‘A vicious cycle’: Why new mums are suffering anxiety and overwhelm

Having a baby is a time of great joy, so why are new mothers finding this one thing so overwhelming?

Maternal ambivalence is when new mothers feel a mix of joy, regret and shame about their new role of parenthood.

If you’re basking in the joy of motherhood one day and wishing you could return to your old life the next, don’t be ashamed. This is a normal and natural part of parenthood called “maternal ambivalence”.

Psychiatrist Alexandra Sacks describes it as a feeling with opposing forces: feeling pulled towards your baby’s needs and your identity as a mother and, at other times, wanting to push it all away.

Ambivalence is considered a healthy way of processing so you can eventually reach acceptance. In doing so, you’re starting to make sense of your experience because you’re considering the good and the bad.

It’s important to normalise ambivalence as an expected part of postpartum because, when we do, it removes the shame and guilt we can experience when we feel grief, regret, uncertainty and difficulty in response to mothering. You’re getting to know your new self, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to miss the person you were before.

At the same time, you might quite like the new person you’re becoming: there is beauty in discovering a deeper altruistic nature, in realising that as you learn how to mother, you’re also learning more about yourself as a woman – beneath and beyond the mother you’ve become. It’s also important to differentiate it from indifference, which means you don’t care about something at all. Ambivalence may mean conflicting emotions, but one doesn’t cancel out the other. The highs will be higher than you can ever imagine, and the lows may be more challenging than you believed possible.

Maternal love is one of those experiences that has countless fairytale connotations – it’s immediate, forever, unwavering. But, in actual fact, it ebbs and flows like most feelings do.

Having a baby can be wonderful, but also lonely.

MATERNAL LONELINESS

Loneliness is the feeling of being alone, regardless of the amount of social contact you have, and it’s as detrimental to your physical and mental health as disease. The brain processes loneliness much like it does pain, so on a neurological level, loneliness hurts.

We have evolved to be close to people, to observe, learn, commune and celebrate, but in recent generations we’ve gravitated towards our own homes, separated from the village that once held us.

New parents are some of the most vulnerable people in society because the arrival of a baby is one of those “shocks” of life, and yet we are often confined to the four walls of our homes, isolated without support and connection.

There’s a strong link between loneliness, social isolation and mental illness, particularly in periods of transition. Researchers have only recently looked at loneliness in the perinatal period and, while it is more prevalent among immigrant parents, trans parents and LGBTQIA+ families (for the fact that they experience a degree of social isolation and difficulty finding community), and for mothers with mental illness (because they experience social isolation before parenthood and that barrier persists afterwards), it’s also a contributing factor to perinatal anxiety and depression for the general population.

We can encourage you to find your village, but that doesn’t change the fact that many new mothers are village-less. Meeting friends in new motherhood is a bit like meeting friends in your first year of high school; it can be nerve-racking and uncomfortable, and because parenthood is innately polarising, finding and connecting with someone who has the same values can be tricky.

Studies show the strength of your friendships typically decreases after birth, and you may find this is particularly pertinent if you’re the first of your social group to have
a baby.

The conundrum of loving your baby so much is recognising that this is the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

Because unless you’ve had children, it’s really hard to understand the magnitude of care required and the intention to prioritise your baby and their needs above anything else. Your priorities naturally shift when you become a parent, and that can easily become an unavoidable social chasm.

For mothers in postpartum, loneliness can be profound and confusing because of the simple, ironic fact that you’re never actually alone but rather touched out and overwhelmed. This is only exacerbated by the realisation that, while you’re not getting much done, you’ve never felt so busy.

The conundrum of loving your baby so much is recognising that this is the hardest thing you’ve ever done; it’s craving space and time but being unable to resist the primal urge to care for your baby and not let anyone else take over; it’s feeling so happy and yet also not quite fulfilled; it’s being exhausted but a bit too anxious to settle for a 30-minute nap. And besides, who else will fold the washing, wash the dishes, pick up the toys and prep the dinner?

