UNDER PRESSURE
Of all the symptoms of stress that Jess Baker battled as she juggled motherhood and a new career, it was the insomnia that broke her.
The former secondary school biology and science teacher knew exactly what was going on physiologically that was causing her sleeplessness, anxiety, irritability and even, at times, rage and, given she was studying to qualify as a personal trainer, she knew exactly what she should be doing to counter it, too. “I knew exercise would relieve the thoughts and anxiety. I knew that to feel okay, I needed to move. But I just didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t know which thing to tackle first. I was totally lacking in energy.”
She was supervising group boot camps for local women in south Auckland, and studying two nights and one morning a week, while caring for toddler Lily and Elijah, then only a few months old. At one point, she admitted herself for three nights to a mothers’ support facility to help her cope, even though she says her husband, Josh, did everything he could to relieve her stress by sharing the parenting as much as possible with his own full-time job.
“He was very happy to do it; he’s wonderful. He said, ‘I’m trying to take away the stress from you’, but it made me feel a little guilty that he’s doing everything and I’m not doing anything – even though I’m keeping two small humans alive.”
She’d get to sleep at 10pm and wake at 1am “and that was me done. I was awake for the day. I was thinking about the [personal training] business,thinking about the children, thinking about the future. I have done many relaxation courses but I just could not switch off.” At the end of last year, she went to hospital with an irregular heart rhythm caused by something similar to a panic attack.
It was only when she was prescribed quetiapine last year to help her sleep and began stepping up her exercise as part of her studies that she started to break through the lethargy and fatigue. She began gentle workouts using bands and weights, increasing their intensity when her sleep was more settled.
When Baker, 34, spoke to North & South, she was only weeks away from packing up the household and moving to Switzerland for two years for her husband’s job but she already had strategies ready to deal with the stress of the shift and adapting to life, language and culture in a new country.
“One of the best pieces of advice I was
