What was wrong with me?
Several months after making the best move of our lives something just wasn't quite right with me. I started to have the occasional panic attack over things that wouldn't usually cause me panic.
I remember we were all sitting around the dining table having breakfast one morning and my OH had decided to give our youngest a tiny piece of bread as he was now trying solids.
I felt anxious when he had just put it in front of him and then he started to cough and that was it i had to leave the room, i couldn't look at him and i had tears in my eyes. My chest was tight and i sat on the stairs having a panic attack, i couldn't return to the dining room and when i did i quickly grabbed my cup of tea and just said to my OH that i was going to go and sit in the living room. I couldn't even look at our 7 month old let alone sit in the same room.
My OH shortly came upstairs and asked me to watch our son while he went to tidy up but i couldn't, i have no idea what was wrong with me but i just didn't feel comfortable to watch him or be near him after having such a panic.
The next panic attack was a few weeks later, i had accidentally knocked the gas switch on our hob whilst cleaning it and hadn't realized until hours later. My youngest was taking a nap in his bedroom on the top floor, my eldest son and i were in the front room on the first floor and as i went downstairs to get something from the kitchen i could smell gas in the hallway. I ran down into the kitchen, checked and switched off the gas and opened all the windows, the front and back door.
I ran upstairs got my eldest son and took him to the top floor where i rang my mum to ask for advice on what to do. I was trying my best to not give away just how panicked i was but i couldn't any longer and broke down in tears, i asked my mum to come and pick us up because i couldn't bear to be in the house with the boys in case we had some kind of gas poisoning. Can i just point out that you could barely smell gas, it hadn't been switched all the way on and would not have caused us any harm but to someone who suffers with anxiety or panic attacks you aboslutely fear the worst.
I came off the phone, packed a bag for the boys, grabbed my youngest from his cot and got us all outside in the back garden because i felt that was the safest place to be, by this point i was panicking about what if the house had a faulty somewhere and what with the gas in the air, could it blow up? I then decided that the garden wasn't safe and that we needed to stand at the front of the house down the road a little and so that is where we waited until my mum arrived.
I couldn't stop crying once we were in the car on the way back to her house, i felt awful for accidentally knocking the gas switch, how could i have let that happen and put my boys in any kind of danger, i must be a terrible mum.
A few days later i had woken up feeling unwell, i have in the past had vertigo and this definitely felt as though that was what it was. I was a little worried but i got up and got on with showering and sorting the boys breakfast out. I finally sat down with a cup of tea in our living room but came over extremely dizzy, just looking out of the window made me feel queasy.
I panicked because i couldn't control how i was feeling and i was thinking what if i pass out, i have my two boys with me here, my youngest has just learnt to crawl, what would they do if i did pass out!? I got on the phone to my mum and rang her in tears, again my chest was tight, i felt hot, and i couldn't see properly where i felt so dizzy and dreadful. I kept asking if i should call an ambulance, i was terrified of what my boys would do if something happened to me and i just felt out of control, i couldn't stop the dizziness and i couldn't stop panicking, which felt like a heart attack in itself!
I managed to crawl across the floor and bumped myself down the stairs to our front door where i let my mum in. I sat at the bottom of the stairs, on the floor while she headed straight upstairs to check the boys were safe and happy. My mum rang the NHS helpline and explained my symptoms, because i had been having a mild chest pain a day or so prior to this they insisted on sending an ambulance out. The ambulance arrived, checked me over and i was absolutely fine, as in the checks they done came back normal except i was still in panic, on the floor and i couldn't move.
If you have ever suffered a panic attack you will know that sometimes at its worse it can give you the feeling of a heart attack almost, your chest is tight, your hot, dizzy, have pains in the chest, feeling so unwell.
After that episode i didn't want to be left alone with my boys for fear of falling unwell whilst taking care of them and with nobody else there with me if i did in fact pass out or become seriously unwell, i didn't want them to be unsafe.
I ended up going to my mums house for the next few days so that i wasn't alone with the boys but i found that every morning i was waking up in a panic. Not for any reason, i was simply waking up feeling very very anxious. Id then go out during the day, with my boys and my mum and found that i would have a panic attack in the middle of whatever we were doing. I would tense up, i wasn't able to talk, i felt hot, i felt trapped, i couldn't escape the panic and i would sit frozen in my seat just waiting for it to pass so that i could resume what i was doing.
My mum herself is a sufferer of sever panic attacks, she has suffered with them for many, many years and it has prevented her at times from doing a lot of different things throughout her life. So she really understood what i was going through and how i was feeling except neither of us knew why i was like this all of a sudden, what was wrong with me?
