Then I was postpartum, and was like sh*t, I didn’t even think of this. Why didn’t I plan better?

But when I look back, the things that actually helped could not have been plnanned for. They weren’t big, dramatic changes. They weren’t perfectly timed or carefully planned. They were small decisions that felt slightly uncomfortable in the moment. Sometimes even wrong.

But were also the things that gave me pieces of myself back.

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I accepted help.

Not in a theoretical way, but in real time. Someone offering to hold the baby and me not automatically saying no. Letting someone else step in and noticing how hard it was to not stay “on.”

There’s a kind of identity in being the one who handles everything. The one who anticipates, responds, holds it all together.

Letting someone else do that, even for a few minutes, felt unfamiliar. But it also made space for something I didn’t realize I needed—to not be needed for a second, and to feel what it was like to be taken care of too.

I left the house alone.

I thought I’d feel guilty the entire time. I thought I’d be checking my phone, rushing back, not able to settle into it.

Instead, I remember walking and feeling like I could actually breathe. Like my body could exhale in a way it hadn’t in a while.

Nothing about my life had changed in that moment. The baby was still there. The responsibilities were still there. But I felt a little more capable. I was reminded how much bigger the world is than my small baby bubble.

I stopped pumping.

I kept doing things to try to make it easier. New flange sizes. A new pump. Pumping ‘ on the go’. I tried every possible thing to make it work, and it just took way too much out of me.

Anytime I reflected on what would make me feel better, it was either having more time in the day, or pumping less.

Feeding your baby is so nuanced and the hardest thing is going in with an expectation, and then having it be something completely different. So many expect breastfeeding to go a certain way, and it doesn’t. Then they feel like a failure, a shame spiral. It’s hard not to think your body failed you.

There’s a point where continuing something stops being supportive and starts being draining, and it can be hard to admit when you’ve reached it. Letting myself step away from that wasn’t easy, but it gave me back energy I didn’t realize I was losing.

That was the start to feeling like myself again.

I went back to work.

This is also controversial.

I expected to feel torn. I expected guilt, doubt, that sense of being pulled in two directions.

Instead, I felt like I had my brain back. Like I could think clearly again. Like I was back to myself for the first time in a long time.

Yes, the guilt was/is there. But I also have more space to process and think about things, rather than to just be in it .

I made sure I ate without having to think about it.

There were days where it would be mid-afternoon and I’d realize I hadn’t eaten yet. Not because I didn’t care, but because there was no space to think about it.

Having meals ready—whether I made them or ordered them—wasn’t about convenience. It was about making sure my body had what it needed to keep going.

I used Feast and Fettle which delivers fresh cooked food to your doorstep without me having to think of what we will eat, grocery shop, make the food, clean up from the food. This saved me both immediately postpartum but also when I went back to work.

I bought clothes for the body I was in.

My new size. My new body. A body that grew and birthed a human.

There’s something gnawing about wearing things that don’t quite fit, that remind you of a version of yourself you’re not in right now. Letting that go, even in a small way, shifted how I moved through the day.

I didn’t have to wait to feel good in my body. I could feel good in it now. I could be excited to pick out clothes, and feel better about myself in them.

I moved my body again.

Literally just moved. I walked. I started yoga again. I did a mom work out class.

After pregnancy and delivery, there was so much that felt unfamiliar. There was pains and aches in new places. Movement gave me a way back to my body. To a version of myself that felt strong, present, connected.

It wasn’t about changing how I looked. It was about how I felt inside of it.

I made space for my relationships again.

Time with my partner. Time with friends. Intentionally.

There was a part of me that felt like I shouldn’t want that yet. Like I should be fully immersed in this one role. But there was another part that knew I needed it. Needed to remember who I was in those spaces too.

Coming back to those relationships didn’t take away from motherhood. It expanded it.

I made sure I had one-on-one time with my toddler.

Because something had shifted there, and I could feel it.

There was a version of our relationship that had changed, and I was grieving that, even while everything else was growing.

Spending that time together didn’t bring it back to what it was, but it reminded me that it was still there. Just different now.

I admitted that I missed parts of my old life.

The independence. The spontaneity. The ability to move through a day without being needed in the same constant way.

It felt like something I wasn’t supposed to say. Like you were ungrateful if you longed for a slow Sunday morning.

Two things can exist at the same time. Loving this version of life and missing parts of the one before it aren’t in conflict with each other.

And what I didn’t expect was this:

Feeling like myself again didn’t take anything away from my motherhood.

It didn’t make me less present, less connected, or less invested.

It gave me more of it.

I’m starting to see parts of the old me come back.

Not all at once, not in a clear or linear way.

But at the same time, I’m also meeting parts of myself that didn’t exist before this.

And maybe that’s the part no one really explains.

You don’t go back to who you were.

You become someone new who still recognizes herself. Who’s expanded and grown in beautiful ways.

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I vividly remember a moment in motherhood that felt like a turning point.

I think it was around 18 months. I turned to my husband and said,
“So this is what everyone means.”

He looked at me, confused.

“I keep saying this is my favorite age. Newborn. Six weeks. Six months. One year. Now this. Every stage… I say the same thing.”

And it kind of stopped me.

Oh. I’m in for it.

Not in a scary way. In the best possible way.

Because right alongside that realization was another one:

It just keeps getting better.

Which felt like the opposite of everything I’d been told.

“Just wait. It gets harder.”

And I mean — yes. In some ways, it does. The questions get bigger. The emotions get louder. The responsibility doesn’t get lighter; it just changes shape. There are moments at three and four that have unraveled me in ways the newborn stage never did.

But what no one really told me — or maybe what I couldn’t understand yet — is this:

It gets better.

Not easier.
Not calmer.
Not less consuming.

Better.

I remember the newborn stage the way you remember a dream you can’t quite hold onto.

That hazy, hormonal blur where days and nights didn’t really exist. I was exhausted in a way that felt like it might never end. My body didn’t feel like mine. Everything felt heightened.

And yet… the way he curled into my chest.

I remember thinking, how could anything ever top this?

That level of closeness. That instinctual knowing. The bubble.

I really believed that would be my favorite.

And then six months came.

The first belly laughs.
The way he would look around a room and then settle when he found me.
That huge, open smile.

I remember sitting on the floor one afternoon, watching him wobble in front of me, and realizing—He wasn’t just there anymore. He was engaging. There was something forming. SomeONE forming.

And I thought, okay… this is it.
This is my favorite age.

Then one year.

Those unsteady steps toward me like I was home base.
Sticky hands grabbing my face.
The determination to do everything himself.

I wasn’t just taking care of a baby anymore.

I was watching someone become.

And if I’m being honest, I think that’s when I started to feel myself becoming, too.

At that point I kind of caught on.

There was this thought in the back of my mind like—
wait… if this keeps happening… what’s next?

Two surprised me.

Everyone says, “just wait for the terrible twos.”

And yes
the emotions are bigger,
the opinions louder,
the intensity… a lot.

There were moments I felt completely unraveled.

I remember one afternoon so clearly.
The baby crying on the ground.
My toddler pulling on my leg, asking me to play.
That sharp, rising feeling in my chest—like I physically couldn’t be enough in that moment.

And still…

I was meeting my toddler in a way I hadn’t before.

His thoughts.
His feelings.
His personality.

The first time he told me he felt sad.
The first time he asked if I was okay.
The way he said words slightly wrong, not knowing that one day he wouldn’t.

I didn’t expect the hardest-feeling moments to also feel so… full.

Three feels different again.

There’s more logic now.
More perspective.

Not just “why?” but “what if?” and “how come?”

I can see him thinking.

I can see who he is starting to take shape—
his humor, his stubbornness, the way he talks through things like a tiny adult.

And then at night, he still climbs into my lap like nothing has changed.

I used to be scared of them getting older.

There was something about the baby stage that felt safe to me.
Predictable in its own way.
Needed.
Exhausting but simple.

I think I thought “older” meant losing something.

But what I’m realizing is:

It’s not loss.

It’s gaining.

Older doesn’t mean less.

It means more.

More of who they are.
More of how they think.
More of the relationship you’re actually building with them.

It becomes less instinct… and more connection.

And still, there are moments that catch me off guard.

I’ll see a photo of him as a baby and feel it still…that tight, physical ache in my chest.

I didn’t expect to grieve stages while I was still in them.

To feel nostalgia in real time.

But I think that's part of it — motherhood asks you to hold both at once. The ache of what's already behind you and the fullness of what's right here. Grief and gratitude, not taking turns, but sitting side by side.

What has surprised me the most is this:

It doesn’t reach a peak.

It unfolds.

The love doesn’t stay the same.
It changes.
It deepens.
It builds on itself.

It becomes shaped by shared moments, hard days, repair, laughter, history.

There are moments now that feel completely different than the early days.

Less survival.

More knowing.

We laugh about things that happened years ago.
He remembers moments I had forgotten.

We are building something together.

And they’re not the only ones growing.

I am too.

Motherhood has changed me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated and couldn’t have chosen. I’m softer in some places, stronger in others. Less rigid. Still learning how to hold on and let go at the same time — which is maybe the most real tension of all of it.

Each stage stretches me into a different version of myself. A different kind of mother. A different kind of person.

The hard parts don’t disappear.

They just shift.

And somehow, so does the joy.

So when people say it goes fast, I get it.

It does.

The days can feel endless and then you look up and years have passed and you can’t quite trace how you got here.

But here is what I wish someone had told me, back in those early weeks when I was so focused on surviving:

It keeps getting better.

Not because it gets easier.

But because the relationship grows.

Every age has been my favorite.

Until the next one.

And maybe that’s the part no one really explains.

There isn’t one peak. There isn’t one stage you have to hold onto or you’ll miss it.

There isn’t one peak to hold onto. There isn’t one stage you have to freeze or you’ll lose it forever. There is just this — the ongoing, surprising, beautiful work of watching them unfold.

And I am growing with them.

And so far, every next version has surprised me in the best way.

Not because I was losing what came before.
But because I was meeting more of who they are.

When First Response (one of the most popular pregnancy testing brands) posted an April Fools joke about a positive pregnancy test, saying “April Fools…. but you might still want to check” and then deleted it, it felt like a slap in the face as someone who struggled with secondary infertility.

We live in an age where there is an unsaid but well known sensitivity that this isn’t something to joke about. The reality that 1 in 6 women struggle with infertility. So for a brand who’s only target market is those trying to conceive (or those trying not to conceive) is joking about this, it raised my alarms.

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In my work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, I sit with women every day who are navigating infertility, pregnancy loss, and the complicated emotional experience that comes with both. I hear what it sounds like when someone is waiting for a result that feels like it could change everything, and I see what it looks like when that hope is met with another negative, and another, and another.

I’ve also lived this through secondary infertility. I know what it feels like to want something so badly that it feels like everyone else is getting it easily. To try to prepare yourself for either outcome while still hoping this will be the time it’s different. And to then be met with a result that lands immediately, before you’ve even had time to process it.

Infertility is brutal. It’s devastating. And those pregnancy tests hold a lot of meaning to someone who’s gone through it.

After the post was deleted, I went back through First Response’s feed. What I found made the original post feel like part of something larger: creators joking about their relief at a negative result. Content that, in isolation, can be genuinely relatable — content that, at a different point in my own life, I might have related to myself.

But context changes everything.

This isn’t about policing individual experience. It’s about recognizing that a company is not an individual. When a brand decides what to amplify, that decision communicates something about who they see as their audience and who they may be alienating.

Someone who’s been through it, or known someone who’s navigated it would understand this is not to be taken lightly. This isn’t just about one post. It’s about a disconnect from the reality of what so many people are actually experiencing.

When I saw this happen, I posted on instagram a post and a reel where I share my thoughts about it. And I was surprised to find mixed results. I had several people comment on my posts and say” if it bothers you, just scroll past”. Or, “there are plenty of women taking pregnancy tests because they don’t want to be pregnant.”

