Lately, I’ve been feeling like my anxiety is out of control. With two kids, both with big personalities, and often being home alone with them, I’ve found my mind wandering and have to stop myself from going immediately to the worst-case scenario. But when you’re constantly battling chaos, and your brain is on overdrive and exhausted, it sometimes feels like it can be inevitable.
The hormonal side of motherhood and postpartum already has a way of turning up the anxiety, and no one tells you how paralyzing maternal anxiety can be.
What happens when your worst-case scenario seems to be coming true more often than not? One moment, everyone thinks you’re overreacting, being overly anxious – but really, it’s that you’ve already seen into the future and played it out in your head.
We have that superpower as moms. When do we stop treating it as if we’re overly anxious and instead go into mama bear mode as an advocate? Because otherwise, the anxiety voice drowns everything else out – when really you’re just trying to foresee everything to protect and fight for your kids.
The anxiety can make you second guess your instincts, and recently, I found out the hard way. I’m always hypersensitive to bugs and ticks. Bugs love me. I always get eaten alive outdoors, and even on my wedding day, I was covered in bites. A few years ago, I got bitten by a tick, and it took weeks to get a diagnosis.
As we know, in Connecticut, it’s possible, and because my symptoms didn’t show as textbook, it took me forever to prove it and get the tests I needed. And then, recently, we were playing outdoors, and I saw something on my son. I brushed it away, thinking it was dirt, and it fell off easily, but a few hours later, I saw the bug bite come up red. I immediately freaked out.
I checked both kids for more bites and called the pediatrician. Only to be told, you’re probably paranoid and overreacting, and if it fell away easily – it’s probably not even a tick anyway because of how they attach themselves.
“But it looks like a tick bite,” I kept repeating over the phone. “Just keep an eye on him in the coming weeks, and if there are any symptoms, let us know.”
Every day, I checked his bite and body, but it seemed to be healing and going away. “Okay, everyone was right; it was just the anxiety and panic that set in. He seems fine.”
Twenty-three days later, I woke up feeling off. Maybe I slept weird getting up with the baby? My neck hurts. Within 12 hours of feeling like something was off, I couldn’t move my neck—complete stiffness.
I’ve felt this before and knew exactly what it was. My Lyme disease didn’t present the textbook way before, but it did start with muscle soreness, then a headache. After weeks of checking my kids, I realized I never really thought about myself. It was around 9 p.m. when I discovered and self-diagnosed.
I made a virtual FaceTime call to a doctor and said I’d get tested the next day but that I wanted to start on antibiotics as soon as possible. Every hour counts with this. He listened, told me he saw it a lot, and told me to keep advocating for myself because Lyme disease can be so undetected, unpredictable, and invisible for a long time.
At this point, I feel like it’s just a waiting game until my son’s symptoms start to show. We called the pediatrician again. “But he still doesn’t have any symptoms, so you just need to keep an eye on him,” they said.
I know I must seem crazy at this point, but I’m fighting for my son to go through blood tests even though the needles are never nice, and he’s not even ill or showing symptoms. But what’s the alternative here? We wait until he feels like I’m feeling? Until the bacteria is taking over his tiny nervous system?
I cried in frustration and fury until my husband took the phone from me and said to them, “We are ten minutes away; we are coming in to see a doctor and order lab tests.”” She put us on hold and then came back and said, “The doctor will see you immediately.”
We left and, within 30 minutes, had a blood test organized with a very patient phlebotomist waiting for the pediatricians to go ahead and lab order. We had informed the pediatrician of our needs, and although they felt it was unnecessary, they complied with our request. Now, I should say. I’ve never experienced this level of care in the US. My concerns have always been taken seriously. But for some reason, even though it’s so prevalent, Lyme disease isn’t always treated the way it should.
Most providers I’ve come across are not “Lyme literate,” a term I’ve discovered from other moms since talking about our experience. Instead, they are looking for textbook symptoms that sometimes don’t even show up, and for others, show up five weeks into the illness.
This experience has taught me that what often gets labeled as maternal anxiety is, in reality, something far more powerful – it’s maternal instinct. It’s the deep, gut-level knowing that something isn’t right — even when others can’t see it yet and don’t have my mama bear superpowers to see into the future.
I’ve learned that advocating for our kids sometimes means being the squeaky wheel, the one who calls back over and over, who asks again, who insists. And sometimes, it means doing the same for ourselves. We live in a world that tells mothers to calm down, to stop worrying, and to wait until symptoms are undeniable. But waiting can cost precious time — and, in some cases, health.
I’m learning not to apologize for the urgency I feel when it comes to protecting my children or myself. That anxiety, while often overwhelming, isn’t a weakness — it’s part of the fierce, protective force that comes with motherhood. It’s not always easy, and it’s rarely quiet, but it’s there for a reason.
So, I’ll continue to trust that voice inside me. I’ll continue to push, ask questions, and ensure that being cautious never gets mistaken for being irrational. Because in the end, I’d rather be the mom who over-advocated than the one who looked back wishing she had.
