Did having children make your anxiety worse or better?

[Sallybegood]

Was having a conversation recently with a friend who has kids (I don’t currently) and she was saying how it has stopped her sweating the small stuff because you just can’t, e.g. she stopped worrying about things being a bit mucky or germy as they inevitably will be as small kids aren’t brilliant at hand hygiene, etc.

I can see how it could work that way, but also understandably a lot of people seem to say having children made them more anxious as you care so passionately about someone without 100% being in control of how they are. Logically it seems to me that, assuming you are a person with generally good mental health, having children just would make you at least a bit more anxious than you were before, because it does dramatically increase your responsibility (along with all the wonderful aspects of parenthood obviously).

But if you are a person who suffered with anxiety before having kids, I am wondering if you feel it made your anxiety better or worse? Not to drip feed: I’m asking partly because I suffer with anxiety quite a bit and I am wondering if that makes it irresponsible for me to think about becoming a parent, as I wonder if I would cope and be the parent that a child deserves (and also hang onto my sanity for my own sake).

YABU - being a parent won’t significantly increase your anxiety/might even make you less anxious, more joyful, more focused on the big important stuff - you should go for it

YANBU - if you’re struggling a lot with anxiety already, you won’t cope with parenthood

Worse. I had never experienced anxiety until I had children. It was nothing to do with parenting though - if anything, my relatively easy children gave me a bit of distraction from my anxiety! Mine was mostly health anxiety, triggered by diagnosis of very high bp late in second pregnancy, which I'm stillon medication for 15 years later. That turned into more general anxiety. I'm mostly fine now, but have never been quite the same since tbh.

Disgustingly anxious about all the things that might possibly happen to them in the future. I found my anxiety reduced in the baby stage weirdly, I think it felt like a bubble and like I had some control. Now I obsess about the world they're growing up in and have horrible thoughts about war and climate change on top of the usual fears about their health, them travelling etc. it's exhausting!

My anxiety was basically cured the day DD was born, which is so dramatic that I assume it must have been hormonal.

Really interested to read comments here. I never had a MH issue before DCs. I’ve struggled on and off with anxiety and stress - about lots of thing but mostly work - ever since having them.

My colleague had GAD prior to DCs, used to lose sleep over the most tiny things are work - now isnt that bothered at all.

We have become total opposites. It’s a real roll of the dice.