Kylie Jenner's Story Reminds Us All Postpartum Journeys Are Different
Sometimes it is easy to forget every postpartum journey is different. From pregnancy to pregnancy and child to child, your postpartum experience can be smooth-sailing or can have you—as Kylie Jenner recently shared—“crying for three weeks.”
In a recent teaser for season 2 of The Kardashians, Jenner shared just how much she was struggling with her mental health after the birth of her son. “I should be really happy right now," she tells her sister Kendall. “I just had this new baby, but I cried nonstop for like three weeks.”
According to People Jenner has previously talked about the change in her postpartum period. “This experience for me personally has been a little harder than with my daughter,” she wrote.
“It’s not easy mentally, physically, spiritually, it’s just crazy,” she continued. “And yeah, I didn’t just want to get back to life without saying that because I think we can look on the internet—for other moms going through it right now—we can go on the internet, and it might look a lot easier for other people, and put the pressure on us, but it hasn’t been easy for me.”
So much of the emotional toll of postpartum depression is carried in secret in a society that often puts a premium on having it all together. Jenner spoke frankly in her post that “It’s OK not to be OK. Once I realized that I was putting some pressure on myself…And I just keep reminding myself I made a whole human, a beautiful healthy boy."
“We have to stop putting pressure on ourselves to be ‘back,’” Jenner told her fans. “Not even physically, just mentally, after birth. So yeah, just sending some love. I love you guys!”
In addition to her newborn son, Jenner and boyfriend Travis Scott are also parents to 4-year-old daughter Stormi. Jenner has been open throughout both of her pregnancies about the ups and downs of being a working mom and recently released her own baby line.
If you are expecting and worried about your postpartum period, know you aren’t alone. One way to ease anxiety is to make a plan. Just like a birth plan, decide what you need to prepare and what you want ahead of time in your postpartum plan.
