It’s not you, it’s me (the system owes you a village)
Busy mum highlights
Big emotions after baby are common and often linked to being under-supported.
Humans didn’t evolve to mother alone, your nervous system expects a village.
Professional support can sometimes miss the mark, leaving mothers feeling judged or wrong.
Motherhood distress can be a reasonable response to unreasonable conditions.
What helps most is holding: co-regulation and practical support.
If you’re struggling, support exists and you deserve it now.
The world has gone crazy and yet…
The world has gone crazy and yet mothers are still expected to keep going, to keep feeding and holding and soothing and organising and anticipating, to keep smiling through the mental load, to keep functioning inside sleeplessness and hormonal change and constant responsibility, and to do it all in a society and system that often treats mothering like a private lifestyle choice rather than the central, life-giving work that it is.
If you have felt big emotions after having a baby, or while raising young children, whether that looks like anxiety, depression, rage, numbness, despair, I want to let you know that this can be your nervous system’s response to being under-supported, and sometimes it is a symptom of the wider system you are parenting inside.
This is not rare, even if it feels like you are the only one
Postpartum depression is widely reported across the world, with a large meta-analysis estimating a global prevalence of 17.22%. (Wang et al., 2021). Postpartum anxiety is also common, with a state-of-the-art review estimating a global prevalence of 12.3% in the first year after birth (Feldman et al., 2025).
I’m sharing these numbers because they can soften the shame that sits behind experiences. And the research keeps showing that many women are moving through something like this, often quietly, often while still “functioning”.
Your body is mammalian, and mammal mothers are meant to be held
Humans did not evolve to mother alone, and across mammals we see how support from the non-mothers in the community is linked with the realities of survival, energy, and reproduction, including how the load of caring can be distributed beyond one body (Isler & van Schaik, 2012). Support systems and shared care change what becomes possible for mothers and offspring, especially under strain (Smaldino et al., 2013).
So when modern motherhood happens with no village, or an inconsistent one, or a village that is physically present but emotionally unavailable, your nervous system can read that as chronic strain, because part of you is still expecting what mammals expect: protection, nourishment, rest, warm contact, and reliable co-regulation, not as a luxury, but as a baseline.
When those basics are missing, it makes sense that the body gets louder or quieter, more vigilant or more shut down, more anxious or more flat, because your system is trying to keep you and your baby safe with the resources it has.
When “support” misses the mark, it can land as judgement in the body
There is also a particular loneliness that comes from reaching out and not being met, especially when the person in front of you is a professional, a midwife, a health nurse, a GP, someone who is meant to know how to hold this season, and yet the interaction leaves you feeling like you are wrong, dramatic or too much.
Sometimes it is the quick, clipped tone that tells you there is no time for your complexity, sometimes it is advice delivered without attunement, sometimes it is a subtle disapproval or simply the feeling of being processed rather than cared for, as if your experience is an inconvenience that needs to be tidied up.
Research on mistreatment in maternity care keeps naming what so many women have felt in their bodies, including poor rapport, stigma, and disrespect, and in one global meta-analysis the pooled estimate suggested more than half of women experience some form of mistreatment or disrespect during childbirth (Mirzania et al., 2025). In addition, a large cross-sectional study across four countries documented how mistreatment can show up in observable ways, and how deeply it is shaped by the broader context women are birthing and mothering within (Bohren et al., 2019).
And this matters beyond birth, because when a woman’s most vulnerable moments are met with brusqueness, dismissal, or judgement, her nervous system learns something (or reinforced something that has happened prior) that can follow her home: it’s not safe to tell the truth here, which can make asking for help next time even harder.
At the same time, two truths can sit together, because many midwives and maternal health professionals are themselves working under intense pressure, and research continues to describe high work-related stress and burnout in midwifery, alongside the need for effective organisational supports, not just individual resilience strategies (Anchors et al., 2024; Suleiman-Martos et al., 2020).
This does not minimise your experience, it simply widens the lens, because a strained system often creates strained care, and mothers feel the impact in their bodies.
If you have had professional support that left you feeling less than, then know that you are allowed to keep looking, you are allowed to ask for a different practitioner, you are allowed to choose care that feels respectful and human, because good support exists and you deserve it.
Motherhood distress is often a reasonable response to unreasonable conditions
We live inside systems shaped by productivity and individualism, where care work is undervalued, where many families are geographically scattered, where “community” is often thin, and where previous generations may love you but still carry their own unprocessed trauma and coping patterns, which can show up as minimising, advice-giving, judgement, or an inability to sit with big feelings.
