good reason.” No, not much.
“Things have been getting on top of me.” If you don’t count the pile of laundry on my bedroom floor … No, most of the time I have coped quite well.
I finish marking my answers on the form and then hook the pen onto the top of the clipboard. I’m at my OB’s office after having my fourth baby. I’ve completed this Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale form more than a few times, and over the last seven years my responses have varied wildly.
My 6-week-old son fusses in his carseat in the corner of the exam room, and I rock him with my foot as I hand the form back to the nurse with a smile. The clock on the wall reminds me I have about fifteen minutes before that fussing turns into a scream for food. We’ll be fine, I remind myself. It’s not like the doctor is a stranger to babies crying.
I turn back to the nurse as she asks how I’m doing, if I have any concerns. “Not really. Everything seems pretty normal. I’m tired,” I say with a shrug and a laugh, “but okay.”
***
“I can’t answer the phone right now,” the text says. Immediately, my heart beats faster. My fingers and hands start to tingle. They’re about to begin shaking, but right now it feels like I’m just shaking from the inside. I’m like water warming over a flame, growing hotter and hotter without notice from the outside until finally the pot rattles as the water boils and spills over.
What’s going on? Why can’t he answer? Is he okay? What if he’s in the hospital?
After trying to call him just to say hi, a quick text back from my dad sends my mind into a tailspin. I can’t stop shaking. I start crying. I pace around the house. I text my husband for reassurance. I check my phone and turn on my ringer to ensure I don’t miss a call. Something horrible must have happened.
A couple hours, or maybe just a few minutes, goes by when my phone finally rings.
“Hi. Is everything okay?” I blurt out. I struggle to slow the speed and steady the trembling of my voice.
“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t answer,” my dad says. “We’re fine. The air conditioning guy was here when you called.”
That’s it? That’s what I was panicked about?
My body still feels shaky, but my breath has started to slow. I feel relief, but also embarrassment—even fear. I’m scared of myself, scared by how out of proportion I blew this whole scenario. I’m scared by how out of control my body and my mind felt. Mostly, I’m scared because I have no idea how to fix it. I can’t remember feeling this way after having my twins, so the anxiety catches me off guard in these months after having my third baby. I can’t help but admit it: I’m not okay.
A few weeks later, I’m on the phone with my counselor and tell her about my overreaction. “I couldn’t calm down. I knew something had to be wrong with my dad. I couldn’t get a grip.”
I’ve always been prone to worry, but this was different. This almost felt like an out-of-body experience, and it had started happening more often. If my husband didn’t text me back right away, I couldn’t shake loose the thought that he got in a fatal accident. If my kids were playing in the front yard, I kept imagining them getting hit by a car or snatched up by a stranger. If I was out running errands and saw a fire truck racing anywhere near the direction of where I lived, I assumed my house must be burning down.
“It’s like your mind is trying to make up scenarios to catch up with what your body is doing,” my counselor says. Maybe anxiety manifests itself differently in others, but her words immediately ring true for me.
The fast-breathing, the shaking, the crying—these physical symptoms were a runaway train I couldn’t catch, and my mind kept trying to come up with all kinds of reasons why there would be a train running away in the first place.
***
I’m 32 weeks pregnant with our fourth. I jot down my thoughts, prayers, words, and worries in my journal. Getting my fears out of my mind and onto the page seems to help calm my nerves.
I can feel myself growing more weary, more disengaged … I can feel myself spiraling more easily. I can sense the depression sneaking up, and it’s scaring me. And then I get all the more anxious because I’m afraid of what may happen, how I may feel down the road.
These final months feel long, but I know his birth is just around the corner. I worry anxiety lurks around that corner, too. I’m almost hyper-aware, fearful that any extra tiring day or bad mood or discouraging moment could snowball into so much more. I ask my friends to pray. I talk to my doctor preemptively. I promise to check in with my counselor, and I plan to make a 6-week postpartum appointment with her just like I would with my OB.
I’m as prepared as I can be for whatever mental struggles may arise after giving birth, but I know there are no guarantees. I’m still nervous I’ll end up where I was after the last pregnancy—wrestling with darkness and fear that felt suffocating a few years ago. “I don’t want to go back there,” I told my husband on more than one occasion during my pregnancy. “I just can’t go back there.”
***
“Can you please go check on the kids?!” I whisper-yell.
My voice quivers, and I shake my husband awake. It’s 2 a.m., and I know I’ve been having a dream. In my dream, my son had wandered off, and I couldn’t find him. No one could. I raced around the streets, through a local park, jumping over cars and through mud, but in my dream it was like I had weights tied to my ankles or was running in water. I knew my child was lost, and I couldn’t get to him. I woke up like they show in the movies—sitting straight up in bed, breathing heavily, fear written across my face.
“Huh?” my husband mumbles.
“Please, please just go see if Josiah is in his room. I know I had a nightmare. I know what I saw wasn’t real. But I need you to check. Please.”
He doesn’t tell me I’m crazy or instruct me to calm down. He doesn't say I’m being irrational. He’s been through this with me before and knows anxiety doesn’t always need reality to feel real. My abdomen aches from my recent C-section, and doing a panic-induced sit-up in bed didn’t help. So my husband crawls out of bed and walks into the kids’ rooms, fixing their blankets and checking their breathing.
“They’re all there, and they’re all good.” He reports as he walks back into our room.
“Did you check on the baby?”
“Yes. He’s sleeping soundly.”
In the weeks following the birth of my fourth, I’m in familiar territory. I’ve been through this cycle—feeling anxious and panicky, crafting a false narrative to fit those symptoms, combatting that narrative with truth, and then slowly trying to calm my body.
I stare at the ceiling and take deep breaths. It takes me at least an hour to settle down, even though I know in my head what’s real and what’s not. My body just needs time to believe it. But the kids are okay. I’m okay.
Over the next couple days, I dread going to sleep, but I’ve learned ways to work through my fears until I can finally drift off. I expect more anxiety episodes to come in the weeks that follow, and a few minor ones do. But vague text messages no longer send me over the edge and ordinary moments don’t turn into panic and I haven’t had a nightmare in weeks.
Like a game of Whack-A-Mole, I know the anxiety episodes can pop out of nowhere, and I have to beat them down with everything I have. But I’m getting quicker on the draw, quicker to get the help I need early and often. I have tools in my belt this time around—medication, counseling, friends I can talk with, awareness. I stand at the ready, prepared to pounce at the slightest threat. And as the wearying weeks of newborn life go by, it hits me: I haven’t needed to pounce in a very long time.
***
My voice is even and calm as the nurse and I continue chatting. I’m grateful for the adult interaction after being holed up with a newborn, and I joke about how I count today a victory already because I showered and my clothes are (for now) spit-up free. She asks me if my other kids have adjusted well, and we make small talk about how this birth compares to having twins. Her twins, I learned during a visit a few months ago, are just a little younger than mine. Over the past few months we’ve shared about the exhaustion and joy a pair of kids brings and how it’s different having one at a time.
I unstrap my son from his carseat. He’s been growing more and more discontent over the last few minutes, and I finally acquiesce to his demands to eat.
The nurse adds my EPDS form to her stack of papers and finishes jotting down a few notes. As she opens the door she reassures me there’s no rush. She’ll give me some time to breastfeed before the doctor comes in. “Do you need anything?” she asks.
My chipperness surprises me. “No, I think we’re doing okay!” I say.
And we are. I can hardly believe it.