I want to start with this: it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I mean that without any performance attached to it. I have never felt more purposeful, more grounded, more like my life actually means something. There are moments with my son where I think — this is it. This is the whole point.
And also, I was not prepared. Not even close.
That’s the thing nobody tells you about postpartum. It’s not dark or light. It’s both, completely, at the same time. The happiest I’ve ever been and the most blindsided I’ve ever felt, often within the same hour. So here’s the honest version — the stuff I wish someone had told me before I went looking for it at 2am.
The hair loss is genuinely unhinged.
Let’s start here because I feel like it deserves its own moment. From about 3.5 to 5 months postpartum, I was shedding like an animal. Not gradual thinning — full-on, pick-it-up-off-every-surface, find-it-in-the-baby’s-fist shedding. I found it in my food more than once. I Googled “is it possible to go completely bald postpartum” at 2am and spent twenty minutes convincing myself it wasn’t happening.
It stops. Mine is already growing back. But nobody warned me I’d be vacuuming my own head for two months, so now I’m telling you.
The sleep is its own category of suffering.
In six months we have had maybe five full nights of sleep. Total. I’m up two or three times a night, every night, still. Sometimes I lie awake and fantasize about checking into a hotel alone. Just me, a king bed, blackout curtains, and eight uninterrupted hours. I haven’t done it yet. I probably will. And I will feel zero guilt about it.
The anxiety nobody warned me about.
Not postpartum depression — something quieter. A constant low hum of what if nobody does it right, what if I look away, what if something happens. For a while I ended up doing everything myself because it felt like no one else would do it the way I would. That’s exhausting — and also, I was wrong. I had to learn to let go, to trust, to actually relax. I’m still learning. But I’m getting better.
The freedom thing hit differently than I expected.
I was the person who would pick up on a Tuesday afternoon and go work from a random coffee shop across town just because I felt like it. That was a whole thing for me — the spontaneity, the ability to just go. That version of my life quietly disappeared. Nobody throws it a going-away party. You just notice one day that you haven’t been anywhere alone in months.
I take my baby everywhere now and I genuinely love it — he’s great at restaurants, he’s been on a plane twice, he’s a good travel companion. But the adjustment was real. There’s grief in it, even when you’re happy.
Some of your friendships will feel far away.
This one is harder to say. A lot of my friends are in a different place in their lives right now. The things that used to bond us — going out, being spontaneous, keeping up the same rhythms — just don’t land the same way. It’s nobody’s fault. Life runs on different timelines. But it made me feel more isolated than I expected, in a particular way that’s hard to explain. You’re never actually alone — you’re with this baby constantly — and yet.
I lost myself. And then had to find myself again.
Before the baby, I knew exactly who I was. I love to travel. I care about the environment. I have this entrepreneurial thing always running in the background. I love good food and good wine and doing things with real intention.
And then for a while, all I was — was mom.
Which is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been. But it’s also disorienting in a way I wasn’t ready for. My whole identity had been quietly replaced by someone else’s schedule, and somewhere in there I stopped knowing what I actually liked, what I did for fun, what made me feel like myself with 45 minutes to spare.
So I’ve been doing the work of finding out. I started writing again. I fixed up my landscaping. I put up twinkle lights and I light candles for dinner and I’m learning to make a really good latte at home. I’m romanticizing the home life I used to be too restless to appreciate — finding a new bottle of wine on a Tuesday just because I want to, keeping things tidy, making the space feel like mine again. I’m still traveling, still going out, still doing the things that make me feel like me — just differently. Less. And somehow it all means more.
It’s not a smaller life. It’s a different one.
Here’s what I’d tell myself on day three: this is a season. Not your permanent state. Not your new normal forever. A season. And seasons end, and something else starts, and you will definitely miss parts of this one — even when you can barely see straight from the exhaustion.
But also: it’s the best season of your life. Both things are true. That’s the whole thing right there — the part nobody adequately prepares you for. You’re going to be more tired than you’ve ever been and more grateful than you’ve ever been, on the same Tuesday, at the same time.
That’s postpartum. That’s the honest version.
And if you’re in it right now — hi. You’re not behind. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just in it. So am I.
If you or someone you know is experiencing postpartum depression or anxiety: Postpartum Support International helpline is 1-800-944-4773 (call or text). These are medical conditions, not character flaws, and they respond well to treatment.
