I started getting insomnia from about 4 weeks pregnant, and after several days of not sleeping in a row, some of those nights wouldn’t sleep at all, I started to develop a fear about going to bed which developed in what felt like terror about not sleeping. Sometimes would induce panic attacks in the middle of the night if I knew I had work pressures and could not take time off. The pressure felt immense. All this with worries about the pregnancy itself, as lost the previous one. I would get this extreme reaction at least once a week. I started therapy at 6 weeks and is ongoing and think after the 12 week scan have felt overall more relaxed and sleeping better and not getting the same reactions at all. I think the hormones played a bit part in having these melt downs. I am now at 16 weeks and sleep has definitely improved with therapy, and occasionally taking promethazine.
I have since read all the medical research about stress affecting the babies white brain matter, and cannot shake the feeling of the irreversible damage I have done to the growing baby and shape who they are/ become. I know I haven’t experienced some stresses that people getting divorced or bereaved, war zones etc but felt pretty extreme to my standards, sometimes hysterical, and now come back to haunt me causing its own new stresses. Does anyone know anymore about this study?
If anyone had a similar experience and their children have turned out ok would love to hear, or just some solidarity with the insomnia nightmare, am I the only that reacted this way to it?