Guest Post | Prenatal Anxiety: What It Is And How To Self-Manage It

A Guest Post 

by the lovely Cameryn Vonbargen

Say hi to her at multitaskingmotherhood.com!

I have struggled with anxiety for my entire life so when I became pregnant my self-awareness of my own mental health was at an all-time high.

I worried every day about having my son because I was terrified that I would have postpartum depression. I never even considered that my mental health would decline at an astonishing rate WHILE PREGNANT. 

I never really considered prenatal anxiety. Though, I do not think that most people do because the world really focuses its attention on postpartum anxiety and depression. I had even been seeing a therapist and our sole purpose in those sessions was preparing me to battle postpartum in the case that I struggled more than usual. 

As time went on being pregnant, my anxiety started creeping up and at more frequent times.

I usually could go a couple of weeks feeling pretty good before I had an “episode” of extreme anxiety. This was not the case here though. I could go maybe a few days without having a complete breakdown and I only began stressing more because I was so afraid I was harming my baby.

I want you mamas, you expecting mothers that are struggling with this, to know that this is okay. What you are experiencing can be normal and that you are not alone.

If you are unsure if you have prenatal anxiety, you can learn more about both the symptoms and typical treatments for it here. 

Of the various ways that prenatal anxiety can be treated, the one that stuck with me the most would be Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I should actually say that it was my own form of this practice. 

I had already been seeing a therapist for years. I also have a degree in psychology. So, I am no newbie to how therapy works. Granted, I did see my therapist numerous times throughout my pregnancy and would check in with her about how things were going. BUT… I was in nursing school (an accelerated one at that!) and had very… very little time for anything other than school, my OB appointments, and eating ice cream in the evening. I did leave class early a few times in order to meet with my therapist but I couldn’t do this all of the time so I had to implement some CBT methods on my own for the time in between sessions. 

So, without further ado, the following is how you can create new thought patterns (essentially using CBT) to prevent or manage prenatal anxiety.

Ultimately, CBT entails “retraining” your brain.

You essentially have unhealthy or negative thought patterns and you want to teach your brain how to turn these into healthy or positive thought patterns. This is the process that I used whenever I would start to have a more serious episode of anxiety:

1. Think about what is giving you anxiety at that exact moment.

For example, having extreme anxiety about the glucose test you have coming up to test for gestational diabetes. 

2. Examine your thoughts.

Unconsciously, you may have been having thoughts go through your head about the situation. For example, “I am going to fail this test. I have been eating way too much ice cream and I have given myself gestational diabetes and it is going to harm my baby”

3. Examine your feelings.

The thoughts that you had about the situation immediately cause you to have some sort of feeling. For example, the thoughts above gave me shame, anger, worry, and (you guessed it) anxiety. 

4. Examine your actions.

It all happens very fast but your actions are a direct result of both your thoughts and feelings that you had about the situation. For example, you had extreme feelings about the thoughts of having gestational diabetes. Since you are so uncomfortable and worried, you eat a sprinkle covered donut because you seek comfort in food. 

Okay… okay. This whole scenario is actually what happened to me. And you know what? In the end, the test went well and I didn’t have gestational diabetes.

That goes to show that the extreme anxiety that you may experience can actually be all for nothing.

I had such high levels of anxiety during the few days span it took to get my results and I acted out by eating sweets because I had unhealthy thought processes such as “well if I have gestational diabetes than it is too late now”. I know… awful. Plus, you know… for any mama worried about her ice cream diet and developing gestational diabetes, ice cream is not a direct cause of gestational diabetes. See? Unhealthy, irrational, and negative thought pattern. 

Now, looking back.

What if my thought process had been slightly different?

What if I had thought “I only have a small bowl of ice cream when I am relaxing at night and other than that, I eat relatively healthy. I also don’t have any of the risk factors associated with gestational diabetes. I know that I am taking care of myself and my baby and that we are both healthy”. From the very beginning, changing my negative thoughts to more positive thoughts would have changed the entire cascade. While worry could have still been present, many of the other negative feelings may not have existed and my actions would have most likely been different. 

In the end, this method requires you to notice your negative thought at the moment and change it to a more positive thought and believe in that positive thought.

Fake it until you make it, right? I am not going to lie either. It is very hard to do at first. Very hard. In the end, though, switching your thoughts from negative to positive becomes easier and there is less of a chance of you sitting there ruminating in your thoughts for hours on end. 

Prenatal anxiety is definitely not something that many talk about. Our society focuses on the need for attention on women’s health to postpartum mental health care. The need must begin to encompass all of perinatal mental health. Until then, however, it is important for expecting mamas to be on the lookout for signs and symptoms related to prenatal anxiety and depression and find a method that works for them in coping with it. 

Remember, in the end, you are not alone thought this and it is a very normal thing. That means, it is okay if you need to seek help for your mental health and take positive steps in improving it.