Emotional meltdown on kids birthday - anyone else?

[SinkGirl]

My twins are 2 today. This afternoon I’ve had a panic attack, something I haven’t experienced in many years and I really don’t know why.

Last year around their birthday I struggled too. I was just coming out of pretty major PND and coming to terms with traumatic birth, months in nicu and one of my boys having some health issues.

This year has been very tough - one of my boys has had various new diagnoses and is being investigated for all sorts of things but I’ve been coping well with it all, just a bit overwhelmed some days.

Is it all this hitting me? Is it normal to have panic attacks when you don’t really know why? Struggling to shake it off because I don’t know what’s wrong.

It sounds understandable. Birthdays are emotive times for all sorts of reasons. You’ve been and still sound as if you are going through some tough times since your twins were born and it’s not surprising that now their birthday has come round it’s brought back all sorts of memories and feelings for you.

Feeling overwhelmed some days is totally normal and having good and bad days is normal too.

If you are generally feeling ok then I’d accept your feelings and that the unpleasant ones will pass. If you generally feel low, overwhelmed and are having lots of memories about the birth/time in NICU then it might help to speak to someone about it.

I really hope you have managed to enjoy some of your little ones’ birthday. It’s ok to have a blip on big dates like this so be kind to yourself and allow yourself to be feeling wobbly. Do talk to someone if the panic attacks go on though. There is help out there.

Thank you for your support, really appreciate it

It’s strange because there wasn’t any particular thing on my mind or bothering me, I just had terrible anxiety out of nowhere. I guess there is a lot going on right now, but usually when I worry it’s about specific things!

Hopefully it will pass :) Other than that we had a good day, I just feel very fragile for some reason.

i Reckon there’s a lot in our subconscious mind that is going on and most of the time we aren’t aware of it. Then there’s a trigger such as a birthday, an anniversary, a certain place or smell etc that will bring up some of the things in our subconscious and cause sudden anxiety or panic that we can’t pin down to one particular thing. I’m glad you enjoyed the day other than the panicky blip. I can really understand why you might have felt that way today what with it being the twins birthday. X