Postnatal depression is something that new mums can be very prone to and if you yourself have not suffered it is probable that you know someone who has.
I don’t think anything can prepare a mum for the exhaustion that is all to common when caring for your newborn baby and in a recent trip to a local mothers group 9 out of the 12 mums there said that they had felt some kind of depression since their baby had been born, and the majority of babies there were around the 6 month mark.
For any new mum, sleep deprivation is part and parcel of taking care of a new born and it can absolutely exhaust a mum so that when morning arrives and the day is ahead of them it can feel overwhelming to say the least. Then if you have this every night for 60 nights it can absolutely make you feel like the walking dead. And if you don’t have any family support it can make the matter even worse
Couple this with other factors such as trying to do housework, doing the washing, cooking meals, breastfeeding, looking after other children, working, plus dealing with your post pregnancy body and it is easy to see why so many mums can get depressed. A lot of mums can also feel great isolation too when they lose touch with friends and become increasingly house bound with their husbands at work everyday – and this is why we believe joining a mothers group is a great idea and we thoroughly recommend it to help mums through these challenges.
I also get a lot of mums asking me when they can start losing their baby weight and my answer is always the same, which is don’t start until you feel psychologically ready to do so. For some mums this could be 12 months after the birth and for others a few weeks. Navigating motherhood and its challenges is hard work and you don’t want to put extra pressure on yourself until you feel ready.
Understandably a lot of mums get depressed about their baby weight but the best advice we can give is focus on getting yourself in a good place with your baby and eating as healthily as you can then only looking at weight loss when you feel ready and have the all clear from your doctor.
For more advice on depression post pregnancy please visit www.beyondblue.com.au
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