Why I Didn’t Feel Like Myself Postpartum

I thought I’d feel like myself again after birth… but postpartum changed me in ways I didn’t expect.

I remember thinking at some point that I would feel like myself again. I expected the hormone crash on day two, and no joke, I was a mess. I cried all day. It felt so intense for me. On one hand, you’re filled with so much joy and gratitude for this little baby, but on the other hand your body is aching, you’re experiencing a level of tiredness and exhaustion you’ve never felt before, and you’re trying to grasp what you just went through. All these little snippets of your birth keep rolling in, and sitting within those emotions felt incredibly intense.

I thought the worst part would be over after a few days, but I kept finding myself in this weird space a lot more often throughout those first six weeks postpartum, and even after that, especially when my period returned.

I knew postpartum would take time, but I think I expected that at some point things would settle, my body would recover, and mentally I’d just… feel like me again. Like things would click back into place.

But that didn’t really happen in the way I thought it would.

There was always this underlying feeling that something was slightly off. Not in a dramatic way, and not all the time. Just enough to notice it. Like I wasn’t fully settled in myself, even on the days that felt “good”… which, to be honest, weren’t that many.

Being needed all the time was a lot for me. I’m someone who needs space and a sense of body autonomy, and it took me a long time to adjust to having a tiny human on me constantly.

At the same time, there was also everything going on physically.

I had retained placenta, which meant I was dealing with ongoing cramping for about six weeks. It felt like mild contractions that just wouldn’t really go away, and I remember thinking, is this just how it is now? Like my body couldn’t fully settle.

Then my milk came in.

That night was intense. I was in so much pain from engorgement, I honestly wasn’t prepared for it at all. And from there, feeding just never felt easy for a long time.

I was constantly questioning if she was getting enough, if my supply was too much or not enough, if the pain would ever stop. The oversupply completely overwhelmed me, and the tongue tie made everything feel even harder than it needed to be.

To be very honest, I didn’t enjoy breastfeeding for a long time.

It felt painful, overstimulating, and relentless. Being touched constantly, not really having any space… it was a lot. And all of that was just there in the background, on top of everything else.

There are also waves of grief in it.

Grieving who I was before. The version of me that felt fun, light, with not a care in the world. Life just felt easier.

And sometimes that hits you out of nowhere, but more often it shows up in those quiet moments… usually in the middle of the night, when you’re up again for what feels like the hundredth time, completely exhausted.

Where your thoughts just go there for a second.

Like… what just happened to my life?

Not in a way you fully mean, but more like a passing thought that comes from being so tired and overwhelmed.

And then it’s gone again.

Because of course there’s love. And you wouldn’t change anything. But that doesn’t mean those thoughts don’t exist at times.

That’s probably what surprised me the most — how you can feel so much love, and at the same time feel completely overwhelmed and a bit lost in it.

And I think that’s where I slowly started to realise that I wasn’t actually going back to who I was before.

I was becoming someone else entirely.

There’s this idea that once you get through those first few weeks, things start to fall into place. And in some ways they do. You find a rhythm, you start to understand your baby more, you gain a bit more confidence in what you’re doing… until the first sleep regression hits.

And then you realise nothing really stays the same for long.

Every time you feel like you’ve figured something out, the next developmental leap hits, or they’re teething, or nap times change. It keeps shifting, and all of that is happening while you’re still trying to figure out who you even are in all of it.

It felt more like I was slowly adjusting to a completely new version of my life, while at the same time trying to make sense of this new version of myself.

This is where I can now see I was right in the middle of matrescence, even though I didn’t have that word for it at the time.

That in-between space where you’re not who you were before, but you don’t quite feel settled into who you’re becoming yet either.

And I think a big part of that is learning to sit with that.

Not trying to rush it.
Not trying to fix it.
Not constantly questioning why you don’t feel like yourself.

But just allowing it to unfold in its own time.

Letting it be what it is, even when it doesn’t feel comfortable or make sense yet.

If I’m honest, I spent a lot of that time waiting.

Waiting to feel better.
Waiting to feel more like myself.
Waiting for things to feel easier.

And while some parts did, the bigger shift only really came when I stopped waiting.

When I stopped looking for the version of me I used to be, and slowly started opening up to who I was becoming instead.

And I think that’s what really stayed with me.

How much of it I just pushed through, thinking it was something I had to get through, instead of something I actually needed support in.

Because when I look at that whole period now, it wasn’t just one thing. It was everything happening at once. The physical side of it, the mental load, the pressure I was putting on myself, the lack of space to actually process what was going on.

And I don’t think I fully realised how much that was affecting me at the time.

I just kept going.

Trying to hold it together, trying to figure it out as I went, thinking that eventually it would just pass.

And in some ways it did, but not because I understood it… more because I slowly adapted to it.

Now, with a bit of distance, I can see that there were certain things that made that whole experience feel a lot heavier than it needed to be.

Things I didn’t recognise in the moment.
Things I wouldn’t ignore the same way again.

And I think that’s why this feels so different to me now.

Because I’m not going into it the same way.

I’ll share more about that in my next blog post.

Love, Charlie