All womyn, everywhere, lives through at least some kind of normal and healthy perinatal anxiety. It would be a unfamiliar occurance for you to not worry at least just slightly.

Healthy anxiety and worry in pregnancy may include concern about things like the future health of your babe or your own self or worrying about the labor and delivery. Worry about finances, taking any time away from work, how this will affect the relationship with you and your partner or worry about how you will manage in the absence of a partner are all healthy perinatal anxieties. The only time that these examples are unhealthy is when they lead to distress and consequently disruption of ordinary activities.

Significant fear of whether you might lose the baby or that something terrible will happen to the baby that makes you persistently check the baby's movement or heart beat or to call the midwife or obstetricians office every time you believe something is amiss. Perhaps you strongly imagine yourself or the newborn not making it through the labor and delivery and the fear of this is incapacitating.

Disproportionate fearf about the well being of your loved one could lead you to endlessly check up on him or her or worry too much if he or she is just even just minutes late returning. You may be frightened that you will injure the infant by mistake or not do something right after he or she is born. Maybe these fears get to a place where you cannot sleep at night, consequently deteriorating your mental clarity and resulting in more anxiety.

I'm certain you often hear of postpartum depression. This is something which basically every womyn in North America learns about while pregnant and is also screened for following childbirth. Subsequent to the labour and birth of a child scores of womyn endure what is declared 'the baby blues' which is normal and thought to be cause of hormonal fluctuations. Sometimes, however, these so called blues can stay longer than just a few days or even weeks and progress into what we call postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a very serious condition that affects one in five mothers. It can also lead to a much more serious condition generally known as postpartum psychosis where the womyn hallucinate and worse. Postpartum psychosis is a very serious condition which, unfortunately, has resulted in serious harm and death to infants, children and mothers in cases in the past.

Perinatal anxiety quite often goes undiagnosed due to this emphasis on postpardum depression. Reality is that one in three womyn are experiencing some form of abnormal and oftentimes returning anxiety within their lives (Kessler et. al, 1994) and that pregnancy is known as a time for already elevated anxiety levels. Therefore it only is practical that womyn should really be tested for it and be more conscious of it. A study conducted in the United States says 80% of Obstetricians admitted they regularly would not screen their patients for perinatal anxiety and in addition, only about 25% of cases are actually recognised. (Smith et. al. 2004, Coates, Schauffer and Alexander 2004)

If left untreated, perinatal anxiety can continue to fester causing or worsening panic attacks (if the womyn is not already experiencing them), other physical symptoms, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) where she may have disturbing thoughts, post-traumatic stress disorder from the labor and birth, postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis; among other things.

Mother to mother, the biggest message I am trying to get accross is to tell someone, research your feelings, get help, find a support system whether it be online or offline just do not let these negative feelings and emotions get to the point that they affect your everyday life, your relationship and most importantly, your child/ren. My biggest fear was that someone would take my baby from me and that they would think I was crazy, weak and incapeable. I looked at other mothers that could 'do it all' and wondered what was wrong with me. I knew I appeared to have it all together and that I could do it all too, but how were these other womyn actually doing it? The truth is, after dealing with perinatal and postpartum anxiety and depression and being able to talk about it openly I have discovered that a lot of these 'supermoms' have the same sortd of problems or have already gone through what I was going through, we are just really good at keeping face. Tell someone, don't be afraid.

References

Kessler, R. C., K. A. McGonagle, S. Zhao, C B. Nelson, M. Hughes, S. Eshelman et al. 1994. Lifetime and twelve-month prevalance of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States: Results from the national comorbidity survey. Archives of General Psychology.

Smith M. V. R. A. Rosenheck, M. A Cavaleri, H. B. Howell, K. Poshman, and Yonkers. 2004. Screening for and detection of Depression, Panic Disorder and PTSD in public sector Obstetric clinics. Psychiatric Services 55(4): 407-414.