Too often, what gets shrugged off as “new mom worry” feels crippling to the woman
Photo: Getty Images I’m lying awake, gazing at the gentle rise and fall of my 3-month-old’s chest. He’s a delicate infant, constantly surprising me with his smallness, like his sister did when she was born four years earlier. In recent weeks, my son has begun stretching out the number of minutes between nursing sessions. He can go for two hours without eating now, or two and a half if I’m lucky. This means I have more of a chance to sleep, at least in short spurts.
According to social worker Karen Kleiman, the founder and director of The Postpartum Stress Center, around 15 percent of new mothers experience anxiety severe enough to interfere with their day-to-day functioning — but many are unaware that there’s a name for what they’re going through.
On a neurological level, a pregnant woman’s brain undergoes a number of changes that, as they work to prepare her for motherhood, can also contribute to the onset of anxiety. For example, levels of oxytocin rise during pregnancy; the hormone, which promotes bonding, also triggers heightened levels of activity in areas of the brain linked to empathy and, yes, anxiety. And according to a 2016 study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, those changes can far outlast the postpartum period.
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