On Why Social Anxiety Sucks

The true face of anxious/exhausted Mum Hannah

So Maternity Mental Health has been awesome and super supportive and has offered me a bunch of useful stuff going forward since the anxious Mums group finished up.  So I have regular contact with my case manager and also regular one on one counseling with the woman who ran the anxiety group AND an upcoming couples workshop.  And funnily, around the time I realised respite care was a thing and had a read online and then didn't know how to apply for/get it my case manager offered it to me.

And I was like 'YAY!' cos the main issue I have these days is just being super tired because Abby has still been only sleeping in 45 minute blocks during the day, and we haven't been able to stretch her wake-times much because of it which makes for a pretty full on day when you also have a full on toddler.  And because our full on toddler is also a very routine kid, school holidays have really thrown her and she has been acting out something chronic*.  So on a weekday when it's just me I am lucky to get 20 minutes where both kids are asleep to take a breath and be by myself, and I spend most of the rest of the day cleaning, and trying to avoid getting hit, or having things smashed.

And Abby is still co-sleeping and waking two to three hourly at night...

So consequently I'm shattered.  So my immediate thoughts on respite were:
'YAY!' and 'YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!'
And because I am so tired my regular smart brain hadn't even considered anything other than that I would finally get some sleep and could maybe feel a little human again for a bit.

What I was hoping for from respite was maybe a couple of hours a few days where they look after your kids so you can sleep.  But what respite actually is, is a full day (7 - 8 hours) three days in a row where someone comes to help mind your kids.  So I said.  Yes please!  Without really thinking through the actuality of what that meant for me as someone with social anxiety.

The first thing that made it not work is that the respite carer was ill the day she was supposed to start so she didn't come.  And while this is 100% not her fault it is still one of the least helpful things to happen to someone with anxiety.  Cos I'd fully prepped myself for having someone I didn't know come to my house.  I'd had a shower, I'd got the dishes done, put away and hung the washing out.  The house was in a reasonable state and the kids were fed and not too feral.  And this is by 9am (high five to me!) And then my careworker called to say that the respite carer wasn't coming.  Again, no-one's fault but really threw me.

Because people with anxiety often don't cope very well with sudden changes.  And I am one of those people, it made me unsure of what was happening for the rest of the week.  And unsure makes me feel insecure and unsafe.  Seriously, I have lists and blackboards and Excel spreadsheets and all kinds of ephemera to manage my day-to-day life so I don't totally freak out.  So when a big thing changes it impacts heavily on me.

But I didn't want to give up so I agreed to have someone come and start the following day for a different three day block of time.

And she did come.  And she was honestly great with the kids.  But because I didn't know the 'rules' of how respite is supposed to work, and when I was supposed to rest, and how much one on one with both or each kids she was supposed to have or any parameters or guidelines or anything I couldn't relax.  I did manage to have about an hour of rest/lie down time while Etta was napping, but for the rest of the time she was there I just kind of hovered, too scared to do much else or do housework even.  And I wore pants all day because I was too anxious to wear my usual comfy pyjamas for fear of doing so in front of someone I didn't know.

And several random things made things worse:
1) -The respite lady didn't know about our dicky toilet flush, cos I didn't tell her, cos I forgot, cos I was anxious and jammed the buttons and ultimately broke the flush on our toilet so then our toilet wouldn't flush.  And I wasn't mad at her just anxious because I then had a stranger in my home that didn't have a flushing toilet.  (I think this would make normal people a bit anxious to be honest).  And our toilet is still broken.

2) Our older cat has been super unhappy with the house renovations and started spraying in the house in random places so I keep finding random spots of cat wee and having to clean them and parts of our house smell which is hideously embarrassing and gross.

3) Because Etta is out of routine and generally having trouble going to bed cos of daylight savings she is tired.  And having a new person there at naptime made things worse.  And because of that she got super crazy at nap time and it took almost an hour to get her to go down for a nap.  And that was stressful (nap time is not usually that dramatic).

