anxiety

Febrile Seizures and Healthy Anxiety

Posted on by megdanielle

It’s Friday morning and the air is cool. The sun is out and the clouds are sparse. The kids are off to school and daycare for the first time in 5 weeks and my music is turned up. Thank you Walker Hayes Pandora station. I have a quarter cup of coffee left in my to-go mug; it’s still hot despite being poured over an hour ago. I don’t feel like I’m scraping myself off the floor today. It’s a good morning.

I mentioned it in my last post but I started anxiety meds at the end of May. It takes a while for the meds to get in your system but I can say without a doubt that medication combined with therapy has made a world of difference for me. I still struggle with anxiety but I’m getting better at recognizing healthy anxious thoughts vs. obsessive thoughts. I’m getting better at communicating those obsessive thoughts with my husband and he’s getting better at giving me grace when I can’t let go of something, snap at him, or need to step away.

Our son had a febrile seizure on Wednesday, his second since June. He’s been at daycare both times and both times I missed the call. I saw Fred’s text explaining what happened after I got out of a meeting and immediately left work. I called him on the way to daycare. I panicked. He panicked. I snapped. I didn’t get to daycare before the ambulance left the parking lot so I followed closely behind knowing that that they wouldn’t do anything but give him some acetaminophen and ibuprofen and a COVID test. I got turned around in the parking structure. Fred somehow made it to the ER before I did.

Febrile seizures are interesting because as long as they’re not occurring frequently during a single “illness” or longer than the completely frustrating range of somewhere between 5-15 minutes, medical professionals don’t really bat an eye. The first time it happened, the ER doctor told me to Google the answers to my questions about how often to expect seizures / whether or not they occur with every fever / if they’re caused by temperature alone or the rate at which the temperature elevates / the statistics of reoccurring vs. one time febrile seizures. Google. To a mom whose son had just had his first ever seizure that lasted 7 minutes followed by another one for 2 minutes.

Another interesting thing about febrile seizures is that the fever is often the first symptom of a virus. So you bring your kid to school and you temp them at the door and you send them on their way. They don’t have a stuffy / runny nose. They don’t have a cough at night. No sore throat. Not even a sneeze. Then they wake up from a nap with a temperature of 102 and they seize.

Little man didn’t need the ambulance ride but I’m shit in emergency situations and I couldn’t think straight. The director at daycare told me the EMTs had arrived and I couldn’t slow down my thoughts enough to ask the questions:

  • Does he have a temperature?
  • How long did the seizure last?
  • Is he lucid?

His COVID test was negative and I tested negative on Tuesday after a coworker was diagnosed. I waited the appropriate number of days before testing myself, we mask in meetings at work, and my other team members tested negative but I’m still obsessing. I could take another test but the first did nothing to curb my anxiety so I haven’t, telling myself that I can rely on the test results and that my anxious thoughts aren’t serving me.

Healthy: Taking the necessary precautions to prevent illness and testing for COVID after a possible exposure

Obsessive: Thinking that you have COVID and spread it to your child despite knowing you and your son tested negative

I’ve always been an anxious person. I know that about myself. I think back across relationships and I see the patterns. The way I obsessed. The way I let healthy anxiety roll into obsessive anxiety. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being so rigid. I’m sorry that I held so tightly to control. I’m sorry if my anxiety made you doubt yourself. Recognizing healthy anxiety and letting the rest go is something I’ll probably always work on.

So I sent my son to daycare today. I’m slow-sipping coffee. I’m spending a moment in catharsis before I hit post and carry on with my day. And I’m trusting that God has this. That whatever caused Freddy’s seizure just is. If I could have prevented it, I would have; I can’t control what is.

Little Man

Febrile Seizure Fact Sheet

A is for Anxiety

Posted on by megdanielle

Do you ever hold your breath doing a completely innocuous thing? Do you find your shoulders scrunched up by your ears while relaxing? Do you feel like you have a pound of bricks sitting on your chest regardless of the task at hand? Do you find yourself periodically taking really deep breaths because you don’t have any air in your lungs? Is your heart racing? Do you feel like you’re watching a reel that keeps getting faster and faster?

Perhaps you’re not cleaning the house on overdrive so you think you’re okay. You’re not obsessing about one thing. There are so many things to remember, right? That’s all this is. You’re trying to manage everyone’s schedule during a hectic time. Everyone feels like this really. It’s a symptom of our times.

But you feel out of control.

And it’s not stopping.

If you’re honest… it’s getting worse.

You’ve started avoiding things. You can get away with it for a while because people know you’re stressed. They want to give you a break and it’s not like you’re avoiding all of your responsibilities. You’re still functioning. You’ll bounce back in a second and you’re so good at managing those bricks weighing down your chest that most people don’t even know you’re struggling. You’ll be fine.

You just need a few more minutes to yourself each day. To reset. To relax. You’re so tired in the mornings. You can’t get that relaxation time in before the sun comes up so you’ll take it after the sun goes down. It used to take a half hour to wind down. Now it takes hours. It’s after midnight and you’re tired. You’re so tired. But you can’t sleep. You hold out for that deep breath to fill your lungs. It doesn’t come. Eventually you wake up on the couch and drag yourself to bed. You’ll have dark circles under your eyes come morning.

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Last month I made a call to my PCP (primary care physician) and told her I wanted to start on anxiety meds. I’ve always been type A but this last year has thrown me for a loop that I can’t seem to get out of on my own. I’ve tried. I’ve mediated. I’ve tried yoga. I’ve eaten better and exercised and eliminated as much from my plate as I could. I’ve increased water. Taken my vitamins. But on my birthday a few weeks ago I canceled a casual evening with friends last minute because I couldn’t handle it. I love birthdays. I celebrate as much as I can. But this year I tried to isolate (and I would’ve outside of my immediate family if not for my kick-ass coworker and brother-in-law who refused to let me take my lunch alone).

