One of my favorite movies of the early 2000s captures the transition to parenting with striking honesty:
“The most terrifying day of your life is the day the first one is born. Your life, as you know it… is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk… and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.” (Sofia Coppola, 2003).
This quote expresses the central paradox of motherhood with disarming clarity: the deepest love for a child alongside the loss of the life and identity that existed before birth.
The transition to motherhood is often a quiet one. Mothers (and fathers, too, though this piece focuses primarily on mothers) move from being everyone’s delight during pregnancy, receiving attention, care, and curiosity, to becoming almost invisible once the baby arrives. This is especially true in large cities like New York, where many families lack an extended support system. Without a village to rely on, motherhood can become an isolating experience, with the transition to parenting unfolding quietly and unseen.
Myths vs. Lived Experience
Motherhood is often portrayed as the happiest time of one’s life, a naturally joyful period of caring for a baby. This is what many women spend months preparing for during pregnancy. With such high expectations for happiness, it can feel confusing or even alarming to notice feelings of sadness, loneliness, or overwhelm after birth.
In reality, the postpartum period involves several rapid and intense changes that make it difficult to remain exclusively within the realm of positive emotions.
Hormonal shifts. Pregnancy hormones, estrogen and progesterone, drop by as much as 90 percent within the first 24 hours after delivery, while cortisol, the stress hormone elevated during labor, often remains high. These changes occur within hours and can lead to emotional volatility, tearfulness, anxiety, and sleep disturbances.
Sleep deprivation. Newborn care fragments sleep into short intervals. Combined with physical recovery, hormonal changes, and emotional stress, chronic sleep deprivation can significantly affect mood, concentration, and emotional regulation.
Physical recovery. Labor is an intense physical experience, sometimes accompanied by medical complications. Healing takes at least six to eight weeks and may be complicated by insufficient rest and the constant demands of caring for an infant.
Given these challenges, many mothers wonder: shouldn’t all of this feel negligible compared to the love I feel for my baby? Why does my exhaustion or irritability matter if holding my child can bring me joy?
Cultural narratives around motherhood, though slowly evolving, are still shaped by myths that emphasize constant happiness, intuition, and self-sacrifice, leaving little room for ambivalence. Common beliefs include:
- Parenting should feel natural and intuitive
- Becoming a mother should feel good
- If bonding doesn’t happen instantly, something is wrong
- If I love my child, this shouldn’t feel this hard
- I should be able to handle it on my own without help
- Good parents always put their children’s needs first
- Other parents are coping better than I am
- Breastfeeding is natural and therefore should be easy
In reality, we find that parenting is something we learn, with multiple challenges and emotional ups and downs along the way. We discover that the transition to motherhood is marked by ambivalence and conflicting feelings. Holding your baby at night might fill you up with love and, simultaneously, feel incredibly lonely. You might feel disconnected from a newborn who, just days earlier, felt intimately familiar inside your body. It is possible to love your baby and want a break from parenting, feel grateful and tired of endless demands, feel happiness and grief for the life you had before, sometimes all in the same day.
For many mothers, encountering these emotions comes as a frightening surprise, marked by shame and self-blame: Is something wrong with me? Am I failing at this?
Mixed Feelings Are Not a Red Flag
Understanding the psychological transition to motherhood, and normalizing ambivalence, is foundational to emotional well-being in early parenthood.
Modern mothers carry not only centuries of cultural expectations but also the added weight of constant comparison through social media. Carefully curated images of effortless parenting can intensify feelings of inadequacy and reinforce the belief that struggle is a personal failure.
Yet mixed emotions are not a sign of poor bonding or insufficient love. They are a natural response to an overwhelming life transition. Loving your baby does not erase your own needs. Joy, love, fear, sadness, longing, and loneliness often coexist. Holding these opposing feelings together and allowing space for ambivalence can ease the pressure to feel happy at all times and open the door to greater self-compassion.
Motherhood as a Psychological Transition
Early parenthood is not simply a stressful phase. It is a psychological reorganization that involves a profound shift in identity. While pregnancy unfolds gradually, the external reality of motherhood arrives all at once. The moment a child is born, there are countless responsibilities that cannot be postponed, and a growing sense of autonomy slipping away.
In the early months, women often step fully into the caregiving role, often without being fully ready and with little room for reflection and understanding the change. Often, where there might be mourning for a lost identity, there is instead unnamed sadness, irritability, or shame. Grief is rarely acknowledged, even when motherhood was deeply desired.
Noticing and allowing grief is an essential part of moving through this transition. Bodies change. Social lives narrow. And, perhaps, most significantly, the internal sense of self no longer aligns with daily reality. Allowing sadness for what has been lost does not diminish love for one’s child; rather, it makes room for integration. Motherhood holds opposing truths: joy alongside grief, devotion alongside longing for freedom, deep love alongside a profound sense of loss.
When Transition Becomes Overwhelming: Postpartum Depression, Anxiety, and Support
For some mothers, the emotional weight of this transition becomes more than can be held alone. Postpartum mood disorders exist on a spectrum. The “baby blues,” characterized by tearfulness and mood swings in the first two weeks after birth, are common and typically resolve on their own. Postpartum depression and anxiety, however, are more persistent and can interfere with daily functioning, bonding, and self-care.
These experiences are not signs of personal weakness or failure. Postpartum depression and anxiety are common and treatable. Struggling during this period does not mean something is wrong with you, it means the transition is asking more than you can give without support.
Therapy can offer a supportive space to process the complex emotional landscape of becoming a mother. It is a space to speak honestly about loss and change without being judged. Rather than focusing on “fixing,” therapy helps integrate old and new parts of the self, allowing space for ambivalence. Becoming a mother is not a single moment. It is a process. And support can make that process less lonely and more compassionate.
There is no right way to feel as you become a mother. If love and loss coexist, it does not mean you are doing it wrong. It means you are human, adapting, in your own time, to one of the most profound transitions of a lifetime.