They aren’t wrong.

Someone else said something I want to sit with: that both of these emotions deserve space, and that we need to find a way for them to coexist with mutual respect.

I agree. And I think that’s actually the whole point.

Because there is a real difference between an individual sharing one moment of their experience and a company deciding what story it tells about the people it serves. Influencers get to be one-dimensional. But I feel that brands don’t — not when their product lives inside some of the most emotionally charged moments in a person’s life.

This doesn’t mean every message has to hold every experience equally. But companies still make choices about what they emphasize. And those choices communicate who they’re prioritizing and who they may be alienating.

Relief at a negative is real. Being glad you’re not pregnant is a valid and important feeling. This isn’t about saying one experience outweighs the other.

It’s about asking: in a space that isn’t neutral, what does it cost to make one group feel seen at the expense of another?

A marketing professional sent me a DM that clarified this well. Even if a company had data showing that a large portion of their audience is trying to avoid pregnancy, she said, centering that audience still comes at a cost — because in doing so, they are actively choosing to alienate the group that is most emotionally invested and most likely to be loyal to the brand.

That’s not just a values argument. It’s a business one.

Because there’s a difference between an individual sharing their experience, and a company deciding how it wants to speak to the people it serves.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a brand miscalculate the emotional weight of the space they’re operating in.

We saw it with Kyte Baby, when an employee navigating the NICU—already in one of the most disorienting experiences a parent can have—was met with losing her job instead of being supported.

We saw it with Frida Baby, when messaging crossed into territory that felt more jarring than helpful.

And now we’re seeing it again.

Different companies, different situations, but the same pattern: marketing that prioritizes being attention-grabbing over being thoughtful, empathetic and aware of the context it’s speaking into.

I’m not a marketer, and I’m not saying I’m right. I don’t pretend to understand the pressure to create content that performs well. But I do understand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of these messages—both from my work and my own experience—and I know there is a line where something stops being okay.

Not because it’s intentionally harmful, but because it doesn’t take into account what it’s actually impacting.

The issue isn’t that brands are trying to be relatable or even funny. It’s that they’re doing it in spaces that aren’t neutral, on topics that carry real meaning, without fully thinking through how it might land. And without factoring in who their audience is and what they are feeling.

Because when you do stop and ask that—when you really think about who might be on the other side of the screen—the message changes. The tone shifts.

The goal becomes less about grabbing attention and more about communicating with care.

More about thinking, what can make a mom feel held. To feel seen. To feel supported by our product.

And it’s not that there’s no way to engage with these topics in a way that feels human. It’s that there’s a difference between making light of something and making space for it.

I'm not asking brands to account for every possible experience in every piece of content. That's not realistic, and I know it.

What I’m asking is simpler: that they stop and consider who is actually on the other side of the screen. What they might be carrying. What that moment means to them.

Imagine if, instead of turning pregnancy into a joke, a company like First Response chose to say something different.

That they understand pregnancy is talked about casually in culture—but that for many, it isn’t casual at all.

That they are there for the waiting. The uncertainty. The moments where you don’t know what the result will bring.

That they recognize this isn’t just a product—it’s a moment that matters.

That kind of message might not get the same immediate reaction.

But it would build something much more important.

Trust.

Because at the end of the day, the question isn’t just whether something is purchased. It’s whether it makes the people it’s meant to serve feel understood.

For the women I work with—and for the version of myself who has lived this too—feeling understood is not a small thing. It’s often what makes the experience feel manageable.

I realize this is nuanced. I realize marketing exists for a reason and companies can’t touch on all angles or experiences. I’m not asking them to do that.

But I think overall, no matter who the company is, helping someone feel held, considered and thought about goes a long way.

What are your thoughts?

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There are the obvious reasons. My son was born at 28 weeks. There was a two-month NICU stay. We uprooted our lives from New York to Rhode Island in the middle of it all. On paper, it makes sense why that time felt hard.

But I think there was something deeper going on, too.

It didn’t feel like me.

And what surprised me most is that after my second maternity leave which was an experience that looked completely different, one I had more control over, one I thought I was prepared for…. I was left with a similar feeling.

Unfulfilled.
Scattered.
Not like myself.

The confusing part is that I loved being with my kids.

I loved the slowness. The snuggles. The way the day could revolve around them. I could sit and just watch my baby for hours, completely in it, completely present.

But somewhere along the way, that became the only thing I allowed myself to do. Anything outside of that started to feel… wrong.

If I wasn’t fully immersed in them—if I thought about work, or wanted a break, or craved something that felt like mine—it triggered this voice I had never dealt with before:

You should be doing more with them.
You should be soaking this in.
You should be grateful for this time.

And even now, I can look back and say, that was anxiety. That wasn’t truth.

But knowing that and feeling that are two very different things.

Because my mind didn’t just settle into being home with them and enjoying ‘time off’ work. It was constantly scanning.

Should I be doing more tummy time?
More stimulation?
More fresh air?
Should we be on a schedule?
Or not on a schedule?
Should I be meeting other moms?
Getting out more? Staying in more?

At any given moment, it felt like there was a “right” way to do this—and I wasn’t quite doing it. If someone can do maternity leave wrong, that’s what it felt like.

And underneath all of that was a deeper question:

How do people stay home and do this all day?

Not because I didn’t love my kids. But because it wasn’t just being with them.

It was the mental load. The constant decision-making. The lack of pause. The way your brain never fully turns off.

If my role was simply to sit with them and be present, that part felt natural.

But it’s never just that.

It’s everything layered on top of it that makes it feel overwhelming in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

So going into my second postpartum, I told myself I knew what to expect. Different birth. More planning. More awareness. And still my brain felt like it short-circuited. Like my executive functioning just… dimmed. Like I wasn’t myself.

Simple things felt harder. Decisions took longer. My thoughts felt scattered. Not in a depressed or anxious way, which was confusing. In a way where I just couldn’t get clarity.

And I kept waiting for that sense of clarity to come back.

It wasn’t until I returned to work that it did.

For the first time in months, I felt like myself again.

My brain felt sharper. I could think clearly. I could follow through. I could show up fully.

I could be me.

And then I’d come home and put on my mom hat… and be a different version of me. A version that is just as real. Just as important. But different.

And that’s where the tension lives.

Because I miss my baby.

I miss the all-day closeness. The slow mornings. The walks, the library trips, the small moments that fill a day in a way nothing else does.

There is a part of me that aches knowing I’m not there for all of it.

But there’s also a part of me that knows—when I’m only in that space, something in me starts to feel lost.

Like a piece of me goes MIA.

A piece I’m not ready to give up.
A piece that, when it’s cared for, actually makes me a more present, more grounded mother.

And to be totally honest, yes the guilt is constantly there.

It feels like my heart is pulled in ten directions at once.

Like I’m failing everything, all at the same time.

And yet, somewhere underneath that, I know something else is true.

The guilt isn’t proof that I’m doing it wrong.

It’s proof that I care deeply about both.

About my work.
And about being a mom.

Both matter.

And in my case, working doesn’t take away from my motherhood, it supports it.

I’ve built something that fills me up. Something I’m proud of. Something that feels like an extension of who I am. In many ways, it feels like my first baby.

And becoming a mother hasn’t taken me away from that—it’s actually reshaped how I show up to it. More intentional. More sustainable. More grounded.

So here I am.

Back at work.
Missing my baby.
Feeling guilty.
And also feeling like myself again.

All at the same time.

If I could change anything, it would be the flexibility.

More snuggles. More time woven in. A version that doesn’t feel so all-or-nothing.

And maybe that’s something I’ll keep working toward.

But for now, I can at least name this:

I didn’t feel like myself on maternity leave.
And I found pieces of myself again when I returned to work.

Both can be true.

So if you’re sitting in that tension—questioning your decision, feeling pulled in every direction, wondering why this doesn’t feel the way you thought it would—

It is hard.

And maybe this is the part we don’t say out loud enough:

Some of us don’t lose ourselves in motherhood.
We just need more than one version of ourselves to feel whole.

And needing that doesn’t take anything away from the kind of mother we are.

If anything, it’s what allows us to keep showing up.

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I would listen to my friends and cousins and siblings before me. And I don’t know if it’s that they never said the words, or that my ears didn’t listen. But now I realize, I never really heard. There is a difference between hearing someone describe motherhood and standing inside it yourself. So once I became a mom, I realized I needed to apologize. Not because it was expected, but because I had no idea.

Dear mom that came before me.

I’m sorry I didn’t really understand what you meant when you said you were tired. Not the kind of tired that goes away with sleep, or a slow morning, or a weekend off. The kind of tired that lives in your body. The kind that you can’t ever really say why you are tired, but it puts a tired lens on everything you do. I’m sorry I didn’t see how much energy it took just to show up.

I’m sorry for the times I judged the choices you made that made your life easier. The screen time. The snacks. The shortcuts. The things I once said I’d “never do” as a parent. I didn’t understand then that sometimes the ease is necessity. It’s survival. I get it now. Sometimes you choose what works, not what looks best from the outside.

I’m sorry I didn’t understand how motherhood could be the most beautiful thing in your life and still feel relentlessly hard. I was so naive. I thought it was just fun, and nutruting, and witnessing the delight that kids bring us. Oh boy. The beauty is there, but now I see the hard. I didn’t know you could feel full and empty at the same time.

I’m sorry I didn’t notice your house the way I notice it now. The dishes left out. The laundry unfolded. The toys scattered everywhere. I see now how those things aren’t signs of chaos or carelessness, but evidence that your energy was being spent elsewhere. On keeping someone alive. On meeting needs that couldn’t wait. On having fun, being present, and not having capacity to do it all.

I’m sorry I didn’t understand why your clothes didn’t match, or why your hair was always pulled back, or why were forgetful or late. I didn’t know how your needs came last, or often weren’t even thought of.

I’m sorry for the plans you had to cancel. The girls’ nights you missed because of sick kids or childcare falling through or sheer exhaustion. And I’m sorry I didn’t realize how rare it felt for you to get time away—and how much you needed it when you finally did. I get now why you went all in on those weekends. You weren’t being wild. You were remembering yourself. You were living without the 6am responsability.

I’m sorry I thought I was listening when you talked about motherhood. I was hearing the words, but I couldn’t fully grasp the weight of them. Not because I didn’t care, but because there are things you can’t understand until your own body has lived them.

Until you’ve paced the floor at 2am with a baby who won’t sleep.
Until you’ve questioned yourself a hundred times in one day.
Until you’ve loved something so deeply you realize there aren’t even words to describe it.

So to the moms that came before me—including my own—I’m sorry I didn’t show up in more meaningful ways. I’m sorry I didn’t check in more. I’m sorry I believed “I’m fine” meant fine. I didn’t know how lonely motherhood could feel, even when you’re surrounded by people.

And thank you. Thank you for welcoming me anyway. For not painting a picture of the hard. For making room for me before I understood what it took to be you. For holding space for my learning curve and naivete.

And to the moms that come after me: I want you to know that I get it now. You don’t have to explain yourself here. You don’t have to justify the mess, the choices, the exhaustion, or the contradictions. You’re not alone in this, even when it feels that way.

And to myself—because I’m learning to extend this grace inward too—I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. I couldn’t have known differently until now.

Motherhood changes the way you see other mothers. It pulls back the curtain on everything that never gets said out loud. It teaches you humility. It softens you in places you didn’t know needed softening.

This is my apology.
And my thank you.
And my acknowledgment that sometimes, you don’t get it—until you do.

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In all the babies of friends, cousins, and sisters-in-law that came before me, I always showed up with a gift for the baby. I came to ooh and aah over the baby, to hold them, to say how beautiful they are. I’m sure I gave my friends loving looks but not in the way I know how to now.

If I were to show up for a new mom today, I wouldn’t go to the baby first.

I would go straight to the mom.

Because no one asks who is holding the mom.

