What Happened to Carefree Me?

There I was in my 20's, the picture of cool. I went away to college and didn't have a care in the world. I worked hard and played hard too but none of that mattered because I had life by the balls. I was a "go getter" and nothing was going to stand in the way between me and obtaining the career and life I always wanted. To say I was carefree was an understatement....nothing really every bothered me and I could pretty much get past anything. To flippantly say all of this changed "one day" would be a lie because it wasn't "one day," I could tell you the exact day, it was the day I gave birth to my son. I went from a carefree, fun-loving girl and changed into a worrying, woman who now had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

I know things change when you have children but I didn't expect my personality to change. I never used to worry about the "little things" in life but now as a mom all of those little things became big things. Strange thoughts started creeping into my head like, "If I go on this roller coaster and get killed in one of those freak accidents who will raise my child?" Yup....full on crazy stuff! The most disturbing of all were the thoughts about, "What if my baby were going to die?" I would get these thoughts out of nowhere. I would have to run into his room and check to make sure he was breathing because what if he died in his sleep? I would restrain that seat belt a little tighter because what if we got in a car accident and died? Then I would think, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME FOR THINKING THESE THINGS?!?!" I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I had all of this anxiety....did having a baby change my brain chemistry? The more I read up on it, the more I saw this term called post-partum anxiety. I was well aware of post-partum depression but had never heard of this term before. In my research I found that 15-20% of moms go through this but I beg to differ. In conversations with my friends and reading posts on my mom page on FB I realized how many women go through varying degrees of this. Will I be a good mom? Am I doing it right? What if???? I'm sure many of us can relate to these worrying thoughts that we have as moms.

Luckily for me, this anxiety subsided and I did not need to seek treatment for post-partum anxiety but I still feel it creep into my everyday life once in a while. Now a days with two kids there is so much more to worry about but I am usually able to talk myself down. I find when I start to feel overwhelmed I can usually do something like yoga, pilates, take a walk or just go out with friends and the anxiety level decreases. It ain't easy being a full time working mom, with two kids, bills to pay and a marriage to constantly put work in to but it is all worth it.....that is what I tell myself over and over. Now that my children are 3 and 6 I have started to find time for myself and realize how important that time is for me to be a better mother, wife and person. If you take anything away from this blog please take away how important it is for us, as mothers, to still find time for ourselves, to find time for the people we used to be before kids and to find time to be carefree once again because it is all worth it!