A Perinatal Therapist's Journey Through Postpartum Anxiety
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I am a survivor of postpartum anxiety.
I was not sure I wanted to be a mother until one day, I was incredibly sure. After months of heartbreak and waiting through infertility, we were finally pregnant. I was overjoyed—and quietly terrified. The unknowns of pregnancy swirled around me, and even then, subtle signals in my body began to whisper that I was not okay.
Though I was a trained therapist, resourced in many ways, and committed to caring for myself, anxiety crept in. Quietly, persistently. It looked like thudding in my chest, a mind on loop, sleeplessness in my third trimester. And after my son’s birth, sleep simply vanished altogether.
My birth didn’t unfold as I had hoped. It became a mosaic of compromises—disconnection, invisibility, and finally, surrender. Though it wasn’t traumatic in the textbook sense, and though my baby was healthy and my body healed relatively well, I left that experience feeling exposed, unseen, and profoundly impacted.
Once home, with just my partner and our beautiful boy, the bottom fell out. Nearly 72 hours passed with no sleep. I began to hallucinate. The intrusive thoughts that so many postpartum women have became loud, constant, unbearable. I felt afraid to be near my baby. Shame crept in, and I could no longer locate myself in the storm. I could not eat. When I went in for my 6 week check-up, my doctor congratulated me on weighing less than I did than before I was pregnant. This was not something to celebrate. I was silently suffering and felt isolated by the lack of understanding. I felt invisible in many ways.
I struggled to breastfeed—something I had deeply longed to do. I didn’t know how to ask for help. Even when I was surrounded by people who loved me, the isolation didn’t lift.
Postpartum anxiety, for me, started as a quiet stream in pregnancy and crashed like a flood after birth. I lost myself. And I didn’t know where the way back began.
But a path did emerge. My sister and dearest friend found a pediatrician who prescribed me anti-anxiety medication quickly. A lactation consultant held me with unwavering respect, no matter my choices. Hospital doctors treated me with kindness when my blood pressure soared, and for the first time in days, I slept. My longtime therapist walked with me through the darkness—naming, humanizing, softening the edges of what felt unnameable. My family began visiting us one by one, offering support in their own unique ways.
Looking back, I did have a community. Or maybe the right pieces of it came together in the moments I needed it most.
My entrance into motherhood was not graceful. I did not “step into myself” as a mother. I crawled. Inch by inch. Day by day. Hour by hour.
Matrescence—the becoming of a mother—is not a single moment. It is an unfolding. It is brutal and profound. It is joyful and grief-stricken. It is rebirth after rebirth after rebirth. It shakes every part of you.
Of course it does. Of course it is so vulnerable, so unsteady, so sacred. To grow life, to open your body, to hold the weight of that threshold—it is a breathtaking, unbearable honor. And in that kind of transformation, support isn’t optional. It is essential.
Matrescence, like adolescence, demands community. Our identities shift—our relationship to life, to our bodies, to our partners, families, careers, and children. We are not the same.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s this: no one should walk this road alone.
That belief now lives deep in my bones. It is why I do what I do. It is why I care so deeply about supporting women and birth parents through the sacred, messy, aching terrain of fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood.
To the mother reading this who feels like she's unraveling, or floating, or barely hanging on:
You are not broken.
You are not failing.
You are becoming.
Let this be your reminder:
- The anxiety, the intrusive thoughts, the exhaustion—you are not alone in them.
- Support is your birthright, not a luxury.
- You deserve to be held, just as you hold.
- Your story matters.
- There is a path home to yourself, and it doesn't have to be walked alone.
And now I know—
Postpartum anxiety, depression, OCD, psychosis, and every perinatal mental health challenge is treatable with the right support. Healing is not only possible—it is likely when we are held well.
I know now how powerful it is to build your circle before the baby arrives. Planning for postpartum care is as essential as planning your birth.
Your team might include a perinatal therapist, a postpartum doula, a lactation consultant, trusted providers, and a friend who can sit with you without trying to fix it. These relationships are not extras. They are the scaffolding.
And if you don’t have them yet, it is never too late to begin building. You don’t have to do this alone. You never were meant to.
I'm honored to be part of the care that holds you—wherever you are in the becoming.
I serve mothers and their families in person in Arlington Texas for perinatal and postpartum therapy as well as moms and families across all of Texas virtually. Please reach out if you are looking for support from a therapist who understands this unique part of life personally and is specially trained in all things perinatal mental health.