4) Because Etta is crazy and I have anxiety any small comment the respite lady made I took to heart and felt like a terrible parent and couldn't articulate well why we did and didn't do certain things.  And I felt bad that Etta still wasn't toilet trained.  And I felt stupid.  And this respite lady was honestly very lovely and not trying to make me feel terrible AT ALL I felt more anxious cos it really drove home how nuts I am.

And I didn't even realise how stressed I'd been until she left for the day and I melted into a puddle of exhausted tears and called my Mum.  Cause I'd been working so hard to put on a front of being ok with this amazing help I've been given that I almost had fooled myself into thinking it was all ok.  But it wasn't.  And it was no-one's fault.  And it was sooo frustrating because I'd pinned a lot of hopes on this being something that would help get me through, and my own inadequacies as a human being failed me.  Again.  Sigh.

And then I had to do one of the most stressful things ever.  I had to talk to my care worker and explain that I couldn't have the respite lady back the next day.  But before that, I had to tell my husband, who I think will also have pinned some of his own hopes and dreams on this respite stuff I couldn't have her back.  And I felt awful and guilty and ungrateful and generally like a bad person.

But I did it.  And Murray was absolutely fine and understanding and fantastic.  And I was too scared to call my care worker (phone calls are not my friend) so I text her work number.  And when I heard back from her (next day, because by the time I procrastinated and thought about what to say and cried and freaked out she will have turned off her work phone cos it was 7.30pm) she was also great and understanding and ok.  And I kinda knew that this would be the case, but because I'm in hyped anxious state from the respite lady being here my sane brain doesn't work very good.

But there have been some fantastic outcomes from this failed respite situation.

The first one being that on Tuesday I was a bit pissed about the changes to the plans so I was like 'You know what?  I'm gonna make my own respite.  Fuck you world'.  And for the first Tuesday that my firstborn was away at her Nana and Poppa's I genuinely took a day of rest.  I watched back to back TV shows and had a lie down and played with Abby and apart from making dinner, and the epic pre-9am-dash-to-make-house-ok-before-respite-came I did naught.  And the sky did not fall on my head.  And everything was ok.

The second one being that this morning Mum was here (yay Mum!) and Etta told me to 'Go away Mummy' so I did.  I went away and I had a bath (Abby was asleep).  And while I was in the bath, relaxing and shaving my legs for the first time in forever I thought about stuff.  The first thought was if I could rest this Tuesday while Etta was at Nana's, there's no reason why I can't rest every Tuesday.  So I will try and do that in future.  And while I don't get more sleep (cos 45 minute naps) I do get time to myself to just chill, which is still very helpful.**

And then I thought maybe I can do this more often when Mum's here - just have a bath.  And if I try and be more assertive I can nap when Etta naps when Mum's here.  I find this tricky because it's nice to have time alone with Mum without Etta to just chat (Etta says 'no talking' to us so often it's like a mantra) - so it's easy to just not get to nap.  Because I love talking to my Mum, and it's good for both of our brains.  But I think, for the time being, I need to prioritise that sleep time until I'm feeling a little more sane.***

And had I not had the respite lady come and make me crazy and freak out I probably would never have come to any of those realisations about the 'respite' I have already available at hand and how the real issue is that I'm not utilising it the best way possible.  So while yesterday things felt quite raw and traumatic, today I am feeling grateful for that experience and like I've made an epic discovery which means I will have respite every week.  Which is amazing.

So at the end of the day I'm a super lucky lady.  And while anxiety trumped support, I've found ways of better using the support I already have from my whanau (who are amazing just by the way).



* I don't know how your toddler acts out, but for ours it's screaming, throwing (chairs, toys, anything she can lift), hitting (others and herself).  And it can last from anywhere from a few minutes to an hour.  And if you try and offer her anything it feeds the tantrum.  So the best way to manage it is to remove all dangerous objects from her path of destruction, be available to comfort her when she's ready, and get her to help you tidy up the other destruction once she's really, really calmed down (not before, or it'll set her off again).  So what I'm saying here is that she's full on.

** What currently happens is I run errands and I clean and I take a little time to myself, but generally run about like a mad thing the rest of the time so don't end up feeling all that rested at the end of the day.  Which is silly really, but soooo easy to do with a family and a never ending list of jobs to do which are MUCH easier generally when you are sans toddler.