She just grew and birthed a literal human, and so often she is the last one on people’s minds. While not only her body is recovering, but her mind is trying to catch up to something that still doesn’t fully make sense.

It’s the most disorienting feeling of:
what the hell just happened?
who the hell am I?
and how the hell am I supposed to keep this baby alive?

Moms don’t need more onesies.
They need to feel taken care of.
They need to feel held.

I felt this with my first, although the circumstances were different with the NICU. It made sense then that I needed to be “held.”

Now, in my second postpartum, I’ve realized something in a way that feels very clear in my body:

Moms need to feel held not just because it’s the nice thing to do but because it makes a real difference.

When I feel held, I show up differently.

I have more patience. More capacity. More ability to stay grounded in moments that would otherwise push me to the edge.

When a mom feels cared for, she’s reminded she’s not alone in this season.

Tonight, as I write this, I’m reflecting on this past week of solo parenting (thankfully only one week, not three).

Each night, I’ve been lucky to have family come by to help with bedtime so I can focus on my toddler while someone else focuses on the baby. Before they get here, I’m at a zero.

Drained from working.
Exhausted from the mental load.
Overstimulated and overwhelmed by the number of tasks I have to do in such a short amount of time.

And yet, having someone there makes all the difference in me feeling held.

And the difference between that moment escalating or feeling loving has very little to do with me trying harder.

It has everything to do with whether I’ve been supported that day.

Whether I’ve eaten.
Whether someone checked in.
Whether I’ve had even ten minutes where I wasn’t the only one responsible for everything.

It isn’t about effort.

It’s about capacity.

It can sometimes be hard to admit, as a mom, that it actually feels good to be mothered.

Yes, by my own mom (who will be reading this), but also by other people in my life
in ways that leave me feeling taken care of without having to ask for it or explain it.

Being mothered as a mom is an entirely different experience.

There is something about being on the receiving end of care that feels unfamiliar at first, especially when you are used to being the one holding everything together.

But it also feels like exactly what is needed.

I keep thinking about the idea of a “village,” and how easily that phrase gets thrown around without really understanding what it means in practice.

In some cultures, there are 40 days where a mother is meant to rest, stay in bed, and be taken care of while everyone else tends to her needs.

And I get it.

Not just because her body needs to recover—which it does—
but because of what it does for her experience of becoming a mother.

Because she is being held while she learns how to hold someone else.

And how different her postpartum is—and will be—because of that.

This time, I started paying attention to the small gestures that made me feel held. They were the moments that made me feel like I didn’t have to do everything on my own:

A warm cup of tea handed to me without me asking for it—when I didn’t even realize how much I needed to sit down.

Meals showing up on my porch so I didn’t have to think about what to cook (sometimes home cooked, sometimes from the restaurant, the best were always feast and fettle because I could pick the healthy and home cooked meals I wanted, for the weeks I needed them).

Texts that said, “you don’t need to respond,” which somehow made it easier to feel connected without the pressure.

Someone sitting on my couch to listen to me. Or sit in silence. But to hold space for me so that I don’t feel alone.

A hug that lasted longer than usual where I could actually feel my body let go.

Someone saying, “let’s just get out of the house for a walk,” with no agenda.

A friend dropping off her old postpartum clothes so I didn’t have to think about what fit in a body that still didn’t feel like my own.

Massage and acupuncture which I now view as nervous system resets.

Therapy, where I could just be. I could cry without explaining. I could relish in all the small joys of the baby. I could admit it was hard and feel like there was space to take up.

None of these things remove the intensity of postpartum or make it easy.

It is still hard.

I am still tired.
I am still overstimulated.
I am still figuring out how to exist in a version of my life that looks different than it did before.

But these things do change how it feels to move through it.

They make it feel like I’m not the only one holding everything.

And that I don’t have to hold it all.

That I’m not alone.

Because how a mother is held changes everything about how she mothers.

She can show up fully. She can share the warmth and love that she feels. She can know that she is cared for, that she matters, and most of all that she isn’t alone.

And maybe that’s the part we should be paying more attention to.

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And my cups are empty.

Here’s 7 things I learned:

1. The Constancy

It is hard to explain the kind of fatigue that comes from there being no pause in the day.

Always being on. Every minute. For everything (no… I’m not complaining… no…).

When you are solo parenting, there is no handoff. There is no moment where you are fully off duty. Even when both children are asleep, you are still listening. Even when the house is quiet, your body does not fully settle. It stays in a low-grade vigilance that never quite powers down.

The exhaustion is honestly more mental than physical. It is the constancy of responsibility. The awareness that you are the only adult in the room.

There were moments in the middle of the day where both kids needed something at the exact same time. The toddler asking a question I had already answered three times while the baby cried in my arms. The stove on, the dog barking, the baby monitor buzzing from the other room. And I remember thinking, very plainly: there is no one else coming. I am the adult in this moment.

The moment of, oh wait, I’m the mom.

What wears you down is not always the difficulty of the moment. It is the relentless nature of it.

2. The Work of Staying Regulated

I think we underestimate how much effort it takes to stay steady.

Even moreso when we are tired, can’t get our needs met, and haven’t seen an adult in days.

Staying regulated is not passive. It is an active, repeated choice. It comes with full intention.

It is feeling irritation spike and deciding not to let it dictate your tone. It is answering the same question again and again without letting your voice harden. It is holding space for a toddler’s meltdown while the baby cries in the background.

I am proud of how I showed up. I met moments with more calm than I thought I would. And by the end of the day, I could feel how much energy that required.

There is a version of burnout that does not look like losing control. It looks like holding control for so long that there is very little left afterward.

3. Fulfilled and Depleted

The part that feels most disorienting is the duality. Which we could say is the truth for all things in motherhood.

I would look at my children and feel overwhelmed with love. Wow, I am THEIR mom. This is the moment I’ve always wanted. There were moments that were tender and fleeting and so undeniably meaningful that I wanted to freeze them.

And it was hard, because I couldn’t fully enjoy them. I was exhausted in every inch of my body without knowing when I would find reprieve.

It took me a few days to stop trying to reconcile those two experiences. I kept waiting to feel either grateful or depleted, as if they could not exist together. But they did. They do. I can most certainly be both.

Loving them fully did not refill me. It expanded my heart, but it did not restore my nervous system. And that’s okay for the time being.

4. The Invisible Accumulation

Nothing about those three weeks was catastrophic. That is what makes this harder to articulate. There was no singular breaking point. No dramatic unraveling. On paper, things were fine. To the outside world, we looked like we had our shit together.

It was cumulative.

It was the layering of broken sleep on top of constant decision-making on top of emotional regulation on top of the quiet pressure to do it well. It was the absence of relief, more than the presence of crisis.

Burnout, at least for me, did not announce itself loudly. It crept in through the accumulation of small exertions that never fully resolved.

5. Being Unwitnessed

What I missed most surprised me.

I did not only miss practical help. I missed being seen. Being recognized for what I’m doing.

Motherhood contains an enormous amount of invisible labor. Not just the tasks, but the constant mental calculations happening quietly in the background. Is the baby hungry? Is the toddler overstimulated? Did everyone eat enough protein today? How long has it been since the baby slept?

There is something deeply regulating about another adult seeing the effort and naming it. Not fixing it. Not taking over. Just acknowledging it. “That was a lot.” “You handled that well.” “You are doing a good job”.

Without that reflection, the labor becomes invisible. And when it becomes invisible, it is easier to minimize the toll it takes.

I realized how much of motherhood happens internally and how rarely it is seen.

6. Capacity Is Not Character

There is a false narrative that if you are good at motherhood, you should be able to handle it. I like to say the opposite that … you are good at motherhood if it feels hard.

It feels hard because you care and are trying. AND that hard will feel different on a week when your partner is gone.

I like being capable. I like staying calm. I like showing up well for my children.

Capacity is a measure of how much output is happening relative to how much replenishment exists.

For three weeks, the output was constant. The replenishment was minimal.

Feeling depleted was not a sign that I was failing.

It was my nervous system telling me that something had been running at full capacity without meaningful relief. It was information that I needed my needs met.

7. What Burnout Actually Looked Like

It did not look like falling apart.

It looked like answering gently for the fiftieth time. It looked like making dinner while holding a baby. It looked like staying composed in front of my children and only feeling the weight of the day once the house was quiet.

Burnout doesn’t have to be a dark place. It can look like the norm, but feel like things are heavier, harder.

Those three weeks did not change how I feel about motherhood. They did not diminish my love or my commitment.

But they clarified something important.

Even the most grounded, prepared, emotionally aware version of myself has limits. And that taking care of myself has a purpose and works.

And one thing I did not expect was how empowering it felt.

Somewhere between the exhaustion and the constancy of solo parenting I realized I could hold more than I thought I could.

That I was capable of hard things.

A new kind of confidence that comes from surviving something demanding without falling apart. It does not make you invincible, although I did feel that way.

It made me feel like a mom.

The kind where, later on, when something hard shows up again, a part of you thinks:

I’ve handled harder days than this.

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The first one said: “One baby changes your life. Two babies test your capacity.”
(See it here)

It described something many mothers experience after the second baby arrives: the feeling of being pulled in two directions at once, the constant sensory input of small children needing you, and the quiet grief that can surface when you realize you can’t give either child the same undivided presence you once gave your first.

The response from mothers of two was immediate and overwhelming. Messages poured in saying things like “This is exactly how it feels,” and “I thought I was the only one who felt this way,” and “How did you get inside my head?” The post struck a nerve that felt almost palpable through the screen.

But the same post also drew a different reaction from some mothers of one child. A few people commented that it felt depressing. Others said it made them anxious about having another baby. Some felt it was too negative, or that it painted the transition to two children in a discouraging light.

Because of that, I felt I needed to tell the whole story. My content talks about the both/and. The beauty and the hard. That piece wasn’t my norm, and only captured the hard.

So the next day I posted another carousel about the exact same transition. This one began with the line: “One baby changes your life. Two babies change your whole world.” (See it here).

That post focused on a different side of the experience: the surreal moment of watching your first child become a big sibling, the tenderness of seeing them gently touch the baby’s head, the way love expands in ways you never imagined possible. It talked about the magic of witnessing your children begin a relationship that will exist long after you’re gone.

That post landed very differently. The tone felt warm, expansive, joyful. The comments were filled with people saying how beautiful it was.

What struck me most was that both posts were describing the exact same season of life. And both of them were completely true.

The contrast between the reactions revealed something that I think is worth pausing to talk about, because it says a lot about the way we collectively talk about motherhood.

There is a version of motherhood that people tend to feel more comfortable sharing publicly. It is the version that emphasizes the beauty, the wonder, the expansion of love. It is the version where siblings adore each other, where the house feels louder and fuller, where your heart grows in ways you never imagined possible.

And that version of motherhood is absolutely real.

Watching your children discover each other might be one of the most surreal experiences of your life. There is something almost disorienting about seeing your first child look at the baby and realize that this tiny person belongs to your family forever. The first time your older child brings the baby a toy, or says “that’s my baby,” it can crack your heart open in a way that feels almost impossible to put into words.

But there is another side of the transition to two children that people talk about much more quietly.

It is the side where your nervous system is suddenly managing more noise, more movement, more competing needs. It is the feeling of someone touching you while someone else is calling your name from the other room. It is the constant mental calculation of who needs you more in that moment and whether you are getting it right.

It is the realization that the version of you who once belonged entirely to one child now has to stretch to hold two.

I remember one afternoon recently that captured this perfectly. I was sitting on the couch holding Teddy while he napped against my chest. Henry was across the room putting on a performance and every few minutes he would call out, “Mom, watch this.” I could hear the excitement in his voice, the pride in whatever he had just acted out. But I couldn’t get up without waking the baby. So I sat there calling back encouragement from across the room while he demonstrated things I couldn’t fully see.

Nothing dramatic was happening. No one was crying. The house was actually calm.

