#speakthesecret
Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts
“This thread is amazing. Needs to be turned into a list and handed out to expecting moms by every ob/gyn. They tell women everything under the sun about what to expect for 9 months; why not this?!”
“I think it’s wonderful you’re making this list for new moms. It would have been reassuring for me to know I was ‘normal'”
“Scary Thoughts” is an expression used to encompass any and all categories of upsetting thinking that can interfere with the well-being of a new mother. Scary thoughts refer to negative, repetitive, unwanted and/or intrusive thoughts or images that can bombard you at any time (Dropping the Baby and Other Scary Thoughts by Kleiman & Wenzel, 2010). Scary thoughts are anxiety-driven, they are extremely COMMON, and most new mothers admit that have, at some time, imagined or worried about harm coming to their babies. The shame of having these thoughts can prevent women from speaking about them. In response to women telling us they feel isolated and ashamed of their thoughts, we asked women to share their scary thoughts in an attempt to help them express these distressing ruminations, so they can get relief and also help other mothers understand how universal this phenomenon is.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Thoughts of suicide are scary, but they are in a different category from anxiety-driven “scary thoughts” to which we refer on this page. If you are having thoughts of suicide, this should always be taken seriously and we urge you to find someone you trust and let them know how you are feeling.
The objective of our #speakthesecret campaign is to obliterate the stigma attached to scary thoughts which are so common in new motherhood.
Our page is an ongoing list of the thoughts that brave women have chosen to share in the hopes of helping women know they are not alone and that having scary thoughts is common during pregnancy and the postpartum period. We will add thoughts as they are submitted.
DISCLAIMER: This list is anonymous. We do not ask for any identifying information and therefore are unable to contact you. You can contact us at any time if you want to modify or delete your submission. We reserve the right to edit or not include a submission if, for any reason, we feel its content is unsuitable for this forum and are not able to respond to individual clinical or medical concerns. We may decide to create a meme from your words which may be (anonymously) posted on various social media platforms.
Please keep in mind that this forum is not a substitute for professional intervention and submitting your scary thought will NOT give you access to treatment. There is no follow-up after you post. If you are worried about the way you feel, we urge you to contact a support person and a qualified healthcare provider. If you need assistance locating a provider who can help you, please email us at support@postpartumstress.com.
My baby was going to die in the middle of the night and I was going to find her in her crib cold and lifeless.
I thought anything could hurt my baby, knives, clingfilm, pictures might fall, the lightfitting could come down. And much more . It was very bad i’d even worry that id snap and kill him somehow as there was baby deaths in the news. I was a nervous wreck and rather isolated.
If everything wasn’t just so (like a piece of clothing was out of place or a picture wasn’t straight in the wall) I HAD to fix it or someone was gonna break in our house and harm the baby.
I didn’t want to hold my daughter while I fed her a bottle. I thought I’d have her head at the wrong angle, and she’d either suffocate or choke on the milk. I propped her up with a pillow on the couch and held the bottle. I’m a birth professional and KNEW that that was more likely to cause suffocation/choking, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Anything having to do with SIDS.
If everything wasn’t just so (like a piece of clothing was out of place or a picture wasn’t straight in the wall) I HAD to fix it or someone was gonna break in our house and harm the baby.
Every time I went outside to get fresh air for my son and I, I put him in the carrier and had so much fear walking on the sidewalk thinking a car would come up on the curb or he would fall onto the road. My mind imagined the whole scene. it was even worse when my husband was pulling him in the wagon.
Contracting an illness or disease as a result of someone not washing their hands or being hygienic in another way. I had my first during the Ebola outbreak and during flu season. Ultimately, I would fear the worst, that my baby would end up dying from something like this because of other people’s carelessness. I was very strict about others washing hands, etc., and I avoided leaving the house at all, except for appointments, for about three months. It was extreme, looking back.
I thought if I bathed the baby on my own, there was a good chance that I’d leave her in there, and walk away.
I thought that I would fall when walking, and somehow in the fall I would drop or throw the baby over a railing, or down the stairs.
We lived on the junction of the 2 biggest streets in our city. Every day as I got him out of the car seat (we had to park on the street), I would have thoughts about how it would be to get hit by a car racing past.
I had very strong scary thoughts when standing on a balcony with my second baby that I might drop her off on purpose and also when I was carrying her through doorways horizontally that I would smash her head into the door jam intentionally. This is despite loving her intensely, not being depressed or particularly anxious, and not having these thoughts with first baby.
My worst intrusive thoughts were around the SARS virus that was around in 2003-2004. In January 2004, my daughter was 8 weeks old and I saw something on the news about SARS. I became convinced that it was going to be the end of all human life, and rather than allow people to suffer, the government would provide suicide pills for all adults, injections for children, or medicine to put in baby bottles. I had visual images (not hallucinations) of having to kill my baby, and of myself, husband and baby lying huddled in bed, dead. It was horrific. My intrusive thoughts were so bad that I was later diagnosed with PTSD.
♥ THANK YOU ♥
to all the brave women who continue to disclose their scary thoughts.
Together, we will educate many and help reduce the anxiety and stigma. #speakthesecret