*** And we have Netflix now, and I've shown Mum how to use it so I feel way less guilty about leaving her in the lounge with nothing to do while sometimes all the rest of us are napping.  Because Orange is the New Black is fucking awesome.  And yes, I know, I'm WAY behind the ball on that one.

On Baby Sleep Part 3: Mum's Sleep

I have always been a very light sleeper.  And I have always had difficulty getting to sleep.  As a very anxious person I sometimes have difficulty shutting down my brain.  And shutting down became nigh on impossible with the advent of being responsible for another human life.

To get to sleep, I (like babies) need to follow a sort of routine (learnt after many years of sleep-drama*).  I need to be comfortably warm (I wear socks to bed).  I need to be in absolute darkness (I wear a sleep mask).  I need things to be pretty much completely quiet.  To help shut down my brain, I read pointless stuff just before bed (at the moment it's Game of Thrones).  If I am still having trouble shutting down my brain, I focus on my breathing, or do some counting exercises.  It usually takes me half an hour to an hour to get to sleep at night.

I cannot sleep in hospital.  I cannot sleep on planes.  I generally struggle to sleep in places other than at home.  And I wake easily.  I usually have to pee once or twice during the night (and no, I'm not diabetic, just have a tiny bladder), and when Murray comes to bed, or gets up for work, or snores it completely wakes me up (we hardly ever sleep in the same bed).  This means I honestly can't remember the last time I've slept for a consecutive period of more than six hours.  It was definitely before I was pregnant.

And now I have a baby I can only vaguely remember the last time I had three hours of consecutive sleep. 

This is also in part because I am an excessively paranoid crazy person regarding SIDS.  This is a silly thing to obsess about.  The rates in NZ are really low compared to when I was a baby.  And it's not like I have any of the factors that increase the chances of Etta having SIDS.  I have never smoked.  I am not obese.  I am not an alcoholic.  I don't co-sleep unsafely or let her sleep on her stomach.  But I can't stop thinking about it.  I still check if Etta is breathing at least once an hour (because if she wasn't breathing I'd have more of a chance of resuscitating her than if it were less frequently.  I've brought this down from half hourly..)  It's insane and not good for either of us.  And now I'm so used to checking her that if I sleep for longer than two hours I usually have a nightmare, wake up, freak out and have to check her.

So with my regular sleep issues and the crazy SIDS stuff combined, I consequently don't sleep very much.

This is not something I get off on.  I am not one of those people who thrives on coffee and energy drinks and three hours sleep and how-much-work-I-can-get-done-at-crazy o'clock. 
'Man, after getting all the housework done I only had about three hours sleep'...
That's not me.  I am someone who actually likes sleeping, would never stay up past 1am to finish an assignment, and if I could do it, I would sleep most of the day.  Pre-baby, I was a bed-by 11-at-the-latest-preferably-10.30 type of person, and a big night out meant I was out until midnight.  Now I have a baby, I'm in bed by 9.30 at the latest in an attempt to maximise any kind of sleeping opportunity.

And the whole sleep-while-your-baby-is-sleeping is a total crock when you have a baby who naps in 45 minute blocks (unless you're like my husband and can fall asleep in seconds)... by the time I get to sleep there are about 10 - 15 minutes until she wakes up again... Due to exhaustion and little brain I have been using 'wake aids' to survive - berocca, cups of tea and chocolate... probably not the healthiest way to exist, but gets me through each day.

And I know this is crazy.  So lately I've been doing my best to think of other solutions to my no-sleep saga.

I need to ensure ya'll know that yes, I have a wonderful supportive partner, and that he really does his best to look after Etta so that I can sleep.  But unfortunately, we have a baby who WILL NOT take a bottle (of expressed breast milk or anything else).  So our pre-pregnancy plan (he minds her until midnight so I can get some sleep before I take over) went out the window.  We would love to do this, and it would definitely help my sleep, but at the moment it's just not possible.  And Murray does mind her in the mornings on weekends when I'm exhausted, but due to it being daytime ie - not completely dark or silent, I generally can't sleep anyway. 