But in that moment I felt the strange emotional stretch of this stage of motherhood. Part of me wanted to stay perfectly still so the baby could keep sleeping. Another part of me wanted to walk across the room and kneel down next to Henry and give him the full attention he was asking for. Instead I sat in the middle of the two of them, aware of both needs at the same time.

It wasn’t a sad moment.

But it was a real one.

For many mothers, that stretch can feel surprisingly emotional. Not because they regret having another child, but because they suddenly understand what it means to divide their presence. The grief that sometimes accompanies this moment is rarely talked about, but it is deeply human.

When mothers of two read that first post, they did not interpret it as discouraging.

They interpreted it as recognition.

Because there is a moment in early motherhood with two children when you realize that love has expanded in your life, but so has responsibility, so has noise, so has the emotional weight of caring for multiple small humans who depend on you completely.

When someone names that experience out loud, it can feel like a relief. It means the quiet complexity you’ve been holding internally is something other mothers recognize too.

For mothers who have not yet experienced that stage, however, the same words can land very differently. When you are imagining what a future might feel like, you naturally want that picture to feel reassuring and hopeful. Hearing someone describe the harder emotional layers of a transition you haven’t lived yet can feel unsettling, even if the intention behind it is simply honesty.

I understand both reactions.

The mothers who felt seen.

And the mothers who felt uneasy.

Both responses make sense, because motherhood contains a level of emotional complexity that our culture still struggles to hold comfortably.

We tend to want motherhood stories to land cleanly in one category or the other: either it is magical and beautiful, or it is overwhelming and difficult. But the lived reality for most mothers is that both of those experiences are happening at the same time.

You can look at your children playing together and feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the family you’ve built. And earlier that same day you might have felt overstimulated, exhausted, and unsure how you were going to make it through the evening.

Neither experience cancels out the other.

They simply coexist.

The goal of my page has never been to make motherhood look harder than it is, and it has never been to make it look easier than it is. What I try to do instead is tell the truth about the experience from the inside, because the thing that seems to help mothers the most is not a perfect picture.

It is recognition.

It is hearing someone describe a feeling you thought only existed in your own head.

The overstimulation.

The love.

The stretching.

The chaos.

The quiet grief of sharing yourself.

The awe of watching your children form a bond that will last their entire lives.

All of those things belong in the story of motherhood.

And the more space we make for the full picture, the less alone mothers tend to feel inside it.

Because the truth is that motherhood rarely exists as one emotion at a time. It is always layered. You can feel grateful and overwhelmed in the same hour. You can feel deeply connected to your children and still long for a moment of quiet. You can watch your kids laugh together and think, this is the family I always hoped for, while also feeling the invisible weight of being the person who holds so much of their world together.

Those experiences do not cancel each other out.

They simply mean you are inside the real, complicated, human experience of raising children.

And if anything, I think the more honest we become about those layers, the more permission mothers give themselves to feel the full range of what this life actually asks of us.

Not just the magic.

But the stretching that makes the magic possible.

Sometimes the most comforting thing a mother can hear isn’t reassurance.
It’s recognition.

And not just any snow day… the Blizzard of ’26. Thirty-six inches of snow. The kind where they start comparing it to the Blizzard of ’78 and you suddenly feel like you’re living inside something people will reference for years. The kind where the plows couldn’t clear the streets because there was literally nowhere left to put the snow. Our backyard disappeared. The sidewalk disappeared. The end of our street blended into a wall of white. When we opened the front door, the snow had drifted halfway up it, pressing against the glass not giving us an option but to stay inside.

When we first heard about the storm, my initial thought was honestly, how fun. Pajamas all day. Something warm baking in the oven. The toddler seeing snow up to his waist. A reset we didn’t have to justify.

And then, about five minutes later, the second thought came.

Oh wait.

I’m the parent.

I’m the one who has to make sure we have enough food. That the heat doesn’t go out. That everyone is warm and fed and safe. I remember standing in the kitchen, looking at the half-unpacked groceries and the baby asleep in the bassinet and the toddler performing his songs, and having that almost surreal realization that there isn’t someone older or more capable stepping in here. It’s me. I’m the one in charge of this.

That feeling lands differently once you have your own children. You don’t really understand it until you’re the one refreshing the weather app and mentally counting snacks and pulling out batteries (for what though? I don’t have anything to put the batteries in, but it seemed important).

I didn’t quite process what four straight days inside together would feel like.

Day one felt cozy. Day two felt manageable. By day three, I could feel the overstimulation building.

The baby would start crying at the exact same moment the toddler would yell “Watch me! Watch me!” from the other room while starting his newest skit. Both of them needing me. Both of them loud. Both of them looking directly at me like I was the solution. And yet they had no clue what was going on. There is something uniquely overwhelming about physically not being able to split yourself in two. I would pick up the baby while trying to make eye contact with the toddler so he didn’t feel ignored, my brain feeling like it had too many tabs open at once, the kitchen counters cluttered with half-folded laundry and dishes that hadn’t made it to the sink.

Every sound felt amplified by late afternoon. The crash of plastic on hardwood. The repetition of “Mom.” The baby’s cry that goes from soft to urgent in seconds. The house smelled faintly of wet mittens drying by the radiator and whatever we had baked earlier just to fill time. Toys spread into every room. The same book read again. The same snack requested fifteen minutes later.

If I’m being honest, I knew we needed to be in survival mode. No limits on screen time. Cookies for breakfast? Sure. Whatever it takes for my sanity.

At one point I stood at the window holding the baby and caught myself thinking, I want my mom here.

Not because I couldn’t handle it. But because being snowed in awakens something nostalgic. It makes you want to be the one taken care of for a minute. I wanted someone to make dinner without asking. Someone to hold the baby so I could shower without listening for crying. Someone to say, “You go sit down.”

And then I looked around and realized — I am that person now.

I am the one they look to when things feel big.

That realization felt heavy and grounding all at once.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect.

As overstimulated as I felt, as trapped as I felt staring at the same rooms for days, there was also this strange sense of relief woven through it.

There was nowhere to be.

No drop-offs. No appointments. No playdates. No background stress about whether I should be getting out of the house more or doing something more meaningful with “maternity leave.” I didn’t have an option, and that felt like a relief.

The baby still cried. The toddler still needed snacks and attention and help with everything. The needs didn’t disappear. The storm didn’t remove the needs. It removed the urgency. And it was the reminder I needed.

It made me wonder how much of my overwhelm comes from trying to mother at the pace of the world. How often I stack urgency, and a need to be present, and the desire to do it all… and then feel confused about why I’m exhausted. Maybe it isn’t the intensity of caring for small children that exhausts me most — it’s trying to do it while everything else keeps moving. While the calendar fills up. While the messages come in. While I’m mentally calculating what’s next and where I have to be and what I have to be doing.

During those four days, there was no “next.”

We sled down the middle of the road. We had cookies for breakfast. The toddler’s cheeks were bright red from the cold as we sat in the snowbank, snow pummeling on us but neither of us cared. The baby slept on my chest in the middle of the afternoon and I didn’t move him because there wasn’t anything waiting for us. There were moments I just sat on the floor and watched them play, feeling both overstimulated and oddly steady at the same time.

It wasn’t magical. I wasn’t suddenly endlessly patient. There were moments I locked myself in the bathroom for three minutes just to breathe. Moments I snapped and immediately felt that familiar wave of guilt. Moments where I thought, I need someone to take care of me right now.

But there were also stretches of time where I wasn’t measuring the day against productivity. I wasn’t racing the clock. I wasn’t trying to optimize anything. We were just there, living inside the repetition of it.

When the plows finally made it down our street (4 days later!) and I saw gray pavement cutting through all that white, I felt relief in my body immediately. I felt freedom. I felt eager to see something that wasn’t the four walls of my house.

So now that the snow has melted and the calendar is filling up again and life is moving at its usual speed, I keep coming back to that question.

What does this mean for ordinary Tuesdays? For the weeks when life speeds back up?

For “maternity leave” that doesn’t feel like leave at all, where the word itself feels ironic because you are working in a different, more invisible way?

I don’t want to need 36 inches of snow to slow down. I don’t want a historic storm to be the only thing that gives me permission to let a day unfold without rushing through it. But that week made something obvious: the baby’s cries aren’t what undo me most. The toddler’s energy isn’t what pushes me to the edge. It’s the way I try to carry all of that while also carrying the pace of everything else.

Thirty-six inches of snow forced us to stay inside. It buried our street and shrunk our world to the size of our home. And in that smaller world, overstimulated and tired and deeply present, I saw more clearly what motherhood feels like when I’m not layering urgency on top of it.

It’s not easier. I still get overstimulated. But being present comes easier.

And maybe that’s the part I want to hold onto.

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I know what is supposed to help.

I have also seen moms in their hardest moments. When despair hits, when the thoughts won’t stop spiraling, when they need more support than they ever imagined they would. I see them at their most vulnerable, where my role often matters less for the medication or therapy I can offer and more for the hope I can help hold when they can’t yet hold it themselves.

All of that was in the back of my mind as I went into postpartum this time.

Does knowing too much set me up for success?
Or does knowing too much keep me on high alert, scanning for symptoms?

The truth is, it’s both.

Going into this postpartum, I had the tools. I had the resources. I knew the signs. I knew when to “get help.” And still, it feels wildly different when it’s my own experience.

It’s one thing to know “what to do”, and another to actually do it.

I think I assumed that because I specialize in postpartum mental health, this time would feel more manageable. That knowing what was happening would make it easier to live through. That I would recognize things early, respond appropriately, and stay a step ahead of it.

But no matter how much you plan or prepare, emotions still happen. Life still happens. You can’t control every variable or anticipate every moment. And postpartum has a way of changing how you feel very quickly.

Mental health doesn’t really care how much you know. It doesn’t show up as a clean set of symptoms you can identify and address. It shows up in your body, your sleep, your patience, your sense of self. It shows up in small, ordinary moments like lying down to rest and realizing your mind won’t stop scanning, feeling okay during the day and then suddenly unraveling at night, knowing logically that things are fine but not quite feeling calm in your body.

This time around, I didn’t come into postpartum without context. I had my first experience as a reference point, which by the way, I only realized how bad my anxiety was once I was out of it. I remembered how intense that season felt, how disorienting it was, how long it took for my nervous system to feel like it had settled again. I remembered how surprised I was the first time by how deeply postpartum affected me, even with all my training and experience.

I found myself thinking: if I was so caught off guard the first time, what does that mean for everyone else? It forced me to confront how unrealistic our cultural expectations of postpartum really are.

Between my first and second child, I went back and got specialized training in maternal mental health through Postpartum Support International, adding the letters PMH-C to my title. I thought that surely this time would be different. That this additional training might make me immune to experiencing postpartum anxiety the way I had before.

And in some ways, it did help. I wasn’t blindsided in the same way. I knew the early weeks could feel consuming. I knew everything was a phase. I knew emotional swings didn’t automatically mean something was wrong. I knew postpartum doesn’t move in a straight line.

I knew support was there, and I knew what it could look like.

But knowing what postpartum can be like didn’t protect me from how real it felt again.

If anything, it added a layer of awareness that was both reassuring and heavy. It kept me on high alert, constantly questioning whether a thought was normal and fleeting or the start of something more. There was comfort in knowing I had been here before and that it eventually softened. And there was also the weight of remembering how much this season asks of you—and how long a “phase” can feel when you’re living inside it.

What stood out most wasn’t one clear symptom. It was how easy it was to explain everything away.

I was tired because I had a newborn.
On edge because my sleep was fragmented.
Emotional because this is a major transition.

All of that was true.

And at the same time, it allowed me to sit in the gray area longer than I might have advised someone else to.

There were moments when I noticed myself minimizing by telling myself, This is just postpartum, and moving on, even when something felt off. Moments when I waited longer than I would have encouraged a patient to wait before slowing down or asking for more support.

Living inside that gray space gave me a deeper understanding of how many women are doing the exact same thing: functioning, showing up, taking care of everyone else, while quietly feeling unlike themselves.

