A Note Before Reading: This is one of the most vulnerable things I’ve ever written. It includes the unfiltered emotions of a mother who was exhausted, overwhelmed, and struggling to find herself after birth. Some strong language is included because it reflects the reality of that moment.
Nobody warned me about the anger. People warned me about the exhaustion. They warned me I would cry. They warned me I would be overwhelmed. They warned me motherhood would be hard. But nobody warned me that sometimes the hardest moments wouldn’t look like sadness. Sometimes they would look like rage. The kind of rage that makes you want to scream until your voice disappears. The kind where you feel so overstimulated, so touched out, so exhausted, that your entire body is begging for a break you don’t know how to get. The kind where you don’t want to hurt anyone, you just want everything to stop.
I remember sitting with feelings I didn’t know how to explain. I loved my baby. I knew I loved him. But I was exhausted in a way I had never experienced before. I was constantly needed. Someone needed to be fed.
Burped. Changed. Held. Comforted. Entertained. Monitored. There was never a moment where my brain got to fully shut off. Even when he was sleeping, I was thinking about the next feeding, the next nap, whether he was getting enough milk, whether I was doing enough for his development, whether I was failing him. I was always “on.” And eventually, I broke.
I didn’t always scream. That’s the thing about postpartum rage that people don’t talk about. Sometimes it’s not loud. Sometimes it’s sitting there silently while your baby cries and feeling every muscle in your body tense. Sometimes it’s biting your tongue because you’re afraid of how badly you want to scream. Sometimes it’s stepping away for a moment because you need to calm yourself down. Sometimes it’s tears of frustration because you don’t understand why something that is supposed to be so beautiful feels so impossible. There was a night where I finally put the feelings into words. I sent my husband a message because I didn’t know how else to explain what was happening inside me. I wrote:
“I’m just so fucking exhausted with this. It doesn’t matter if you leave early, it doesn’t matter if it’s Friday, it doesn’t matter that you’re off Tuesday, because this isn’t fucking stopping. Monday, Wednesday, and the rest of the week will be just the same. I’m here all fucking day with no fucking help. I’m tired. I’m in pain because I get a simple 15 fucking minutes to pump. My supply is dropping, so guess what? Formula may be on the horizon, and I AM FUCKING FAILING AT THIS. I can’t even eat during the day. My attention is on him constantly. I’m at such a loss. I have no fucking clue what to even do anymore. I can’t help him developmentally with tummy time or story time because he’s just never fucking happy or even content, and all my time is filled with either feeding him, burping him, changing him, giving him his medicine, and keeping him upright. Then boom—now he’s so tired he’s going to fucking scream and won’t go to sleep. So now I’m spending hours trying to get him to sleep. It’s like, what the fuck am I even supposed to do?”
Looking back at that message, I don’t see a mother who didn’t love her baby. I see a mother who was drowning. I see someone who was trying so hard to do everything right that there was nothing left for herself. I see someone who was carrying the mental load of an entire little human while also trying to recover physically, maintain breastfeeding, support development, manage appointments, remember medications, and somehow still function. I see someone who needed help.
The scariest part about postpartum rage is the guilt that follows. Because when you love your baby so deeply, it feels impossible to admit that sometimes you just want silence. Sometimes you want to disappear. Not because you don’t want your baby. Because you want a break from being needed every second of the day. You want to remember what it feels like to be a person. You want to eat a meal without rushing. Take a shower without listening for crying. Have a thought that isn’t interrupted. You want five minutes where nobody needs anything from you. I also grieved my old life. That was a hard thing to admit. I missed who I was before motherhood. I missed freedom. I missed independence. I missed feeling like myself. And then I felt guilty for missing it. Because how could I miss a life before my baby existed? But I’ve learned that missing who you were does not mean you don’t love who you are becoming. Two things can exist together. You can love your child more than anything and still struggle with the weight of motherhood.
Postpartum rage is often misunderstood because anger is seen as a personality flaw. But anger is usually communicating something. Sometimes it’s saying:
“I’m exhausted.”
“I’m overwhelmed.”
“I’m lonely.”
“I need support.”
“I have been giving everything I have, and I have nothing left.”
For me, rage wasn’t about my baby. It was about feeling like I was disappearing.
If you have ever sat there thinking, “I just want to scream,” or “I want to disappear,” I want you to know that you are not alone in that feeling. You deserve support before you reach your breaking point. You deserve to be cared for, too. Because mothers are expected to pour everything into their babies, but we forget that mothers are people. And people need care.
This is why conversations like this matter. Not because motherhood is broken. Not because babies are the problem. But because mothers deserve honesty. They deserve to know that the hardest moments are not always the ones you can see. Sometimes the hardest moments are the ones where you are smiling on the outside while screaming for help on the inside.
The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is free, confidential, and here to help, 24/7.
1-833-852-6262
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