Mums Worry

It's the middle of the night, and my five- month-old son is sleeping peacefully in the room next door. I should be asleep too but instead I'm wondering whether to look in on him again. I decide that the quickest way to get back to sleep would be to check just one more time, so I peer around his door and wait for the soft snuffly noises that signal my return to bed.

If there's one thing worse than being up all night with a fretful baby, it's being up when yours is happily asleep. When I finally drift off, I have horrible dreams, and wake up sweaty and scared. Since Owen's birth, I've had lots of nasty thoughts, kept at bay during the day, but which bubble up and swarm my subconscious as I sleep. It's the vague sense that there are people out to get me, but who I gradually realise are after my baby.

I was prepared for many of the changes that come with being a parent - domestic chaos, endless nappy changes and broken nights - but the fear that something might happen to my child is easily the most difficult one I've faced. When I confess to my mother that I've started leaping up every hour to check my baby's respiration rate, she says that I will get used to it. Then she adds, ominously, that once you've had children you never really sleep easy again.

Becoming a mother has made me feel vulnerable. Suddenly the world is filled with fear. Driving, for instance, never bothered me. Now it terrifies me. As soon as my baby is bound into his infant carrier in the backseat, I become an overcautious driver, creeping along the roads. I've also found myself reading up on obscure food bacteria and its potential impact on tiny stomachs, having always been less than scrupulous about kitchen hygiene.

"You've got the fear," says my friend Poppy, breezily. "You have to switch it off, or you'll go insane." A mother of two, she's no stranger to the stress of the early days. But how do I escape it? "It's about letting go," she tells me. "Learning to accept that bad things happen, but they are unlikely. If you obsess over them, you'll ruin what should be a magical time."

According to Dr Neelam Sisodia, a consultant in perinatal psychiatry, some degree of postnatal anxiety is perfectly normal. "Because of the physical and emotional changes that occur at this time, including rapidly changing hormone levels and lack of sleep, your coping mechanisms may be affected and small worries can easily be blown out of proportion," she says. In the early weeks, this is put down to the "baby blues". "Usually some time between the second to 10th day after delivery, eight out of 10 newly delivered mothers experience symptoms such as feelings of anxiety, tearfulness and emotional changeability. By six weeks, hormones will have settled down to pre-pregnancy levels. A few months on, there might be mild anxiety, but it should be more manageable."

If you are still feeling overwhelmed, Sisodia advises talking to someone. "Your health visitor or GP can often help get these worries into perspective and allow you to access more specialised help if necessary".

There are also several basic ways to combat anxiety before seeing the doctor. Experts suggest that eating well, getting out regularly and taking exercise can have a positive impact. "Another sensible plan is to make sure you have someone who you can confide in, someone you can talk to honestly about your worries," says Professor Ann Mortimer, a consultant psychiatrist, responsible for maternal mental health. "Many women feel ashamed that they're having problems, believing that they should be able to glide serenely into motherhood and carry on exactly as before."

According to Justine Roberts, mother of four and co-founder of the parenting website Mumsnet, this kind of fretting is usually the territory of first-time mothers. There's even a term on Mumsnet for precious first borns, or PFBs, with threads about the ridiculous worries that new mothers have. Tales of women phoning NHS Direct when a baby hits itself with a rattle make soothing reading for anyone who imagines they are alone in their anxiety. This also underlines that you will probably look back and laugh. "A process known as habituation tends to help," says Mortimer. "Time passes and nothing awful happens so you realise that things will probably be all right."

However, for the minority of women who are unable to overcome these anxieties, it can become a serious problem. In which case, it should be treated by a specialist for your child's sake as much as your own, according to Dr Ben Priest, a psychiatrist and expert in child mental health. "If a mother is very anxious, she may not be emotionally available for her children. She's not attending to their needs because she's tied up with her own. Getting help is important in order to prevent lasting impact ... the children's emotional development might otherwise be delayed."

The biggest concern is that untreated anxiety will lead to depression. "Although [anxiety] can sometimes be related to OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), a condition which can have some genetic origins, it is more commonly linked with post-natal depression," says Priest. "The boundary between the two can be indistinct, with one often leading to the other."

Fortunately, the vast majority of mothers simply face short-term worry rather than any kind of long-term mental health condition. In which case, virtual support offered online can be enough to quell fears. When Owen was four months old, I questioned my decision to turf him into his own bedroom sooner than the six months recommended by the World Health Organisation. It was heartening to hear from other women via Mumsnet who had done the same, and made me realise that the number of rules and regulations about caring for your baby has made the worrying worse.