One Year Postpartum: What Protecting My Mental Health Actually Looked Like

I can’t quite believe I’m writing this, but I am officially one year postpartum.

There is something about approaching my son’s first birthday that has made me want to slow down and look back at this past year. Maybe it’s because the first birthday feels like a milestone for both of us. He is turning one, but it also marks one year since I became his mom.

And, wow. What a year it has been.

I entered motherhood after spending years working in perinatal and postpartum mental health. Before having my own baby, I had supported many women through pregnancy, postpartum anxiety and depression, identity changes, relationship challenges, and the many other emotional adjustments that can come with becoming a mom.

I knew the statistics. I knew the risk factors. I knew the signs and symptoms of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs). I had spent years talking to women about how to prepare for postpartum and protect their mental health after having a baby.

And then it was my turn.

I did many of the things I had spent years encouraging other women to do. I prepared. I went to therapy. I talked to my husband about postpartum mental health. I protected my sleep. I accepted help. I moved my body. I found other moms.

Those things helped tremendously and at the same time, postpartum was still hard. I think that’s important for me to say, especially as a perinatal psychologist. 

There can be a temptation when we talk about protecting our mental health to make it sound as though if we just do all the “right” things, we can somehow avoid the difficult parts. But that wasn’t my experience, and it isn’t what I believe as a psychologist.

I could know what to expect and still be surprised by how something felt when it was happening to me. I could have support and still feel overwhelmed. I could desperately need a break and then miss my baby when I got one. I could feel like myself in one moment and wonder where the old version of me had gone in another. And I could find motherhood incredibly hard sometimes while loving my baby more than I knew was possible. All of those things were true and to me, that has been part of the fullness of motherhood.

When I look back now, protecting my postpartum mental health wasn’t about creating an experience without hard days. It was about building enough support around myself to help me move through them.

Preparing My Mental Health Before My Baby Arrived

As I look back I remember all of the preparation that happens before having a baby.

We prepped the nursery, researched and purchased strollers and car seats, bought a million outfits, and packed and repacked the hospital bags. All of this felt so big at the time but one of the things that felt equally important to me was preparing for my mental health postpartum.

I made the choice to be in therapy before my baby arrived because I knew I was about to go through the most major transition of my life. Even though I felt great during my pregnancy I wanted somewhere I could talk honestly about my expectations, fears, identity changes, and everything that came with preparing to become a mother.

I also talked specifically about postpartum mental health with my husband. This feels particularly relevant at this time, and to me it was important that he knew the signs and symptoms of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and other perinatal mood and anxiety disorder, not because I expected something to go wrong, but because I wanted someone close to me to know what to look for. Because sometimes when you are in it, and you do experience postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD or even psychosis in more extreme cases, you can’t tell someone you’re struggling. It can be hard to describe and detail your symptoms or explain to another person what you’re experiencing. This is why I recommend the people closest in your life familiarize themselves at the very least with the difference between baby blues and postpartum depression. 

For us, we talked about what we would actually do if either of us became concerned. We went over mental health resources and what to do if I needed support more urgently. A great place to start if you are looking for resources for yourself or a loved one could be Postpartum Support International.

Protecting My Sleep and Asking for More Support 

I knew going into postpartum that sleep was something I wanted to protect. I am a person who needs a good night of sleep, so I knew this transition was going to be hard no matter what. 

Sleep deprivation is certainly part of caring for a newborn, but that doesn’t have to be the end of your experience. 

We made the decision to hire a night nurse, and that support was incredibly valuable for our family. I recognize that having access to overnight help is a significant privilege and isn’t an option available to every family. But the larger decision underneath it is one I still think matters: protecting my basic needs was going to be part of protecting my postpartum mental health. Here is what I need you to know: I didn’t need to do every overnight wake-up myself to prove that I was a good mother. Throughout this year, accepting support has looked different at different times. It has meant receiving help from my husband, family, friends, childcare, and other people in our lives. And yes, sometimes that meant there was a sacrifice, but to me, sleep was nonnegotiable and the “costs” associated were worth it. 

