About RAINE

Postpartum anxiety almost ruined my 4th trimester

If you met me after I gave birth to my firstborn, you would have thought I was the happiest girl in the world! You would have thought that motherhood was coming easily to me and that I was unbothered by all of the newness that I was experiencing. You WOULD think my husband and I were smooth sailing and that we were on the same page.

You would have been SO WRONG.

Unbeknownst to me, I was in the throes of postpartum anxiety and was doing my best to hide it from EVERYONE, including my husband. I just thought that this was the way every birther must feel. Telling people how I felt would be complaining and showing ungratefulness. I thought that feeling (like I was going to lose my sh*t if I was away from my son for more than 5 minutes) was just a typical motherhood experience…that being terrified at every nap that he wouldn’t wake up was just ‘another day in mom life’. My family members were all out of state, my husband was experiencing his own anxieties as a new parent, & most of my friends hadn’t had kids.

They were living their child.free.lives.

Rude.

So I should just shut up and suck it up, right?

Thankfully I’m on the other side of that dark time of motherhood, but I think about it often. I felt so isolated even though I had such a large community at the time. I wish I‘d been able to have someone around that was experienced enough to identify what I was going through.

But fckin’ guess what? I eventually opened up to other parents (primarily birthers) who either were currently in the trenches with me OR those whom had made it to the other side. They met me with compassion and understanding & provided tips and the relatability that I needed to normalize all my ‘new parent sh*t’.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad! There are so many beautiful memories, but alongside those are the moments of stress/worry/indecisiveness/confusion/frustration. Those dark times were fueled by the lack of knowledge when it came to parenthood; from this came my inspiration to become a postpartum doula!

Believe me, you’ve got this on your own, but why go it alone if you don’t have to?

So damnit, for you and your partner’s sake, let me f*cking help.