Worries around Emma's role as a mom and other people's expectations grew into intrusive thinking that she didn't want to be here anymore.
Transcript
So I started noticing when I was pregnant with my daughter, she’s my firstborn. I was about seven months pregnant, and I just kind of started realizing I was having feelings that didn’t feel normal, just really anxious and tense all the time, worrying about things like my bond, my role, what other people were expecting of me. That’s something I struggled with my whole life is the expectations of other people. And so having a kid, everyone’s so excited for you, and they want to do all these things. And then they kind of forget that at the center of it all is a mom who’s also becoming a mom. And so that kind of fed into this thought process of, maybe I’m not necessary and my child is, but where’s my role in this? And does it matter that I’m here?
And it was just really weird feelings of purpose and lack of purpose as a person. And so that kind of started feeding into a bit of a depression spiral. And I started thinking, nobody wants me, they just want the baby, and I was OK with that. And I started having intrusive thoughts about I don’t want to be here anymore, and it was very consuming. And obviously, not something everyone talks about, about how you can have intrusive thoughts, especially when you’re pregnant, I found that that was really not even on the radar. And I had heard of postpartum, but I hadn’t heard of antenatal depression and anxiety. And I would have anxiety attacks, and my husband was concerned. And it started getting really bad, where I would start having suicidal ideations almost every week, several times a week.
And so I sought some counseling. And I was seeing a psychiatrist, and I had a doula and then I started feeling good again. And it was about 38, 39 weeks, and I was just like, I just started feeling pregnant. I was like, this is awesome. And I just started to bond with my baby. And so I was OK with her going over. I was like, you can stay in there forever. And it was good and overall, it was an OK birth, it had its hiccups, but it was good. But then it was like, she was out, and I felt I hadn’t had an opportunity to bond with her again. And then everybody swooped in with those expectations again, that caused a lot of stress for me. I was stressed about, you know them respecting boundaries and not kissing the baby, so that the baby didn’t get sick, or washing their hands and listening to directions, giving the baby back when the baby was crying.
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