it's not postpartum rage, it's postpartum realization

talk of postpartum rage is everywhere. it’s on tiktok, where moms post videos of themselves cursing and crying and screaming into pillows. it’s on instagram, where blush-colored graphics define the condition as “a condition that can occur after giving birth, causing a person to feel anger, frustration, or lose their temper easily”. it’s on reddit, where anonymous moms compare their symptoms and ask each other the question we are always asking each other underneath every other question: is this normal or is it just me?

soon after giving birth to my first daughter, postpartum rage snuck into my blood. that’s how it feels – like it lives in my blood, thick and slow and ever-present. for me, the rage is directed at anyone around me except my baby. I’m angry at my husband for not waking up the second the baby starts crying, I’m angry at my friend for commenting on my baby’s (PERFECT) temperament, I’m angry at a family member for a passing comment on getting exercise back into my routine (what routine, my dude??). I’m angry at the world for continuing and expecting me to continue, like nothing has changed.

the idea that you get of postpartum rage if you look online is that moms are hormonal, insane, hysterical monsters who are lashing out at everyone around them. and while we are hormonal and sometimes hysterical (though I will argue with anyone on earth that it is reasonable to be so after you just, you know, BIRTHED A HUMAN BEING), I don’t think we’re insane. I think we’re, to put it in the parlance of kylie jenner, ~realizing stuff~.

what if it’s not postpartum rage after all? what if it’s postpartum realization? what if we’re realizing how all-encompassing it is to be a mother and how, at least in the united states, our society and government doesn’t give a shit about our experience of motherhood while simultaneously pushing us into it? what if we’re coming to terms with the fact that our society exalts motherhood but doesn’t give a shit about mothers? that we’re expected to “bounce back” and take it as a compliment when someone tells us it doesn’t even look like we had a baby? (because it’s so bad to look like we changed through a process that fundamentally changes a person.) that we have no federally mandated maternity leave and so many of us are forced to go back to work just weeks after birth? that despite how liberal and feminist our husbands are, we’re still the default parent and it’s exhausting? that, though we’re never alone, we’ve never been lonelier?

note: I originally wrote this in the aftermath of my first daughter’s birth but I’m now 6 weeks postpartum with my second daughter and, ladies and gentlemen, the rage is back like it never left…! :-) I somehow thought I could escape it this time around but I haven’t. and I think I know why.

I asked some of the moms I lean on for advice and commiseration what astonished them most in their period of postpartum realization and this is what they told me.

How my time to rest is not my time - it’s spent pumping, washing pump parts, cleaning, trying to do laundry, etc so I never get rest. How her body is so limp and flexible and mine is basically always tensed. I just, like, tensed one day and never let off again

the way fathers get to choose how involved to be and mothers end up picking up all the slack. the way mothers carry the physical and mental load of so much—when the next feed is due, when it’s time for a nap, etc—while dads are so often performing the role of helper

back in 2024, I posted on tiktok to ask #momtok what their postpartum realizations were. here are some of the hundreds of comments I got:

(to be clear: I’m not saying postpartum rage doesn’t exist. I just wonder how much of it is society giving a diagnosis to the reckoning and realizing mothers go through when they go through birth and matrescence (“the term for the physical, emotional, social, and psychological changes that a woman experiences as she transitions into motherhood”).

of course we’re full of rage. look at how this country treats mothers. look at how moms are forced back to work while they’re still bleeding and how daycare is so expensive that they have to give up their careers. look at how we’re told a village is needed to raise a child and then we’re left siloed. look at how we exalt motherhood but don’t give a shit about mothers.

(if you’re wondering why I’m ignoring the lindsey clancy of it all, it’s because I cannot, as someone who is 6 weeks postpartum, engage with that story. it is so heartbreaking. there were so many failures. I’m devastated about it.)

my older sister always told me motherhood radicalized her and I thought I understood but I didn’t, not until my own daughter was born. consider me radicalized and realized and full of rage I don’t know what to do with.

if you’ve ever felt postpartum rage or had postpartum realizations, tell me about them so I don’t feel like such a monster <3

If you’re interested in more of my postpartum ramblings, you can find them here:

night in my life with a 5-week-old

day in my life 10 days postpartum

this is how postpartum is different the second time around

8 things I forgot about you, postpartum

While you’re here, here is the reminder I have to give every single time I write anything because I spent the last 2.5 years pouring my blood sweat and tears into this book – you can get my new book, which has been called a “stomach-wrenching exposé” into mom influencers, family vloggers, and child influencers – Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online – at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, Hudson Booksellers, Target, Walmart and more.