You may have heard of the baby blues before, which most women experience in some shape or form. This is when you may feel low in mood, emotional or teary after giving birth.
This usually settles by the end of the second week after giving birth and can be caused by a combination of reasons including sudden change in hormones after the delivery of your baby, lack of sleep and fatigue. It is important to know that experiencing the baby blues is completely normal, so many women experience this phase and as women we should not feel guilty for feeling this way.
Some women are completely fine after this dip in mood, however many women may go on to develop post-natal depression which is low mood developing within six weeks of giving birth, where the symptoms of depression can be more severe and longer lasting. You may struggle to bond with the baby, feel guilty, worthless, isolated, and potentially even suicidal in severe cases. It is important that if you ever have suicidal thoughts, you need to seek urgent medical help.
Being a GP, I knew I was depressed as I had most of the symptoms- I was withdrawn, felt ashamed, had lost my self-confidence and self-esteem, was unable to find pleasure in things I usually would enjoy and just generally felt down most of the time. One of the hardest things I found was to actually admit I was depressed and needed help. I felt like a failure to have succumbed to depression after being through difficulties in the past before I had managed to safeguard my mental health. I felt now at the most crucial moment of becoming a mother and having a baby depend on me, I had failed my baby and family by allowing my mental health to deteriorate to this point.
In reality, wasting my time and energy thinking negatively and beating myself up did not benefit me in any shape or form, instead it weighed me down and prevented me from moving forwards. The thing that motivated me to get better was knowing that to do a good job with looking after my baby I needed to also do a good job with looking after myself and being kinder to myself.
I feel sometimes as new mothers we give ourselves such a hard time and beat ourselves up over things which are unnecessary. We need to be kinder to ourselves and give ourselves a break instead of holding unrealistic expectations of ourselves. Also, we need to try to drop the high expectations others may pile on us as new mothers.
For tips on how to tackle post-natal depression check out the following link:
Important Note: Call 999 if you think there is an immediate danger that you may harm yourself or your baby and try to stay with another person rather than being alone whilst waiting for help.