Community Posts, Tips & Support on Postpartum Care

Honest, unfiltered, and in real-time: what women like you are talking about. Peanut group chats, support, and posts on Postpartum Care

thoughts…

it’s my birthday in a few weeks and i’ve just found out my partner has bought me some lingerie… a few years ago this would have been fine, except i’ve just had 3 babies in 16 months (singleton and twins) and im currently 8 weeks postpartum… i currently hate how my body looks and know i won’t want to wear anything like it.
i’ve also recently discovered he is watching porn and pleasuring himself nearly every day… this isn’t something i would normally mind, but i think the frequency he is doing it makes me feel “icky”. it feels like he’s bought me the underwear to make me more appealing to him, without thinking about whether it would be something i’d want.

am i just being overly sensitive..?

Is it worth it to have a second when you had PPD and you don’t have a village?

I really want a second baby. Mine is only 6 months and the thought of leaving him without a sibling when he doesn’t have cousins kills me. I would love to have 2 to have a slightly bigger family - but I’m going through postpartum depression and I don’t live around any family or friends. I know postpartum depression won’t last (I hope) but I think about if I’ll be able to do it again everyday. And I worry about deeply regretting it because it takes my autonomy away even more.

Postnatal depression..

Is anyone suffering/has suffered from postnatal depression? If so what did it consist of for you? I’m 5weeks PP and worrying I’m suffering with it. TIA ❤️

Today I actually tried to open up to my daughter.

We were having a conversation where I tried to open up to her about my feelings of feeling as though I may be on the spectrum. She immediately shot me down as though I am some how hoping of the trend when I have been feeling this way for awhile after my youngest was diagnosed and as I started to learn more about it. Having been a 90s child as well as an abused child. I feel likethe real me is buried under this anxiety and trauma but since these are so overused they have lost all meaning. I can't even look at her without feeling hurt right now. She accuses me constantly of invalidating her feelings so when she shot me down like she did it was kind of like oh okay.... Also ended up making the rest of the day about her and college and I ran an hour out of the way in order to do what I had planned today.

That double standard always be really fucking me up. If I'm making no sense call me out..

Right now I'm also kinda reprocessing so old grief Ithink as I am planning on going to see my high-school best friend and her dying mother. Her mother was very kind to me after my mother's death. Not many people were.

I'm also watching an elderly aunt and my father slowly deteriorate.

It feels like too much.......
Idk what I need or want but I just had to tell someone and I can't tell anyone anything...

Oh also I have some masses on my ovary that are worrisome....
Might as well fulling trauma dump..

I need to learn to cut toxic family off

But I always end up apologizing even when it wasn’t my fault just because I hate being alone.

Breakup

Hello mamas i am going through a hard time right now i feel like a mess emotionally I don’t know how to manage it , recently my boyfriend ended up our relationship because of problems he decided to leave me alone taking care of our 2 month old I have my limits I have Celebral palsy I cannot do everything alone , i need friends at least that i can feel support

Why did nobody tell me about the anger issues???

Everyone talks about the crying because of the hormones but never how angry you get at almost everything. I'm not the calmest person but since I've gotten pregnant I've had a lot harder of a time controlling my anger since it's been amplified by my surge of hormones. Not sure if that's just a me thing but it's hell sometimes.

Help

For those who may remember I put a post up a few months ago saying how i broke up with my baby’s dad and he doesn’t look after the child he’s already got!
I’m stressed tf out and it’s causing me pains!
He’s mum keeps messaging me and so does he when I said I’m not interested unless it’s to do with the baby! But they still message me about a child I had from a previous relationship! I feel like it’s trying to pressure me to get back with him when the thought of being with him makes me feel SICK!! He even got his mum a canvas of me and my child on it !! Like what! I told her I do not have to go through her to speak to my child’s dad. He told her that I’m breastfeeding the baby once she’s here and she messages me and says “well just formula feed her so we can have her sooner or pump” SORRY

I just want advice I’m so stressed and scared it’s going to cause me to go in to early labour 😭

Would it bother you? Hubby never finishes.

So my husband doesn't finish. Not for birth control but he just doesn't finish, he says he can go a really long time before actually finishing. He can finish as we have a child together.

It's never bothered me enough to cause serious problems in our relationship. Sometimes I wonder if I'm good enough in bed? He says he just gets tired. I've only ever been with two guys, my ex and hubby and my ex never had an issue with it. Hubby says he likes it and we have a healthy sex life as in we have sex regularly.

Just wondered if it would bother you or am I overthinking it?

Please help. Terrible twos

My daughter has had such a terrible attitude lately and has been hitting and throwing things. I’m a SAHM and I’m at my wits end because she keeps hurting her baby brother. Please give me advice.

Emotional!!

Guys I’m nearly 29 weeks pregnant and OMG I’m feeling so emotional and drained I cry for everything 😫😫
Does anyone else feel like this or is it just me??

