Ep.21: The 5 Pivotal Postpartum Moments in Your 2 Years of Postpartum

If you've felt blindsided by how hard a particular moment is in your 2 years of postpartum, this episode of The Postpartum Wellness Show will validate and acknowledge your frustrations. 

Dr Kristal Lau breaks down the five pivotal postpartum moments which are predictable pressure points across your two-year postpartum journey. This is where chaos tends to erupt, emotions run high, and even the best-laid plans unravel. 

Drawing on her medical background and her own raw experience as a mother of two (including an ADHD diagnosis she didn't see coming!), Dr Kristal Lau ditches the toxic positivity and gives you something far more valuable: the truth about what's coming, why it's hard, and why struggling doesn't mean you're failing. 

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EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• The five pivotal postpartum moments are predictable — and knowing they're coming is your greatest advantage. The first week home, the week before returning to work, the first week back at work, the six to eight week postpartum checkup, and any major adjustment point in the two-year postpartum window are all moments of heightened chaos. Anticipating them means you can prepare rather than be caught off guard.
• Your postpartum plan is meant to be revised, not followed perfectly. Plans made before baby arrived will almost certainly need adjusting, and that is not failure; it's just reality!
• Emotional exhaustion is just as depleting as physical exhaustion. Navigating big feelings (guilt, grief, overwhelm, frustration) takes enormous energy. Most of us were never taught how to process these feelings, which compounds the chaos at every pivotal moment.
• The modern system was not built for families — and that is a structural problem, not a personal failure. From inadequate parental leave to fragmented postpartum care to unsupportive workplaces, the challenges of postpartum don't exist in a vacuum. If you feel like you're behind or failing, much of that is by design (unfortunately!).
• The six to eight week postpartum checkup is your moment to advocate for yourself — come prepared. Writing down your questions in advance and asking for the care you need can make a difference in your postpartum recovery.

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QUOTES

" [...] think about these five pivotal moments for yourself in your postpartum journey, so that when you notice these things happening and you suspect [...], there's a pattern here [...] then you have a gear that you go into, you prepare yourself for it, and you are also kinder to yourself during this time."

" [...] changes like this, again, they're temporary, but when you're in the thick of it and when it's happening, it's just chaos. And then a lot of things that you might have set in place just don't work anymore, and you have to change."

" [...]  just because an event or a situation is emotional, it doesn't mean that it takes less energy from you to tackle. In fact, it is very exhausting to have to navigate a lot of feelings, even to let the feelings pass. It's something you kind of have to learn how to do, and a lot of us didn't really le

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Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Postpartum Wellness Show with me, your host, Dr Kristal Lau. Today I want to talk to you about the five pivotal postpartum moments. Now, these moments are not described in any clinical papers or academic papers yet. They are based on my observation when I was doing geriatric medicine, and I noticed that there were certain points in time where my patients and their caregivers and the other family members that they're living with seem to go through some difficult change. And then I noticed that this pattern was repeated as well, or mirrored, in the postpartum journey, both for myself as well as for other moms and families that I've spoken to.

So it's something important to think about for your postpartum two years, because when change comes about, whether for yourself, for your spouse, your partner, or the other family members, and also as change happens for your baby as they're growing up, it is bound to bring some chaos to you. And so, being aware that these little bumps in the road in your two years of postpartum helps you prepare better for what to anticipate around this time. As usual, before we dive in, a quick disclaimer — everything in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. If you have any medical questions or medical concerns, please see your healthcare provider.

So the quick overview of the five pivotal moments: the first one is the first week of being home with your new baby. Whether you are a first-time parent, or this is your second, third, or fourth child, that first week home with the new member of your family is a pivotal moment. The second one is the week before you or your spouse or partner goes back to work, because a lot of preparation needs to be done and a lot of feelings are also involved during this time — for both you and your spouse, your partner, and also if you have other children who are still adapting to the new family dynamics during this time. You know, it's a lot to take in. This is the week before you or your spouse and partner goes back to work.

Now, the third moment is that first week of being back at work. It's one thing to prepare for going back to work, and then that first week itself of being back at work — that's a whole other experience when you're actually stepping away from your family and away from the home. The fourth pivotal moment is around the time of that six to eight week postpartum checkup. Now this is more towards the mother, the birthing parent. It can also affect the non-birthing parent or your spouse or partner, especially if you are recovering from a condition related to the pregnancy and the childbirth process. And the fifth pivotal moment is really any time in these two years of postpartum where you or your spouse and your partner and your other children — if you're having baby number 2, 3, 4 — anytime when you all have to adjust to a new routine or another life event, because things happen during these two years.

Like for myself, my grandmother passed away during my postpartum, my second postpartum journey after having my second kid. So these types of events, these types of changes, they can bring some chaos into your environment and you have to then navigate to find your new normal or a new routine that sticks. Another thing that could bring about this fifth pivotal postpartum moment is the baby's milestones, where they're making a developmental growth, a developmental leap, teething, illness, just chaos. So really the core theme of these five pivotal postpartum moments is just chaos.