At the same time as the no-sleep saga, we've also had the our-baby-is-ridicously-tall saga, which has resulted in us having to move her into her own room sooner than we intended.  Her cot is too big to fit in our room, and she is far too big to fit in her bassinet.  Because Plunket recommends sleeping in the same room with your baby for the first six months, I knew this was going to add another layer to my SIDS paranoia, so I started taking some actions to address this.

I'm actually a pretty logical person most of the time and I knew that this fear was ridiculous.  If I could trick the crazy-new-Mum hormonal part of my brain, I figured everything would be ok.  So I compared the SIDS death stats with some regular death stats.  If Etta's been on a car ride during the day, at nap time (or bed time), I say to myself 'Etta is fourteen times more likely to die in a car accident than of SIDS.  And you let her go in the car, so surely you can let her sleep for a couple of hours without checking her'.  Now for some people that'd make them freak out about taking their baby in the car, but I know that's as crazy as my existing crazy (and a way harder to hide kind of crazy), so it's actually been oddly reassuring.  This, combined with getting a baby monitor, has started to bring in line my hypervigilance in checking Etta while she's asleep.  And while I slept on her bedroom floor the first four nights she was in her own room, I have let her sleep in there by herself since then.

Which has been great, and (seems to, sometimes) has helped her sleep.  But it still hasn't magically cured my sleep dramas.  So I decided to invest some money in trying out a breast-feeding-safe sleep naturopathic medicine thingee.  I'd read about some sleep drops on this on an online NZ Mummy forum, and heard it was supposed to actually work.  The first night I tried them (along with a sleep support drink from the same people) it actually had a weird effect on me.  When Etta woke up and I went to feed her (I was sleeping on her floor at the time) I was mega dizzy.  Not a high kind of dizzy, a dizzy exactly like I had been spinning in one direction for a while and just stopped.  Everything was pulling to the left and I worried that I might fall over.  So I didn't pick Etta up.  Murray brought her to me in my bed, and he slept on her floor (to help me get peace of mind).  The next morning I felt fine.

I emailed the sleep drops people to see if they had any suggestions, and they haven't encountered this before, but recommended a different dosage in case I had a sensitivity to one of the ingredients (totally possible, our family has intolerances/allergies up the wazoo).  And it seems like the reduced dose is somewhat helping.  I'm (usually) finding it easier to get back to sleep after having to get up to feed Etta, and I'm (usually) falling asleep quicker at night.  It's quite possibly a placebo effect, but it doesn't matter - the end result is the same.

But after all this hard work, at the end of the day when your baby's not sleeping, you can't really sleep.  And Etta's just hit another rough patch (partly wonder weeks, and partly stupid fireworks).  So I still haven't managed more than a three hour sleep run, but I'm feeling confident that it WILL happen at some point.  And the past 5 months have flown by, so what's another year or two...




* In short form, sleep drama means bouts of insomnia that are untreatable via sleeping pills or sedatives as they don't work on me (weird extreme susceptibility to some medications, and absolutely no effect on me from others.  Causes problems in hospital) and just issues with sleeping in general.

On Baby Sleep part 1: On Getting Etta to Sleep

                                          Aren't they lovely when they're asleep?

Etta slept most of the time for her first month on this Earth - apparently that's quite normal for early babies.  But after that, she woke up, and appeared to never want to sleep again.  Being new parents with no prior baby minding experience we had zero knowledge around baby sleep - how much they need, when they need it, or how to get them to sleep.  I think (early times blurry due to lack of sleep) we assumed she needed sleep at night, and otherwise when she got cranky - and worked out we could get her to sleep by doing the following:

- Feeding her to sleep
- Rocking her to sleep
- Making shhhhhhing noises

Sadly, the rocking her to sleep was not that effective.  Sometimes it was more like rocking her to quiet, then as soon as you stopped rocking she would scream.  And the shhhhhing only worked once she was calm.  One night Murray attempted to rock her to sleep for four hours before coming to get me so I could feed her to sleep.

And shortly after that she would no longer feed to sleep.  The sleep situation was pretty ridiculous.

