Earlier this spring, I shared my postpartum experience in an essay for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. When I did, one thing became clear: I was not alone. But many women coping with postpartum aren’t as well-supported as they need to be.
With my first Mother’s Day approaching, I know I didn’t get here easily. I got here through anxiety that felt endless, nights that blurred together, and a postpartum experience that required far more strength than I ever expected.
I love my baby in a way I didn’t know was possible. And at the same time, I’m still untangling the version of myself that had to be rebuilt in order to get here. I always imagined Mother’s Day as something light — a celebration of something that felt natural and whole. But while it’s joyful, it’s also a reminder of everything it took to survive the beginning of motherhood.
It’s also a chance to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained with other new mothers and mothers-to-be.
If your sleepless nights feel endless and anxiety won’t quit, I can relate. I had the sense that something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know where to turn — or how long it would take to be heard.
The Power of Reaching Out
Waiting weeks or months for the support you need can feel impossible when you’re just trying to get through the next hour. In that gap, I did what so many women do: I turned to other mothers. It helps.
I talked to so many women — friends, acquaintances, people online, people who quietly reached out after reading my story. We talked about what worked, what didn’t. We reminded each other that every baby is different.
As we reassured each other, I found something both beautiful AND heartbreaking: a network of women who genuinely want to help each other, but often don’t know how beyond sharing their experiences.
Also, I found that as the months pass, many women don’t remember the extent of the hard parts. Not fully, in a way that captures what it feels like to actually be in it. So we try to help each other with fragments — the survival stories that we’ve mostly recovered from.
Those conversations are powerful. They carried me, holding me over until I was able to access something more structured. They also led me to find the right professional help.
Experts Are Out There
After a long and frustrating process, I was eventually matched with a postpartum therapist through UPMC who has made a profound difference in my journey. She is real, down-to-earth and talks not in the clinical way I’d feared, but in the human way I needed. Working with her is grounding, validating and gently challenging when I need it.
Getting to her wasn’t straightforward. I was matched with someone else first, but it wasn’t the right fit. There was a time when I would have accepted that not-right fit as “good enough.” But this time, I advocated for myself. I asked to be re-matched. And that decision changed so much.
Along the way, I also found smaller, more accessible pockets of support. These include weekly mom groups through Magee-Womens Hospital and through The Village.
I also reached out to the Magee Lactation Center more times than I can count. In those early weeks, I could turn to them quickly for guidance and reassurance when things felt overwhelming.
Photo by Jenna Norman on Unsplash.
What Else Can We Find?
While finding help from those resources, I also discovered that many support groups for new mothers that I saw listed online are no longer there. Emails go unanswered. Phone numbers lead nowhere. Programs have been defunded or dissolved.
The search does include some dead ends, but don’t give up looking. Good resources are out there.
Also, don’t forget the physical side of this experience. I was encouraged to have lab work done and found that I was anemic, with extremely low iron and ferritin levels. I also had hypothyroidism. I was dealing with nutrient absorption issues that were affecting things like my magnesium level.
All of these things were quietly, invisibly contributing to how I felt.
Yes, I was experiencing postpartum anxiety and very real hormonal shifts. But there were also tangible, measurable physical wellness issues. Once I began addressing them, I started to feel small shifts. Not overnight or magically, but enough to begin moving forward.
Those early weeks might have looked very different if I‘d known to check these things sooner. If you are in it right now, it’s worth asking questions and advocating for a fuller picture of what might be happening in your body.
Somewhere along the way, I also began shifting my language: When my baby cried, I moved from “I have to get up again” to “I get to be the one he needs.”
It doesn’t fix the exhaustion or the hard nights. But it gently reframes them. There are women praying for these moments in the middle of the night — the chance to comfort, to hold, to care for a child — even if it brings exhaustion.
Both realities can exist at the same time.
Trusting Your Progress
There was a night recently, after yet another sleep-regression scare, where everything felt like it might unravel again. The quiet after a stretch of difficulty didn’t feel peaceful. It felt suspicious.
My husband and I found ourselves bracing, analyzing, waiting for my struggle to start again. Remembering how the previous waves began, we were facing the memory of what we had already survived.
And then… it didn’t happen. The night stayed calm.
It can be hard to trust things getting better, when you’ve been through something that felt so consuming. I’m still learning how to believe that we’re in a different place now.
One last layer to all of this that I can’t ignore: The need for more support, including more parental leave.
My husband works as a teacher, just like I do. Working in a profession centered around children, you’d think there would be more built-in support for birth and bonding. But he was given just five days. Five.
Despite this, he ended up taking nine weeks off, which I’m incredibly grateful for. But even at nine weeks, being suddenly on my own felt overwhelming in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
Puppies are kept with their mothers for eight to 12 weeks. And yet in the U.S., we expect human mothers to return to work after six weeks, sometimes sooner.
Globally, the average paid maternity leave is about 29 weeks, with paternity leave around 16 weeks. The World Health Organization recommends at least 18 weeks for mothers — ideally six months — to support recovery and bonding. And yet many U.S. families are expected to manage with a fraction of that.
We need to do better in this country. And that can start with mothers and fathers raising their voices about this important issue: Support for postpartum mental health should not be this hard to access. Mothers deserve care that is easy to reach, not something they have to fight for while already running on empty. And new parents should have enough leave from their jobs to heal and bond and adjust to life with a new baby.
Mothers also need to know: You don’t have to carry it quietly, moving through it as best you can, alone. You can talk about this publicly.
And maybe part of that starts here. Because the truth is, the more you share your experiences with people you know and with new friends you find, the stronger we all can be.
Until the system catches up, we must keep doing what women have always done: Reaching for each other. Filling in the gaps. Sharing what we know. And hoping the next mother finds her way to support a little bit sooner.
If you are still in the thick of it, I want to say this clearly: Hold on. You will make it through, not because it magically gets easier overnight or because everything resolves perfectly. But because piece by piece, support can come into place. Answers can surface. Your body can stabilize. Your mind can feel like your own again.
And if it helps even one mother feel less alone, or find support a little sooner, then I know it was worth saying out loud.
This first-person essay is by guest writer Cara Zlatos.