Why 8 Months Postpartum Can Feel Harder Than the Beginning

Transcript

If you are eight months postpartum and you feel like it is so hard, much harder than you expected, you thought you'd be doing better, but you're actually feeling worse, I hear this all the time in my office. The middle part of postpartum is often so much harder than the beginning. If you don't know me, I'm Dr. Jana. I'm a licensed psychologist who specializes in moms. And I think why that eight month mark is so hard is that babies can be really clingy at that stage, like refuse to be put down. Like you try to put them down and they like put their feet up so that you can't put them down and they are heavy. So it's so normal to be kind of feeling touched out, just wanting to be able to get your stuff done and you're not able to. And I think also as babies are learning more skills, they often wake up more in the night. So you still might be waking up multiple times a night and they're more mobile. So you're busier and you're eight months in. Really, if you count pregnancy, you're like a year and a half in. You've been carrying a lot physically, emotionally for a long time. And I think it just catches up with people. I don't think it's just one thing. I think it's all the things. The cumulative effect of being the one who has to constantly care for other people. It disrupted sleep. Carrying a baby around that's heavy all the time. Feeling touched out. It's a lot. So if you were in this place, you were not alone. So many moms feel like this. If you need more support in this season, I work with moms in over 40 states. You can check the link in my bio and as always follow along for more honest conversations about motherhood and mental health.