Coping With the Postpartum Experience I Actually Had

Even with everything I knew professionally about postpartum and maternal mental health, there were parts of my own experience that looked very different from what I had imagined.

Pregnancy gives us a lot of time to picture what life with a baby will be like. We imagine the birth, the newborn days, who will be there, what our relationships will look like, and even what kind of mother we might be. I certainly did.

I think I imagined people being more involved and showing up in ways that ultimately didn’t happen. There were relationships I thought would play a bigger role in my postpartum experience, and when they didn’t, I was disappointed. I had to let myself acknowledge that disappointment rather than immediately trying to talk myself out of it because I had other people who did show up for me.

I also had ideas about what my my maternity leave and return to work would look and feel like. While on leave, I thought I would feel ready to do more, go more places, and take advantage of this rare stretch of time when my partner and I were both home together. The reality was that we did much less than I imagined. My return to work was also not how I imagined it. I thought I would be more prepared to go back to my usual pace of productivity but it simply wasn’t possibly not what I truly wanted. I’m grateful though, because it gave me an opportunity to slow down, reevaluate, and come up with a plan that worked for me and my family. Looking back now, I don’t regret that. But at the time, there were moments when I wondered why I wasn’t doing more or why I didn’t feel as ready as I thought I would.

This became one of the biggest lessons of my own postpartum adjustment: sometimes the difficult part isn’t only what is happening. It’s the distance between what is happening and what we thought should be happening.

I had to practice something I talk about frequently in therapy, allowing disappointment to exist without turning it into evidence that something was wrong with me or that I had somehow failed.

I could be disappointed that someone didn’t show up in the way I hoped and still appreciate the people who did. I could wish we had done more during those early months and also recognize that maybe slowing down was exactly what we needed. I could change my plans without believing I had failed. And I could know intellectually that something was completely normal and still find it incredibly difficult when I was the one living it.

Knowing about postpartum professionally and experiencing postpartum personally turned out to be two very different ways of knowing.

Finding Ways to Feel Like Myself Again

One thing I knew about myself before becoming a mother was that I do better when I move my body, get outside, and feel connected to the world around me. Those things have always supported my mental health, so I knew I wanted to find ways to keep them in my life after having a baby, even if they looked different for a while.

As much as I reasonably could, I tried to leave the house nearly every day, even in the first few weeks postpartum. By day 4 at home I was so stircrazy, I made my husband pack us all into the car and just drive around with the windows down. I wasn’t really up for doing much more than that, but I needed to get out of the house. Sometimes getting out meant going for a walk or eventually exercising. Other times it was getting coffee, walking around Target, or running an errand that probably could have waited. The point wasn’t really what I was doing. It was getting dressed, getting out of the house, and reminding myself that my world still existed beyond the walls of my home.

In those early postpartum weeks especially, it gave some structure to days that could otherwise easily blend together. It also helped me slowly build confidence doing things with my baby. The first few outings required what felt like an unreasonable amount of planning. Eventually, things that had once made me nervous started to feel normal.

Movement was another important part of reconnecting with myself after having a baby. Walking, yoga, and eventually returning to other forms of exercise gave me something familiar to come back to while so much else in my life felt new. Exercise has always been important to my mental health, and postpartum was no exception. I just had to adjust my expectations around what movement looked like during that season.

I’ve thought a lot this year about the idea of “getting back to yourself” after having a baby. I’m not sure that was ever really the goal for me. I didn’t need to become exactly who I was before my son was born. Motherhood changed my priorities, my relationships, my body, my time, and the way I experience so many parts of my life. Instead, I think I spent much of this year figuring out how the person I had always been fit alongside the mother I was becoming and honestly, I’m probably still figuring that out.

Finding My People

I also intentionally sought out relationships with other mothers, and this ended up being one of the most important parts of keeping me mentally healthy postpartum.

I had wonderful, supportive people in my life before becoming a mom, and I still do. But I learned quickly that there is something different about talking to someone who is living through the same stage of motherhood at the same time.

