Having a baby when you have health anxiety

[WorriedOlive]

Hi everyone

Something that’s on my mind a lot recently. I’m 26 y/o and my partner and I are due to get married soon. We want to start a family and I desperately want a baby but I am so so scared of the thought of my health anxiety during pregnancy, and the effects it has on my mental health. I have a horrible thought of what if I’m a terrible mum because of my worries.

I’ve tried medication and CBT, and I have another appointment with my doctor tomorrow to try and think of another course of action. At the moment I jump from worry to worry on a daily basis, spend around 4 hrs a day worth of googling/reading medical journals about symptoms I have which relate to a life threatening illness, and I am obsessed with working out my statistics of having a disease based on cancer research cancer case stats. It’s an obsession which leads me to feel un excited about so much in my life as I feel there is no point if I’m going to die soon anyway. I can’t shake this feeling of doom and I’m scared to look at my body in case I find something.

I am finding it hard to stop weird behaviours, such as I can’t eat anything remotely red, as I’m terrified to see if in the toilet and won’t know if it’s blood or food. I’m ashamed to say when this has happened in the past, I’ve removed red bits from the toilet (disgusting I know!) and kept them in tissue paper for a number of weeks, obsessively checking to see if they are still red and therefore not blood.. the logical part of me knows I have a serious problem as this is far from normal behaviour.

I’m terrified of blood tests and can’t stop googling the outcome for each test type before I’ve even received my results, so I can be mentally prepared and armed with questions for the doctor.

Every morning I wake up with a feeling of dread and spend ages sat on the bathroom floor trying to calm my body down.

All of this leads me back to my worry about having a baby and I just would feel so irresponsible knowing how bad my worries are :( also the thought of pregnancy, all the testing let alone the birth itself makes me so scared. I also feel like I’ll constAntly worry somethings wrong with the baby.

Sorry it’s such a long post - anyone out there who’s been through pregnancy and had a baby when they have terrible HA, any advise would be appreciated.

x

[Scass]

Hello,
I think you should definitely discuss it with your doctor.
My health anxiety reared up after I had a baby, so there’s really no amount of planning you can do to stop yourself having certain ailments. You can help yourself though and I’m really pleased you are taking it seriously because as much as children are a joy, they are also a lot of work.


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[WorriedOlive]

Thanks for replying Scass. I will discuss this with my doctor when I talk to him about my HA tomorrow. I always feel my happiest around my baby niece and nephew, but I know that’s very different to caring for your own child! I guess I had hoped in the back of my mind a baby would distract from HA, but I sadly doubt that will be the case!

[molly15]

Hi there I have been through a twin pregnancy and still had terrible health anxiety but actually felt better anxiety wise once the sickness passed. I gave birth normally no section needed and that is unusual with twins. They are both 16 now . You will get through it no problem I promise. I was very scared at first but I just thought I've no choice now so I just had to get on with it.

Don't let this horrible illness stop you having a beautiful family . Xxxx

[WiseMonkey]

I have HA but was fine during my pregnancies apart from a bit of morning sickness with my second. It reared it's head after my second birth when I developed CFS, depression and a big flare of HA. As long as you have a supportive partner and some family or other group support you should be fine. Have a wonderful wedding xx

[Worrywart84]

Hi,

I’m so sorry to hear you are struggling. For what it’s worth, I’ve been through four pregnancies, three births and one early miscarriage all with health anxiety and I made it through. It wasn’t always easy—I was triggered a lot because you are constantly going to appointments and they are checking on things as part of routine prenatal care and before every check I would often go down the rabbit hole and assume the worst and that was indeed stressful, but it got easier as time went on and with each subsequent pregnancy.

I would recommend telling your OB about your hesitations and get a feel for if they will be sensitive to your needs—for example, I often requested a heartbeat check for peace of mind if I was nervous or I had the ultrasound tech talk me through things during exams so it wasn’t silence and wouldn’t make my mind wander.

I absolutely loved labor and delivery (maybe I’m weird) but I was very in the moment and didn’t even give HA a thought because I was too busy birthing a human being out of my body.

One thing that really helped calm me throughout all three was enrolling in prenatal yoga—great stress reliever and also helps you prepare physically and mentally for birth.

Good luck to you!

[WorriedOlive]

Thank you so much for all your supportive comments. It’s so nice to hear of others with HA who have gone on to have pregnancies without being crippled with fear. Makes me realise life must go on despite the worries xx

[Halle0587]

Hey there! I had helping sign after a health scare in 2011 I developed it. I was terrified to have a child especially after going through infertility to get there. I hate taking medication so having to do the infertility was really difficult, but once I got pregnant I actually felt like all the hormones did something to help my anxiety through the pregnancy and I really didn’t have a whole lot of anxiety during the pregnancy. However after both pregnancies I ended up with postpartum anxiety and postpartum OCD. I was given Lexapro and cymbalta after the first pregnancy and then lexapro and Wellbutrin after my second. Full disclosure I never took any of them. The only thing I landed on was BuSpar and I only take that as needed I don’t take it daily per my provider. I do see a counselor and have seen a counselor for the past 2 1/2 years and it feels good to be able to just tell her my fears and not be made fun of for it. Not all of my fears have been health anxiety but I do struggle quite a bit postpartum with health anxiety and I think that has more to do with I want to make sure I’m OK and I’m safe and I’m healthy to be here for my children. I don’t stress over their health and I don’t stress over genera anxiety much during the postpartum period. The OCD part tends to be over my children safety and it’s weird stuff that just popped into my head and just cycles on loop and I compulsively check their breathing in the monitor I just watched their belly rise and fall to make sure they’re breathing. So that part is tough but I will say that I wasn’t going to let it steal my joy of having a child however that being said we wanted three children and I do not think I can go through it a third time. That doesn’t mean we won’t have three children it just means I won’t birth three children.

Sending you all the love because I know what that feels like. Have a beautiful wedding and please don’t let health anxiety stop you from growing your family the way you guys want to.