In the days following my pregnancy loss, I began experiencing insomnia and anxiety that started to close in on me in the evenings. My days, strangely, were fine. Around dinner time, the anxious worrying began. I worried about things that I normally wouldn’t worry about. I worried about the family dog’s health. I worried that my boyfriend’s dad would accidentally bump into a bathroom sink that needed to be installed and break it. I worried that my boyfriend would hit a branch while on his bike and die. I grew anxious when the bakery a few steps from our window wouldn’t turn their light off late at night. It was hard to feel calm. My brain burned with these thoughts on a loop. The sink, the sink, the sink. I wanted it to be morning so I could ask my boyfriend to tell his dad to be careful around the sink. I assume this is a hormone response: the pregnancy hormones have dropped off and my body is trying to piece together what has happened. My brain had just been occupied thinking about the entirety of my child’s life and then suddenly there was no child. It needed a bridge. I just didn’t like getting across it.
A similar experience occurred in my mid-twenties after the onset of post-viral illness. It took me six months to get safely to the other side of this one. It started with not being able to sleep.
At first, the illness I was recovering from switched from the need to oversleep to sleep deprivation. A girl in one of my graduate classes gave me some sleeping pills which set off a psychosis-like period that revolved around my hair. I believed that my hair was falling out. More specifically, I worried that the water in my apartment was contaminated in some way. I bought jugs of distilled water from the store to wash my hair with and would lean over the rim of the bathtub, pouring cups of clean water over my head. Empty water jugs started piling up around me and my hair washing routine became more and more restrictive. Time became divided into “hair wash” or “no hair wash” days. I didn’t like going out on days that weren’t hair wash days. I bought a new shower head with a water filtration system to try to curb my behaviours, but it only increased my anxiety. After each shower, I would crawl around the bottom of the tub, counting all the hairs that had collected near the drain to see if the new shower head was doing its job. Then I’d quickly flush them down the drain and try to get on with my day.
Mirrors became my next problem. If I looked in a mirror, I would get stuck there, sometimes for an hour, staring at my head, so incredibly dissociated. I started covering all my mirrors with towels or shirts to prevent this. My boyfriend at the time newspapered over the mirrors at his apartment which made it look like a place no one would want to mentally inhabit voluntarily, but I’d still find holes and find myself out of time, my body skyrocketing into another dimension. If my roommate forgot to re-cover the mirror in our bathroom, my day would be ruined. But I couldn’t avoid all the mirrors. At school, I’d stare at myself in the bathroom mirrors and then pretend to wash my hands if someone came in to use the toilet. When they left, I’d resume staring and parting my hair to take stock of my scalp. The compulsion to look in the mirror was too strong. I wore hats to control this. If I went anywhere, I had to be wearing a hat. But then I would just stare at other women’s heads when I passed them on the street, or sat across from them on the bus, or behind them at a cafe. I Googled about wigs, convinced I would need one soon. It was all getting out of hand. I visited the university walk-in clinic, hoping to take back control of my hair. I left with a prescription for some medicated scalp cream and a referral to the university psychiatrist located three floors above the walk-in after expressing that I wanted to kill myself. I was out of my mind with anxiety. It was a terrible time.
When I started dating Tristan, I was still dealing with hair anxiety. It was much more manageable by that point, but it still dictated certain behaviours. I wouldn’t let him touch my head or stroke my hair, for example, but over time he habituated me to these caresses, like a scared animal. He reassured me that I had nice hair and that it wasn’t falling out. It took me a long time to really believe him.
Maybe I’m more hard-wired for episodes like this. My mother experienced psychosis. She had a difficult time postpartum and was hospitalized a few months after giving birth to me.1 There is also a history of schizoaffective disorder on her side of the family. I’ve always been very careful around medication and now avoid anything that alters my mind or mood. Personal history makes me cautious of these things.
What I’m getting at is that hormones are mysterious and powerful. One may need support to get through them. Tristan, with this post-miscarriage anxiety, has reassured me that no, his dad would not break the sink accidentally. The dog is fine. He will be careful cycling. I will be able to sleep again.
Postpartum mood and anxiety disorders can be brought on by sleep deprivation and hormonal fluctuations. Insomnia, anxiety, disorganized thinking, and mood changes are common symptoms. In more serious cases, a person may experience bizarre or intrusive thoughts. Mother’s may become afraid they will hurt their children. Sometimes they do.