There's a word for what happens when you become a mother, and it isn't just "postpartum." It's matrescence — the psychological, hormonal, and identity shift of becoming a mother, as significant a developmental transition as adolescence, but one almost nobody prepares you for. You're not just adjusting to a new baby; you're becoming a new version of yourself while your hormones, your body, your relationships, and your sense of who you are all shift at once.

Many women in this stage carry some combination of grief for their pre-baby identity, anxiety or intrusive thoughts they weren't expecting, a changing relationship with their body, or a sense of feeling like a stranger to themselves — and none of that means something is wrong with you. It means you're in the middle of one of the biggest transitions a person can go through.