Dealing With Anxiety While Still Being a Bad Ass Mom

So, I'm just going to get right into it. I have had anxiety since I was 12 years old, probably even sooner, at least that's when the big symptoms starting showing up. I would be in class having a good day and then all of a sudden I would have a huge panic attack. For a while the doctors thought it was just my asthma flaring up from being in class with all the farm kids and horse kids. But as time went on I started having these attacks more often and zoning out in public events, including family dinners, school, pretty much anything that had me leaving my room. Soon my mom and dad caught on after a night full of attacks and crying. I ended up going to see a child psychologist who diagnosed me with severe anxiety. It took a few tries but eventually I got on the right medication and was back to my old self, no more attacks!

Skip ahead to being 18, moving out of my parents house and in with my boyfriend (now husband, Mitch). I was starting school at the community college for business and things started going downhill. I started flunking out of school as most weeks I maybe made it to class one day and even when I went I was checked out. My relationship with Mitch started to get strained as I started pulling away from him (often it's the people we love most that we pull away from). Things got so bad I dropped out of school and Mitch almost moved out, only for me to convince him to stay and to promise to get help. Honestly if it wasn't for Mitch I don't know how different my life would look like today. He stuck with me through my darkest times, when a lot of people would have ran the other way. Eventually with a change in my medication and weekly therapy I was back.

Mitch and I eventually moved three hours away from my family to a bigger city so he could attend college. My plan was to work, and I did as a nanny. I loved being a nanny and I was good at it too. Until yet again I started make excuses and miss work and not get out of bed for days. Mitch was busy with school and tried his best to help me, even going to therapy with me to help him better understand what was going on with me. Eventually we made it though our time in the big city and moved to our small town we live in now.

With Mitch often on the road for work I stayed with my parents lots where I worked as a bank teller. Eventually he got a job posting close to home and we rented a house in town while I got a job at a closer bank. Things were good, and I was good. We got engaged and purchased our first home together. After we got married I started to feel my anxiety creeping in again, but this time I was strong enough mentally to realize that I needed a change with work, and that being a bank teller dealing with the public everyday probably wasn't the smartest career choice.

Animals are my thing, ever since I was little I just felt like I connected better with them than people, probably the no need to communicate thing helped. I was lucky enough to land a job as a vet assistant and even graduated a course with honors. I loved that job, but eventually I got pregnant and was over the moon excited! This is what I wanted my whole life and it was finally happening. I wasn't about to let anything jeopardize my pregnancy and asked to be switched to a less hands on position as the receptionist. That went great until my sixth month when I developed high blood pressure and was put off work.

Pregnancy induced hypertension is what I was eventually diagnosed with and preeclampsia. Sarting at 32 weeks I had to drive half an hour once a week to the city to have a non-stress test. They were always high but my urine was showing no signs of protein so I just had to rest as much as possible. 36 weeks and 5 days I went in for my weekly test and my blood pressure was so high and I had protein in my urine. The only cure now was to get the baby out. I had a long awful labor with two epidurals that did not work at all due to how swollen I was. My labor lasted 15 hours until I started to bleed excessively and was rushed for an emergency c-section. Lennox came out perfect at 5:35 AM at 37 weeks exactly.

I thought having the high blood pressure through my pregnancy and dealing with anxiety practically my whole life would mean it was a sure thing for me to get post par tum depression. I kept waiting for it to happen but it never did! Even when Mitch had to go work two and a half hours away when Lennox was only 3 months old or when she got RSV at one month old, still never happened.

Of course I am worried about developing post par tum depression with this baby but I feel confident in myself as a mother and as someone who has the tools to cope with things like that from all my years of dealing with anxiety.

Dealing with anxiety and being a mom has been relatively easy for me, no one is more surprised than I am! I truly believe that all those years dealing with anxiety I just felt like something was missing in my life, and that was to be a mom. I always said I will never find a career I am happy with because I just want to be a mom, and I was right.

Becoming a mom has filled a void in my life that was empty before. Not very many people know but when I talk about my dad, I am actually talking about my step dad. He is my dad in every way either than the biological, even though I am more like him than I am my mom. My biological dad left us when I was 10 years old and I have had nothing to do with him since, at least I try to keep it that way...but that is for another blog. I think having a parent leave you so young for sure makes you feel empty or incomplete or worthless, or probably all of the above. I have said ever since meeting Mitch, that he is my reward for having such a shitty first 10 years.

Lennox and Mitch make me feel complete and I can not wait till baby girl gets here as well. I am not going to lie I have hard days, really hard days. But when bed time comes and Lennox says "night Mommy, Love" in the sweetest little voice I know I am doing something right and that I will get through the hard days. Being a mom motivates me more than anything else in this world to get out of bed and make the days amazing for this little person that fills me up with so much joy. I have mom friends who ask me how I dont have days of sitting on the couch all day watching netflix while Lennox is on the ipad. It's true I dont have those days, but I do have about two hours once in while of that and than I just feel guilty and feel like I can do better. So I take that ipad away and we bake, paint, color, play outside, we do something that is going to turn our day from ok to great!

Just remember parenting is not easy. We all have our hard days, but it is up to us to make the next day better.

Tasha