I started my first blog, Joey and the Owl back in 2014 when I was a new mom. I was having a tough time in my new role and started this blog because I loved to write and I loved fashion. I thought it would be a little creative outlet for me to help with the paralyzing anxiety I felt as a new mother. Lately I’ve been going back to my old blog and reading all of my posts. I can’t believe how much time has gone by and how much Joey has grown and how much I’ve grown as a mother. It’s funny because the day your child is born is not only their birth but also a mother’s new birth because let’s face it, we are never the same after. This is probably my most vulnerable post so I wanted to share it again because it is always good to look back and see how far you’ve come. I can’t believe 6 years have gone by since you made me a mother. Happy birthday to you my sweet boy. You have taught me more than you will know and I feel so lucky that you chose me to be your mom.
February 20, 2014
The whole reason I started this blog was to share my story and experiences of being a new mother. After I had Joey, as I have shared in previous posts, I had a very hard time. My anxiety had hit an all time high and I felt myself spinning out of control. I had another episode of bad anxiety when I was in college but this time it was different, I was a mother and had an infant to take care of. The thing is, I am a “why” person. I research everything to the 100th degree until I have answers to everything. I have done the same with anxiety and out of all the books I have read and all the therapists I have seen, the book “The Places That Scare You” was my answer. It was my aha moment to why I was having anxiety. Pema Chodron taught me how when my life is out of control and I am scared of the unknown, it results in feeling anxious and uneasy. All the time, I have to refocus to live in the present, to not obsess about the unknown and to live in the moment and this is how I keep my anxiety under control.
After I had Joey, it was such a big change and everything was so out of my control, my anxiety got so bad and I could not talk myself down. I would reread my book to try to suppress it but I just couldn’t. Finally I knew I had to go see someone and get some medicine to help me get through it. I went on the Internet and randomly found a psychiatrist who specializes in postpartum and infertility issues. Her name is Dr Smith and she was my second aha. When I was in college and had my other bad episode of anxiety, I went to see a psychiatrist who was covered under my insurance. He was so archaic and his medical knowledge was so primitive, he handed me some meds and I went on my way. Since I am a “why” person, I just didn’t want someone to hand out anti-anxiety medicine like M&Ms, I wanted to get to the bottom of why I was feeling this way. The anti-anxiety did help and I took it for a little while until I felt better but it wasn’t until I did my own research, was I able to understand why I was feeling that way.
When I first met Dr Smith, I was a disaster. She is younger than me, petite, with beautiful long hair. She sat there and listened to me as I cried the entire appointment about how my whole life all I ever wanted to be was a mother and this should be the happiest moment of my life and I am riddled with guilt for feeling so overwhelmed. She told me after my appointment to go get my blood drawn and she would see me the following week to discuss the results. I was so confused. A psychiatrist telling me to get my blood drawn but I did what she told me to do and when I went back for my follow up appointment, she went over all of the results. I was lacking Vitamin D (as everyone does in the winter), I had low thyroid levels and low levels of folic acid, which could all be causing a chemical imbalance. She sent me home with a list of supplements to buy and a specific diet to follow. I went home and researched everything.
Every appointment after that, I would drill her about all of her knowledge that she calls “progressive medicine”. She really believes in the mind and body connection and how there is a strong correlation between what you eat and how you feel. You can tell she spends so much of her own time researching what causes certain disorders because she truly believes this is the future of medicine. She is beyond knowledgeable, I have learned so much from her and for someone like me, she has answers to all my “whys”. I try to be open with all of my friends about how much I struggled after Joey’s birth because I feel it is so important that other mothers know that they are not alone. I was so scared in the beginning and felt like I was the only mother who ever felt this way, which made me feel even more ashamed. She not only taught me so much about progressive medicine, she also taught me it was okay to feel vulnerable. Vulnerability is what makes us human and connect to other people. One mom friend who I told my story to, confided in me that she had been having a hard time for six months after her daughter was born. I referred her to Dr Smith and she loves her too. She came over for a play date a month later. She got teary eyed and thanked me for telling her my story because she was in such a dark place but felt too ashamed to talk about it. As women, as mothers, we owe it to each other to talk about how we feel because you never know who is struggling and just needs someone to say, I know how you feel.
