On a previous episode of her WHOA That’s Good podcast, Sadie Robertson Huff told her daughter Honey’s birth story. She described it as a “very scary” and “really dangerous” experience.
Honey got stuck in the birth canal during labor, which cut off her air supply.
“So her shoulder actually got stuck, which is really, really rare. Since then, we found out that only happens in about 1% of births, and it’s what our nurse said that is the scariest thing that can happen…” Sadie recalled.
Thankfully, everything turned out just fine, and Honey is a happy and healthy baby.
:-)))))) 😃 !!!! pic.twitter.com/UvsyWnImRi
— Sadie Robertson Huff (@sadierob) May 28, 2021
In a new episode of her podcast, Sadie spoke about how she has “struggled with anxiety for years.” But Honey’s traumatic birth and Sadie’s new life as a mom has made that anxiety much worse.
Getting honest about her postpartum experience, Sadie said:
“I’m constantly trying to fight fear in my life. It was, like, so many emotions happening that I couldn’t really fight the fear like I normally do. All of a sudden I was just in a state of anxiety. I didn’t even realize that it was creeping up as much as it was.”
She went on to explain just how bad the postpartum anxiety got:
“That is such a toxic brain spiral to go through that it will manifest itself in some way. I didn’t even realize that those thoughts throughout the day were making me jittery, were making me have all these feelings of anxiety and were making my chest feel super tight, like, I couldn’t breathe.”
Even though Sadie was going through such a tough time, she didn’t tell anyone about her struggles. She only opened up when her husband, Christian, found her crying in a closet one day.
I’m sharing on about my postpartum struggles with body image, physical pain, ‘what if’s’, and so many other emotions that have flooded over me in the past several weeks. GO watch the full video on YouTube! https://t.co/t2WmQLhRFd pic.twitter.com/t0bpVSlPES
— Sadie Robertson Huff (@sadierob) July 14, 2021
Sadie recalled what she told Christian in that moment:
“I just said, ‘I’m so scared. I’m so scared that something is going to happen to her.’ It was so real. I was like, ‘I’m so scared that something is going to happen to her. I’m so scared that she’s not really OK. What if whenever she got stuck, the oxygen actually cut off to her head. I’m scared that something happened to me and I am not going to get to be the mom that I want to be to her.'”
Sadie said it was hard for her to accept that she was so scared, because she felt like she should have been nothing but joyful. But she came to realize that she could experience both emotions at the same time.
“You don’t have to choose fear and trade out all the joy,” she said. “You don’t have to choose joy and trade out all the fear. It actually can go hand in hand.”
You can listen to Sadie talk at length about her postpartum journey in the video below.