By Catherine Jones
I suffer from anxiety, which is debilitating at times. I have suffered for as long as I can remember, both mentally and physically. And while I’ve tried many methods that help to alleviate my symptoms, I know my anxiety will never completely go away. It only got much worse after my child was born. I had a lot of time during my maternity leave to come up with some truly unreasonable, completely invalid fears. One of my biggest issues with anxiety is that I know I’m being silly, but I can’t help it. I know there’s no reason to be afraid to ask for help finding an item at the grocery store and there’s definitely no reason to contemplate all the awful things that may happen to my child. I hope some anxious mothers out there can relate, or at least be relieved that they’re not nearly as imaginative (cuckoo) as me.
When my son was first born, he hardly slept, or if he did it was for maybe an hour at a time. He was always hungry and wanted to be nursed for hours and then be nursed again after a short catnap. He never seemed particularly tired, but I was getting loopy from a lack of sleep. When he did manage to sleep at night for a few hours at a time, I kept getting up to check on him, straining my eyes in the darkness to make sure his little chest was still rising and falling. When he switched to formula and actually started to sleep through the night, I was terrified. Why was he sleeping so much? Was something wrong? Infants are supposed to sleep for most of the day, but not my baby! I slept on a cot in his room for months. Continue Reading…