Mental Health Tips for New Moms I Wish I Knew as a New Twin Mom

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More than anything, I wish I would have had someone share with me a list of mental health tips for new moms before bringing my premature twins home from the NICU.

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mental health tips and support for new moms struggling with postpartum mental health

What I Wish I Knew as a New Twin Mom

I have written a handful of times now about my struggles with mental health as a new mom that developed after a traumatizing month-long hospital stay, emergency c-section, and having NICU babies. Those things combined with being the new, first-time mom to teenie tiny preemie twins played part in my path toward the darkness.

That path continued to get darker and darker after trying to advocate for myself and being turned away by two doctors that I genuinely trusted.

Them turning me away left me feeling hopeless. I was convinced I was crazy. I was convinced that this must just be what motherhood is. That motherhood is a dark cloud that someone everyone else seemed to manage so much better than myself.

Every time I collapsed onto the kitchen floor at 4pm I felt the intense intrusive thoughts of not being enough. That I must be some kind of failure because I couldn’t handle what I was given.

I didn’t want to ask for help again. I didn’t want to speak up again. I didn’t want to feel more pain than I was already putting on myself.

Something no one seems to talk about is just how HARD it is to advocate for your mental health when you are your own worst enemy.

Then when you find the courage to do so, to ask for help, just to be shot down. It feels like a knife being pushed into your abdomen.

That changed in March 2019.

I was so low that I drove myself to my local hospital and sat outside. “I need to be admitted” I thought to myself. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I didn’t want to risk losing my babies. I didn’t know what would happen if I was to walk inside. Motherhood with mental illness is a sick joke sometimes.

But that night I realized I needed help. Both for myself, and for my twins.

The next day I called around asking for local mental health clinics. I came in contact with an outpatient walk-in mental health clinic close by. I made a promise to myself to go in the next morning when they opened.

I was scared. But I went.

Little did I know that clinic would change my life and help me learn how to manage motherhood with mental illness.

They listened. They heard me. They cried with me. And they got me in contact with a therapist and psychiatrist. They helped diagnose me as Bipolar and got me on meds. They helped me realize it was possible and that I deserved the care. That they were there for me. All of me.

Over the last year, I’ve discovered a lot about myself. I’ve gone to regular therapy, found a medication that works for me, and most importantly, found my worth.

It didn’t come without a lot of hiccups along the way. There is no clear path to healing. And I am in no way healed. Managing motherhood with mental illness is something you continue to work at every day.

It’s also something that I wish, so desperately wish, that more people talked about. And not just new parent struggling with their mental health, but the practitioners that are supposed to help us.

You’re Not Alone in Your New Mom Mental Health Struggles

As you have probably gathered through what I have shared so far, one of my biggest struggles with accepting where I was at mentally as a new mom was my mindset of being the only one.

But I hope that if you are in a space where you came across this post, you now know that you aren’t alone, just as I was not alone.

1 in 5 new moms struggle with their mental health postpartum. Yes, 1 in 5.

Here are a few more-common-than-you-think ways that new moms struggle with their mental health postpartum:

Common New Mom Mental Health Struggles

Not understanding the difference between baby blues/PPA/D/R, or really what they are as a whole
The mindset of postpartum mental illness breaking the surface closer to or after the first year of your little one’s life
Separation anxiety & the toll it takes/what it looks like
Hormones running WILD and causing so many things from irritability, to change in appetite, sexual desires, and even hair loss
That anger is a real thing w/ the combination of hormones + very little sleep
Not getting enough rest & assuming all is fine with that
The heavyweight of mom guilt over taking time for yourself to do any and everything
That everyone struggles in different ways
& that you (more than likely) might not understand the emotions but it’s important to let yourself FEEL them

Steps I Took to Overcome my New Mom Mental Health Struggles

Honestly, the greatest thing I did for myself and my mental health as a new mom was accepting that I needed help, and with that, how to get over myself and take that help. That alone is the most important of the mental health tips for new moms I have.

This “help” can come in many different ways from the actual physical help of others, to purchasing items that take some of the stress off (like these from Regalo Baby that I have raved about), to helping yourself by putting your needs at the top of your list next to the needs of your new bab(ies).

Let’s dive into some of those mental health tips for new moms are, as well as some of what has been recommended by other parents I’ve met along the way.

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