No One Told Me About Postpartum Rage
I remember thinking that a few months into my son’s life after a rage attack shook the very foundations of my concept of motherhood. In a way, I felt betrayed that no one had mentioned it to me, that I hadn’t come across it in my preparation for postpartum. I was prepared for potential depression and anxiety—I’m a trained therapist, after all, and I had seen enough friends struggle with those after giving birth. I had read books, bought all the gear to help my body heal, hired an incredible postpartum doula. I had long conversations with my husband about how to navigate potential challenges and how he could best support me.
And yet I still found myself battling this red-hot boiling rage that would wash over me. It made me think terrible thoughts about my baby, provoked images of throwing him across the room to make the crying stop. Irrational anger surfaced around breastfeeding. Around trying to help him fall asleep, or stay asleep—anything to do with sleep. It was vicious.
What was I feeling?
I couldn’t believe that no one had mentioned this to me beforehand. When the rage swept through me, it shook me literally and figuratively. This wasn’t depression. This wasn’t anxiety. This was a completely different beast. It was large, unwieldy, hot, and consuming. It drowned out my baby’s cries and made me hate him.
The reality of my postpartum experience
My postpartum experience didn’t go the way I had envisioned. It wasn’t filled with long, languid breastfeeding sessions. I didn’t have the space to allow my body to heal uninterrupted. From the second day home with our son, I had an intuition that something was off with his ability to breastfeed. My midwife had already mentioned a potential tongue tie, but I didn’t know what that meant or how it would impact our breastfeeding relationship. I had our lactation consultant do a home visit, and she quickly confirmed that he indeed had a severe tongue tie and a less severe lip tie.
From there, it was a blur of appointments to have a dentist revise the ties, a chiropractor work to loosen his body, and an occupational therapist support his oral rehabilitation by teaching him how to latch, breathe, and swallow. For three weeks, my husband and I worked together to do mouth exercises on the baby to encourage the oral surgeries to succeed—six times a day and once in the middle of the night. These were brutal; they entailed using our fingers to pull his little tongue and lip away from the wounds to ensure they didn’t retie.
Then there were all the practitioners I desperately sought out to help with breastfeeding, which did not come naturally to us. After a few sucks, he would pull off my nipple screaming in pain and discomfort. My let-down was too intense for him; he was (and still is) a sensitive little guy. Amidst all this, I was pumping at least eight times a day to keep up my milk supply while syringe-feeding him every 45 minutes to an hour—sometimes more frequently if he was cluster feeding. I felt so disoriented. I couldn’t believe this was my reality. I still feel robbed of those early months. I was in such survival mode—we both were. There were many moments when both of us were sobbing as we tried to figure out how to make breastfeeding work.
With all this going on, rage found a natural place to perch. There was so much out of my control that I didn’t have a say in. And it all felt so unfair. In those moments, rage would creep in like hot lava and erupt. I have a distinct memory of leaning over my son on the living room floor and trying to syringe-feed him, my breasts painfully swollen and needing to be pumped, not being able to feed him fast enough as his screams pushed me over the edge, and rocking back to scream silently over and over again. Some part of me had the sense to call my husband, who rushed home, called my mom, and took over. I spent the day in the bedroom sobbing, vacillating between anger, sadness, and shame. Thankfully, I had enough internal tools to work my way back into my body eventually. But it was tough. And it was painful to be with my son right after. To hold him and feel that I had let him down profoundly. His cries triggered me so deeply that I felt helpless and incompetent.
It’s time to talk about postpartum rage
I wish we had more honest conversations about postpartum rage, and how it consumes and shames us. I wish we had more honest conversations about breastfeeding and infant sleep challenges. I wish we had more honest conversations about high-needs babies and the extra resources needed to care for them.
Far too often, we want to protect birthing folx from postpartum's ugly and painful realities. This does a disservice by setting them up for a sense of failure. I wish someone had told me about postpartum rage, but then I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of it. And that’s it right there. None of us know what it will be like after having our babies. But if more birthing folx are open about their difficult experiences, we can create a culture of unvarnished honesty around this, and fewer mothers-to-be will be blindsided by the inevitable hardships that trigger the shame and rage. I’m sharing my own anecdotes with a role model, talking about these scary thoughts and feelings.
You are not alone
If you feel this way or have felt this way, you are not alone. It’s important to remember that while the rage can be terrifying as you are experiencing it, it's normal to feel this way. Having thoughts of harming your baby does not mean you actually will. Rage is a natural response to feeling out of control and helpless. But if the rage is allowed to fester, it can become depression. Be sure to get help to have the support and reassurance you need.
Support group
If you are looking for support, we have the perfect online postpartum support group in Pasadena, California, for you to cope and normalize postpartum struggles with others going through the same thing.
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