There is also something specific about navigating postpartum as a mental health provider. Even when no one else expects you to have it all together, it is easy to expect it from yourself. There’s an internal pressure to cope better, regulate faster, and know exactly what you need. I’ve realized that pressure comes from me and no one else is holding me to that standard.

I know the coping skills. The grounding techniques. The breathing strategies. The routines I recommend almost daily. I know what helps regulate a nervous system.

And there were still moments when I couldn’t access any of it in the way I thought I should.

Not because I didn’t believe in the tools.
But because I was exhausted.
Because I didn’t think I was “there.”
Because I knew I needed support but hadn’t yet let myself reach for it.

You can know where the light is and still struggle to move toward it when you’re in the fog.

Postpartum is happening in real time, often when your capacity is already stretched thin.

Knowing what helps does not mean you can always access it. Knowing the tools does not mean you have the energy or space to use them while running on broken sleep, constant responsibility, and a body that is still recovering.

This experience has changed how I think about care. It has made me slower to reassure and quicker to ask what support actually looks like in someone’s life. It has reminded me that education can be grounding, but it is never enough on its own. Support, rest, and being noticed matter just as much.

Having someone ask “how are you really doing?” and feeling safe to answer honestly, can go a long way.

Most of all, this season has reinforced something I now hold very firmly: struggling postpartum is not a contradiction to being competent or informed. You can know exactly what is happening and still need help moving through it. You can love your baby deeply and still feel undone by how much this season rocked you.

I’m writing this for the providers who quietly wonder why this feels harder than they expected, and for the mothers who assume everyone else is managing better. Postpartum doesn’t sort people by experience or credentials. It happens, regardless of the plan.

Even if you’ve been here before.
Even if you help others through it every day.
Even if you thought this time would feel easier.

I’m still learning how to move through this season by meeting myself where I am, not where I think I should be.

Knowing what postpartum is doesn’t make me exempt from it.
It simply makes me more aware of how deeply it asks to be held.

If anything, it reminds me how human this season is.

And how much we all deserve to be supported through it, not just informed about it.

The love is immediate and overwhelming. The responsibility is constant. Your body is still recovering. Your mind is adjusting to the fact that there is now someone who depends on you at all hours of the day and night.

You expect to be tired. You expect it to be an adjustment.

What you may not expect is how quickly your own needs slip out of focus.

There are the obvious challenges of postpartum — healing, feeding, sleep deprivation. But there are also the quieter patterns that shape how steady or unsteady you feel.

I have found myself asking, more than once, “Why does this feel harder than it needs to?”

Not because postpartum is supposed to be easy. It is not. But because there are small, daily choices that either support your mental health or quietly chip away at it.

These are the patterns I see over and over again — in my practice, in my friends, and in myself.

1. Sleep deprivation

Getting sleep is the most essential thing to your mental health.

When you are waking every two hours, half listening for the baby even when they are quiet, your body never fully relaxes. You might technically be in bed. You might even be sleeping. But you are alert in a way you did not used to be. You are literally always on.

After a few weeks of that, you start to feel it everywhere.

You get teary in moments that would not normally hit that hard. You snap at your partner and then replay it in your head. You lie awake at 3 a.m. thinking about whether you are doing enough, or doing it right. Small decisions feel bigger than they should.

It is very hard to feel steady when you are that tired.

I have had so many conversations with mothers who are convinced something is deeply wrong, and when we zoom out, they have not slept more than three consecutive hours in weeks. That kind of exhaustion changes how you experience your own thoughts. It narrows your window of tolerance. It makes patience harder to access. It makes things feel more overwhelming than the reality.

You do not need perfect sleep. That may not be realistic right now. But even small shifts can help. Trading off one stretch with your partner. Letting someone else take a morning feed. Lying down instead of scrolling. Closing your eyes while someone else holds the baby.

And, if you are trying to sleep, but can’t, that can often be a sign of postpartum anxiety or depression and is definitely worth mentioning to a provider.

2. Not feeding yourself before the baby

It is astonishing how many mothers realize at three in the afternoon that they have not eaten.

You would never intentionally delay feeding your child. But somehow your hunger becomes last on the priority list.

When your blood sugar drops, so does your patience. Irritability creeps in. You feel overstimulated more quickly. You wonder why you are so on edge, and sometimes the answer is simply that you have not nourished yourself all day.

There is something almost symbolic about it…. carefully tracking ounces and feed times while forgetting your own body entirely, until it’s past empty.

You may not scream like your baby does, but your body does give you clues.

Postpartum is not the season for elaborate meals or ambitious cooking. It is the season for accessible nourishment. Snacks within reach. Food you can eat with one hand. Something substantial before you tend to everyone else.

You function differently when you are fed. Your capacity is different. The day feels more manageable.

Sometimes it is that simple.

3. The pressure to breastfeed

Breastfeeding can be beautiful. It can also be painful, overstimulating, physically draining, and emotionally consuming.

The expectations around it can become heavy very quickly. There is so much messaging about what is best, what is natural, what good mothers do. It is easy to internalize the idea that if you struggle, you are falling short.

I have sat with so many women who are dreading every feed but feel unable to say it out loud. Who are counting minutes until it is over. Who feel their anxiety spike before the baby even latches.

That is worth noting.

If feeding is increasing your stress to the point where you feel tense all day, if it is pulling you deeper into guilt or shame, or you are just exhausted… you are allowed to reassess. You are allowed to pivot. You are allowed to change your mind.

The way your baby is fed matters. But so does the state of the person doing the feeding. Your mental health is more important.

4. Saying “I’m fine”

“I’m fine” is never the truth. You are either ‘great’ or are ‘struggling to survive’, and as a new mom, more likely the latter.

And yet, most mom’s say “I’m fine” because it’s easier, because you think you have to be fine, because you don’t want to explain that really, you aren’t. And if you say you aren’t, then what difference does it make?

It does make a difference.

When you say, even quietly, “This is harder than I expected,” something shifts. Not because it solves anything immediately, but because it invites connection. It allows someone else to say, “Me too.” It offers hope that you aren’t alone in feeling this way.

5. Not having boundaries with visitors

Early postpartum is not a holiday. It is a recovery period.

And yet so many mothers feel pressure to host. To look presentable. To hand the baby around. To make conversation when they are still bleeding, leaking, and barely sleeping.

Your body is healing. Your nervous system is recalibrating. You are getting to know your baby. You are getting to know YOU as a mother. That is enough.

It is okay to say you are not up for visitors yet. It is okay to ask people to bring food and keep the visit short. It is okay to protect your energy without over-explaining why.

This is time for you and your baby. Other people can get their fix later.

And if the visitors do come, have a list ready for them of what they can do to help.

6. Ignoring your basic needs

Mothers get very good at putting themselves last.

You hold your bladder. You skip showers. You forget to refill your water. You push through headaches. You tell yourself you will rest later.

Over time, that accumulates.

You start to feel more depleted than you expected. More resentful. Less like yourself. And it can be confusing because nothing dramatic happened. You just stopped tending to the basics.

Meeting your own needs does not mean big gestures. It can look like drinking a full glass of water before your coffee. Taking five uninterrupted minutes in the bathroom. Asking someone to hold the baby so you can shower without rushing.

These are small things. But they add up.

7. Not moving your body

There is so much language about “bouncing back” that it can make movement feel like another expectation. That is not what this is about.

Your body just grew and birthed a human. It has stretched and shifted in ways that take time to integrate. Movement in postpartum is not about fitting back into jeans. It is about reconnecting.

Sometimes it is a short walk outside. Sometimes it is gentle stretching on the living room floor. Sometimes it is just standing in the sunlight for a few minutes.

When you move, even gently, something shifts internally. You remember that your body is still yours. That it is capable. That it is not just a vessel for everyone else’s needs.

The goal is not transformation. It is connecting.

8. Trying to fit into old clothes

There is a quiet grief that can surface when your clothes do not fit the way they used to. You might tell yourself it should not matter. That you should be grateful. That this is temporary.

But bodies change. Posture changes. Proportions change. And trying to squeeze into a version of yourself that existed before can be a daily reminder of everything that feels different.

Buying clothes that fit now is not giving up. It is responding to reality with kindness. It is reminding yourself that you can feel good in the clothe you are in.

When you wear something that feels good on your body as it is today, you move through the day differently. You feel more at ease. You are allowed to dress the body you have now.

(and if you don’t want to buy new clothes, I love nuuly for this!)

9. Treating mental health as optional

Taking care of your mental health is not separate from taking care of your baby.

If you are struggling, that is worth the time and attention. If you feel persistently low, anxious, irritable, disconnected, or unlike yourself, that is worth talking to a provider.

Support can look like therapy. It can look like medication. It can look like honest conversations with people who understand. It can look like practical help so you can rest.

And if you are not sure where to start, there are organizations specifically dedicated to postpartum mental health. Postpartum Support International has a provider directory where you can search for therapists and prescribers trained in perinatal mental health. They also offer free support groups and a helpline to connect you to local resources. You can find someone who understands this season.

You can also ask your OB, midwife, or primary care provider for referrals. Many practices now work closely with therapists or psychiatric providers who specialize in pregnancy and postpartum. You do not have to figure this out alone.

Postpartum does not have to be something you quietly “grin and bear”. It does not have to feel this hard without support. Mental health care is not a luxury in this season. It is part of responsible care for yourself and for your family.

It’s everything but the baby

Postpartum will stretch you. It will expose the places where you are exhausted, tender, and adjusting to a new version of yourself. But so often, what makes it feel unbearable is not just the baby… it’s everything else. The skipped meal. The unspoken truth. The relentless fatigue. The belief that you should be able to handle it all without help. When you start meeting your needs in those other places, you will see a change in your mental health. You feel steadier. More resourced. More like yourself in the midst of it.

Postpartum is not about doing everything right. It is about noticing what you need and allowing it to matter.

I said it in a way of, I’ll do whatever work I can on myself to be strong despite the trauma and despite things not going as planned. I didn’t want the trauma to define me.

What I didn’t realize then is that you don’t stay unchanged when life happens to you. Especially when it happens in ways you never imagined. There are experiences that don’t pass through you without impact they rearrange you. And looking back, I think what I was really saying was this: I didn’t want motherhood to cost me myself.

It did. And it didn’t.

I had to grieve parts of early motherhood. I had to grieve the version of myself who entered it believing things would be straightforward, joyful in the ways people talk about, protected by optimism. And at the same time, I was becoming someone new, even if I didn’t have language for that yet.

Having a baby three months early does something to you. The NICU does something to you. Loving someone while living inside constant uncertainty rearranges your internal world in ways you can’t fully explain to anyone who hasn’t been there. I didn’t leave that experience unchanged. I left it more alert, more tender, more aware of how fragile things really are.

There was a clear before and after. A loss of naivety. A loss of control over how I thought motherhood would unfold versus how it actually did. Grief showed up in a season I thought would be made of smiles and milestones. I remember sitting beside his isolette, watching his chest rise and fall, feeling grateful he was breathing and terrified to leave the room all at the same time. I thought motherhood would feel simpler than this. I was wrong.

But I didn’t realize then that what I was really grieving wasn’t motherhood — it was the version of myself who didn’t yet experience this.

Over the next three and a half years, I slowly came to terms with the fact that having a son born so early did change me. And that change didn’t mean I was damaged. It didn’t mean I was a worse mother. If anything, it deepened everything.

I felt a greater sense of gratitude. I felt a love I never imagined. I felt appreciation for every small breath, every mini milestone, every ordinary moment that I got to be in my sons presence. And while I know many parents feel this way, I do think having gone through a loss or trauma heightens the emotions around gratitude. Because you’ve loved in a time where you almost lost the love. You appreciate something that almost wasn’t.

In one sense, I think this made motherhood so much more profound for me. I wasn’t bothered by the night time wakings or blow outs… these were moments I felt lucky to experience and it made me feel like a mom. It made my anxiety worse and harder to be away from my son, but it also made my love so much deeper.

