MÈRE Stories: Mary Seid
Motherhood has taught me more about myself than I ever imaged. I envisioned helping these little ones find their way, but through the process I've found my own way.
I have a history of anxiety—it goes way back—long before I realized I had it. I did things to begin treating it here and there, starting in my 20s. Fast forward to pregnancy in my early 30s, and I had even more issues with it.
I’ve discovered that there are two main things that trigger my anxiety—hormones and big life changes.
So pregnancy is the ultimate in anxiety triggering for me.
With my first, I dealt with it [anxiety] as part of early pregnancy and then postpartum, although I didn’t really recognize it then until I looked back on it. Then about three years later, I had a miscarriage—queue anxiety.
It's crazy how quickly you forget the impacts anxiety can have on you when you aren't in it. But it quickly came rushing back.
I was very fortunate and quickly got pregnant again—queue anxiety of pregnancy after miscarriage. Was everything going to be okay this time? Were things developing properly? What else could I do?
Then COVID hit and I had my son in May of 2020…queue anxiety again. I was technically induced for preeclampsia but all was seemingly fine while in the hospital.
In most cases, the “cure” for preeclampsia is delivering the baby. In my case, my body didn’t recognize I had delivered the baby, so the preeclampsia continued to progress once I left the hospital. Around 6 days postpartum, I was feeling terrible - I was more swollen, felt a bulge in my side (it was my very enlarged liver), was having terrible headaches and realized something was wrong. Turns out my blood pressure was nearly 200/115 and I was facing a serious condition.
Unfortunately, because of Covid, neither my husband nor my new baby could come to the hospital with me. My husband had to drop me, his 6 days postpartum, emotional, scared and sick wife off at the ER alone. And he was left alone with a 6 day old and a 3 year old not knowing how what to do either. Needless to say it was not a good experience.
My OB was aware of my anxiety and before I was discharged, she sat on my bed and said,
“Mary, this experience is going to make you more likely to deal with postpartum anxiety.
You need to pay attention and you need to take care of yourself. You can’t take care of your baby if you don’t take care of yourself. If breast feeding is too much, stop.
If you need help, ask for it. Don’t try to do it all.”
I’m so glad she did that, because it gave me the “permission” I needed to make choices down the road.
I had some anxiety after leaving the hospital,
but quickly pushed it down to deal with all of the other tasks at hand.
The pandemic continued,
I continued to push down the anxiety.
My son started daycare and I went back to work full time—
pushed down the anxiety.
The kids got sick (thank you new daycare germs), daycare had Covid closures, I got sick, work got stressful—
I continued to push down the anxiety.
Then, something seemingly great happened. We got covid vaccines and the world started to return to normal.
I could take a deep breath – until I couldn’t.
Once I felt I could finally come up for air, I couldn’t breathe.
Everything I’d been pushing down came pouring out.
For the next three months I dealt with pretty severe postpartum anxiety.
I worked with my therapist regularly, I asked for help, I took time off work.
And I slowly began to return to normal.
That’s when I did something different – I kept working at it.
I kept going to therapy, I dug deeper and I really took a look at my life, what my priorities were and how I wanted to move forward.
I ultimately quit my full time job and began doing marketing consulting work. Once I had a bit more freedom in my schedule and less stress overall, I had time to think about other things.
As I began to revisit my experience, a few things really stuck out to me…
I worked for a supportive company and I still left my job. I couldn’t imagine going back to the exact same situation that I was in when I felt so terrible. But it made me think, how many people are in similar situations at companies that don’t do anything to support working parents.
I live with anxiety and I had it as a part of both pregnancies/deliveries and I still didn’t recognize the signs – when you are in that situation, you don't see what's right in front of you. There needs to be more education, more conversation…people assume what they are dealing with is normal but they also just don’t know.
The transition to working parenthood is hard. There is no way around that. But there has to be more that can be done to support individuals in this phase of life – there have to be options.
So that all led to me developing Hera, a company that provides support to working parents and businesses.
I want to provide solutions to people in that phase of life and ease the transition pains so it can be more enjoyable.
I want people to feel supported in their journey.
And I want to pass along what I learned through my own experience.
While what I went through wasn't fun, it got me to where I am today, and for that I'm grateful.
If you had to summarize your journey in motherhood with all its challenges, how would you describe it now? How have you found a way to reclaim your strength or identity? What have you learned?Motherhood has taught me more about myself than I ever imaged. I envisioned helping these little ones find their way, but through the process I've found my own way.
I've learned what's really important to me and how to prioritize those things. I've learned to do what works for me and my family—and that may look very different than what works for someone else and their family—and that's okay.
What advice or words of encouragement would you give another mom walking through a similar chapter? That it gets better and you are way, way stronger than you ever realized.
How has your journey changed you, both in ways you expected and in ways you never could have imagined?My journey in motherhood has made me a better person overall—more understanding, more empathetic and has really shown me what I can do.
Every day is something different!
— Mary Seid | Founder of Hera
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