It's mostly organised chaos in the sense that you have an idea of what you want to do during this time, because when baby first comes, you have a postpartum plan. But as things go on and you really start to adjust to the new dynamics in your family and to how you do things around the baby and around everyone else, and with everyone else in your family, you'll start to realise that I think I need to adjust and update my postpartum plan, because it all sounded good on paper when we were just talking about it, but now that baby's here and now that we're actually putting the plan into motion, I think we need some adjustments — and that is absolutely okay. Now, the reason for this is we are all human. The human experience is not meant to be static, and things usually don't go as planned. That's just the nature of being human.

And for a lot of you, especially if this is your first time being a parent, and especially for the mother and the birthing parent — remember that your brain has gone through a major change and remodelling during pregnancy, and then now in postpartum. Everything has been preparing you for raising this child, but you honestly have no idea what it feels like to be in this new brain, or to be having all these new synapses and connections in your brain, and everything's firing off and doing as it is intended to do, but you actually have no idea what it feels like. So it takes a moment to adjust. And so plans can be disrupted, plans can change, your postpartum plan can change. And so it's important to realise that at these pivotal postpartum moments, as you are approaching them and as you are in them, to give yourself some leeway, some permission to fail, some permission to try again, and permission to just throw out whatever plan you have and say, you know what, this just doesn't work, we need something else.

Now, I say this because the first week that you're home with a new baby — let's talk about the first pivotal moment. When you're home with a new baby, whether it's your second time around or your fifth time around, it is your first time of being a new parent to a plus one, and you've never done this before. So the dynamics are gonna change. And with other children on board, we don't know how they're gonna react. It's easy to say one thing, you can prepare as much as possible, of course you can talk about it, but once the baby is actually here, that is a whole other story. So the first week home, whether you're a first-time parent or a parent of more babies, it's going to be some chaos.

And for a lot of us so-called mere mortals and peasants of this modern kingdom, we don't always have all the resources that the rich folks have. You know, we make do with what we have. We create the community as best as possible around us, the village around us. When we can, we try to hire some help. If we have friends and families that we trust, who are reliable, who are good for our mental health and our physical health, and if they can come to us in these first couple of weeks, then that's lovely — you get more support. But regardless, that first week home will be chaos. Now, how much chaos? That again depends on the resources that you have and how things can be set up for you. So you make do with what you've got.

So allow yourself this time to be messy. Allow the feelings to come. Allow everyone mistakes to be made, because we're all trying to find our place in this new family dynamic. And honestly, if you argue, if you have a disagreement — allow that to happen. You're only human, you're frustrated, and the birthing parent, the mother, has just gone through childbirth. You're tired, you're in pain, you're uncomfortable, and so emotional, because a lot has happened — not just hormones, but a lot has happened. And then for the spouse, the partner, and the non-birthing parent, you've watched so much happen, and unfortunately till today, 2026, we still don't have enough guidance for our fathers and non-birthing parents on how to invite them into this space properly and how to provide them the care as well, especially for first-time fathers and first-time non-birthing parents. We don't have enough for them. So everyone's trying to find their place during this time.

So allow the messy to happen and allow the messy to come out, and give yourself permission to work through the messy as well. This is temporary. Just like a lot of the hard stuff that happens in parenting in general and as our kids grow up, a lot of these things are temporary. But also, being aware that this can happen will help you prepare and remind yourself to give yourself grace. Because sometimes, honestly, in the moment of chaos, in the moment of frustration and anger and all of the feelings, you're probably not going to be able to put on your logical hat and switch gears to the logical brain, because we are driven by emotions as well. So if the emotional outburst happens and all that, just allow yourself some grace during this time. So that's the first week home.

Now, the second pivotal moment is the week before going back to work. Now, the reason there are a lot of feelings and chaos during this time is because depending on the type of parental leave that you have in your country, you might have a couple of years — and that's great. So then this week before going back to work could be a year or two years later. Some places allow you up to three years, give or take, of parental leave. Then you're pretty much out of that big postpartum two years, and it's a lot easier in terms of not having such big feelings about leaving a brand new baby behind. So that's a different preparation and different feelings around it if you are able to get such long parental leave. But for most countries — I know in the US there's not much parental leave, it's getting better — in Malaysia you have a baby that's about three months or four months old when the mom, the birthing parent, is going back to work. And then for dads and the non-birthing parent, some places still have no parental leave at all for them. So you're hopping back to work like the next day after your baby has just arrived, and you don't have time. So for parents like that, your first week home with the new baby and then going back to work kind of clashes together, which overwhelms that whole moment for you.

So a big pivotal postpartum moment happens the week before going back to work, because so much preparation — both emotionally and physically — and arranging logistics can feel very overwhelming and frustrating for sure. And then if you think about the mother and the birthing parent, you'd be like, wow, crap, I'm probably gonna be home by myself. Especially as a first-time parent, I was definitely terrified. I thought, I'm gonna be home alone with my first baby ever, and I've got two dogs as well, and I was like, how am I gonna do this? Sure, I'm a doctor, I have the knowledge, but now I actually have to do it, and I have to do this every day on top of sleep deprivation and just pain and discomfort. It absolutely can feel very overwhelming.

