For the first three weeks of my daughter?s life, I was scared of pretty much everything. The task of taking care of this small person completely overwhelmed me. How could I possibly keep her happy and healthy?and safe" I imagined all the countless things that could happen to her, the ones I could control and the far too many I couldn?t. For me, pregnancy had been a lesson in how it feels to lose control, but once my daughter was born, that sensation amped up to a frightening level.
Afraid to fall asleep, I placed her bassinet beside the couch so my obsessive monitoring wouldn?t keep my partner up. I?d lie and watch her tiny chest lift and lower. If I did fall asleep, any small noise?a sigh, a gurgle?would wake me, and I?d grab my phone to illuminate her body to confirm she was still breathing. I became increasingly sleep deprived. And petrified.
Every parent experiences some degree of anxiety. It comes with the territory: Alongside the intense love a baby brings, there?s also the paralyzing realization that you might not be able to stop bad things from happening to your child. When you factor in the massive life changes, hormonal shifts and exhaustion of those first blurry postpartum weeks, it?s no wonder about 80 percent of new mothers report experiencing the ?baby blues.? (Those feelings usually resolve spontaneously within a few weeks and are not considered a mental health problem.) A recent study out of the University of British Columbia, however, shows that anxie...