The Baby Blues

«After the birth of my first daughter I went through a long period in which my mood shifted from one moment to the next: it took nothing at all to send me from the greatest happiness of being a mother, to total despair at not being able to cope, from feeling inadequate, overwhelmed by daily tasks, to enjoying a role that seemed made just for me. These constant mood swings made me feel like I was on a rollercoaster: they were exhausting to live through, so I decided to start psychotherapy in order to experience, more serenely, what I had so wanted. I have to admit it wasn't easy to find the courage to face myself without finding, as I usually did, excuses to justify my behavior. It took courage, willpower, and help from the people close to me — both to look after my daughter in my absence, and to push me to keep going with work that doesn't give immediate results. Still, as the weeks went by, I began to feel calmer, more confident in myself, less at the mercy of events, and instead felt like I was taking charge of my life and of my new identity as a mother. After my second birth, even though I had some baby blues symptoms, especially in the first weeks, I realized they were less intense moments, easier to manage, partly because by then I knew them well!»

The postpartum period is the time in which the woman reworks her separation from the baby (experienced during pregnancy as a part of herself) and rebuilds the identity she lost with childbirth. The postpartum period is generally marked by the onset of depressive-type symptoms. In 80–90% of cases, however, these are considered semi-physiological phenomena — «the interface between normality and pathology» — attributed to hormonal imbalances and referred to as «baby blues». The term situates these elements in the time and emotional dimension of the blues, that is, the work songs of African Americans, with their slow rhythm expressing the suffering tied to their condition as enslaved people. The baby blues is defined as a brief physiological period marked by mood swings, which appears in a high percentage of women who have had a baby, and which manifests with a peak intensity between the third and fifth day after birth.

The distinctive features of the baby blues that set it apart from postpartum depression are: the suddenness of its onset (in the first days following birth) and the transient nature of its symptoms. The positive prognosis of the baby blues often leads people to neglect it, to not give it importance, to downplay its symptoms — which, however, shouldn't be underestimated, even though they usually disappear within a few days. The rapid and spontaneous resolution of symptoms, however, doesn't guarantee that the intense physical and emotional experience the woman went through with the wait for and the birth of a baby has been sufficiently processed at a deeper level.

Indeed, even if the mother tries to hide and downplay the feelings of anxiety and distress she perceives, even if she doesn't want to acknowledge the lack of serenity with which she cares for her child, it's the baby themselves who expresses the distress caused by the inadequacy of the relationship with the mother, through various psychological and physical symptoms: persistent crying, sleep difficulties, feeding problems, a greater tendency to fall ill, and so on.