How to work through postpartum disappointment

If you struggled through your pregnancy or have a difficult childbirth or newborn experience, you might get the impression afterward that since you have a healthy baby (I hope you do!) you should forget about the bad stuff and focus on the good! Put those difficulties behind you and move on. It might have been hard, and parts of it might have even been terrible, but be glad it’s over and let it go! You have a healthy baby, after all! Be happy that it wasn’t worse! 

But if this feels way easier said than done, please know that you are not alone!

Postpartum disappointment is a real thing!

Many new moms struggle to work through disappointment after having a baby, even when everything has gone well. But it is hard to acknowledge those feelings, especially if their cause is hard to pin down when everything turned out alright in the end. Instead, you might be left only with a vague sense of unease and a lingering feeling of guilt, simply because you are not happier.

And those negative feelings can be easy to brush off - it’s so easy to blame them on hormones and sleep deprivation (which can definitely make things feel much worse than they really are!) and to convince yourself you’ll feel better in a few weeks or maybe you just need a few months, and then you’ll be fine!

But if you are a new mom who feels this way, especially if you feel like you can’t tell anyone that you’re not really happy with how it all went or turned out, please know that you are so not alone.

A healthy baby is not the only thing that matters.

And also, let me assure you that in this whole experience, a healthy baby is not all that matters. You matter too. Your experience of the whole thing matters! Your feelings, about all of it, are important and can be helpful to explore! Of course your baby matters, and the relief and gratitude may or may not come, but how you feel about, think about, and remember the experience has a real impact on how you recover from childbirth, bond with your baby, and move through your first year of motherhood. 

Exploring those feelings and processing them in a healthy way is necessary, so here is one way to go about doing that using a journaling exercise.

How to work through your disappointment

Firstly, it is so important to be honest with yourself about your desires, your preferences, and your hopes for your pregnancy, your entire childbirth experience, and for the first few weeks, and even months after you have a baby. Things might not have gone as you imagined, but what did you envision in the first place? 

It's okay to revisit and honor those desires. If you kind of brushed them off because you didn't want to get too attached to something you couldn't control, take some time and really explore those hopes and dreams. What would it have been like in the very best version of your story? What about in a pretty good version?

Your true desires and sincere hopes for your motherhood journey are valid and deserve to be heard!

T​​ake some time to articulate and write down what a better experience would have looked like for you. Try not to edit yourself through this exercise - your true desires and sincere hopes for your motherhood journey are perfectly valid and deserve to be heard! Give yourself a solid half-hour if you need it to really think through what you wanted in the first place.

When you are all done, feel free to put this exercise aside for a day or two and revisit it again later to see if it still rings true. Go ahead and make any changes if you need to. 

Speak gently to yourself!

Then, when you are ready, write your vulnerable self a kind and generous letter like this one: 

"My dearest Patricia, Congratulations on the occasion of having a baby! You did so well. I'm really proud of you. I know you were hoping things would go differently. It's so disappointing that... It feels really unfair that... If only ... ... Your vision for this experience was beautiful and I know you feel ... about how it all turned out. It's okay to feel this way. Let's feel ... about this for one more (day/week/month). But maybe later, if this still feels as heavy as ever, let's look into some counseling or something. But for now, it’s okay to feel ..."

Maybe you feel like you've worked through your disappointment after this one exercise. Maybe you need to return to this letter every night for a week, or even a month before you feel like you are healing and are no longer struggling with persistent, intrusive, or intense feelings about your experience. Whatever amount of time you need is the right amount! If you need to work through these feelings on your own, it's okay. If you want to meet with someone else to unpack, explore, and integrate your experience, that's okay too.

But it all starts with treating yourself well and honoring your true desires.

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