Scared having a baby will trigger severe anxiety

[Immyreeves91]

I’m an extremely anxious person and always have been - not all the time but every so often it’ll flare up and be very intense for a week or so, when I’ll not be able to eat or work and will have to lie on the floor just waiting for it to pass. I’m just worried that having a baby will be a ‘trigger’ for me (obviously I’m not thinking of a potential baby primarily as a trigger) and I just wondered how other women who suffer with anxiety have experienced pregnancy and early motherhood?

Talking to other women about mental health issues, we agree that it needs to be acknowledged that having a child can trigger a reaction to past trauma, it certainly did in my case, markedly with my second as the family setup then matched the circumstances where abuse occurred in my own childhood. My health visitor (the mental health specialist in the area) listened to my concerns, I'd been referred by my gp during my first pregnancy and then told me that 'this isn't the time to unpack this, you're about to have a baby'. Which is utter bollocks, it's exactly the time to do it!

I have had bad anxiety since my son was born last year, it's been pretty tough. Eventually the doctors gave me meds which made it loads better. Do you have a good support network around you? Have you spoken to our GP about potentially starting a family?