Any of you moms have an anxiety disorder and?

did it affect your delivery? Not only in the state of having your children early or late, but also did it make delivery difficult? I have been reading on it because I have generalized anxiety disorder and it says that anxiety causes preterm labor. I’m just curious how many of you it affected. Thank you!

I have generalized anxiety also and see a psychatrist for it and have for almost a year. I was pregnant from February and delivered at 37 weeks and 3 days on October 14th. It didn’t affect my pregnancy or my delivery at all. I had to be induced due to severe preclampsia.

During my pregnancy I just tried to avoid stressful situations that seemed to cause me anxiety like dealing with my father in law who is an awful person. I started getting panic attacks dealing with him and his wife so I stopped seeing them at all, to protect myself and my baby.

Also, delivery wasn’t really all the difficult for me. I was nervous and anxious about being induced but once things got under way I was on so much pain medication that I felt pretty decent all things considered!

If you ask your Ob you can also take some medications while you are pregnant to help control anxiety and/or depression. I was prescribed Zoloft during my pregnancy but chose not to take it and do therapy instead. But my OB said it was safe to take as long as I was off of it by 36 weeks (assuming I would go full term) so the baby had enough time to get the drug out of its system.

I think you should be just fine. Just try to relax as much as you can an avoid things and or people that make your anxiety worse.

Good luck!

P.S. Anxiety can make you more likely to suffer from post partum deprssion and post partum anxiety after you deliver so be sure to watch out for the signs of those and get help if you need it. I’ve been diagnosed with both and am taking anti depressants and doing therapy every other week and it’s helped me cope a lot better with all of the changes going on.

Arekku – Labor