By Tochi Okafor
I recently had a conversation with a woman that stayed with me. She told me about a night when she turned to her husband and said she could not keep nursing the baby until dawn. She needed sleep. Real sleep. She simply wasn’t feeling like herself.
He stepped in that night, and, importantly, he kept stepping in. Before that night, she said she had been struggling to understand what was happening to her. Nothing was obviously broken. She had a new baby. She was expected to be happy.
Yet somewhere inside, she knew she was not quite herself. One day, while scrolling through social media, she came across an advert for postpartum massage. It prompted her to start reading about what can happen to women after childbirth. The more she read, the more she began to recognise some of what she was experiencing and wonder whether she might be dealing with postpartum depression. That conversation made me think about how little we acknowledge the enormous disruption that comes with having a baby.
We celebrate pregnancy. We celebrate the birth. We celebrate the baby. But what happens to the woman? Pregnancy is not a small thing. I once watched a video online of a woman who experienced temporary hearing loss after childbirth and another who spoke about losing a significant amount of her hair. Some postpartum changes are common and well documented; others are less common. The point is not that every woman will experience the same thing. It is that pregnancy and childbirth can affect a woman’s body in ways that extend far beyond the delivery room. Childbirth itself can be physically demanding — hours of labour, sometimes surgery, blood loss, tearing, stitches and enormous physical exertion.
And then, almost immediately, she is expected to recover while caring for a newborn who may need her around the clock. Her hormones have changed. Her sleep has been disrupted. Her body may look and feel different. Her responsibilities have multiplied overnight. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, she is expected to adjust to a completely new identity. There is an expectation that once the baby arrives, the mother should simply be fine. She has the baby she wanted. She should be happy. She should be grateful. I think we need to challenge that assumption. A healthy baby does not automatically mean a healthy mother.
Sometimes the question we need to ask is not, “How is the baby sleeping?” or “Is the baby feeding well?” It is simply: “How are you?” And sometimes, a woman may not have an articulate answer. She may only be able to say, “I don’t know. I just don’t feel like myself.” We need to learn to listen to that. We also need to understand that emotional wellbeing after childbirth is not merely a matter of “being strong.”
Postpartum depression and other postpartum mental health difficulties deserve proper attention and, where necessary, professional care. Rest, massage, practical help and family support can be incredibly valuable, but they are not substitutes for medical or mental health care when that is what a woman needs. There should be no shame in asking for help.
And this brings me to the role of the partner. I believe the first line of support for a new mother should be her spouse or partner because the person sharing the home and the parenting should also share the responsibility. We need to retire the idea that men are somehow naturally incapable of caring for babies. Fathers can learn to change nappies, settle babies, bathe them, feed them where appropriate, carry them, comfort them and understand their routines.
They can get up at night. They can cook. They can clean. They can make sure Mum gets a few uninterrupted hours of sleep. Of course, every family has different circumstances, and not every couple will divide responsibilities in exactly the same way. But there is a difference between genuinely not knowing how to do something and never learning because someone else will eventually take over. A woman recovering from childbirth should not have to become the manager of her own recovery while simultaneously managing the household and a newborn. We should also have more honest conversations about spacing children.
Women are sometimes asked when the next baby is coming almost before the first baby has arrived. Perhaps we should ask different questions. Has she recovered? Is she ready? Does she actually want another child? How is she coping? Motherhood can be deeply meaningful, but it should not be treated as a compulsory assignment simply because a woman has the biological capacity to have more children. And postpartum support should not be something we improvise only when a woman is already overwhelmed. Why don’t we plan for the mother as carefully as we plan for the baby?
Who will cook? Who will help with laundry? Who will make sure she gets some uninterrupted sleep? Who will accompany her to appointments? Who will simply sit with her? “Let me know if you need anything” sounds supportive, but it still leaves the exhausted woman with the responsibility of identifying what she needs, asking for it and coordinating it.
Sometimes real support sounds more like, “I’m bringing dinner tomorrow.” Or, “I’ll take the baby for two hours. Go and sleep.” Or simply, “How are you really doing?” We also need to stop romanticising maternal self-sacrifice. A good mother does not have to eat last, sleep last, rest last and permanently place herself at the bottom of the list. Exhaustion is not proof of love. A woman does not become a better mother by disappearing inside motherhood.
The woman I spoke to was fortunate to have a supportive husband and family around her. The massages helped her relax and feel cared for. But perhaps more importantly, she had people who noticed her, listened to her and gave her room to navigate a difficult period without making her feel that she was failing. And I think there is a larger lesson here. Sometimes support does more than make life easier. It gives a woman enough breathing room to recognise that something is wrong and enough safety to seek help. So when a woman gives birth, let’s celebrate the baby, absolutely.
But let’s remember the woman who gave birth too. Don’t just bring gifts for the baby; bring food for Mum. Don’t just ask to hold the baby; ask whether she needs to sleep. Don’t just congratulate her on becoming a mother; remind her that she is still a woman with needs, dreams, ambitions and a life beyond motherhood. And before asking when the next baby is coming, perhaps we should first ask whether she has had enough time to heal from the last one.
Because the question shouldn’t only be, “Is the baby okay?” It should also be: “Is the mother okay?” And if she isn’t, perhaps our first response shouldn’t be to tell her to be strong. It should be to help carry some of the load.
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