Moms Share the Most 'Unhinged' Things They Did After Having a Baby

Yahoo

a day ago

When Lauren Nolan gave birth to her first child, Charlie, six months ago, she remembers feeling a bit "unhinged."
"Postpartum hormones really threw me for a loop," she tells TODAY.com "That combined with an emergency C-section recovery and first time baby ... it's all very overwhelming."
So the Chicago-based content creator decided to start a conversation with her followers based on a popular trend.
"Moms — tell me the most unhinged thing you did freshly postpartum," she wrote on an Instagram reel on April 19. "Not like 'I cried a lot,' or, 'I only wore pjs.' I'm talking 'unhinged.'"
And oh baby, did her audience deliver. She still receives comments on the reel every day. Here are a selection of our favorite responses:
"I walked to the coffee shop down the street and realized I was wearing only the baby in the carrier on top. No shirt. No bra. Just the baby."
"I was holding my daughter and dropped the remote control on her head while nursing her by accident. I then cried and laid on the couch and dropped the remote control on my own head a few times to see how bad it hurt. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫"
"I dreamt that I had twins. I woke up in a panic because I couldn't find the other baby. Legit was looking for it for a good 15 minutes before I realized I only had the one baby."
"Dialed 911 in a panic because I saw on the monitor that someone was standing over my baby's crib in the middle of the night. It was me. I was the one standing over the crib. 😭🫠"
"Took the dog to the vet to get his nails clipped. Was wearing an eye patch for postpartum Bell's palsy. Forgot the dog at home."
'I woke up in the middle of the night with my 1-week-old at the time and had forgotten what I named him and started crying. I had to wake my husband up to ask him.'
"Woke up one night nursing, burping and then rocking baby to sleep. Was about to put him back in the bassinet only to realize baby is asleep in the bassinet and I was nursing and burping my phone."
"Shaved my head. One of my kids came home from elementary with lice 10 days after birth. I just shaved everyone's head cause I couldn't handle hours of combing four children."
"I cried all day long because my 3-day-old baby didn't have any friends 😂"
Though the vast majority of the comments are lighthearted, some touched on more troubling emotions that can follow childbirth. So, how do you know if your unhinged postpartum moments are normal or something more worrisome?
Dr. Catherine Birndorf, a reproductive psychiatrist and co-founder of The Motherhood Center, tells TODAY.com when to reach out to a trusted medical professional.
"A rapid drop in hormones after childbirth can cause you to do things you normally wouldn't do, which can be unnerving. In fact, 80% of people who give birth experience 'baby blues' in the first two weeks," Birndorf shares. "But I'm surprised more people don't lose it."
Baby blues are "a non-pathological state, not an illness like postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety," she explains. Most of the comments Birndorf saw on the Instagram reel fit into the baby blues category, but if moms continue feeling "overwhelmed, mad, guilty or helpless" for more than two weeks, she says it is time to seek help.
Nolan, who experienced what she describes as the "normal" amount of unhinged behavior, says that she found a lot of validation in reading the comments and hopes other new moms do too.
'You just grew a human and birthed a human, and then are taking care of a human, and as much as your partner wants to understand and support you, there's no way of explaining that to someone else who hasn't been through it,' she says.
"Of course we're all crying. Of course we're all struggling. We're sleep deprived. We're recovering," she adds. Reading other women's stories "made me feel a lot less alone. It reminded me that every new mom feels that way."
This article was originally published on TODAY.com