Somewhere in the midst of toddlerhood, I came to terms that I was glad that motherhood changed me. I liked who I was. The trauma didn’t define me, it made me. My story didn’t have to live on as the trauma, but could take the shape as me developing a sixth sense. One with broadened gratitude, expanded love, and shifting perspective.

I felt grounded in myself as a mother. Steadier. More certain of who I was. And I thought, okay…. now that I know myself here, maybe I can open the door a little wider.

Except I forgot one thing. Motherhood doesn’t stop changing you just because you feel settled for a moment.

And so, our story shifted again into recurrent pregnancy loss, failed IVF, heartbreak layered on heartbreak. I grieved things I hadn’t known to name before: the grief of waiting, the grief of time, the grief of realizing the family story I imagined wasn’t going to unfold the way I had hoped. I could feel myself changing again, whether I wanted to or not.

And it was in that season that I started to understand something important: there was no version of me to return to.

I wasn’t meant to go back to who I was before these experiences. I was meant to become someone through them.

And eventually, I found that I didn’t want the old version of myself back anyway. My heart felt more tender, more marked, but I also moved through the world differently. With more softness. More patience. More room for other people’s unseen stories. I noticed how quickly I stopped judging. How often I caught myself thinking, you really never know what someone is carrying.

The person I am now exists because of the NICU, because of infertility, because of loss. Those experiences shaped me in ways I didn’t choose but can now recognize. They widened my capacity for compassion. They changed my relationship with gratitude. They taught me how to trust my own path, even when it looks nothing like the one I imagined for myself.

I miss parts of who I was before. I miss the ease. I miss the innocence. I miss the version of myself who didn’t have to hold quite so much awareness all the time.

But even if your journey doesn’t look like mine and even if it isn’t marked by the same moments … the inevitable part is there is still loss in motherhood. And there is still becoming.

Becoming yourself again after motherhood isn’t about returning to an earlier version of you. It’s about allowing yourself to be formed by what you’ve lived. It’s about recognizing that the self isn’t something fixed that gets lost and found — it’s something that grows. It’s someone that you meet along the way.

I’m not the same person I was before I became a mother. I don’t think I’m supposed to be. I’m someone shaped by love and fear and grief and resilience. And I’m proud of that. Some days that feels heavy. Other days it feels grounding. Most days it feels like I’m really me.

This isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about becoming. About learning who you are through the experiences that change you — even when you wish they hadn’t, even when you’re grateful that they did.

And maybe becoming yourself again really means this: letting yourself be the person your life has shaped you into, without trying to undo it.

This being motherhood.
This being the way my heart feels permanently exposed.
This being the mental load that never really turns off.
This being everything around the love for my children.

What I’ve come to realize is that it’s incredibly common for motherhood to feel hard just not something many people say out loud. Maybe because admitting it feels risky. Like it means you’re ungrateful, or complaining, or failing at something everyone else seems to manage. Or maybe because it’s surprisingly hard to explain why it feels hard in the first place.

The truth, for me, is that motherhood has been the hardest and most wonderful thing I’ve ever done.

I love my kids deeply, so why does it sometimes feel like I want to rip my hair out, or crawl into a quiet room and cry? At one point, someone said something to me that stuck: If it feels hard, it’s because you care deeply. Because you’re trying. Because you’re reading and researching and second-guessing and adjusting and reflecting. Because you’re paying attention and trying to do better than what you were handed.

That helped me understand why it feels hard in theory. But it didn’t fully answer the question I kept coming back to: what is it, exactly, that makes this feel so heavy?

And over the last 3.5 years of parenthood, I’ve realized it isn’t the big moments that tend to catch me off guard. It isn’t the milestones, the emergencies, or the scenarios people imagine when they think about how motherhood might be hard. It’s the simple parts, the ones that repeat every day without fanfare, that slowly begin to feel heavier than expected. The parts no one notices.

Packing a diaper bag can suddenly feel overwhelming, not because it’s complicated, but because it requires thinking three steps ahead at all times—anticipating needs, preparing for possibilities, trying to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Getting out of the house carries a similar weight, where something that once felt simple now requires planning, timing, and a constant mental checklist running in the background.

Even familiar tasks like grocery shopping, meal planning, or cooking dinner feel different than they used to. Not because the tasks themselves have changed, but because they now exist alongside the ongoing responsibility of caring for someone else.

Time feels louder. The clock feels louder. There’s a sense of being rushed and stretched thin at the same time, as though there’s never quite enough space to do any one thing fully.

And somewhere along the way, it can start to feel like your brain has disappeared. Thoughts trail off. Sentences don’t get finished. Things that used to take two minutes suddenly take two weeks, not because you’re incapable, but because your attention is being pulled in a dozen directions at once.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, many mothers begin to wonder whether they’re the only ones struggling with these parts, whether this underlying heaviness means they’re doing something wrong. It’s easy to assume that if something feels this hard, it must be a personal failure rather than a shared experience.

That question is often shaped by what we see around us….highlight reels, polished moments, reminders to “enjoy every minute”. Gratitude is emphasized, but the complexity of the experience is rarely named. The nuance. The “both/and”.

There isn’t much room to talk about how the everyday parts of motherhood can feel demanding or relentless, even when nothing is technically “wrong.”

But when honest conversations happen…. like when someone admits that they’re tired, overwhelmed, or surprised by how hard the normal parts feel, it causes something to shift. It’s a relief, an exhale. A realization of" Oh. It’s not just me.

The truth is that motherhood can be hard in ways that aren’t always visible, and at times when nothing is technically “wrong.” That difficulty doesn’t happen all at once, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone, but it exists nonetheless. Silence has a way of making that struggle feel isolating, as though it belongs only to you, rather than recognizing it as part of a shared reality.

Saying that motherhood is hard doesn’t take away from the love, the connection, or the meaning it holds. It doesn’t cancel out joy or gratitude. It simply makes space for honesty for the reality that love and difficulty often coexist.

That two feelings can exist at once.

That you can be deeply grateful and still exhausted.

That saying this feels hard doesn’t make you a bad mom.

It often means the opposite.
It means you care.
It means you’re invested.
It means your heart is wide open.

You can love your kids deeply and still find parts of motherhood really hard. Both can be true. And naming that truth helps mothers stop questioning themselves, step out of comparison, and feel less alone in the parts of motherhood that feel heavier than they ever expected.

If any part of this felt familiar, I’d love to know.
Sometimes saying it out loud makes it feel lighter.

The house was still in that way it only is in the middle of the night, when everything feels paused and fragile. Their body was warm against my chest. I could feel their breathing, slow, steady and without realizing it, I was matching mine to theirs. I watched his hands move out in startle, and then scrunch up, in that perfect newborn way.

I pause, thinking how badly I want to just hold on. To keep him right here. To protect him from everything big and loud and terrifying about the world.

There is this instinct in me that feels almost primal. Like if I could just stay still enough, long enough, I could keep him safe. Like that was my only job as a mother. My only important job in life.

And at the same time, I know I can’t do that.

No matter how much I want to protect my children, I can’t protect them from everything. I can’t control the world they’re growing up in. I can’t hold them forever inside the safety of my arms.

I can love them. I can show up.
But I can’t make the world less scary just by wanting it to be.
I wish I could.

And in that same moment, holding my baby in the dark, I felt the weight of how lucky I was. To be there. To be safe in my home. To be having this quiet, ordinary moment while so many children and families are not. And damn that hit hard.

That contrast has stayed with me.

Because there is something uniquely heavy about being a mother right now.

We see the news.
We see the kids’ faces.
And before we even finish reading, our bodies react. Our stomachs drop. Our thoughts start to loop. The tightness in the chest. That sudden sense of helplessness that’s hard to shake. And maybe you just let out a small cry.

I think about how many of us grew up learning about devastating moments in history from a distance. We read about them in textbooks. We watched documentaries. We asked the same question again and again:
How did they let this happen?
How did people go on with their lives?

And now we’re here.

Living inside something we once thought we would only ever study.

And motherhood doesn’t pause for any of it. If anything, it makes it more poignant.

The fear comes—and then a child needs breakfast. Or help with their shoes. Or climbs into your lap like the world hasn’t just shifted under your feet. And you still have to mother.

Some days, that feels like the hardest part.

Because you can feel scared and still have to be brave.
You can feel unsure and still have to make decisions.
You can feel deeply unsettled and still have to help someone else feel safe.

There are days I don’t know how to explain the world to my kids. Days when I’m choosing my words carefully, trying to be honest without overwhelming them. Days when I’m regulating myself while also trying to be a calm place for them to land.

I want to stay informed.
I want to stay present.
And sometimes it feels like those two things are in direct conflict with each other.

Some days, courage looks like having a slow, careful conversation.
Other days, it looks like turning the news off because your nervous system needs a boundary.

Some days, it looks like crying in private so you can show up steadier.
Other days, it looks like admitting you’re overwhelmed instead of pushing yourself to keep consuming more.

Motherhood right now is a constant balancing act.

Caring deeply without becoming immobilized.
Paying attention without becoming paralyzed.
Loving your children fiercely while knowing you cannot protect them from everything.

And then morning comes.

The sky starts to lighten. The room slowly fills with that early morning quiet. I’m still holding my baby, feeling their weight against me, watching the sun rise through the window.

And I realize something simple and steady.

I can’t protect my children from everything.

But I can love them.

And that love is what keeps me showing up.
It’s what grounds me when fear feels close.
It’s what allows me to keep mothering, even in a world that feels uncertain.

Maybe that’s what bravery looks like right now.

Not having answers.
Not feeling fearless.

But choosing love, again and again, and trusting that it will make a difference both for them, and for me.

For the words unsaid,

Kim

Not because it’s unfamiliar, but because this time, everything is different.

With my first, bonding happened automatically. But not in the way people usually mean. It wasn’t ‘instantly bonded’ at first sight. It wasn’t gentle or slow or rooted in ease.

It formed through trauma. Fear. Uncertainty. A constant sense that something could go wrong at any moment. A deep deep love, for fear of loss and fear that we could lose everything in the blink of an eye.

At the time, I didn’t recognize it as that. It was my first, I had nothing else to compare it to. I just knew I loved him fiercely. I had never experienced a feeling like that before, and it wasn’t how others described it. It was big and heavy. It felt like we were super glued. I was attached. I had to always be on. It was (and still is) hard for me to let go of being everything to him.

It wasn’t until I had my second that I realized how much of that bond was shaped by trauma. How the story of how he was born, and the story of how I became a mother, became part of my story for what I knew about loving a child.

I loved out of worry. I loved out of knowing how close we were to not having him, and how close I was to not being here. I loved out of trusting the process and feeling like because of him, because of where we were, everything was meant to happen that way.

None of that crossed my mind in thinking what goes into loving a child. I always assumed (And knew about myself), that I love big and I love strong, so not to even consider what it means to love a child.

And yet, while it is intuitive and natural, it can feel different when circumstances are different.

This pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum have been healthy. Steady. Beautiful. Peaceful. There were no emergencies. No looming fears. No moments where everything felt fragile and at risk of falling apart. In many ways, it has been a magical experience. I left delivery and joked “no notes”.

And that has raised a question I didn’t expect to ask:

How do you bond with a baby without trauma, when that is all you know?

How do you love from awe and wonder instead of fear and vigilance?
How do you build attachment when it isn’t fueled by anxiety? And instead fueled by being present with this magical being?

It wasn’t something that ever crossed my mind, until I was in it. I’ve had to be intentional in ways I didn’t anticipate. Intentional about reminding myself that a different bond doesn’t mean a lesser one. Intentional about not measuring this experience against the first. Intentional about letting this relationship be its own thing. And to let myself marvel in the beauty of a bond that is based in bliss and ease.

