At work I’d feel guilty I wasn’t with my son – and when I was with him I’d feel guilty I wasn’t at work
SITTING at her laptop shortly after returning from maternity leave, Sarah Lloyd felt the all-too-familiar warning signs. restless legs. Clammy palms. And a compulsion to rub her index fingers and thumbs together.
They spread rapidly through her body until her heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it was about to leap out of her chest and her throat was so constricted she could scarcely talk.
‘I’d just dropped my daughters at nursery and was due to dial in to a conference call,’ says Sarah, 40.
‘But I was shaking so much I could barely open my laptop. I sent an email to say I was stuck in traffic and asked a colleague to cover for me.’
With a high-powered career as the global head of leadership for a technology company, Sarah seemed, to the outside world at least, every inch a success story.
In addition to her rewarding job, adoring husband and two beautiful daughters, she had a wardrobe crammed with smart clothes and a 4x4 Nissan parked on the drive of her spacious semi-detached house in the Home Counties.
‘But I felt torn between a job I’d always wanted and two children who needed me, which made me incredibly anxious,’ says Sarah from Farnborough, Surrey. Her anxiety was both caused and camouflaged by a pursuit of perfection.
‘Women are more susceptible than men to this form of anxiety because the social pressures on them to be a perfect wife and mother while holding down a successful job and social life are so great,’ says Fiona Markham, chief clinical officer of The Cabin, a mental health services provider that treats disorders including anxiety.
‘They don’t want to show they aren’t coping, so it becomes a silent disorder.’
Often, she says, the more anxious mothers become, the more they strive to be Supermums to mask their symptoms: ‘The busier their schedules and the more they accomplish, the less they have to acknowledge these crushing and debilitating feelings.’
‘Like many women, I felt I had to say “yes” to every demand thrown at me to prove myself and struggled to delegate,’ admits Sarah, married to Karl, 39, a design engineer with whom she has two daughters: Lucy, four, and Amy, two.
‘I’d wake at 4am fretting about my workload and triple check every project to make sure it was perfect. After becoming a mother it hit me my life had changed beyond measure and I felt overcome with fear that, unlike my career, a baby wasn’t something I could control,’ she says. ‘As an older mum — I was 36 when I gave birth by emergency Csection — I felt I was in a goldfish bowl, with midwives constantly monitoring how Lucy was feeding and sleeping. It took me hours just to get us both out of the house. I felt under enormous pressure.’ And when she returned to work after nine months, that pressure segued into depression. ‘I’d leave Lucy with my mum and a nursery when I was at work and constantly had other people telling me what she’d been up to. I felt a huge sense of guilt — as if I’d made a terrible choice — and the panic attacks I’d started to suffer from in my early 30s returned.’
WHEN Lucy was one, Sarah’s GP put her on antidepressants. Sarah took them throughout her pregnancy with Amy, who, because of her first traumatic labour, was born by elective caesarean in December 2015.
‘It sounds crazy but at the time I felt that because I hadn’t given birth to Amy naturally I didn’t deserve her,’ she says.
‘Breastfeeding was a struggle and I became obsessed with how she was feeding and sleeping. Then there was the
guilt of not being able to spend as much time with Lucy because I had a new baby to look after. When I was looking after both children together I felt completely overwhelmed.
‘I remember driving home from one trip to the park with friends in tears from the stress of simply trying to get both children in the car without either having a meltdown. All the other mums seemed competent in comparison.’
When Sarah returned to work for the second time in the summer of 2016, she felt under almost intolerable pressure. ‘I felt I needed to prove having two children wouldn’t affect my performance,’ she says. ‘I started having panic attacks every couple of months. When they happened I’d walk out of the office in silence, sit on my own in my car and cry.
‘I wanted to be a “Supermum” but dealing with a toddler, a baby and a career was too much. Something had to give.’
Last year, Sarah admitted to her company’s HR department that she was ‘doing too much’ and agreed to go down to a three-day week, and last month she quit her job altogether to become a freelance communications consultant.
‘Ultimately my girls come first, and I’m not under as much pressure any more,’ says Sarah, who has also taken up mindfulness — a form of meditation.
‘I still suffer from a small panic attack most weeks if I’m tired or run down, but have found ten minutes of meditation and breathing techniques a day help disguise my anxiety from others.’
Cheryl MacDonald is another successful career woman whose anxiety was exacerbated by motherhood. ‘I managed to persuade people I was coping even when I wasn’t,’ says Cheryl, 38, from Glasgow, who is married to Mike, 42, a physician, with whom she has a seven-year-old son, Caelen.
‘Breastfeeding constantly all day and night was exhausting and even when Caelen slept I couldn’t.’
Sleep deprivation, she says, cost her all sense of perspective and triggered anxiety attacks. ‘I felt as if the world was caving in. My throat tightened, I felt hot and there was a sense of being outside my own body. Fortunately Mike was supportive. He held me as I cried and struggled to breathe.’
In public, she tried to present a brave face. ‘Even though I was an emotional mess it was important to me that I still came across as competent. I’d put fake tan on my face to make myself seem less drained. I smiled and exuded confidence before going home to collapse. Like most mums, I felt too guilty to admit I couldn’t cope.’
HER feelings of inadequacy were exacerbated by social media. ‘Nobody posts pictures of themselves covered in vomit. All the other new mums I knew looked immaculate and said they felt fantastic, when my baby hadn’t slept,’ she recalls.
‘It took four hours to get Caelen dressed. Being stuck in the house all day while Mike was at work was isolating, and being alone with my thoughts drove me mad.
‘In previous generations new mothers had their families nearby to help them cope. My parents were a half-hour drive away and both were still working full-time.’
Although her symptoms eased when Caelen was three and started sleeping better, Cheryl, a former business analyst who now runs a chain of yoga franchises, called YogaBellies, says she is still trapped in an ‘endless cycle’ of guilt that she is not a good enough mother or businesswoman.
‘At work I’d feel guilty I wasn’t with my son and when I was with Caelen I’d feel guilty I wasn’t at work.
‘I have learned to control my anxiety but keeping it under control is an ongoing journey.’
And one all too many mothers will recognise.