I Wanted This Baby, So Why Am I Depressed? Perinatal Depression During Pregnancy and Postpartum
Wanted your baby but feel depressed, numb, anxious, or unlike yourself? Learn the signs of perinatal depression during pregnancy and postpartum, why it happens, and how therapy can help.
You wanted this baby. Maybe you planned for months or years. Perhaps you imagined pregnancy, pictured holding your newborn, and expected this chapter to feel meaningful, joyful, even transformative.
So why do you feel sad, anxious, irritable, numb, or completely overwhelmed?
And perhaps the most painful question of all:
“What kind of mother feels this way?”
Perinatal depression can create a painful contradiction between what you expected to feel and what you actually feel. But loving your baby and experiencing depression are not mutually exclusive. Perinatal depression is a real mental health condition, not a measure of how much you wanted your child or how deeply you love them.
What Is Perinatal Depression?
Perinatal depression refers to depression that occurs during pregnancy or after childbirth. It is often discussed as postpartum depression, but symptoms can begin well before delivery. In fact, research cited by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that among women who screened positive for postpartum depression, many experienced the onset of depression before the baby was born (Wisner et al., 2013)
Symptoms of depression during pregnancy or postpartum depression can include persistent sadness, emotional numbness, irritability, anxiety, loss of pleasure, hopelessness, guilt, difficulty concentrating, changes in sleep or appetite, overwhelming fatigue, withdrawal, or difficulty feeling connected to your baby.
Sometimes it sounds less like “I’m depressed” and more like:
Why don't I feel like myself anymore?
Why does everything feel so difficult?
Why can't I enjoy this when I know I should be grateful?
Why don't I feel the connection with my baby that everyone told me I would?
Why Can Depression Happen After a Wanted Pregnancy?
Pregnancy and childbirth involve extraordinary biological and psychological transitions. Recent neuroscience research suggests that postpartum depression involves far more than simply feeling overwhelmed (Wenzel et al., 2025). Researchers are studying profound reproductive hormone shifts, neuroactive steroids, stress-response systems such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, neuroplasticity, genetics, epigenetics, and changes in brain circuitry involved in emotion, reward, attachment, and threat processing (Wenzel et al., 2025).
In other words, your brain and body are undergoing a major transition at the same time you may be navigating sleep deprivation, physical recovery, feeding demands, changes in identity, increased responsibility, relationship stress, and the relentless needs of another human being. Wanting your baby does not make your nervous system immune to any of this.
“I Love My Baby. Why Don't I Feel Connected?”
Few symptoms carry as much shame as difficulty bonding with a baby. We are surrounded by stories suggesting that the moment a baby arrives, a parent experiences an instantaneous flood of love and connection. For some people, that happens. For others, attachment develops gradually.
Depression can also affect brain systems involved in reward, attachment, salience, and emotional responsiveness. Research examining postpartum depression has identified differences in neural and hormonal systems involved in maternal responses and mother-infant bonding, although the neurobiology remains complex and continues to be studied (Nguyen et al., 2019). Feeling emotionally numb does not tell us how much you love your baby. It may tell us how much your system is carrying.
When Motherhood Makes You Feel Like You've Lost Yourself
Perinatal mental health is also about identity. Suddenly your body may feel different. Your time is no longer entirely yours. Your relationship may change. Sex and intimacy may feel unfamiliar. Work, friendships, independence, sleep, exercise, spontaneity, and privacy can all shift at once.
Meanwhile, everyone asks:
“How's the baby?”
And part of you may quietly wonder:
“But how am I?”
This can be especially complicated for people with histories of trauma, attachment wounds, sexual trauma, body-image concerns, infertility, pregnancy loss, difficult births, or complicated relationships with their own parents. Pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, medical procedures, and the loss of bodily autonomy can sometimes activate old nervous-system responses that seemed unrelated to becoming a parent.
Perinatal Depression Can Affect Relationships and Intimacy Too
Having a baby changes the couple system. One partner may feel abandoned with the physical and emotional labor of parenthood. The other may feel helpless, rejected, or unsure how to provide support. Exhaustion can transform small disagreements into enormous conflicts.
Sexual desire may change because of hormonal shifts, physical recovery, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation, body-image concerns, depression, anxiety, sensory overload, resentment, or simply being touched all day.
Instead of asking, “What's wrong with our relationship?”, therapy can help couples ask, “What is happening to us during this enormous transition, and what do we each need?”
How Therapy for Perinatal Depression Can Help
At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we approach perinatal mental health through a trauma-informed, attachment-focused, neuroscience-informed lens. Treatment is not about convincing someone to be more grateful. It may involve helping regulate an overwhelmed nervous system, reducing shame, addressing depression and anxiety, processing birth trauma, rebuilding identity, strengthening attachment, navigating relationship changes, and reconnecting with the body, sexuality, and intimacy.
Depending on symptom severity, treatment may include psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of approaches. ACOG recommends screening for depression and anxiety during pregnancy and postpartum, with appropriate assessment, treatment, monitoring, and follow-up. Sometimes one of the most therapeutic realizations is remarkably simple: You can love the life you created and still struggle inside the life transition that created it. Both can be true.
You Don't Have to Feel Joyful to Be a Loving Parent
Perhaps the question isn't:
“Why can't I just be happy?”
A more compassionate and clinically useful question might be:
“What does my brain, body, and nervous system need right now?”
Perinatal depression deserves treatment, not judgment. With appropriate support, the goal is not to become some idealized version of the endlessly happy parent.
It is to help you feel increasingly present, connected, regulated, and like yourself again, while making room for the complicated reality that love and struggle can exist at the same time.
If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, harming your baby, severe confusion, hallucinations, paranoia, or feeling unable to keep yourself or your baby safe, seek immediate medical attention. ACOG recommends immediate assessment of suicide risk and immediate medical attention for suspected postpartum psychosis.
Reach out to schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation with our team of therapists, trauma specialists, somatic practitioners, or relationship experts, and start working towards integrative, embodied healing today.
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References
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (2023). Screening and diagnosis of mental health conditions during pregnancy and postpartum: ACOG Clinical Practice Guideline No. 4. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 141(6), 1232–1261.
Maguire, J., & Mody, I. (2019). Pathophysiological mechanisms implicated in postpartum depression. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 52, 165–180.
Nguyen, A. J., Hoyer, E., Rajhans, P., Strathearn, L., & Kim, S. (2019). A tumultuous transition to motherhood: Altered brain and hormonal responses in mothers with postpartum depression. Journal of Neuroendocrinology, 31(9), e12794.
Schiller, C. E., Meltzer-Brody, S., & Rubinow, D. R. (2015). The role of reproductive hormones in postpartum depression. CNS Spectrums, 20(1), 48–59.
