Anna Haines explores how running can enhance our mental wellbeing in motherhood.
Padding gently along the peaceful country lane to the melodic chirping of the dawn chorus, my mind relaxes and drifts from the intrusive thoughts that have been playing over and over in my head since 4am. I focus on my breathing, unsteady and irregular at first, but falling into rhythm with my footsteps as the dew-drenched meadow unfolds ahead. With each in-breath, my lungs fill with litres of fresh, oxygen-rich air, fuelling every cell in my body, restoring my sanity and, crucially, channelling vitality into the eight-month-old baby growing inside me.
I started running regularly, unconventionally, when I was five months pregnant. I have always been active, but I am more of a tortoise than a hare when it comes to exercise, preferring long countryside rambles to sprint sessions at the track. However, I am also quite the daydreamer, indulging in fantasies of completing outlandish feats of endurance while dawdling around the duck pond with my children. So when my husband joked about signing me up for an ultramarathon after I joined him one Saturday at our local parkrun, my brain started ticking.
This daydream was a welcome distraction from the funk I had found myself in. I was experiencing mounting anxiety about the upcoming birth of my daughter. My son had been born the previous year by emergency caesarean after an attempted vaginal delivery resulted in a suspected placental abruption. As the birth of my daughter loomed, I started having flashbacks: the feeling of impending doom as we sped towards the hospital, bright lights fading in the corridor as I was rushed into theatre and, finally, waking up alone on a ward without my son, who, unbeknownst to me, was recovering on the neonatal unit. Now, with the possibility of this happening again, dread mounted every time I visited the hospital. Panic overwhelmed me when my midwife spoke of birth options. At night, dreams of dying haunted me and in my darkest hours my faith crumbled. I blocked out all thoughts of giving birth and began to avoid hospital appointments.