I remember we were all sitting around the dining table having breakfast one morning and my OH had decided to give our youngest a tiny piece of bread as he was now trying solids.
I felt anxious when he had just put it in front of him and then he started to cough and that was it i had to leave the room, i couldn't look at him and i had tears in my eyes. My chest was tight and i sat on the stairs having a panic attack, i couldn't return to the dining room and when i did i quickly grabbed my cup of tea and just said to my OH that i was going to go and sit in the living room. I couldn't even look at our 7 month old let alone sit in the same room.
My OH shortly came upstairs and asked me to watch our son while he went to tidy up but i couldn't, i have no idea what was wrong with me but i just didn't feel comfortable to watch him or be near him after having such a panic.
The next panic attack was a few weeks later, i had accidentally knocked the gas switch on our hob whilst cleaning it and hadn't realized until hours later. My youngest was taking a nap in his bedroom on the top floor, my eldest son and i were in the front room on the first floor and as i went downstairs to get something from the kitchen i could smell gas in the hallway. I ran down into the kitchen, checked and switched off the gas and opened all the windows, the front and back door.
I ran upstairs got my eldest son and took him to the top floor where i rang my mum to ask for advice on what to do. I was trying my best to not give away just how panicked i was but i couldn't any longer and broke down in tears, i asked my mum to come and pick us up because i couldn't bear to be in the house with the boys in case we had some kind of gas poisoning. Can i just point out that you could barely smell gas, it hadn't been switched all the way on and would not have caused us any harm but to someone who suffers with anxiety or panic attacks you aboslutely fear the worst.
I came off the phone, packed a bag for the boys, grabbed my youngest from his cot and got us all outside in the back garden because i felt that was the safest place to be, by this point i was panicking about what if the house had a faulty somewhere and what with the gas in the air, could it blow up? I then decided that the garden wasn't safe and that we needed to stand at the front of the house down the road a little and so that is where we waited until my mum arrived.
I couldn't stop crying once we were in the car on the way back to her house, i felt awful for accidentally knocking the gas switch, how could i have let that happen and put my boys in any kind of danger, i must be a terrible mum.
A few days later i had woken up feeling unwell, i have in the past had vertigo and this definitely felt as though that was what it was. I was a little worried but i got up and got on with showering and sorting the boys breakfast out. I finally sat down with a cup of tea in our living room but came over extremely dizzy, just looking out of the window made me feel queasy.
I panicked because i couldn't control how i was feeling and i was thinking what if i pass out, i have my two boys with me here, my youngest has just learnt to crawl, what would they do if i did pass out!? I got on the phone to my mum and rang her in tears, again my chest was tight, i felt hot, and i couldn't see properly where i felt so dizzy and dreadful. I kept asking if i should call an ambulance, i was terrified of what my boys would do if something happened to me and i just felt out of control, i couldn't stop the dizziness and i couldn't stop panicking, which felt like a heart attack in itself!
I managed to crawl across the floor and bumped myself down the stairs to our front door where i let my mum in. I sat at the bottom of the stairs, on the floor while she headed straight upstairs to check the boys were safe and happy. My mum rang the NHS helpline and explained my symptoms, because i had been having a mild chest pain a day or so prior to this they insisted on sending an ambulance out. The ambulance arrived, checked me over and i was absolutely fine, as in the checks they done came back normal except i was still in panic, on the floor and i couldn't move.
If you have ever suffered a panic attack you will know that sometimes at its worse it can give you the feeling of a heart attack almost, your chest is tight, your hot, dizzy, have pains in the chest, feeling so unwell.
After that episode i didn't want to be left alone with my boys for fear of falling unwell whilst taking care of them and with nobody else there with me if i did in fact pass out or become seriously unwell, i didn't want them to be unsafe.
I ended up going to my mums house for the next few days so that i wasn't alone with the boys but i found that every morning i was waking up in a panic. Not for any reason, i was simply waking up feeling very very anxious. Id then go out during the day, with my boys and my mum and found that i would have a panic attack in the middle of whatever we were doing. I would tense up, i wasn't able to talk, i felt hot, i felt trapped, i couldn't escape the panic and i would sit frozen in my seat just waiting for it to pass so that i could resume what i was doing.
My mum herself is a sufferer of sever panic attacks, she has suffered with them for many, many years and it has prevented her at times from doing a lot of different things throughout her life. So she really understood what i was going through and how i was feeling except neither of us knew why i was like this all of a sudden, what was wrong with me?
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