And then there’s the highlight reel of social media, which typically presents two opposite ends of the spectrum: the mother with the perfect home, perfectly dressed kids, a side hustle and regular social outings with friends and, at the other end, the crying, overwhelmed, dishevelled mother who may not say it but internally screams: I am so lonely!

Loneliness from isolation, boredom from the monotonous tasks of parenthood and a deep need to engage in adult conversation doesn’t cancel or dilute the love you have for your baby. It’s instances like these when mother guilt can creep in and take hold, but you don’t need to
feel guilty for thinking these things; this is just part of the process of recognising your needs as a mother and honouring them in the best way you can. And we encourage you to do this because it forms the foundation of sustainable motherhood – not the burnt out, depleted, exhausted motherhood that we so easily fall into.

Co-author Sophie Walker.

co-author Jodi Wilson.

GUILT VERSUS SHAME

Research shows that our tendency to feel mother guilt reduces with each child we have because we learn that it’s just not possible to attend to everyone’s needs at once.

They say comparison is the thief of joy but, for mothers, it’s often guilt. It’s really easy to fall into the habit of listing everything you haven’t done, everything you didn’t do well enough, everything that could be better next time.

So, what’s the difference between guilt and shame? The US National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine defines guilt as acting against our values, which can
be both helpful and unhelpful for emotional growth.

You can feel bad about something you did but also use it as motivation to make different decisions.

Shame, on the other hand, is a deeply-held belief about our unworthiness as a person – a painful feeling of being fundamentally flawed.

You may question your worth as a mother, which can be a contributing factor to postpartum depression. The vicious circle starts here, as you’re less likely to disclose how you’re feeling, which can further exacerbate your shame.

While guilt can offer insight and, ultimately, act as a productive step forward, shame cannot. Helpful (healthy) guilt is a feeling of psychological discomfort about something we’ve done that is objectively wrong.

Unhelpful (unhealthy) guilt is a feeling of psychological discomfort about something we’ve done that goes against our irrationally high standards.

This is mother guilt: a response to the irrationally high social standards of what it means to be a “good mother”.

Shame can induce a fear of rejection that often leads to a disconnection from others, and we know that conversation with people you trust is early intervention for perinatal mental health concerns.

The Complete Guide to Postpartum by Sophie Walker and Jodi Wilson.

In postpartum, this is particularly concerning because we know that shame is one of the root causes of perinatal suicidality, which is the leading cause of death in the first year after birth.

Postpartum is a state of becoming – you’re perpetually learning and growing as a mother – which is a lovely way to think of things because it gives you grace to mess things up and then brush them off and keep going.

It’s this mindset that you’ll no doubt nurture in your baby when they’re older, toddling and tripping and inevitably in need of your encouragement to get back up and try again.

THE MENTAL LOAD OF MOTHERHOOD, AND MANAGING OVERWHELM

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 by responsibility.

New mothers can find postpartum a stressful time and need to look after their physical and mental health.

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 to this inherent stress, 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.

Overwhelm is a normal and expected part of postpartum.

As social worker Sue Wilson explains, your brain is constantly bombarded with new information, which results in cognitive overload: too much information going in without routines to rely on or the brain capacity to process and make sense of it.

The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes new information and makes decisions. It’s also the part of the brain that releases stress hormones in response to fear or threat.

This means you can’t make decisions when you’re anxious and too much new information creates anxiety.

It’s a vicious cycle, but it also explains the commonality of anxiety and overwhelm in new motherhood, as it’s a period of rapid learning when countless decisions need to be made every day. This is why you feel overwhelmed.

This is an edited extract from The Complete Guide to Postpartum by Sophie Walker and Jodi Wilson, Murdoch Books, $40, out now

Originally published as ‘A vicious cycle’: Why new mums are suffering anxiety and overwhelm