Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

While we're out and about, I have visions of my child running into traffic, escaping from a train, or falling into water, etc. Like I actually see this happen in my mind's eye. It's terrifying.

I was a prosecutor for a while. It made me hyper aware. I'm scared someone will sexually abuse my son and I have no real way to prevent it. I'm also scared someone will take inappropriate images or "misuse" images of him. That time made me a better lawyer and impacted people's lives. But I regret the vicarious trauma and sometimes wish it had never happened so I could be blissfully ignorant since these situations are not something I can meaningfully control or avert.

My husband wants more kids. I do too. Truly. But I was in labor with our first (an IVF baby, so there's a whole lot of emotion pent up in that as well) for nearly 4 days. After he was finally born by emergency c section, I swelled up like Violet Beaureguarde in Willy Wonka. I couldn't bend my legs to sit on the toilet and my skin started splitting. It took two courses of Lasix and two weeks to go down. After that, the PPA set in. It was a lot for my 37yo body; it's now 19 months later, my hips didn't settle back in right, and I feel weaker than I did 2 years ago. But, I'm not getting any younger. I wonder: am I stupid to want more kids? Am doomed to repeat that kind of experience? If that's likely, does that make me a bad mom for exposing our existing child to that? Am I being ungrateful for this gift we worked and prayed so hard for? Could my marriage handle it? I have these thoughts and don't want to voice them. I am not sure there are answers. If they exist, I'm scared to know the answers or to see what happens if I do talk about the thoughts. First I am mad at myself for being unreasonably worried about something I can't really control, then I'm mad at myself for not talking about the worries. I try to relax and have faith that things will work out as they're supposed to and that I am loved and it will be ok. But I don't always succeed.

My baby is almost 2 and I am still terrified I'll die suddenly or get diagnosed with a terminal disease and he'll be left alone without ever knowing all the things I wanted to teach him or how much I loved him. This first struck me hard when he was about 8 mo old and I had to go away for 48 hrs. I was on the plane and started penning a farewell letter to him in my head. I was obsessed. I couldn't stop "writing" it. I wondered if I should record it just in case we crashed. Then I started thinking: if I do write something like this down, maybe I'd actually end up bringing it about by "speaking it into existence" or tempting the fates or whatever. I still don't know what to do when these thoughts find me- sometimes multiple times a week. I usually just have to sit with them until inevitably the distractions of the moment take over.

I leaned to grab something by my feet on the ottoman while rocking my baby, and I was convinced I'd pressed him into my arm/body too hard that I had crushed him. I checked him over and over and over and my thoughts started spiraling down the "what ifs".

This is when I first recognized that maybe my anxiety was more than just "new mom worries":

It was about 3am, and I was rocking my approx. 3mo old son in his nursery. He was hungry and I had just fed him some breast milk from a bottle. I realized that the bottle I'd used was the same one we'd found left in the car for a few days the week prior. It was silicone, not plastic. I had cleaned it twice and sanitized it. There was no smell, no discoloration. The bottle was fine. It went back into circulation. But, in those wee hours, I found myself absolutely SURE I had just given him some kind of bacteria that would turn into a digestive superbug that would ravage his little body- moving faster than I could catch and address it. I had visions of his death (something I still -- over a year later -- find difficult to "say"/type out) and, in that moment, I could literally feel the inevitable world-rocking guilt/blame I knew would follow beginning to well up inside me.

This incident caused me to stop and say "maybe my husband is right" maybe I have been being unreasonable. Not in everything, but certainly in some things. Maybe it didn't make sense to spend my sleep time waking up every 20 minutes just to check my son was still breathing. Every time they screened me for PPD, I wasn't depressed (its true, I wasn't). I didn't know PPA was a thing. No one ever said. No one ever asked. But it is a thing. It is a very real thing.

After that night in the nursery, I started talking about my feelings with friends and loved ones who were fellow moms. This helped. Eventually, I would come to realize the source of my issue. Namely: My pre-child self could work through moments of anxiety by thinking about the "worst case" scenario including how I'd meet whatever challenge I was worried about- to convince myself I could survive and overcome it. That coping mechanism disappeared when I had my son. The "worst case" scenario became unthinkable and only led to a death-spiral of other "bad" thoughts. I wish I had taken the time to get professional help.

PPA did a doozy on my marriage that we're still working to recover from, and it invaded this special newborn time with my first child. It made me question myself in a way I never had and it made my husband question my judgement in a way he never had (which only caused further resentment and disappointment in me). The whole situation makes me sad (and mad) to this day. Things eventually got better. As my hormones leveled out (which didn't really happen until after I stopped pumping), as I continued talking to others, and as I started being able to name what I was feeling, I got better at carrying it and at managing it. But the scars in my marriage, in myself, and in my post-partum recovery journey are still there- and I still struggle to identify when anxieties I have concerning my son are reasonable and when they warrant re-thinking.

If you've read this far... if this speaks to you... take the time you have now (hopefully while you're on some kind of parental leave), and talk to someone. Consider a professional if you can. Consider getting yourself the book "Good Mom's Have Scary Thoughts" - its pictures not pages of text - and it might help you realize this is not new and you're not alone.

I am afraid I will never feel like me again. I am mad that physically I will never be the same (literally, I had a failed surgery to go back and address something that didnt heal properly the first time around). I love my husband, but I resent that his life did not change nearly as drastically as mine did, simply due to biology.

The first day I was home from the hospital I kept asking myself "what did I do?" I didn't prepare myself to feel so disconnected from my 2 older children (8 year age gap) I often wished it was just the baby and I and nobody else. Fast forward 3 months later and after returning to work full time I only have a feeling of despair...I always think I may die from cancer. Sometimes i become afraid I'll lose my grip on reality and somehow harm one of them and not remember it. It's my worst fear... I can't stop crying about all of it.

Today while my husband was getting the bath ready with our son, I saw they were doing fine just the two of them. I wanted to walk out the door and never come back.

After a traumatic miscarriage I had horrible anxiety. The intrusive thoughts about my other 2 children started popping up a couple weeks later. I saw their death so many times in my vision and it scared me, it was really like suffering. I thought I was living in hell. Not to mention grieving over my baby who is now gone. I lost sleep over those few weeks and eventually couldn’t sleep at all. I became delusional and did get professional help. I ended up staying in a mental health facility for 2 weeks to help me get back on a foundation where I could go home. Now with medication, psychology, exercise, sleep hygiene, nutrition, my faith in Jesus, I’m knocking out those anxious thoughts left and right. Anxiety doesn’t have a hold on me anymore and I’m putting in the work and effort to better my mental health.

I can’t delete any photos or videos of him even if they are totally blurry and unidentifiable because what if he dies and I deleted the only memories I have of him?

I've been a mother now for over 20 years. I love all my children with every ounce of my being. Yet, I wonder sometimes where I would be in my career if I had not paid the motherhood tax of a combined ten years. At the same time, I am grateful for those ten years. I love my children with my whole being, and yet I was relieved and excited when my oldest got their own apartment. Even 20 something years later, with my youngest being ten years old, I get weary, tired and resentful of the needs, wants and demands they all have. I wonder why I was not sad when my oldest graduated HS, moved out for college, and then moved into an apartment, and wonder if there is something wrong with me, when I see so many other mothers mourning their children's completed childhoods. I strongly suspect that there is not, but I do still question myself and wonder why I am not happier being a mother.