My Decision to Try Mental Health Meds
As someone with a lifelong history of anxiety, also affected by the profound sleep loss that often accompanies new parenthood, it took years for me to realize that I was increasingly unwell and needed professional help. I told myself: it's just that I have a very difficult baby who won't sleep (and who was diagnosed with autism years later). That seamlessly transitioned to our second baby, two nighttime wakers, two in diapers, and two who needed constant supervision and exhausting emotional management. Nothing on earth was more important to me than their well-being, and I was lucky to have a caring husband actively sharing that load with me. But my sanity was cracking more and more, and I was stuck in a hyper-vigilant obsession, micromanaging the kids' environment, demanding the kind of impossible perfection from myself and my husband that doesn't just solve problems but somehow prevents them instead. Even then, an awareness in the back of my mind recognized that