Before we get into differentiating the two, let’s first discuss postpartum depression. What is it?
Postpartum depression is a mental illness that usually develops after giving birth. It can lead to intense feelings of loss, emptiness, or sadness. Also, it is important to take postpartum depression seriously because if left unchecked, it might impede a mother’s capacity to live normally and fruitfully after giving birth. It can also cause mothers to feel disconnected to their baby, as if the child isn’t hers. Postpartum depression can also result in self-harm, suicide, and harming others.
Is it Baby Blues or Postpartum Depression?
The difficult part of answering the question, “Is it baby blues or postpartum depression?,” is that they usually share the same signs.
As stated earlier, the body’s hormones levels drop after giving birth. This sudden drop can often lead to sadness and mood swings. This phenomenon is what we know as the “baby blues.”
If you find yourself crying, anxious, irritable, or overwhelmed after giving birth then that still falls under the baby blues. What’s important to keep track here is that baby blues will only last for two weeks after childbirth at most. This means that if you experience these feelings for longer than that time, it has developed to postpartum depression.
In addition of not going away, postpartum depression feels more intense than the baby blues. These feelings can be severe that sometimes they might stop you from functioning on a daily basis. In addition, unlike the baby blues, postpartum depression can begin even before giving childbirth.
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