Balanceophile

Well, first things first, panic/anxiety attacks during pregnancy are pretty common. I mean, imagine, your body is growing another human, nothing external is contributing to that human’s growth but your own body. The human gets bones and muscles from your body. And don’t get me started on the hormonal dance that your body goes through. It’s difficult; it’s beyond our general perception. Remember those exam days and the nights before – a lot of us stressed about completing the entire syllabus overnight. Some of us went into panic mode wondering if we could complete studying everything. Imagine a simple exam and the stress we carried because of it. Coming back to pregnancy, growing a human is like taking exams every day. It is stressful, unpredictable, and overall confusing. Naturally, going through multiple anxiety or panic attacks is common.

Now comes the million-dollar question: how to manage these unprecedented attacks? I used to get panic attacks for the most part of second trimester and the initial half of the third trimester. It did not help that few people shared their pregnancy experiences, and that only added to the anxiety and stress.

So, here are a few things I did that helped me manage those episodes:

Deep Breaths

Everyone says to take a breath, and you might be irritated with people stressing this constantly. I used to feel the same until I did it and felt the difference. Especially when you are in a public space where you don’t have the comfort to be yourselves, breath work helps. It helps calm your nerves, and the silence that follows will slow down your overflowing thoughts to one thought at a time, which you can process comfortably. Just inhale for 4 seconds and exhale through your mouth for 4 seconds. While this method helped me, there are different deep breathing techniques, and you can try whichever works for you.

Journaling

Thanks to the guided journal gift from The Whole Truth Foods, I ranted my thoughts in it. Every time I had panic attacks in my house, I stopped doing whatever I was doing and poured my feelings into the journal. Honestly, it didn’t help me at first. Writing made me cry inconsolably, and I wasn’t feeling good about it. But gradually, I understood the point of journaling. Writing my thoughts made it easy for me to see the reality and understand how far my imagination is from the reality.

Pregnancy Yoga

There are plenty of benefits of pregnancy yoga. Even if your gynecologist suggests bed rest, there are a few yoga postures that you probably can do with their advice. I loved the entire experience of pregnancy yoga because every time I did it, it helped me massively to clear my head space. All the clutter I had in my head vanished, and I felt at peace. A significant aspect of pregnancy yoga is regulating your breathing, which helps manage anxiety too.

Understanding the unpredictable aspects and being prepared for them

My greatest fear during pregnancy was delivering the baby. Every woman that I knew who got pregnant, I’m sure most of you all at one point might’ve been worried about how your delivery experience would be. I went through it myself multiple times. Every time, I used to think of different ways things might go south and felt my heartbeat increase. But then, when I processed these thoughts, I realized that I’m getting these panic attacks because of the unpredictable outcome. And the unknown factor of how delivery pains will be added to the anxiety. I thought about what I could do, and the first thing I thought was to understand the process of delivery and coping mechanisms that help go through it. I listened to podcasts, attended a session from my hospital, and practiced those coping mechanisms regularly. These steps gradually helped me reduce my anxiety about the unknown factor.

Talk to your Partner

Having a supportive birth partner makes a mountain-sized difference in a pregnancy journey. While they cannot carry a human in their womb, they sure can share the mental load. Whenever I had stressful thoughts, I used to share them with my husband, and most of the time, he knew exactly what would take my mind off it. Sometimes, they can be very helpful, and that makes this rather confusing journey all worth it.

Conclusion

Pregnancy is an amalgamation of multiple feelings and thoughts running in milliseconds. It is hard to manage these thoughts, and I am glad that our generation doesn’t believe in ‘Just suck it up and move on’ mindset. These are some measures that I took to manage my stress. If you have any other ways, do share them.