Maybe you love the baby and still cry in the shower. Maybe a thought flashed through your mind that scared you, and you have not said it out loud to anyone. Most mothers have some version of this in the early weeks. You can love your baby with your whole heart and still feel this. It means you are a person whose body and whole life changed at once.
For the first couple of weeks, tears that come from nowhere, moods that swing, feeling raw and weepy. Most new mothers feel some of this, and it usually eases by about two weeks. If it does not lift, or it sinks deeper, that is worth a call.
Depression and anxiety after birth can show up as anger, numbness, racing worry, a pounding need to check on the baby, or trouble sleeping even when the baby finally sleeps. Struggling wears many faces, and tears are only one of them.
A sudden image of dropping the baby, or a what-if that horrifies you. For most mothers these are intrusive thoughts: unwanted, upsetting, and the opposite of what you want. The horror you feel about the thought is the very sign of how deeply you love your baby. They tend to loosen their grip once you stop facing them alone.
Many treatments for depression and anxiety can be used while breastfeeding. You can tend to your own mind and keep feeding your baby, both at once. Your doctor can help you weigh what fits.
This can begin any time in the first year, not only the first weeks, and it can happen after one baby and not another. If this birth feels different in a way that worries you, that difference is worth saying out loud to someone.
Now and then, a mother feels unable to sleep for days, deeply confused, certain of things that are not true, or feels the thoughts as commands. That is a medical emergency, and like any emergency it is treatable. The note below has the numbers to call right away.
Call your doctor, or call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-852-6262 (call or text, free, day or night), if low mood, anxiety, or scary thoughts last more than two weeks, get worse, or make it hard to care for yourself or the baby. Some signs need help the same day: not sleeping at all for several days, seeing or hearing things others do not, believing things that are not true, thoughts that feel like commands, or any thought of harming yourself or the baby. For those, call or text 988, or go to the emergency room. The people who answer these lines hear from new mothers every day and are trained for exactly this.
If reading this stirred something up, the support page holds the lines that answer day or night, and the help-near-you links can point you to people nearby. And if your body has felt as worn as your mind, there is a page for that too.