Research, are we ok as moms?

I felt very alone still do and she turns 2 in a couple of days. At 5 weeks pp we got a call that my mil only had a few days left to live. Went to her said our good byes. A couple days later I was hospitalized with appendicitis separated from my baby for 3 days. I cried for 4 hours straight after they told me I would be there for almost a week. Only my husband and some friends visited. My family never came they also never came after the first visit after I had her. Alone and abandoned are the only words that work for what I was feeling besides fear and dread that this is what the rest of mother hood would be for me. So far its correct alone. We are expected to bounce back faster than our mothers and grand mothers did with less support than they got.

I sent you a private response, thank you for sharing!

I feel like for the first year I didn’t really feel normal I just felt like I was on fight or flight mode

I didn’t feel really ok until my son turned two. He’s almost three now & I finally feel like myself again. I still struggle with exhaustion but it’s nowhere near what it was. I was fortunate to have enough PTO to take three months off after he was born but when I went back I struggled being away from him. I left my full time job to work part time remote from home so I could be near him. Even 20 hours away from him was a struggle. I became a SAHM when he was two and that was a game changer. I still didn’t really feel ok though cos that’s when the mom burnout started. We moved to a new town for my baby daddy’s job so we didn’t live near family anymore, didn’t have any friends. Baby daddy works (medical industry) four 12 hour shifts a week then has to sleep all day on his first day off to recover. That leaves me alone with a toddler for five straight days a week. It’s too much. I hardly get alone time, sleep is always a struggle with lots of night wake ups. I want my village!

I want to preface by saying my husband does all of the nighttime feeds and diaper changes so I can get my rest. That being said, even with a (mostly) full night of sleep, I felt nowhere near what I would consider recovered. Mentally I felt almost back to normal after a couple of months, but I was experiencing orthostatic hypotension and shortness of breath up until about 6 months pp. Just in case it potentially helps anyone else reading these posts, what helped me the most was eating enough food and drinking enough water to keep up with breastfeeding needs, and exercising. My body physically feels normal now, but it took about half a year to get to that point.