Why So Many Moms Hit a Wall Between 6 and 9 Months Postpartum

Transcript

People talk a lot about how hard the newborn phase is, but a lot of my moms really struggle at that six to nine month mark postpartum. It can feel emotionally harder. And if that is you, let me tell you about what's going on there. So first your hormones are shifting again at that mark. Just feeding patterns can change. Maybe you've introduced solids and you're not nursing as much. Your menstrual cycle might be starting to return. Your estrogen and progesterone can fluctuate around this time. And a lot of people are sensitive to those kinds of changes. they can make you more sensitive to stress, more anxious, more emotionally overwhelmed. Number two, sleep deprivation are becoming cumulative. So you can push through broken sleep for a while, but months of disruptive sleep add up. So research shows that chronic sleep loss affects your mood, your patience, your ability to regulate, obviously. So even if your baby's technically sleeping better, you might have that cumulative sleep loss that's really impacting you. And number three, the mental load increases. Around this time, you might be managing solids, a more mobile baby, nap transitions. You might be going, have gone back to work. So the maternal mental load is higher at this stage than in the early newborn stage. And finally, the outside world assumes things are easier now. You may be getting less offers for help, less meals dropped off, and the emotional and cognitive load is still really high. So that mismatch can lead to guilt, disconnection, a sense that you're supposed to be doing better, but you still feel hard. If you're in this stage and you're feeling overwhelmed, emotional, foggy, still not like yourself, you are not failing. You are human and you're in a phase where a lot of parents feel more vulnerable than they expected. And what you deserve is support, rest, and you're not meant to do this alone.