I’m a FTM to an 11 week old and was wondering if anyone has dealt with postpartum anxiety and if you’ve went to the doctor about and how it was treated. I love my LO to pieces and he’s bought me nothing but joy. I’ve always heard people talk about postpartum depression but not anxiety. I know I'm not depressed but I don’t want my anxiety to turn to this if it gets worse.
When LO was about a week or so old I slept through him crying, my partner woke up and fed him but since I’ve been so worried about not waking up to him crying and effectively having him cry it out because I didn’t wake up. He usually wakes once in the night around 2-3am then my partner takes over on the 5-6am feed for the morning. Since sleeping through his crying once, I’ve not been able to sleep until I’ve done his 2/3am feed. I’ve been doing this for the past 10 weeks and am absolutely exhausted because of it. My partner has told me to sleep during the night so I can catch up on rest but we’re both deep sleepers and I sometimes even sleep right through my alarm so it’s not like I can just have an alarm set before LO wakes up. I also have to continuously check he’s breathing/he’s not kicked around too much that the blanket has went over his head. Even when we’re eating dinner and LO is napping I can’t leave him more than 5 minutes without checking and constantly feel on edge and feel like I can’t concentrate on anything else until I’ve checked.
I’ve also only been out with LO in the car on my own 2 times since he was born and this was only for a maximum of 10 minutes and when I’m meeting my family somewhere. I have LO strapped in his car seat with the seatbelt in the front seat with the airbags turned off so I can reach him if need be. He’s small for his age and I notice sometimes if the car seat isn’t at a certain angle his head will go chin to chest or tilt to the side. When I have taken him in the car with me I’ve been driving with one hand then the other hand I’ve used to check on him the whole time.
One of the triggers for my anxiety is my MIL, when LO was younger she continuously tried to take over, as in insisting on taking him to separate rooms to me, trying to take him from me when he cried, buying a cot and car seat for her own place without telling us, keep asking to look after him alone and telling me and DH to go out and making continuous ‘jokes’ about taking him away from me to their home country or insisting I only looked after him when he was growing in my stomach and now it’s her turn. She had arguments with my partner multiple times as she only got to see him a couple of times a week which wasn’t enough for her and I changed his nappy instead of her. She was always turning up without letting us know beforehand and when I finally bought this up to her she started an argument and threatened to kick us all out (we live separate to them but are renting our flat from them). I also bought up fostering to her (I wanted her to have another baby to look after so she wouldn’t be so obsessed with mine lol) and she said “when you have your own baby you can never love another one” whilst looking at my son and proceeds to say she wouldn’t be able to foster as it’s such a big responsibility and babies have accidents and get bruises and she would be worried they would think it’s her doing it. I thought this was just a bizarre and concerning thing to say and no normal person would automatically think of that. She also said how she accidentally dropped DH loads of times when he was a baby. We only see them once every 2 weeks or so now but I’m filled with anxiety every time we have to see them and hate the thought of her holding or looking after LO.
I’ve never dealt with anxiety before and am embarrassed to speak with my GP about it. I know it all sounds ridiculous but I can’t help feeling this way. Has anyone else experience this and what treatment was used/what helped them? I’d rather take therapy than have medication but not sure how effective this is?