Managing overwhelm MENTAL LOAD OF MOTHERHOOD Strategies to help you pivot from pregnancy to postpartum

Strategies to help you pivot from pregnancy to postpartum

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Overwhelm stifles our ability to think creatively or flexibly. We lose the skills that assist with reasoning, managing and planning, and it’s harder to access the part of the brain that helps us make sense of things. We are observing our baby and also planning, preparing, anticipating, supporting and caring for the family’s practical, physical and emotional needs.

Overwhelm in motherhood can feel like:

• Paralysis and heaviness, both physical and mental.

• Being quick to snap, reactive, angry, panicked.

• Head fog, inability to make decisions, forgetfulness.

• Tense shoulders and jaw.

• Being swallowed up by responsibility.

It’s not a message we hear very often, but it’s an important one nonetheless: postpartum is innately stressful, and this stress is exacerbated by your physical and emotional vulnerability. There are a few reasons you can expect a low level of anxiety in the fourth trimester.

• Your hormones have dropped from the highest high to the lowest low.

• Your brain is rewiring, hence your nervous system is resetting.

• The primary hormone in postpartum is oxytocin, which has a dark side. It can make you hypervigilant, anxious and wary.

In addition, you're evolutionarily programmed to keep your baby alive and having your fragile newborn so dependent on you for survival in turn means that your body is on guard at all times. This can manifest as being attentive and careful, but it can also lean into hypervigilance and anxiety. This is a normal and expected aspect of postpartum, but it’s also uncomfortable and it’s common not to enjoy the way this new level of alertness makes you feel.

What's happening in your brain