Suzannah Neufeld MFT - Awake at 3 a.m.: Yoga Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

My images of myself in pregnancy and motherhood mostly take place in the light of the moon. Im awake at 3 a.m., throwing up. Im awake feeling the baby kick. Im awake anxiously researching facts about baby health. Im feeding my baby. Im waking up to feed the baby again.

Night was always the hardest for me. In the day, with the sun shining, my demons vanished, love for my baby blossomed, work was meaningful, seeing friends brightened my mood. In the night, the unbearable sense that no one was coming to save me was overwhelming. I would think, All I want to do is sleep. I am so desperate for sleep. I have never been this tired before. I cant do this. I want to be here for my baby. Why am I not a good enough mother to just do this?

Becoming a parent is a blessing. Pregnancy is a miracle. My children are my favorite humans, teachers, and beloveds, and, in retrospect, they make those early nights of suffering infinitely worthwhile. I mean it with my whole heart (and only the slightest bit of irony) when I tell my daughters, I love you to the moon and back.

But this is also true: being pregnant and having a baby are hard. Really hard. Even for the happiest mom on earth, its certainly one of the greatest physical and endurance challenges that most of us have ever faced. Its a marathon of constant change and new, profound responsibility that you cant delegate elsewhere (though my greatest pregnant fantasy was making my husband carry the baby in his belly for me, even for just one trip around the grocery store). You are on the clock twenty-four hours a day. Add to that modern pressures to do it perfectlywearing your baby all day, making your own baby food, taking adorable monthly photos and posting them online, and, of course, bouncing back to your pre-pregnancy body in just a few months.

For most moms, this combination of change in hormones and identity and the relentlessness of the physical demands of mothering bring difficult emotions and thoughts to the forefront. Sadness, rage, guilt, and anxiety may come to visit. You face the unknown, filling every day with fantasies and hopesand worries, fears, and perhaps even terrors. For some moms, these feelings stay mild or manageable. Other moms, though, experience more intense emotional challenges, and develop depression or anxiety disorders.

Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are the number one. Yet while every mom is tested for diabetes, and robust support and treatment options exist for diabetes, moms who suffer emotionally are rarely acknowledged. Instead of receiving help, they are handed platitudes like sleep when the baby sleeps, let go of stress because its bad for the baby, just enjoy every minute because it goes by so fast, or this too shall pass. This can be a lonely and confusing place to besuffering profound fear, overwhelm, or sadness at a time when your friends and family expect you to be happy, radiant, and beatifically calm.

If this is you, youve picked up the right book. Above all, this book is meant to hold with compassion the challenge and exhaustion of this messy and transformative period in life. My intention is to help you make space for the darkness that can be so painful or scary to acknowledge.

These dark feelings can pose real, tangible difficulties for you and your family, so you likely picked up this book offering yoga therapy because you are looking for a solution. Many books or articles on yoga for moms have words like calm or bliss in the title and feature smiling, glowing, slim pregnant women on the cover. Yoga and mindfulness (and pregnancy in general!) in America are usually marketed as a path to fix all our woes, to make us happy, healthy, beautiful, loved, eternally youthful, sexy, peaceful, more productive, fully present. These promises sell well, because they prey on our attachments and reinforce our insecuritiesagain and again. But yoga doesnt actually work that way.

Yoga does offer effective coping skills for depression and anxiety, and this book will share these abundantly. Yoga doesnt, however, make us eternally calm or peaceful. It doesnt make us good mothers or turn our children into magical unicorns devoid of suffering. We are still exhausted. We still need sleep, food, care from our community or from professionals. Yoga doesnt fix us, but thats okayeven better than okaybecause