AITA

So my due date is in 10 days but obvs we don’t know when the baby will actually come. Anyway, my SIL is also pregnant (after 10 years of infertility) and I am so happy for her when I found out because the doctors had said they may never conceive. So she has her gender reveal on the 26th of April (which would be almost 2 weeks after due date) in either case I wouldn’t feel comfortable attending while newly postpartum and with a newborn baby where there will be lots of people I don’t even know, I said to my husband he should go just with my daughter, which he agreed but mentioned she might feel a certain way. I mean she needs to sort of be understandable, I just don’t want to put my baby at risk, and after I gave birth last time I made myself very unwell thinking I’m okay to go out and about earlier than I should. On top of this, she shouldn’t feel a certain way because in our culture it is crucial for the mum and baby to not leave the house for 40 days, and she knows this. Anyway I don’t think I’m being an Asshole, I just don’t want to put my baby at risk and especially because people from my country don’t know boundaries when it comes to babies (kissing them, holding them, passing them around)

Medication advice needed- newly diagnosed

Hi all,
I have been diagnosed with epilepsy in pregnancy (not a side effect I was expecting!) I had multiple seizures as a child but they weren’t really investigated and then another two 5 and 10 years apart which were just associated with stress. However, when I hit my second trimester I began having 2/3 a week and I was referred for tests. Although my EEG has come back clear doctors believe my seizures are epileptic and want me to take keppra but have said it’s my choice if I take them or not. I’m leaning more towards not taking or delay taking medication for two reasons.

1. The side effects- from what I have read it seems okay for baby, however I’m worried about the side effects for me. It seems there’s a high chance of getting depression and personality changes and I don’t think it’s the right time for me to attempt this. With pregnancy hormones and the isolation that has come from the seizures I’m already feeling quite down, not depressed, but I am really having to work to keep my mental health well at the moment and I don’t want to mess with that before baby comes.
Further to the above, I don’t really have anyone close to me at the moment who would notice changes to be able to help. I have my husband who is amazing but not really good at things like that. My mother would be brilliant but my nan is currently very ill so it would be unfair of me to put more strain on her at the moment. If I wait a few months until after baby is born I might be in a different situation and able to try them.
2. The seizures are slowing- when I came into my third trimester I felt like a switch had been flicked and the brain fog had lifted. Also, since then (4 weeks ago) I’ve only had two seizures and they were little, I don’t think I fully lost consciousness, they were quick and I recovered quickly. I’m hoping they are stopping on their own. Looking at the ones I had in previous years they seem to be triggered by hormones- they started when I was going through puberty and fizzled out between 18-21 then one of the others I had I think may have been around a miscarriage. Is it possible that there were hormones in my second trimester that triggered them?

Could you please advise what you would do in my situation? Am I being stupid and I should just take the tablets? Also, if anyone has any good experiences of Keppra please let me know

Navigating Unplanned Single Motherhood

My wife and I were together for 18 years. We paid thousands for fertility treatments and were finally successful in getting pregnant last summer. She left me at 7 months pregnant and blindsided me by asking for a divorce and being unfaithful. She’s maintained that she still wants to be in our son’s life. Now I’m two months post partum and I’m barely keeping my head above water. I never thought this would happen to me.

Navigating the betrayal through post partum feels impossible and everyone keeps telling me to “just put my son first” when I talk about how sad I am. I feel like I want to scream that he’s literally all I take care of 24/7 and that I’m still a person with feelings even though I had a baby.

This week she showed up for her time with our son with a huge hickey on her neck and I feel like I’m spiraling. All I can think is that while im covered in spit up and haven’t showered… she’s doing what she’s doing. And it just feels so unfair and hopeless. I feel disgusting and unattractive and exhausted and… she looks amazing and is moving on. It all just sucks. If there’s anyone out there that understands or doesn’t mind being a listening ear to a hot mess… let me know.

I feel like a terrible mother

I am 5 weeks pregnant with my second and my anger is through the roof. I feel like I am snapping and screaming at my 22 month too much. My hormones are killing me and I feel like I am a horrible mother. I can’t control it and I feel terrible. Has anyone else gone through this??