Holding space both for the bond with my first, and for the truth that it was shaped by fear and survival. Holding space for the fact that no matter how deep that love is, it was formed in circumstances that required my nervous system to stay on high alert. And holding space for the grief that comes with realizing how different it could have felt.

Because to fully experience how grounded this postpartum feels, I’ve had to acknowledge what I didn’t get the first time. There’s grief in recognizing that I never had this ease before. That my nervous system didn’t get to rest. That love and fear were so tightly woven together that I couldn’t tell the difference. And didn’t even realize that until having this new experience, 3.5 years later.

My husband and I felt that acutely during this delivery. There was a moment where we both looked at each other and thought, If it had been like this the first time, I understand how people decide to do this again and again. That doesn’t take away from what we survived before, but it does highlight how hard it actually was. And how we didn’t realize it, until in this moment.

There’s also something unexpected about loving without anxiety.

With my first, my love showed up as constant worry. If he cried, I wondered if something was wrong. If he didn’t sleep, I spiraled. My care was loud. Alert. Always scanning.

This time, it’s in the awe. It’s in the quiet.

And that has confused me more than I expected.

I don’t feel that same edge of panic. I don’t feel the constant need to check and recheck. Part of that is experience. Part of it is therapy. Part of it is having a healthy baby. But sometimes I catch myself wondering… if I’m not anxious, am I loving him the same way?

The truth is, I am. It just looks different.

When he cries now, I don’t immediately think something is wrong. I think, You’re here. When he keeps me up at night, I don’t panic, I feel grounded and grateful. His weight on my chest calms me. His tiny arms don’t activate my nervous system; they settle it. His grunts and coos are cute, rather than worrisome.

With my first, he cries triggered hypervigilance.
With my second, his cries remind me that I’m with a human, that I created.

And maybe that’s the biggest shift of all.

Both of my children are deeply loved.
A love I never knew existed, and one that just thinking about brings me to tears.
The bonds are real.
They’re just different.

And how amazing is it to experience it in two such different ways.

I’m learning how to let this bond be shaped by presence instead of fear. How to trust that connection can exist without constant worry. How to sit in a postpartum that feels stable — even enjoyable — without questioning what that says about me as a mother.

I always knew that the love I had for my first felt different. What I understand more clearly now is why. That love was shaped by how he came into the world. By how close we were to losing everything. By who I was becoming in the middle of it.

This love is being shaped by something else.

By things going “as best as they can”.
By steadiness.
By a nervous system that doesn’t have to stay on high alert.

It doesn’t make one deeper or more meaningful than the other. It just makes them different.

And maybe that’s part of what it means to become a mother again. That the love you have for each kid is different. It isn’t the same. It evolves. It changes as we do.

I’m letting myself experience that difference without trying to explain it away. I’m trying to sit in the gratitude of experiencing love in so many ways.

For the words unspoken,

Kim

Routines. Schedules. What someone managed to do between feeds and naps. What their day looked like before noon. Even when it’s well-intended, it can create the feeling that there’s a right way to move through postpartum. A way that looks organized, productive, or put together.

And when your own days don’t look like that, it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing enough. Or you are doing it wrong and something bad will now happen.

For me, it’s a huge trigger for my anxiety.

What I’m realizing in this season is that postpartum productivity cannot be measured the same way as productivity outside the bubble. The bar is lower — not because you’re capable of less, but because you have so much more on your plate.

Feeding every 3 hours.
Maybe breast feeding/pumping, maybe not, but either way there’s a lot going on.
Not getting enough sleep.
Being interrupted over and over and can’t complete a single task in the entire day.

Never mind that your body is healing, regulating.
Keeping a brand-new human alive while recovering from something enormous.

It’s a season for things to be messy. For there to be no perfect day and certainly no one way to do it.

We talk a lot about newborn routines in this phase — feeding schedules, wake windows, nap rhythms — but we don’t talk nearly enough about the mother’s routine. Even though her regulation, rest, and care matter just as much.

Care for the baby matters.
Care for the mother matters just as much.

What if instead of “a day in the life for my newborn” we focused on “what I need in a day” as a mom.

It’s not based on wake windows or feed times, but instead on making sure the mom is finishing her meal, drinking enough water, getting outside, showering.

So I’m not going to spam you with content on “what my day is with my 5 week old”.

But I will spam you with “how I took care of myself” and what I need in a routine as a new mom in order to have a good day.

I say this to my clients, and I need to keep reminding myself. Taking care of mom, is the best way to take care of the baby.

So here are a few things I’ve learned I need in my routine to feel regulated, human, and okay on a good day.

1. Nourishing yourself:
   Feed yourself first. If you aren’t fed and hydrated, everything else will feel so much harder. Your body is recovering and healing from something incredibly major. You need to restore yourself in order to give to others.

2. Wearing real clothes

   Not that I’m dressing up to go anywhere, but clothes that make me feel human. Make me feel like myself. It can change how you feel about what you are doing, even if you are doing the same thing.

3. A shower in peace.
   Just a few minutes under warm water. Breathing. Letting my shoulders drop. Cleaning off the night before and starting a new day fresh. Feeling the wetness, the temperature, the quiet. Resetting in a way I didn’t know I needed until I felt more like myself afterward.

4. Skin-to-skin time.
   Not for milestones or bonding goals. Not because I was supposed to. But because I get high off my baby’s smell. I’ve never felt something like the softness of his head kissing my nose. It grounds me. It connects me. His breathing regulates me. Our bodies move together and reminiscent of being in the womb. Except now he knows who I am and I know his patterns. It feels primal.It reminds me there is no where else I need to be and nothing else that I need to be doing (well, there is plenty, but nothing worth my time in that moment).

5. Texting one friend back.
   Postpartum, I tend to have texts that sit unread for days. Not because I don’t care, oh I do. It’s that I don’t have capacity to get out of my bubble and into another bubble. Yet I appreciate everyone who checks in and who takes me out of the bubble. So once/day, I set aside time to answer all the texts from the last 24 hours.

6. Stepping outside for two minutes.
   Literally just getting a change of scenery and a chance to breathe. An exhale. Fresh air on my face. Feeling of the sun or the wind or the rain. No goals or expectations for steps or movement. Just stillness and something that isn’t confined to the 4 walls of my house.

7. Resting when I actually needed it.
   Letting things sit at home. The laundry. The dishes. The piles of things. They can all sit while I sit. My rest is more important than a to do list.

8. Holding the baby longer than planned.
   Do you know the posts of “I got nothing done today” and then show you holding the baby all day and give some notion of ‘you are their everything’. I don’t love those posts because they can instill guilt of ‘I should be appreciating this more’ or making you feel like you are rushing if you aren’t doing that. AND, I do also agree that if all you did was sit and hold the baby, then you did more than enough.

   
   Looking back at the day and realizing I hadn’t “done” much — and also realizing that caring for a brand-new human was the day.

9. Releasing the idea of a routine.
   Accepting that these days weren’t about consistency or structure. They were about responsiveness — listening to my body and my baby instead of forcing the day to look a certain way.
   It’s more about checking in with your needs and listening to your needs, then following a to do list.

10. Lowering the bar out loud.

    Actually saying, “Today is a low-expectation day.” Naming it removes the pressure to complete tasks or push through. It gives me permission to stop negotiating with myself about what I “should” be able to do and just meet the day where it is. For in postpartum, your days are run by a newborn on their own agenda.

I’m learning that postpartum care isn’t about building the perfect routine or getting the day to look a certain way; it’s about listening to my body, rather than doing.

Listening to my body when it asks for rest instead of pushing through out of habit. Listening to my capacity instead of negotiating with myself about what I should be able to handle. Listening to what actually helps me feel steadier and more regulated, rather than what I think is supposed to help based on someone else’s schedule or productivity.

Some days, that listening leads to movement or connection or checking something off a list. Other days, it leads to slowing down, staying put, and letting things remain undone. And I’m learning to trust that both kinds of days are good.

If a day includes even one moment that supports you, whether it’s a pause, a breath, or something small that helps you feel steadier, then you showed up for yourself that day.

What’s one thing you need in a day right now to feel okay?

For the words unspoken,
Kim

At the time, it felt like a challenge. A personal experiment. A way to prove to myself that even in motherhood, it was important to choose myself in some small way each day. What I didn’t know then was how much I would need it.

I didn’t know that I would start the year deep in infertility. That I would be on the edge of beginning IVF, facing new emotions with equal parts hope and dread. That I would go through a cycle that was emotionally exhausting and deeply disappointing in ways that are hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. That I would later move through pregnancy with joy, fear, gratitude, grief, and worry all at once. I didn’t know what the year would hold. But somehow, the act itself, was a saving grace. It helped keep my head afloat.

When people hear “365 days of doing something for yourself,” they often imagine something impressive. Big self-care moments. Elaborate rituals. Perfect routines. Spa days and grand gestures. That’s not what this was. What I learned quickly is that the most important “me” days were never the big ones. They were the mundane ones. The unremarkable ones. The days that would never make it onto a highlight reel.

A shower where I didn’t rush. A walk outside, even when I didn’t feel like it. Jumping in the ocean on a random afternoon. Laughing with my son until my stomach hurt. Letting myself smile for no reason. Nothing about those moments was extraordinary on their own. What mattered was my perception of the intention of those moments.

And don’t get me wrong, sometimes I had no desire to do a ‘me moment’. Thinking it wouldn’t make a difference, or on the darkest days, that I didn’t have it in me to try. And yet, those were the days that a good cry, a “sitting in my feelings moment”, or yes, an ice cream treat would make the biggest difference.

This year taught me that taking care of yourself as a mom isn’t always about adding more. Often, it’s about shifting how you relate to what’s already there. Being present for them. Letting ordinary moments be enough. Letting them restore you instead of rushing past them.

I started this challenge believing I needed to do something every day. What I realized instead was that I needed to listen every day. Some days, taking care of myself was active and intentional. Other days, it was passive and just part of my day. There were days when finding a “me moment” felt nearly impossible. Days when my body was tired, my heart was heavy, or my mind felt stretched thin. And then there were days when it came easily. Naturally. Without effort.

This year taught me that nurturing yourself doesn’t have to look the same every day to be meaningful. Consistency doesn’t mean rigidity. It means showing up with curiosity instead of pressure. It means being graceful with yourself if you don’t meet your expectations and accepting what is. Asking, What do I need today?. This practice didn’t change my circumstances… it changed how I looked at them.

This practice stopped being about proving that I could do something for myself every day. It became about staying connected to who I am, even as motherhood continued to push me in new ways. It reminded me that caring for myself doesn’t pull me away from being a good mother. It anchors me more deeply into it. It makes me a better version of myself. When I feel nurtured, I’m more patient. More present. More playful. More grounded. Not because I’m trying harder, but because I’m taken care of too.

This year reaffirmed something I believe deeply, both personally and professionally: taking care of yourself as a mother doesn’t compete with caring for your child. It supports it.

When I began posting about my daily “me moments,” I thought I was simply documenting something for myself. What I didn’t anticipate was how many people would begin sharing theirs in return. Messages started coming in. Comments filled with small, honest moments. Photos of coffee mugs, walks, ocean swims, quiet corners, laughter with kids. Some people even began sending me things for my me moments…tokens of thoughtfulness, encouragement, care. Watching other mothers reconnect with themselves has been one of the most meaningful parts of this entire year. It reminded me that inspiration doesn’t always come from grand transformations. Sometimes it comes from letting go and pausing. From seeing someone else choose themselves and realizing you’re allowed to do the same.

Looking back, I don’t see this year as 365 acts of self-care. I see it as 365 moments of attention. Attention to my needs. To my feelings. To my body. I started the year thinking I was creating a challenge. What I was really creating was a lifeline. And if this year taught me anything, it’s this: you don’t need to know what’s coming to prepare yourself for it. Sometimes, all you need is the commitment to show up for yourself—one ordinary, meaningful moment at a time.

What have the small moments that carried you this year looked like? I’d love to hear!

