After my first child was born, I fell into an exhausted sleep only to have a nightmare: I was on the deck of a ship holding my new baby. The sea was heaving so hard that the ship pitched forward and almost rolled into the water, teeming with sharks. Terrified of dropping my baby, I woke up gasping.
This was my first clue that postpartum hormonal crash would trigger temporary but severe anxiety in me. It was something I’d never experienced before and was not expecting. I’d thought having a newborn would be easy.
Back when I was a teenager, I’d worked as an au pair in France, caring for a blue-eyed baby who could not yet support her own head. As far as I was concerned, she was the bee’s knees, and I comfortably traipsed around Paris with her strapped to my chest in a baby carrier.
But none of the ease I felt with that Parisian infant carried over to my own child. I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid she’d stop breathing, and my fingers trembled when I changed her because I was so worried I’d accidentally hurt her. My doctor told me SIDS is statistically unlikely and that babies are tougher than they look—they’re not going to be damaged because you move them around to change them. This was all very logical, but it didn’t help.
As Dr. Pilar Jennings points out in this issue’s cover story (page 48), what helps one person find relief from anxiety or depression will not necessarily work for someone else. It may not even work for the same person in a different situation. This makes sense. After all, conditions like anxiety and depression can have myriad causes, including hormones, stress, the experience of trauma in one’s own life, and the intergenerational effects of trauma transmitted via epigenetic mechanisms. Anxiety and depression are often complex and intractable, requiring multiple modalities like psychotherapy or medication to manage.
Regardless of the root causes, one thing that often helps at least soften the edges of anxiety and depression is knowing that it’s normal to struggle. As the Buddha taught, there isn’t something wrong with us if we’re suffering—suffering is simply part of the human condition. When we recognize this, we don’t feel so alone in our pain or ashamed of not having everything all figured out. Self-compassion grows from this knowledge, and as Jennings says, it allows us to explore methods for reducing symptoms.
This was true for me. Knowing that it’s common to suffer from postpartum anxiety, I understood it was not my personal failing but something I could be curious about. With that curiosity, I found three strategies that helped me:
1. I did basic mindfulness practice. When anxiety clamped down, I’d follow my breath, slowly returning to the present moment where there was, in fact, no danger.
2. I took concrete action to alleviate my worries. Specifically, I bought and installed a special baby monitor that could detect breathing and sound an alarm if it stopped.
And 3. I found comfort in human contact, holding my baby close and leaning on my family and friends for support.
While these strategies were not miracle cure-alls, they were enough to get me by until my hormones stabilized. I was lucky—my postpartum anxiety only lasted a couple of a weeks. Soon I was happily traipsing around town, baby in tow.
Now, whether you’re grappling with temporary or longer-term anxiety or depression, I think you’ll find Jennings a wise and compassionate guide. May these pages bring some relief.