Research keeps highlighting how social support relates to perinatal and postpartum wellbeing, including how insufficient support from partners, friends, and family is associated with higher risk of depression and anxiety symptoms, and how support from health professionals can either buffer or miss the mark depending on how it’s offered (Sufredini et al., 2022). Reviews focused specifically on the postpartum period also continue to frame social support as a key coping resource that shapes postpartum psychosocial health (Khademi & Kaveh, 2024).
Policy matters too, with a systematic review in The Lancet Public Health summarising evidence that more generous parental leave is generally associated with improved maternal mental health outcomes, including reduced depressive symptoms and distress (Heshmati et al., 2023).
This is part of why your experience can be both deeply personal and deeply systemic at the same time, because your nervous system is responding to the conditions around you, not just your inner world.
What mothers often need is holding
What many mothers need is a steadier net, the kind made of actual hands and time - deeper and more impactful than the inspirational or funny quotes on social media.
They need real load-sharing, meals, childcare, someone to take the baby while you shower, someone to fold washing without commentary, someone to sit beside you while you cry without trying to solve you, because practical support reduces stress in a way that no mindset shift can replicate.
They need co-regulation, the experience of being with someone whose presence helps your body soften, because nervous systems settle in relationship.
They need spaces where they can tell the truth without being judged so they can open and soften within their body.
If you are struggling, please reach for support
If you are experiencing anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, panic, numbness, or feeling unlike yourself you deserve support now, not only when it becomes a crisis.
In Australia, you can contact:
PANDA National Helpline: 1300 726 306
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
Lifeline (24/7): 13 11 14
If you ever feel at risk of harming yourself, or you cannot stay safe, please call Lifeline or emergency services (000), or go to your nearest emergency department.
Closing reflection
If motherhood has made your emotions bigger, darker, sharper, or stranger than you expected it may be because your body is responding honestly to the absence of support, the weight of responsibility, and the pace of a world that keeps asking mothers to carry what should have always been shared.
Continue Reading
Twin Motherhood and the Nervous System - Why So Many Mums of Multiples Live in Survival Mode
I Didn’t Realise How Much Motherhood Would Pull Me Out of My Body - A personal reflection
References
Anchors, Z. G., Arnold, R., Burnard, S. D., Bressington, C. A., Moreton, A. E., & Moore, L. J. (2024). Effectiveness of interventions on occupational stress, health and well-being, performance, and job satisfaction for midwives: A systematic mixed methods review. Women and Birth, 37(5), 101589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wombi.2024.02.005Bohren, M. A., Mehrtash, H., Fawole, B., Maung, T. M., Balde, M. D., Maya, E., et al. (2019). How women are treated during facility-based childbirth in four countries: A cross-sectional study with labour observations and community-based surveys. The Lancet, 394(10210), 1750–1763. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)31992-0Feldman, N., Hibara, A., Ye, J., Macaranas, A., Larkin, P., Hendrix, E., et al. (2025). Postpartum anxiety: A state-of-the-art review. The Lancet Psychiatry, 12(12), 947–959. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(25)00197-XHeshmati, A., Honkaniemi, H., & Juárez, S. P. (2023). The effect of parental leave on parents’ mental health: A systematic review. The Lancet Public Health, 8(1), e57–e75. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00311-5Isler, K., & van Schaik, C. P. (2012). Allomaternal care, life history and brain size evolution in mammals. Journal of Human Evolution, 63(1), 52–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.03.009Khademi, K., & Kaveh, M. H. (2024). Social support as a coping resource for psychosocial conditions in postpartum period: A systematic review and logic framework. BMC Psychology, 12, 301. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01814-6Mirzania, M., Shakibazadeh, E., Maleki, A., Noorafrooz, M., Karimi, N., Mayra, K., et al. (2025). Prevalence of mistreatment and disrespect of women during childbirth in the world: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Reproductive Health, 22, 193. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-025-02119-6Smaldino, P. E., Newson, L., Schank, J. C., & Richerson, P. J. (2013). Simulating the evolution of the human family: Cooperative breeding increases in harsh environments. PLOS ONE, 8(11), e80753. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080753Sufredini, F., Catling, C., Zugai, J., & Chang, S. (2022). The effects of social support on depression and anxiety in the perinatal period: A mixed-methods systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 319, 119–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.09.005Suleiman-Martos, N., Albendín-García, L., Gómez-Urquiza, J. L., Vargas-Román, K., Ramirez-Baena, L., Ortega-Campos, E., & De La Fuente-Solana, E. I. (2020). Prevalence and predictors of burnout in midwives: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(2), 641. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17020641Wang, Z., Liu, J., Shuai, H., Cai, Z., Fu, X., Liu, Y., et al. (2021). Mapping global prevalence of depression among postpartum women. Translational Psychiatry, 11, 543. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01663-6