The First Year of Motherhood Is More Than the Baby

In a baby’s first year, a woman is expected to be everything at once. She is recovering from birth, sometimes from major surgery, while feeding around the clock, getting to know a person she has only just met, keeping a household running and, often within months, returning to work. Somewhere on that list is the one thing nobody schedules: herself.

In the UAE, many women are doing all of this far from home, without the mothers, sisters and aunts who might once have helped carry them through it. And because the baby is fed, dressed and thriving, a mother’s own struggle is easy to miss, sometimes even for her.

The numbers suggest it is more common than many realise. A 2022 study of 457 women across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and Fujairah found that 35 per cent showed depressive symptoms within the first six months after birth.

This World Mental Health Day, we asked three experts what that first year really involves, and how a new mother can take back a piece of herself: her mind, her rest, and her sense of who she is.

Her mind: when it’s more than the baby blues

For Rita Figueiredo, Founder and Clinical Psychologist at Peninsula Psychology, the first step is knowing what is normal. “Up to 80% of women experience baby blues, so feeling tearful, irritable or overwhelmed in those first days is very common,” she says. “These feelings usually settle within two weeks. What deserves more attention is sadness that persists, hopelessness, losing enjoyment in things, or anxiety that makes it difficult to sleep, rest or get through everyday life.”

She is careful about how the UAE figure is read. The study “used a screening questionnaire, so this figure refers to symptoms that warrant further assessment; a diagnosis requires a clinical assessment by a qualified healthcare professional.” What concerns her is how much goes unseen. “When the baby is cared for, and everything appears to be functioning, that suffering can be easy to miss,” she explains. “There is also a tendency to normalize exhaustion and low mood as part of becoming a parent, which can make it harder to recognize when someone needs support.”

Nor is a single six-week check enough on its own. “A single appointment at six weeks, particularly when it centers on physical recovery, leaves too much unexplored,” says Figueiredo. “Babies’ needs change, relatives leave, partners return to work and sleep deprivation accumulates.”

The thoughts nobody talks about

Many new mothers have unwanted, frightening thoughts about their baby coming to harm, and many suffer them in silence. Figueiredo wants that to change. “Having an unwanted thought does not mean someone wants or intends to act on it,” she says. “With intrusive thoughts, a mother generally recognizes that this is something happening in her mind, even when it feels upsetting and difficult to let go of. In psychosis, contact with reality can be affected, so a belief or perception may feel real and the person may have little awareness that she is unwell.”

That distinction matters, because the rarer condition needs urgent care. “Postpartum psychosis is very rare and is a medical emergency,” she says. “Families may notice confusion, hearing or seeing things that others do not, unusual beliefs, or marked agitation and overactivity.” Her reassurance is just as clear: “With appropriate treatment, recovery is possible.”

Her rest: why sleep and recovery are the same thing

Anna Baker, Founder of SleepBaker, says we make one fundamental mistake. When it comes to a baby’s broken sleep and a mother’s recovery, she says: “They’re the same thing, and we treat them separately.”

“No sleep isn’t tiredness with the volume up. It changes how a brain works,” she explains. Exhaustion can blunt joy and connection, including with the baby, which frightens women who fear it means they don’t love their child properly. “Usually it’s exhaustion in a very convincing disguise.”

She is careful not to overstate it. “I’d never say postnatal depression is only tiredness. But I’ve watched mums certain they were failing become themselves again after a few weeks of proper sleep. And I’ve watched others sleep well and still not lift, which is exactly when you know it’s more than sleep, and they need real help.”

Meanwhile, her body is healing. “She’s recovering physically at the same time, often from surgery. Nobody would ask anyone else to heal from an operation while getting up four times a night.” In the UAE, Baker adds, the support that should catch her is often missing: “The village that’s meant to carry a woman through this doesn’t exist unless somebody builds it on purpose.”

Letting go of the schedule, and the guilt

Expectations in the early weeks need resetting. “A newborn has no body clock. It doesn’t develop until around three months,” says Baker. “Anyone promising you a routine at six weeks is selling something.” What to let go of? The internet schedule, the idea that you should have it sorted by now, and the guest list. “You’re allowed to say not this week. You are healing.” Accepting help belongs on that list too, “especially here, where help is available, and there’s still some odd shame attached to using it.”

