Nine Months Postpartum

So...how am I actually doing?

Quick note: this one is a little more personal than my usual marketing posts. Over the past several months a lot of you have kindly checked in on how I’ve been doing postpartum, so this is a small update.

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Nine months ago I had my third baby. And because I have this thing where I tend to overshare online, I told everybody that I was going through some postpartum depression.

I don’t know if I’d actually call it depression. It was more like postpartum rage mixed with a whole cocktail of other postpartum stuff.

Because I decided to share that, people ask me all the time how I’m doing. A lot of you have checked in over the past several months, which I’ve always found incredibly kind. My answer is usually something like, “I’m doing good,” which isn’t a lie.

Outwardly, I am doing good. I’m flourishing at work. I’m spending more time with friends and family. I’m working out again. I’m doing all the things that, on paper, signal that life is going well. The fog that I felt from postpartum has lifted just enough that I can feel my life settling back into some kind of rhythm.

But I don’t think this chapter is really about “getting back” to anything.

If anything, what I’ve learned in these months of post-baby recovery is how to regulate my emotions better and reconnect my mind to my body. For months my body didn’t feel like it belonged to me. Sleep was touch and go (still is, actually). Honestly, I still feel like my brain is slower than it used to be, though I can’t tell if that’s from sleep deprivation, or the fact that I’m chronically online and doomscrolling whenever I have a spare second.

Every day, I’m still figuring out how to be more intentional with my time and where I spend it. I’m trying to read more. Or at least as much as my children will allow. I’m trying to eat better and be more mindful of my gut health.

I guess part of why I’m sharing this is because when people talk about hard seasons in their lives, the moment we tend to share is arguably the dramatic part. Everything is heightened. Emotional. Raw. When I wrote about postpartum, I think a lot of people responded with something like, “Wow, that’s a lot,” because I was inviting people into something that was messy and immediate.

But what folks don’t often see is what happens after that. What’s is the through line here?

The stretch where the crisis passes but things aren’t magically fixed. I mean, you don’t wake up one morning and suddenly feel like the old version of yourself again. As much as I wish it were so, the reality is much much slower than that.

I’ve been in therapy for months now. Since the summer. Three or four sessions a month. And one thing I’ve had to accept is that there isn’t really a finish line to “getting better.”

What I was feeling didn’t just disappear because I got more comfortable talking about it. It’s something I have to learn how to live alongside without letting it swallow everything else.

I wrote this in my notebook, “nothing in life should be all-consuming. Not motherhood. Not work. Not anything. Because when one thing takes up that much space, you start to feel this creeping anxiety that you’re not enough somewhere else.”

For a long time that thought sat over my head like a cloud. Am I doing enough? Am I being enough? I didn’t want to go on medication. For one reason or another, I felt like I just needed to work through it in a way that made sense for me. And a lot of that meant brutally prioritizing the things that actually matter. Which is way harder than it sounds.

What I’m learning now is how to exist as both a mom of 3 and someone who still wants to perform at a high level at work. And I think I’m better at regulating now than I was nine months ago.

But I also realize that I might not ever feel like my “full self” in the exact way I remember from before. And maybe that’s okay. Because the truth is, most of us are works in progress all the time. Life doesn’t move in neat arcs where you struggle, get help, and suddenly everything is fixed.

These days I feel good. Not perfect. Not fully healed. But good.

And good is good ✌️