Duck Dynasty’s Sadie Robertson details her postpartum anxiety struggles after welcoming Honey James

Duck Dynasty star Sadie Robertson Huff got candid about the postpartum anxiety she’s been experiencing since welcoming her first child, Honey James, on May 11. 

On Wednesday, the 24-year-old detailed her constant ‘fear’ and the struggle to fight a ‘toxic brain spiral’ of negativity, that has begun to plague her since becoming a first time mom. 

Speaking on her podcast Whoa! That’s Good, Huff divulged the nuances of her day to day anxiety when it comes to her daughter. ‘I’m constantly trying to fight fear in my life,’ she began. 

Sadie began talking about the difference between postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression, and vaguely spoke about emotional highs and painful lows — chalking most of it up to ‘fear.’

She spoke about her general struggles with anxiety but shared that they started to take on a different form after welcoming her daughter. 

‘It was so many emotions happening that I couldn’t fight the fear like I usually do…I didn’t even realize it was creeping up as much as it was,’ she said of the hormonal anxiety she felt. 

Robertson then spoke about some level of PTSD she experienced from the traumatic labor with Honey — after detailing previously on her podcast that the infant got ‘stuck’ underneath her pelvis and was clamping her own umbilical cord, which prevented airflow.  

‘Because Honey and I had the labor we experienced, my mind kept going into the like “what if this would have happened”,’ she began.

“What if it did last one more minute and she didn’t make it”, “what if she didn’t end up coming out and neither one us made it,”‘ Sadie shared, detailing her spiraling inner monologue. 

‘That is such a toxic brain spiral to go through, that it will manifest itself in some way,’ Robertson shared of the relentless worrisome thoughts. ‘And for me that was extreme anxiety.’

 ‘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 continued to say that she kept her struggles private — even from her husband Christian — because she said she was also ‘so joyful’ to be a mom as a whole. 

‘I didn’t understand how I could be so happy and so joyful, yet also experience so much fear,’ Robertson said of the complexities. 

‘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,’ Robertson continued. ‘However, just because it makes rational sense that I had some fear it doesn’t mean that is something I needed to live with.’  

She went on to say that it got to a point where she had to talk about the fear that she felt with Christian and her family, and also spoke about the guilt she felt that her ‘fear was stealing from the sweetness’ of motherhood.  

Ultimately, she said she learned to let gratitude flood the fear. ‘It’s important that you don’t let that thought run rampant, and that you exchange it with a different thought’ she explained.