For the words unsaid,

Kim Meehan

Maybe because there aren’t clean words for it. Or because it lives somewhere between shock and awe, love and fear, strength and fragility all at once.

For me, it brought an entirely new dictionary of emotions.

Even when the baby is so deeply wanted.
Even when the pregnancy was planned.
Even when you thought you knew what to expect.

There is a kind of shock that settles in anyway.

You can be deeply in love and still feel completely overwhelmed by how intense everything suddenly is. Your world changes overnight, but your body hasn’t caught up yet. You’re still bleeding. Still sore in places you didn’t expect. Still flinching when you sit down. Bracing when you stand. Learning how to move inside a body that no longer feels like it belongs to you in the same way.

But wow, that body did something so incredible. It grew eyeballs and ten toes and a real human. I pause every day to remind myself of that.

And you’re running on adrenaline and fragments of sleep. Your nervous system is lit up, even when you’re lying still. Time stops acting the way it used to. Nights blur into mornings. Days feel endless and gone too fast at the same time. You can’t tell if it’s been three hours or thirty minutes since the last feed.

You feel like you’ve got nothing done, and also what is there to be done? You have this perfect, beautiful human who just wants to be snuggled and loved.

You cry for reasons you can name, and for reasons you can’t.
Sometimes while holding the very thing you love most.
The tears are more than you expected and also feel good to get out.
It’s a new kind of release you didn’t know existed but feels right for this new range of emotions.

These emotions feel uniquely tied to becoming a parent.

There’s a constant checking. Are they breathing? Are they too warm? Too cold? Even when you know they’re okay, your body doesn’t believe it yet. Your brain is rewiring a new calibration to understand what’s a real fear vs an everyday worry now. The responsibility lands hard, especially in the quiet hours of the night. That sudden understanding that everything depends on you now.

People might be around. Checking in. Asking how you’re doing. And somehow, you’ve never felt more alone. This is the part no one prepares you for. The loneliness feels unfamiliar because it isn’t about being alone physically…. it’s the loneliness of an emotional experience you can’t fully hand off, even when people are around.

Then there is the missing. You miss your old life in flashes. The ease, the spontaneity, the autonomy, the version of yourself who existed without needing to be needed every second. And then you feel guilty for missing it. And then, quietly, you realize you miss yourself too.

In reality, you’re still waiting to meet who you are becoming. And as a second-time mom, I know you will love who you are becoming, but that in-between can be a hard place to imagine your way out of.

At the same time, you can feel strong in a way you’ve never felt before. You got through labor. You did something monumental. (Yes, you birthed a human!!) And yet, emotionally, you might feel more fragile than you ever have. You feel tender and a new need to be taken care of.

You’re learning your baby. Their sounds, their rhythms, their cues while learning how to be a mother. While wondering how everyone else seems to make this look easier. While scrolling past images that suggest confidence and routine, when what you’re actually living is survival.

Because that’s what the first two weeks are.

They are survival.
Not routine.
Not confidence or knowing.
And not a reflection of how good of a mother you are.

They are the in-between.

The undoing.
The becoming.

Your old life hasn’t fully disappeared, but it doesn’t fit the same way anymore. The new one hasn’t settled yet either. You are suspended somewhere in the middle of being exhausted, emotional, tender, and more open than you’ve ever been.

It’s a time where everything feels heightened. Where your heart is stretched wide. Where the love is real and immediate and consuming and so is the fear, the grief, the overwhelm, the ache.

Nothing about these weeks is a verdict on how this journey will go.

They are not meant to be mastered.
They are meant to be moved through.

Slowly, imperfectly, messy.

And even if it doesn’t feel like it now, this in-between phase is doing something important. It is reshaping you. Teaching you. Pulling you apart just enough to make room for who you are becoming.

For the words unspoken,

Kim

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What I didn’t expect was the sense of loss.

Loving my second wasn’t the hard part. That came easily, in a way that felt familiar and almost grounding. There was comfort in recognizing that feeling again, in knowing my body and heart remembered how to do this. And in realizing what I had been missing by not having that feeling.

Loving my first didn’t feel harder either. If anything, it felt deeper, fuller, more protective. Watching him become a sibling has been so incredibly heartwarming with the way he leans in, the way he asks questions, the way he wants to help without fully knowing how. How he throws all of his stuffies on him (with our watching of course).

The harder part has been realizing that the version of motherhood I had with just him is over.

Not gone. I know we’ll still have our time. We’ll still have moments that are just ours. But it’s changed in a way I don’t think I fully let myself think about before bringing home a second. There’s no going back to the days where our time was unplanned and uninterrupted, where our routines revolved around one small person and the two of us moving through the day together. Where we could fully spoil our first with what he wanted or needed.

Our time doesn’t belong only to us anymore. The slow mornings, the ease of leaving the house when it was just one car seat, the ability to follow his pace. All of that now has to make room for someone else. I still get time alone with him, but it feels different. More intentional. More aware. Less effortless. Like I’m trying to soak it in while it’s happening.

What surprised me was how quickly my first seemed older.

He didn’t change overnight. His personality is the same. His laugh is the same. But something in me shifted. Bringing another baby home instantly reframed how I see him. How capable he is, how much he understands, how big his emotions feel now. The baby I once rocked endlessly now feels like a kid who’s halfway grown up. And I’m standing there thinking, how did this happen so fast?

This stage has a way of pulling you backward in time.

Caring for my second brings back so many memories from those early days with my first. The constant feeds, the way a newborn curls perfectly into your chest, the hyper-awareness of how fleeting these moments are. The constant worries and checking if he is breathing, if he is too cold. The blowouts that come out of nowhere. The weepy moments that don’t make sense. The feeling that everything is fragile and urgent all at once.

The difference now is perspective. The things that once felt unbearable feel survivable. The uncertainty feels familiar. I know more than I did then, and that changes everything. It’s easier in some ways. Heavier in others because I now know.

It’s emotional to realize how much I’ve grown.

It’s also emotional to realize how fast time moves.

Holding my first as a baby feels both recent and forever ago. I remember thinking I would never forget those moments …. the weight of him, the way he smelled, the tiny details. And now, so much of it feels blurry. I remember it through photos more than through memory. Becoming a mother again doesn’t just add new experiences. It brings old ones back, with the awareness of how quickly they passed.

It makes me catch myself thinking things like: how do I freeze this? How do I hold on to this before it slips by too?

What I didn’t anticipate was how strong the pull would be between loving what’s happening now and missing what already feels gone. It is my heart being pulled in every direction at once.

Loving my second deeply while missing my first in a new way. Missing the version of him that existed before everything shifted. Missing the ease of undivided attention. Missing the simplicity of being a family of three, even while feeling grateful for the family we’re becoming. Both feelings exist at the same time.

And then there are the moments of watching my first become a sibling.

The way he looks at the baby. The fun and twinkle in his eye. What he doesn’t know yet about their relationship, yet that I can see the early start of. Seeing him step into it has unlocked a kind of love I didn’t know before. It doesn’t feel like my heart has to choose. It’s stretched ,expanded, and opened up a door to an entirely new set of feelings that wasn’t even an option prior.

There are moments when I stop and really take in what we’ve built. This family. This life. And I feel disbelief right alongside gratitude. This was once something we imagined. Talked about. Hoped for. And now we’re living inside it. It feels grounding and surreal at the same time. The joy is real. The adjustment is real. The emotions are very real.

Going from one to two isn’t just a numerical change. It’s an identity shift. It’s realizing time moves faster than you think. It’s loving this moment while already knowing how quickly it will pass. It’s learning that loving more sometimes means feeling more. That’s what it is. It’s more tenderness, more nostalgia, more awe, more ache. More abundance of it all. More gratitude.

This transition isn’t all magic. It can feel hard. Your energy feels either completely spent or completely full. You’re using what you already know, but in a whole new context. It’s an entirely new challenge.

To me, there wasn’t a single moment where everything changed. It’s been a series of small realizations. Moments where I notice I’m not the same parent I was before. Moments I see my growth, my families growth.

I wouldn’t say I miss my old life or the version of me when we were just three. I loved those moments, AND, I love these moments too just in a new way. Either way, it feels entirely surreal.

For the words unspoken,

Kim

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I keep thinking about how so much of this stage can’t be explained ahead of time because it’s real in a way you can’t prepare for. It’s a whole new dictionary of emotions that only makes sense once you’re the one holding the baby.

And somewhere inside the tears and the hormones and the exhaustion, I keep landing on the same feeling: gratitude.
Yes, it’s intense. Yes, the emotions are big.
And still—how lucky am I to feel all of this?

Here are a few of the moments that keep hitting me…

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How lucky am I to be this tired and still not want to put my baby down. There’s a kind of exhaustion that makes your whole body ache, and yet there’s also this pull to hold them for just a little longer. I can want sleep so badly and still feel sad when I finally set them in the crib. In this season, and perhaps because of my journey, contact naps, skin to skin, and simply being physically connected to my newborn is what feels right. It also helps with the healing, if the only thing I have to do is snuggle. It’s me trying to form the bond and learn about the connection to this baby.

How lucky am I that I sometimes cry while rocking them because we hoped for them for so long. The tears don’t come from sadness—they come from the weight of everything it took to get here. They come from the immense joy, the miracle, the frank disbelief that this baby is here in my arms now. The months of waiting, the uncertainty, the longing. There are moments when it just hits me: we made it to this. He’s here. I’m holding him. And it’s overwhelming in the best possible way.

How lucky am I to hold a baby who has only ever known me. I am their everything. It feels very primal, very animalistic. All through scent, touch and sound. I’m the familiar thing in their brand-new world, and that feels huge in a way I didn’t expect.

How lucky am I to learn their sounds faster than I learn anything else. It’s funny how within a few days, you already learn the difference between their tired cry and their hungry cry without even thinking about it. You may not know them yet, and that can be hard in forming the bond. And, you can start to understand them.

How lucky am I to take a hundred photos a day because every tiny change feels big. I know most of the pictures look the same, but to me they symbolize how fast time goes and how much I want to hold on to these moments. Their face shifts. Their expressions change. Their little hands do something new. I find myself scrolling through those photos at night trying to hold onto a version of them that already feels like it’s slipping away. The one constant in parenting is me wanting to hold on to the norm.

How lucky am I to be needed every minute in a way that feels both heavy and meaningful. There is a weight to being the person they rely on for everything. Some days it feels like too much. But there’s also this sense of purpose that I didn’t know would feel so grounding. It’s intense but also a feeling that I haven’t felt elsewhere.

How lucky am I to feel their breathing on my chest and already know this phase is moving fast. There are nights when I hold him long after they fall asleep because I know these moments aren’t permanent. I can feel the clock running in the background, even when I don’t want to. I constantly ask myself “how do I freeze time?”, knowing I can’t and that these moments slip by in an instant.

How lucky am I to be healing from childbirth while figuring everything out on the fly. Postpartum is messy—physically, mentally, emotionally. I’m learning my baby and learning myself at the same time, and neither one comes with instructions. Some days I’m proud of how I’m handling it. Some days I’m overwhelmed. But I know it is all a phase and it will be figured out.

How lucky am I to feel a love that keeps growing in ways I didn’t expect. The small, subtle moments that I haven’t noticed before. The way they sigh into me. The way their eyes follow my voice. The way their whole body relaxes when I pick them up. The way his small hand closes over my finger.

How lucky am I to live moments I’m already nostalgic for, even as they’re happening. I’ve never experienced anything like that before—missing something while I’m still in the midst of it. It makes everything feel a little sharper, a little more important, a little more fleeting.

And going through this a second time, I realize, this is all of motherhood. It doens’t end at a certain time of ‘postpartum’. It’s a continuum.

This postpartum period is more intense because it’s a lot of big feelings happening all at once. But underneath the noise and the exhaustion and the learning curve, there’s an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I’m lucky to be here. I’m lucky to be their mom. And I’m lucky to go through these emotions.

For the words unsaid,

Kim

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