A mother shares her story about the surprising impact of postpartum hormones on her mental health after birth.
Pregnant women have nine months to get used to the chaos about their hormones. After receiving the notification that I was pregnant, I became nauseous for several weeks.
I remained securely bound to a hormone roller coaster. I am in a heightened emotional state for the next nine months of my pregnancy. I was very excited; then I would feel unbearably sad, followed by unusual anxiety—my emotions are all over the place.
Hormones and your postpartum mental health
For some irrational reason, I believed that after I gave birth, I would miraculously “go back to normal.” This is not the case. I found some relief. I entered motherhood sleep deprived and exhausted.
I had a long labor, and I found rest to be poor in the days and weeks after the birth. Lack of sleep is never good for one’s endocrine system or mental health. I suffered from unspecified postpartum anxiety.
I don’t know if I can credit the concern hormones, lack of sleep, or natural fear accompany being a mother for the first time. I assume that all three factors played a role in my chaotic state of mind.
I’m one of those girls who always wanted to be a mom, so having my son was a dream come true! I was able to adrenaline and pure fun for the first week. Around the seventh day, the baby blues put in.
I traveled at times of uncontrollable crying spells. Maybe my head was under a rock, but I was surprised for some unknown reason. I feel like my doctors didn’t warn me enough about this common occurrence.
Fortunately, the baby blues come and go within days. Upon further reflection, I now believe that the baby blues occur from a spiritual perspective because the mother is grieving the loss of his former self.
Hormonal changes in the first year postpartum
By the fourth trimester, if not longer, I moved on suffer from intrusive thoughts. I fear the worst that could happen to my sweet baby girl. I relentlessly checked his breath and made sure his environment was safe.
Care must be taken when you have a newborn, but my worries are all-consuming. My body tensed. My cortisol levels were through the roof, and I was in a constant state of fight-or-flight
Seven or eight months after giving birth, I finally feel more “normal” or “like myself,” but my hormones continue to wreak havoc. The long thick locks I had maintained during pregnancy started falling out in clumps. I got bald patches near my temples.
Read next: Your Postpartum Hormone Timeline
And because of high prolactin levels My body was formed because of nursing, I have zero libido. Plus, I could smell it. No one talks about it, but the doing A different body odor after childbirth is not uncommon. For months, I experimented with dozens of deodorants. Nothing worked.
Fortunately, by the time my daughter turned one, I was sleeping, my anxiety was back to a manageable baseline, my hair had stopped falling out, and my tried-and-true deodorant will work again.
My libido didn’t return until months after I stopped nursing, and my sex drive remains low than pre-baby. Motherhood is no joke. No part of a woman’s life is unaffected by being a mother, and our hormones are no exception.
Unfortunately, the inconvenient presentations of certain hormones are the same we celebrate because those hormones are responsible for making a baby. As women and mothers, we are under pressure practice honed levels of resilience.
When you are in the thick of the mess of postpartum hormones, please remember— you are not crazy, you are not alone, and this is temporary.
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