Sadie Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame welcomed her first child, a baby girl named Honey, back in May. In a new interview, the 24 year-old former reality television star is opening up about the mental health struggles that she went through immediately after giving birth.
“I’m constantly trying to fight fear in my life,” Sadie revealed this week on her “Whoa! That’s Good” podcast. “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 us as much as it was.”
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While Sadie added that she had “struggled with anxiety for years,” she still was not expecting her mental health issues to escalate the way that they did after becoming a parent.
“That is such a toxic brain spiral to go through that it will manifest itself in some way,” Sadie explained. “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.”
Sadie never told anyone what she was going through, until she found herself crying alone in a closet one day.
“I just said, ‘I’m so scared. I’m so scared that something is going to happen to her,’” Sadie stated. “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 [during delivery], the oxygen actually cut off to her head. I’m scared that something happens to me and I am not going to get to be the mom that I want to be to her.”
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Sadie found herself deeply confused about how she could be so happy about the birth of her daughter, yet so anxious at the same time.
“I didn’t understand how I could be so happy and so joyful, yet also experience so much fear,” Sadie recounted. “I realized that you don’t have to choose just one of those feelings. You don’t have to choose fear and trade out all the joy. You don’t have to choose joy and trade out all the fear. It can actually go hand in hand.”
“The reason I was so fearful is because I loved her so much,” she concluded. “However, just because it makes rational sense that I had some fear it doesn’t mean that is something I needed to live with.”
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