How Postpartum Anxiety Is Actually Showing Up

Why is it that we have to convince ourselves that we’re “fine”; that we aren’t suffering; that we can do it all on our own without asking for help? 

Does it have to do with expectations of what mamahood should look like or how we should behave? Or is it a desire to maintain the same pace we lived pre-baby? 

Or perhaps it’s because we aren’t aware of the fact that we are, in fact, suffering; we aren’t aware that something is actually wrong.

This is why I want to break down the common signs or symptoms of postpartum anxiety and show you how they actually show up in everyday life. I want you to be more aware of how postpartum actually presents itself. Sometimes we understand the symptoms, but don’t realize that our own behaviour falls into one of these categories…and then we don’t get the support we need.

So, to start us off…

here are 7 plain and simple, common signs of postpartum anxiety:

1. excessive worry
2. feelings of dread
3. racing thoughts
4. disturbance of sleep and appetite
5. lack of concentration
6. inability to sit still
7. physical symptoms like dizziness, hot flashes and nausea

These are the signs that you might find if you were to research ‘postpartum anxiety’. A list like this which can leave you with questions about how these symptoms come out in your daily life.

So let’s break them down into more comprehensible pieces to show how they may actually look.

EXCESSIVE WORRY

• What if my babies never sleep through the night?
• Why isn’t my 16 month old walking yet? What have I done wrong?
• Is he too hot in the layers I dressed him in for bed tonight? Or too cold? I should go check on him.
• Did they wash their hands before touching her face? Is she going to get sick now?
• How are we going to afford sending them to university when we can hardly afford diapers?
• Should I have tried harder to breastfeed? Would my baby be better fed if I had just stuck it out and tried harder?
• If I let her cry in her crib for a few minutes will it traumatize her and affect our bond?
• If she doesn’t fall asleep now her whole schedule is going to be thrown off and she won’t sleep tonight!

FEELINGS OF DREAD

• All the days feel the same; it’s just groundhog day over and over. I can’t do it anymore.
• Showering is so much work. 
• How am I supposed to make myself a good meal when I’m running on 4 hours of sleep and feeling completely touched out?
• All I see is mess. Everything is a mess. I have no energy to do anything about it though.
• I don’t want to go to bed because I can never fall asleep once I’m in. But the baby is sleeping…but I just don’t want to.

RACING THOUGHTS

• (head hits the pillow) If I get up early maybe I can finally do some yoga before the baby wakes up. Or maybe I should shower and get dressed for the day. But then if I don’t do my yoga then I need to do something physical. Maybe I’ll go for a walk mid-morning. But she hasn’t been liking her stroller so I might not be able to walk for very long. Maybe I’ll just wear her and then we can go farther. But my back has been really sore lately, so maybe I should just do the yoga and forget about the walk. Or do yoga and go for a walk. I should check the weather and see what it’s going to be like tomorrow…
• (playing with your 4 year old child) Is he being challenged enough? He looks like he is but maybe he needs to be challenged more. Maybe I’m not doing enough to help him develop the skills that he needs or understand the concepts he should at this age. I wonder if we should look into a tutor or something, like someone who can teach him better than I can. Because let’s face it, I’m not a very good teacher and I want him to be challenged so he can be a good student. He looks bored. Maybe he’s not interested in what we’re doing…
• (eating lunch) How long did she sleep last night? Okay, so if she has an hour and a half nap now then she can be awake until 3:00, and then I should put her for another nap at 3 or so and then she should sleep for about an hour and then we’ll do bedtime starting at around 6:30 tonight and then she shouldn’t be overtired or fight going down because she will have had 2 really good naps today. But if she doesn’t have a good second nap then it could affect her nighttime sleep and then I’ll have to be up a few times and I really need more sleep than I’ve been getting…

DISTURBANCE IN SLEEP & APPETITE

• Waking up throughout the night even when your baby / child is still sleeping
• Waking up to check on your baby / child constantly throughout the night
• Not being able to fall asleep when everyone else is sleeping
• Laying down for a nap and then immediately having racing thoughts making it impossible to rest and so you get up and do something to feel more “productive”
• Knowing that you need to eat but not feeling like eating
• Feeling lightheaded or faint but not having the time to prepare something for yourself
• Feeling overwhelmed with how much there is to do and so snacking in the kitchen for a while 
• Using food to procrastinate

LACK OF CONCENTRATION

• Not being able to actively listen when someone is talking to you
• Forgetfulness – forgetting to do things, what someone said, or what you were working on
• Scrolling your phone or needing to do something else while watching a show or movie
• Inability to focus on one task
• Distracted by all the things that need to be done, but not productively multitasking

INABILITY TO SIT STILL

• Always needing to move
• Unable to relax or physically unwind
• Feeling restless when sitting in one place (dinner table, couch, car)
• Not able to be in the present moment

PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS LIKE DIZZINESS, HOT FLASHES, NAUSEA

• There are so many other physical symptoms that people experiencing anxiety feel: paralysis, sweaty, difficulty breathing, racing heart, dry mouth, ringing in your ears, sweaty palms, diarrhea, weakness in the legs, and/or blank thoughts.

So, Mama, I hope this has helped to understand more clearly what you might be experiencing. This is not to help you diagnose how you are feeling, but rather to bring more awareness and understanding to what postpartum anxiety actually feels like, looks like and sounds like. 

Remember, if you are experiencing any of the above and it’s interfering with your daily life, please reach out for more support. Because postpartum anxiety (and depression) are highly treatable and you deserve to feel good in your mamahood journey.

Ashley

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