As for the guilt that comes with every sleep decision, she offers a kinder way to see it: “the parents eaten up with it are, without exception, the ones paying close attention. Neglectful parents don’t lie awake auditing themselves at midnight.”

Three things to try tonight

Morning light. “Twenty minutes near a window before nine. Light is the strongest signal a body clock has, and in this city children get almost none of it.”

A properly dark room. “Not dim, dark. Cover the standby lights, block the gap at the top of the curtain.”

Split the night. “Two of you up at two gives you two wrecked adults by breakfast. Split the night, one takes the first half and one the second, and guard each other’s block like an appointment you can’t miss.”

Her identity: the invisible load

For Shayne He, Regional Director at Momcozy, the first year is less about losing yourself than about making room. “The first year is less about ‘losing yourself’ and more about having to renegotiate who gets space,” he says. The pressure often arrives just as she is changing: “The outside world often starts expecting her to be ‘back’, back at work, back socially, back in her body, back to normal, just as she may be realising that she does not actually want to return to exactly who she was before.” His conclusion is the heart of this piece: “motherhood becomes part of her, without becoming all of her.”

Feeding is where that pressure is easiest to measure, and where it can hurt most. “There are ounces, minutes, pumping sessions, supply levels, weight gain and once something becomes that measurable, it’s very easy for the number to start feeling like a verdict on the mother rather than a description of the baby,” he says. He points to the brand’s own 2026 research, which found that “40% of mothers surveyed named breastfeeding among the hardest parts of early motherhood, while nearly three-quarters described the experience as exhausting.”

Then there is the work nobody sees: the noticing, remembering and deciding that comes before any task gets done. “It’s the difference between giving a feed and being responsible for feeding,” he explains. That is why a well-meaning “just tell me what to do” from a partner can still leave her “still the project manager, just with more admin. Real support shifts ownership of the noticing, not only the doing.”

His practical fixes are small but telling. At home, “a partner fully owning one category, bottles, bedtime, grocery planning, rather than waiting to be assigned individual tasks.” At work, “automatically protecting pumping time in the calendar rather than forcing a woman to renegotiate it every day.”

What real support looks like

Figueiredo suggests watching for “whether she is withdrawing from people, becoming much more irritable or angry, feeling persistently sad, or losing enjoyment in things she usually likes,” and adds that “repeated comments about failing as a mother, doing everything wrong or feeling unable to cope can also tell us something about how much she is struggling.” Her advice is to keep checking in: “Keep asking over the days how she feels, what seems hardest and whether anything is happening that she feels afraid to mention.”

For families far from home, she recommends planning: “I would encourage families to make a postpartum plan covering meals, shared care and responsibilities, time for rest, and boundaries with visitors.” Partners and friends can take on the work of finding help, “because finding support can otherwise become another task on the mother’s list.”

Momcozy’s Shayne He puts it: “Genuine support is support a mother does not have to manage to receive.” In global research Momcozy conducted with Postpartum Support International, “4 in 10 mothers surveyed said they did not feel strongly supported by their community after having a child.” Even so, he says, “The modern village may look different, but its job is the same: to make sure everything does not fall on one person.”

When to seek urgent help

Figueiredo is clear: “Expressions of profound despair, wanting to disappear or wanting to die need to be taken seriously and assessed urgently. Sudden confusion, unusual beliefs or apparent hallucinations also require immediate medical attention. If there is an immediate safety concern or suspected psychosis, help her reach an emergency department, stay with her and make sure another trusted adult is caring for the baby.”

Where to find support in the UAE

• Your own doctors: your obstetrician, GP or your baby’s paediatrician can ask, screen and refer you on

  
  

• National Hope helpline: 800 4673 (800 HOPE), free, in Arabic and English

  
  

• Sakina helpline (Abu Dhabi): 800 725462, free, 24/7

  
  

• In an emergency: call 998 for an ambulance or 999 for police, or go to your nearest emergency department

  
  
  
  

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