Parenting and loneliness
Postnatal anxiety often goes unrecognised — it is less visible than postnatal depression, and new parents are expected to be anxious to some degree. But postnatal anxiety is more than ordinary worry. It is intrusive, consuming, physical — a constant hypervigilance about the baby, catastrophic thoughts that will not stop, a body that cannot relax even when the baby is safe. And it is often carried almost entirely alone.
New parenthood is supposed to be joyful, and many people find it so. When the dominant experience is fear rather than joy, there is an additional layer of shame — the sense that you are failing at something you were supposed to find wonderful. That shame makes it harder to talk about. Partners may not understand. Other parents may have had different experiences. The health system may focus on the baby rather than the parent's mental state.
There is also the physical isolation of early parenting — the hours alone with a small person who cannot converse, the disrupted sleep that makes thinking clearly almost impossible, the shrinking of ordinary social life.
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