Mental health of new mothers during the pandemic

The mental well-being of new mothers is often overlooked and rarely taken into consideration.

Three days after I gave birth this March, my cousin called to see how I was doing. She was the first to check up on me. She also happened to be one of the few people I knew who openly talked about postpartum depression (PPD). Not long after she gave birth to her child, she started becoming haunted by the thought of her baby not being her own. This unrelenting, intrusive thought caused her immense pain, and it constantly left her racked with ‘mom guilt’. Only years later did she realise that it was a clinical issue and not a problem she could grapple with alone; she had PPD. Since PPD is an experience women commonly endure, she called to check if I was going through what she did. On that day, however, I was doing fairly alright.