Carmella thought she was just cutting back one small pumping session. Instead, her body hit her with something she says she had never felt before.
While speaking on her YouTube channel, Carmella opened up about weaning off exclusively pumping breast milk around eight months postpartum, and she said the change sent her into a terrifying panic attack. Her milk supply had started dropping, but she didn’t expect one adjustment to knock her that hard.
“The other day, I just had such a terrible, terrible, terrible panic attack and like mental breakdown. It was so bad. It was like physical because I think it was the first time my body was realizing that I wasn’t pumping as much. I wasn’t getting as much milk. My supply was going down and I didn’t do a drastic change.”
That’s what made it so scary. Carmella wasn’t dealing with some huge life crisis in that moment. Her body just reacted, and suddenly everything felt wrong.
“It has been insane. It was so crazy to the point where I was like having a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. Everything was like putting me in a bad mood.”
She knew something was off enough to say it out loud to her mom. Carmella said she could feel her hormones shifting as her supply dropped, and it changed her whole mood.
“I finally said to my mom like, ‘I feel like my hormones are all over the place. I can tell because of my supply going down.’ And I said, ‘Everything is pissing me off. Everything is making me mad. I feel like this like dark cloud over me.’”
The confusing part was that her life wasn’t falling apart. She had just come back from vacation and should have been riding that high, which made the panic feel even more out of nowhere.
“I knew I had nothing to be upset about. I had just gotten back from vacation. I was on cloud nine. Why was I feeling like this?”
Carmella has dealt with postpartum struggles before, including rage and anxiety, but this one scared her because it didn’t feel like anything she already knew how to handle.
“Of course, I had like postpartum rage with him that I know I’ve talked about publicly and some postpartum anxiety, but this was like something I have never felt in my life.”
And the timing made it feel even stranger. She was already eight months postpartum, which made the sudden crash harder to understand. Then her mind started running. Carmella said she spiraled into fears about her health, including Lynch syndrome, which her mother has and which Carmella has put off getting tested for.
“It’s such a weird thing to experience at 8 months postpartum when I never felt like that. I was spiraling about all these other things that I had no control over… like, for example, my mom has this thing called Lynch syndrome… and I’ve been putting off getting tested for it for years.”
From there, the thoughts got darker. She started worrying about cancer, whether she would be around for her sons, and even whether they would have enough money for college.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what if I have cancer and then I’m not going to be around for my boys and then I’m not even going to see them grow up.’ Then I’m like, ‘What if we don’t have enough money to send the boys to college?’”
Her therapist finally helped pull her out of it by bringing her back to what was real right in front of her. That was the moment Carmella said the spiral finally slowed down.
“Listen, right here, right now, you’re in this room. Your husband’s next to you. Your boys are fine. Your mom is with them. You are good. You are healthy. You have a roof over your head. You have food in your refrigerator. Finally, I was able to stop this downward spiral and be like, ‘Oh, okay. I’m good.’”
Carmella said she shared the story because another mom might be going through the same thing and wondering why she suddenly feels like she is losing control.
“I guess I’m just sharing this for any other mom out there who might be going through this… know like, hey, you’re okay.”
Carmella’s experience shows how intense postpartum changes can get, even months after giving birth and even when the trigger seems small. She didn’t share it to make the moment sound neat or easy. She shared it so another mom in that same dark spiral knows she isn’t alone.
What do you think about Carmella opening up about this postpartum panic attack? Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
