What's normal, and what's worth mentioning

This page is here to help you work out which parts are the ordinary awfulness of these weeks, and which parts are worth saying out loud to someone. It will not tell you what is wrong with you. Nothing on a screen can do that.

If you only have the energy for one section, read the next one. It covers the things women most often assume are happening only to them.

Crying without being able to say why. Feeling low, tearful and all over the place in the days after birth is very common. It usually settles within about a fortnight of the birth.

Rage. Not sadness, rage. Being wound up and irritable belongs to the same picture as feeling low, rather than being a separate character defect. Snapping at your partner about the dishwasher when you have slept in ninety minute pieces is not a mystery.

Feeling flat rather than sad. Numb, empty, going through the motions with the sound turned down. People expect this to look like crying. Very often it looks like nothing at all from the outside.

Not feeling a rush of love straight away. This causes more private shame than almost anything else here. Plenty of women feel protective, or responsible, or honestly not much, and the love builds over weeks or months instead of arriving in the delivery room. It is not a verdict on you, and it is not a verdict on the relationship you will end up having with your child.

Resenting your partner. Particularly if they sleep through it, leave the house every day, or hand the baby back when it gets difficult. Feeling hostile or indifferent towards the person you had the baby with is more common than the cards suggest.

Grieving your old life. You can love your baby and still mourn the person you were in the spring. Becoming a parent can make you feel like you have lost touch with who you used to be, and that is a recognised part of this rather than ingratitude.

Losing the plot with your own body, your house, your friendships, your sense of time. All of this is ordinary in these weeks and none of it means you are doing it wrong.

This gets its own space, because it is the thing women are most afraid to say and the thing they are most relieved to hear is common.

Sudden, vivid, unwanted thoughts about something terrible happening to your baby are a recognised part of this period. They can arrive as images, and they sometimes have you in them as the person causing the harm.

They come out of nowhere, they are horrifying, and they tend to convince the person having them that she is dangerous, or evil, or the only one.

Women who have them often start quietly arranging life around them. Avoiding bath time or nappy changes. Not wanting to be alone with the baby.

Checking on the baby again and again, waking a sleeping baby to be sure, or going back over the day to reassure yourself nothing happened.

If you recognise that pattern, it is worth mentioning to your GP or health visitor. Not because of what the thoughts say about you, but because this is well recognised and there is specific help for it.

If the thoughts keep returning and will not go, that belongs in the next section too.

This is not a checklist to score yourself against, and nothing here means anything on its own. These are simply the things worth mentioning to your GP, midwife or health visitor rather than sitting with alone.

• Low mood that has not lifted after a couple of weeks. The tearful early stretch usually eases within about a fortnight of the birth. If it has not, or if it has got heavier rather than lighter, say so.
• Not sleeping when you actually have the chance. This one gets missed constantly, because everyone with a newborn is exhausted, so exhaustion stops carrying any information. Lying awake when the baby is finally asleep is a different thing from simply not having enough hours in the night.
• Feeling distant from your baby over time, rather than in moments. Everyone has flat moments. A settled, ongoing sense of feeling detached, or of feeling very little towards them week after week, is worth saying out loud.
• Thoughts that frighten you and will not go. If they keep coming back, if they are taking up hours of your day, or if you are rearranging what you do to avoid them.
• Feeling guilty, worthless, or that you are a bad parent, most of the time. Not the odd 3am wobble, but a settled background hum of it.
• Feeling hopeless, or unable to see this changing.

You do not need all of these, and there is no number of them that counts. If something has been bothering you for a fortnight, that is a good enough reason on its own.

It is also completely fine to go and be told everything looks fine. That happens a lot and nobody minds.

A few things should not wait for the next appointment. Ask for help the same day if:

• you are having thoughts of harming yourself or your baby
• you feel unable to keep yourself or your baby safe
• you have not slept at all for several days, or you feel you do not need sleep
• you are believing or seeing things that the people around you are not
• things feel confused, very fast, or unreal in a way that is frightening you or the people near you

A GP will fit you in the same day for any of this. Outside surgery hours, 111 has a mental health option. The numbers at the foot of this page are open all the time.

Your GP, your midwife and your health visitor have all heard this before, many times. Supporting new mothers through exactly this is a large part of what a health visitor is for.

You do not need to have the words ready. “I am not feeling right and I cannot really explain it” is enough to start with. You can write it down beforehand and hand over the paper instead of saying it, and plenty of people do exactly that.

Now the fear that keeps most women quiet, said plainly.

A lot of women say nothing because they are frightened that admitting how they feel will mean their baby is taken away. It is very rare for that to happen. The far more likely thing, by a distance, is that you are listened to and offered support to look after your baby, because keeping you and your baby together and well is the entire purpose of the people you would be telling.

Saying nothing does not protect anyone. It usually just means going without help for longer than you needed to. Getting help makes things more likely to improve, and it is worth asking even if you only recognise some of what is on this page.

Twelve weeks is not a deadline. Some of this eases at six weeks, some of it at six months, and some of it changes shape rather than disappearing.

If you take one thing away, make it this: telling a professional how you actually feel is an ordinary thing to do, not an admission of anything, and it is the single step that tends to make the rest of it easier.