Last weekend I had to RSVP to two events and the decisions had me in tears. When Fred suggested we bring guacamole to one of them, I immediately started panicking about how hard it would be to find avocados. First world problems, am I right?

They tell me it takes 4 weeks to find out whether or not a medication helps or not and I’m lucky enough to have had a very good friend point out to me the following warning:

They said, “You know… the thing about medication that I didn’t realize is that it doesn’t fix you. You won’t suddenly go back to doing all of the things you pulled away from when the anxiety got too bad. You have to push yourself. You have to start doing the things that cause anxiety to see that that the anxiety isn’t there anymore.”

Another friend told me:

“Change is hard. We get used to sitting in this space even when it’s bad for us. We get comfortable. Our coping mechanisms are comfortable. This won’t be easy.”

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Postpartum Self Care

Posted on by megdanielle

The conversations started well before I became pregnant with my son. They came up when people asked me how I felt about pregnancy and about the 4th trimester and about the first year. They came up when one of my friends announced she was pregnant and again when her beautiful baby was born. I was reminded of them when I passed any pregnant woman on the street.

I’ve been having them for years. 4 years, to be exact.

It took me a long time to understand the heart of those conversations. Over time, the shared dialogue about the hard truths of the newborn phase, the darkness felt in that first year, and the loss of self became less about pain and more about understanding and the need for self care.

I was retroactively diagnosed with postpartum depression following my daughter’s birth. I don’t know exactly when my charts were updated, perhaps it was after talking with my OB this time around about the fears I had going into another newborn phase. Perhaps it was after my last pregnancy which ended in miscarriage. I can’t be sure. But I do know that when the nurse in the recovery room read aloud that I had experienced PPD with the last birth and offered to take our sweet baby boy to the nursery for a few hours to love on him so we could get some sleep before going home as a family of 4, I felt seen.

During my daughter’s time as a newborn, the language for postpartum depression focused on sadness and tears. I didn’t have those symptoms. What I had were feelings of anxiety. Obsessive behavior surrounding breast feeding. I felt on the inside the way you feel when you look at a wide-eyed, feral animal in a cage. I felt irreversibly changed. Damaged. Trapped.

I always committed to answer honestly when asked by medical professionals about PPD symptoms but no one seemed to ask just the right question to force me into what felt like a confession. I was unable to offer what I viewed as weakness and therefore consistently flew under the PPD radar.

Fast forward to my second time around:

Postpartum anxiety is now part of the professional conversation. My friends are here with me in this phase of motherhood; they’ve been through it and they’re checking in with me. And I’m open. They’re direct because I’ve told them to be. I’ve tipped them off to my darkest thoughts during my first go as a new mom and I’ve given them signs to watch for in case I don’t recognize those signs in myself. In case I’m unwilling to listen.

The biggest change this time around isn’t in others. It’s in me. I had people who checked in during the first year with Emma and people who pleaded with me to supplement even one night to get some much needed sleep if I refused to ask for help. (Word to the wise: Obsessively setting an alarm every two hours at night in order to alternate pumping and nursing for weeks while your child consistently shows hunger cues and you’re left with mere drops after pumping until you finally wake up one morning with literally nothing to give your child for her next meal is *drum roll, please* INSANITY. Now we both know).

I couldn’t hear anyone the first time around. I couldn’t see it for myself.

I’m a recovering perfectionist, learning to see failure as a step in an ongoing process rather than a condemnation of character. Learning to see it as an opportunity for growth. Learning to see it as a mere fork in the road where one path is now closed for the time being and the other path is just as good albeit different.

Which brings me to back to nursing.

I said I’d try.

I had a traumatic relationship with nursing the first time around but from the outsider perspective, 8 months is respectable enough. You couldn’t see the obsession. The arbitrary measurement of success I had placed upon it. So when I had my first bad latch with baby Freddy and he threw up my very own blood, I felt that anxiety rise but I said I would continue with use of a nursing shield. And the anxiety subsided.

And then my beautiful but sleepy boy began to drop weight so I was scheduled to see a lactation consultant and, to her credit, she did not once shame me for wanting to continue using the shield (a likely cause of weight issues, I came to learn) but instead gave me tips to continue use which involved nursing, then pumping, then immediately feeding what I had pumped. And the newly climbing anxiety began to subside.

Then I actually tried to put into practice what felt so reasonable in her office and it took me 1.5 hours to complete the whole cycle. At which point, I had 30 minutes until I began the cycle again. And so the anxiety began to rise.

When Fred called me on his drive between work engagements to check in, I picked up the phone and immediately began to sob. I felt panicked. Caged. So my husband came home, he took the kids, and he shooed me out of the house to go for a drive. Go to a library, a bookstore, get a coffee. Whatever. And I did. And the anxiety began to subside.

What I’m realizing about self care is that it’s more than simply saying “I will stop before I get to that deep, dark place.”

I didn’t immediately see that I was taking that approach to nursing. “I will try this thing and this other thing to ensure that I can continue nursing even though it is stretching me toward a place I do not want to go. I can still get control of this.”

I don’t believe that I have postpartum depression this time around but I also don’t believe that I need to in order to make self care decisions that may look selfish from the outsider perspective. I am coming to see that self care means allowing yourself more than preventing disaster. It means allowing yourself to thrive.

For me, self care means giving a formula bottle when my supply is fine, knowing that I’m telling my body to produce less. It means nursing only at night, pumping sometimes, and increasing formula. It’s not ideal but it isn’t bad either. It’s giving me room to breathe. It’s taking away some of that anxiety. It’s giving me back control and allowing me to feel whole. And that, my friends, is good.

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