She was only about six weeks old at this stage.  We had tried the methods my friend had used (her son is two months older than Etta), but they hadn't worked for us and the internet offered so much conflicting advice it was confusing.  The only book I'd read that had anything in it about baby sleep was one by Nigel Latta.  So I re-read his advice, and trialled it for a day nap.  Nigel Latta uses a 'controlled crying' method.  It's where you put your baby down for a sleep (in a quiet place, with some sleepy preamble) and then you leave them for five minutes before checking on them.  No matter how much they are crying.  And then you go back, and if they are crying you pick them up (or rock them) and soothe them to quiet - and then you put them down and check them again in six minutes.  And it goes on like this up to leaving them for half an hour if needs be.

And it worked.  She was asleep after (I think?) six minutes.  It was hard letting her cry, but armed with a book that reminded me babies don't die from crying I managed to hold out on picking her up early.  This was a revelation!  I used it for a few days.  Then I checked this method with the internet.  It was not recommended for babies under the age of four to six months.  I felt bad.  So I stopped using it.

Until I really thought about how hard it was to get her to sleep without it.  So I thought bugger the internet, I'm with Nigel Latta.  It seemed to work for Etta, and Murray was on the same page as me*.  In the first two weeks it sometimes took up to nine minutes to get her to sleep - but most of the time it was six.  And even at the nine minute mark, allowing two minutes each time to soothe her - that's only 45 minutes of crying and not sleeping as opposed to four hours.  So I know it seems bad to leave a small baby to cry - cortisol and all - but in total she cried less during sleep training than she had overall beforehand because she slept more and was generally a more content baby.

We still use this method to get her to sleep - and most of the time (unless she's teething or cranky) she doesn't cry at all.  We have been also using white noise to soothe her, but I've recently discovered she doesn't actually need it.  Sometimes it takes her a while to actually sleep - she often lies there quietly staring at the ceiling, or flicking her head back and forth but she almost always eventually goes to sleep.  For naps, putting her down is quick and easy.  She gets tired.  I swaddle her and put her in her bed (in a quiet, dark room) and say 'It's sleep time now.  I love you and I'll see you soon', kiss her and leave the room.  In the evenings, we have a small routine - we lower our voices.  Murray changes her into night time clothes, we swaddle and feed her, then Murray reads her a story and sings her a song in bed, then it's bedtime.  She's asleep now, and she got there, as usual with a little protest grizzle but no tears.  No picking up, no messing about.  Lovely sleeping baby like the one pictured above.

There are LOADS of articles on why controlled crying is dangerous cos crying babies equals too much cortisol which damages babies brains etc.  Despite this, it works fine with our Etta - she is a happy, normal baby who still seems to love us both.  Like most things around babies, there are several schools of thought on how to do things, and why other ways of doing things are wrong.  I think that just like there are many ways to cook an egg, there are many ways to teach your baby.  And just because you prefer your eggs poached, doesn't mean that scrambling eggs is wrong.

Initially it isn't easy to just sit on your hands while your baby cries - we aren't heartless.  If you do use this method to get your baby to sleep, I recommend going and doing something for the first five minutes - make a cup of tea, or check your emails, or (if you're quick like me) have a shower.  Once they're sleep trained they'll usually be asleep (or at least quiet) once that first five minutes is up anyway.  And then you also have a cup of tea, or are clean and refreshed - so if they are still crying, you are probably in a better mindset to cope with the next six minutes.  And if you really can't cope with the crying, you don't have to start with five minutes - you can start with two like in Jo Frost's controlled crying method.

What I like about this sleep method  is that it has taught Etta how to self settle without sleep aids.  It's an important thing to learn which will help her get to sleep through the rest of her life.  And Murray and I are fairly independent people, so a method that teaches independence to our child makes sense to us.  Because we are not leaving her to cry indefinitely, she knows we haven't abandoned her, and that she is loved and cared for.  And I don't think it has emotionally retarded her - she has absolutely no trouble communicating her emotions - be them happy or sad. 

And most importantly, she sleeps! 


* Having him onside is what made this work.  Whenever one of us was about to buckle because she was making such a piteous sound, the other would stand strong.  This definitely got us through the tough first few weeks, and still helps us get through the occasional tough nights now.