I needed people I could text with a ridiculous baby question. People who understood why leaving the house at a certain time suddenly required strategic planning. People I could laugh with, vent to, learn from, and ask, “Is this happening to you too?”

Motherhood can feel really, really,  isolating, even when you have support and even when you are surrounded by people who love you. Having people around you and feeling seen and heard are not always the same thing.

Finding a community of moms became an important part of my own postpartum support system. It has also influenced me professionally and changed the kinds of spaces I want to create in my work as a perinatal psychologist. My experience this year is part of why I feel so strongly about creating opportunities for moms to connect through my groups, workshops, and community events.

Because I’ve now experienced personally what I had already understood professionally: sometimes maternal mental health support isn’t another piece of advice or another coping skill. Sometimes it’s being around other moms and hearing, “Yeah, me too!”

One Year Postpartum

And now, somehow, we’re here.

The newborn clothes are packed away. The routines I spent so much time trying to figure out have been replaced by entirely new ones. Things that once felt completely overwhelming became ordinary, and then just as I got used to them, something changed again.

There were days this year that felt incredibly long, and somehow the year feels incredibly short. That might be one of the strangest parts of motherhood.

As I approach my son’s first birthday, I find myself wanting to hold onto little pieces of this year while also feeling so excited about the person he is becoming. There are parts of the newborn days I absolutely do not need back, but knowing they are gone still makes me emotional. I can miss something while also feeling excited about what comes next.

My baby is turning one, but I am also one year into becoming his mom and I think that is why this milestone feels so big.

When I think about the version of myself who was preparing for postpartum a year ago, I don’t think I’d give her another checklist. She had enough of those.

I’d tell her to keep the therapy appointment. Accept the help. Protect her sleep when she can. Go for the walk. Text the other mom. Let someone else hold the baby. Leave the house even when getting out the door feels like an event in itself.

But I’d also tell her something I don’t think she could have fully understood yet.

This is going to be hard sometimes, and knowing that won’t make the hard parts not hard. Having support won’t mean you never feel overwhelmed. Loving your baby won’t mean you love every part of motherhood. Missing parts of your old life won’t mean you aren’t grateful for the life you have now. You are going to experience things you have spent years understanding professionally in an entirely different way once they are happening to you.

And you are going to love this little person more than you can possibly understand right now.

When I think about what protecting my mental health postpartum actually looked like, I think that may be the biggest lesson: the goal was never to make sure I only had the good experience.

It was to give myself enough support to have the whole experience.

It has been beautiful and exhausting. I was prepared and still overwhelmed. I had help and still had hard days. I missed parts of who I was and discovered new parts of myself. I sometimes desperately wanted a break and then missed my baby the minute I got one. And I loved him more than I could ever put into words.

That is the story of my first year postpartum.

Supporting Your Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum

As both a mom and a perinatal psychologist, I don’t believe there is a perfect way to prepare for postpartum or a checklist that can guarantee you won’t experience postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, or another perinatal mood and anxiety disorder (PMAD).

What I do believe is that we should spend at least as much time thinking about how we are going to support the person becoming a mother as we do preparing for the baby who is about to arrive.

That might mean learning about the signs of postpartum depression and anxiety before your baby comes. It might mean finding a therapist during pregnancy instead of waiting until you’re struggling. It could mean having honest conversations with your partner about sleep and division of responsibilities, identifying the people you can actually ask for help, finding other moms, or thinking about what helps you feel like yourself and how you might protect some version of that during postpartum.

None of those things guarantee an easy postpartum experience. They aren’t supposed to. They are meant to give you somewhere to turn when it isn’t easy.

If you’re pregnant, postpartum, or adjusting to motherhood and would like more individualized support, I provide perinatal and postpartum therapy for women in New York and New Jersey, as well as in PSYPACT states. My work focuses on maternal mental health, postpartum anxiety, identity transitions, perfectionism, and the emotional adjustment to motherhood. To learn more about working together, you can fill out the contact form linked here.