Anxiety and PND - decided to see go tonight about antidepressants as feel so desperate

[Anroga76]

Hi
For the last 3 weeks I have been experiencing severe anxiety during he night and early hours of the morning which is now creeping into e daytime. After looking at the symptoms of PND I definitely have some of those.

My gp and he both said I should ride it out but I can't carry on feeling like this, have booked to see a counsellor on Saturday but after another horrendous night I have booked to see my gp tonight about medication.

I have never had depression or anxiety in he past so know nothing about antidepressants any advice, stories etc would be appreciated.

I tried for years to have a baby and then got success through IVF and so sad I feel like is now with my 9 week old.

Is there anything specific that triggers your anxiety? I noticed it starts in the night which was when mine did because I was scared of cot death. This is very very very normal by the way. What I did was to get a baby movement sensor which helped hugely as I knew she was still breathing without me checking every five minutes!
Sleep deprivation is a huge contributor to anxiety and depression so you need to get help to get more. Is there anyone that can take your baby in the morning while you get more sleep? That helped me too.
Speak to your health visitor and tell her everything. They are trained in this and have heard it all before as its so so normal believe me!! Having an ivf baby doesn't prevent pnd it is indiscriminate.
Sending you loads of hugs the new born stage is hard but you won't always feel like this believe me.
Pm me if you need to further chat xx

Anroga I am slightly different in that I have developed pre-natal anxiety. I developed anxiety 5 weeks ago (currently 31 weeks pregnant). Mine started after being seriously ill. I never have had any MH issues before and I honestly would take the serious illness over the anxiety if I had to choose. I had never experienced anything like this.

I went to my GP after 4 days who referred me straight to psychiatrist and psychologist. I started anti-anxiety meds after 1 week (been on 4 weeks) and they have made a massive difference. I also started counselling 2 weeks ago, which again has helped, but I personally feel the meds enabled me to be in a place where counselling would be effective. I think counselling would have initially been useless for me as I was so anxious I couldn't even speak about what I was worried about (which frankly I would say was everything!)

I have 2 older children and a big worry was that I would "ruin their childhood/not enjoy their childhood" as I was so fearful - a vicious circle. After 5 weeks, I am not "cured". I am however a lot better and can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and probably see that I do need to work on how I deal with normal worries in day to day life.

Please go back to your GP (can you see another one). Don't put pressure on yourself that you are missing baby's early days etc - that's the anxiety talking. You can get through this.

Thank you so much for both of your replies have only been able to get on this now.

A lot has happened since this post, the anxiety and depressions spiralled out of control and after calling an emergency doctor I was put on 2mg of diazepam 3 times a day which helped me sleep and eat almost straight away.

I then arranged to see a recommended psychiatrist self funded as the wait was too long on the nhs who diagnosed me with pnd and anxiety straight away.

I have been on 15mg of mitrazipine for 6 days and now 30mg for 8 days no diazepam for a whole week now.

I have got to say this has been the darkest hardest time of my life, although the anxiety is better I still feel very low and am just taking each day by day, my family have been great and my husband is my rock but I know he finds it hard to understand as do I, I have to keep telling myself that the feelings I have are down to the pnd and anxiety.

Seeing my psychiatrist tonight and am just hoping that the anti-depressants will start to kick in soon so I can start to feel like me again and enjoy my beautiful baby boy who is now 3 months.

Hope you are both doing ok xxx