Feeling angry, frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, Tired, empty and hopeless

So firstly, I am just not having a good day at all. My baby has been very clingy today - than she normally is and getting into stuff way more which leads to my temper going off and then mom guilt . I am also feeling angry and frustrated because I am realizing a lot of painful truths about my life that I am just understanding since going no contact with my family. That I have genuinely only been emotionally understood and heard by very few and little people in my life who genuinely cared about my feelings. I come from emotional neglect, so I constantly feel, ignored , rejected, unworthy of love , I don’t know who I am and I lack emotional control in which I am very high functioning. But I have gotten better with emotional control but actually letting myself feel my emotions or be myself with people is VERY difficult. I usually struggle as well to understand the way I am feeling that’s why I feel that writing could help me a lot- which I do now to try to help myself. I also recently gotten into therapy expecting that my feelings would be taken into consideration finally or that someone would care about my feelings, but I ended up not really receiving that understanding or to that sit there in my emotions,but instead I got a redirection of what to do - it felt very transactional, surface level and just logical. Which isn’t that bad , but when I just learned that I struggled finding someone to just accept me at my worse or just really dive deep into how I feel and my feelings - I just didn’t really like how therapy was more logical instead of emotional support. I feel like since that’s all that was around me in my family, then that’s what I attracted. Constantly being told and feeling like I’m too much - I am not saying that my marriage is all bad, because it’s not, most of the time we are best friends but when it come to emotions there’s a lack . Overall I am very upset and overwhelmed and this haven’t been the best day for me.

Weird feelings

I am now 2 and a half months PP, and I was just looking at my scar. It feels so surreal to me. I had to have an emergency C-Section after 20 hours of labor and an induction that worked too fast. It's so strange to me that this scar is on my body, that it's where my baby came out of. Everything was completely the opposite of my original birth plan, but I could not be more thankful that they caught the reason for my c-section when they did. That still doesnt change the... almost impostor syndrome I feel when I look at my body and my scar. I've changed so much, it's so strange to me

Does anyone else miss being hot?

I know our bodies grew a baby, if not multiple. I know PP messes with your hair. I know the baby blues messes with our emotions. But I see old pictures and I miss being hot. Doesn't help that I am a sahm so I live in sweats and a sports bra with my hair up all the time ..

Relationship rant / advice? long post

I'm not sure if anyone can really give me advice here, but I'm gonna lay out what's gone on and how I'm feeling and other factors.

So my partner and I found out I was pregnant early on into the relationship (back in 2024), and at the start of this year we had a massive talk where I said I feel like it's got alot to do with the current distance and tension between us. It was something I was worried about initially.

Now by distance and tension, I'm on about the slow decline we have gone through. It started about my 3rd trimester, and him and I both agreed alot was to do with my mental health as someone with severe C-PTSD and a disability that stems from it. This is something I have been actively working on getting help for. We also agreed that he had faults too, and overall it became a bad cycle of us both feeling like the other wasn't doing enough, and negative emotions building up against eachother. Alot of it was to do with me feeling him start to decline In the ways he showed love. I could feel his positivity draining almost, and he would never talk about it. Always said his mental health wasn't the best and shut it down.

This was through postpartum, all of 2025, we finally discussed it at the start of 2026, but it was along the lines of "we can't carry on like this, and we both have felt clocked out of this relationship, but we don't want to end the relationship because we still love eachother and want the same things".
So we agreed to start actively communicating, trying to make changes because we want to get back to what we were.

But I can not stop stressing, and thinking about how much my other half brought up how he's got everything figured out for if we end things. He was very clear on saying that he had clocked out to the point of not hating the idea of co-parenting, and even started taking about us salvaging things after a break up, it was alot. Really confusing. And just felt like he was trying to end things right there. But when I asked him if that's what he wanted he told me he will never be the one to end the relationship...

Now, its been a couple months, he expressed his poor mental health, I advised he go see a therapist and even offered to help him with this process. I've picked up where I need to, I've started getting more help, recently I've taken on most of the housework after studies too. And he seems happier, keeps telling me things are better but now I'm the one feeling like it's never going to change. He still hasn't started the process of getting help after promising me he would, I told him its integral to this relationship. That I'm stepping out of my comfort zone time and time again for the sake of him, us and our son, and I expect the same from him. There's also little things I brought up that mattered to me that he just isn't doing, whereas everything he brought to me I have taken on board and apply daily.

I can't tell if it's the poorer side of my mental health being as negative as it always is, or if after the conversation and some other things he has told me, I've started to lose the want to mend things. Its gnawing at me, I feel like we have switched roles and I just don't know what to do. I'm waiting on therapy to get back to me with my appointment dates. I'm waiting on the consultation for medication, and I'm putting 110% into this relationship whilst I feel like he's doing less. And I know physical appearance isn't something that should matter so much, but I've been really looking after myself, putting in the effort not just for him but for me, yet I'm watching him let go of himself. Which yeah, mental illness does that to a person, but as I mentioned he's not doing anything to help himself. There is only so much I can do.

Most of me feels like it's my fault. That in trying to heal whilst in an active relationship and post-partum I've caused all of this. But a small part of me feels like that's an unfair take.

Need encouragement

I'm 3 months postpartum and I'm struggling with getting back to normal. I just feel like I can't do anything right anymore. I get anxious just even walking outside now. I have been locked in my room for a week now and I feel like I'm letting my family down. I just don't know how to pick myself up.