And then really soon after that, you kind of go into the third pivotal moment, which is the first week of being back at work. And of course, for the mom and birthing parent who has to go back to work, that preparation time the week before is of course very difficult. And then if you're nursing or breastfeeding, how are you gonna arrange all of that? It's a whole logistical challenge and mental exercise to get all things organised. And then that first week of being back at work, you're actually away from your newborn, away from your growing family, and that's hard. Again, very emotional.

You know, since the start of this episode, I've talked about chaos during these pivotal moments. I've talked about how there's a lot of feelings involved for everybody, and it truly is. And here's the thing though — just because an event or a situation is emotional, it doesn't mean that it takes less energy from you to tackle. In fact, it is very exhausting to have to navigate a lot of feelings, even to let the feelings pass. It's something you kind of have to learn how to do, and a lot of us didn't really learn these skills growing up. As adults, we kind of just wonder what we're gonna do with these feelings, and when you don't know what to do with them, it becomes very overwhelming.

And naturally you want to stay close to your new child. You want to be close to protect them. It's just the instinct that we all have — both mothers, fathers, the birthing parent and non-birthing parent. So naturally, the first week of being back at work, you're constantly gonna be thinking about your child, you're constantly gonna be wondering what they're doing. All of the guilt will come — a hundred percent. It's just a matter of how we are going to navigate and manage that guilt. And remember, your brain has remodelled, as I've mentioned earlier, and we'll go into this in another episode. Your brain has remodelled to prepare you — both the mother and the father — it has gone through this process to prepare you for raising your children. So naturally your entire focus and desire, driven by your brain, is going to be focused on the child.

So if you're not productive at work that first week back, if you're just feeling kind of foggy or like you're just not into it and not doing the work that you normally did before, like you're not at the same productive level — that's because you have been rewired to prioritise your child. But our modern society dictates that you've got to go back to work. And unfortunately, our societies, for some reason, for centuries, have been socially conditioned to devalue raising children, to devalue children, to devalue parents. So of course you're going to feel like you're behind. And then your employer or colleagues may say, oh well, you know, see what happens when you have a child — you can't really function very well. It really isn't a great space to be in. And of course, if you have great employers and colleagues, then congratulations, I'm glad that you have that support system. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of us who don't have that kind of supportive work environment.

So anticipate that during this time, you are probably going to feel a lot more exhausted than usual, a lot more frustrated than usual, and just feeling like a fricking failure, honestly, because you just have so much to do. But it'll pass. It'll pass because you'll figure out how to work out the logistics, how to work out the schedule, and this is something you have to be in it to try and then adjust to see what works for you. So yes, part of the postpartum planning is like, when I go back to work, this is kind of what I expect — but allow, again, space to change those plans. And sometimes after going back to work for a bit, you might say, you know what, actually, screw this, I don't want to be at work anymore. And then you can make a decision then.

But it is very challenging in our modern society. And I know today's episode might sound a little bit more darker or gloomy in terms of — I'm just throwing all the chaos at you and telling you how challenging this time is. But at the same time, I don't want to sugarcoat things and pretend like, you know, ganbate! It'll be fine. Ka Yao, add oil, be okay, be all good — because toxic positivity brings us nowhere as well. We need a balance of all the things so that we can achieve that balance within as well, and you can navigate these moments appropriately. So I just want to give you an insight that there are a lot of challenges along the way that you'll face, and on many days, many times, it might feel like more negative than positive. But it is also because we all exist within a system and a structure that is not optimised and has not been created for not only children, but for families, let alone the elderly or the disabled. We exist in that type of system and environment, so it is hard. I just wanted you to be aware of that so that you can give yourself some grace.

So now as we talk about the fourth pivotal moment a little bit more — that is the week of the six to eight week postpartum checkup. Now, the reason I say that this time is a pivotal moment where chaos can reign again is because, depending on — and this is more specific to the mother and the birthing parent — depending on how your pregnancy and your birthing journey went, if you had any complications or stitches or tears, things like this, it can be a bit of a wrecking moment. Because you go in and you get the checkup to get a sign-off for a clean bill of health, so to speak, and then off you go to continue the rest of your motherhood and parenthood journey. But this is also when they do the depression screening for most clinics. And if you're still struggling, then the question is — do I bring this up? How do I discuss my concerns and my worries with my OB-GYN and my midwife? And it can become also a tender moment where you want to discuss all the things — talk about your pelvic health, like I want to get some rehab. In my country maybe it's not a gold standard, it's not part of the postpartum recovery process — how do I ask for it? What do I ask for during this time? Can I ask for these things? It's really a lot of questions.

So for this particular time, I just want to encourage you to centre yourself, because at the end of the day, your baby and your young child is dependent on you for a while, and that's just the nature of the mother-infant dyad, where a lot of times the young ones don't see themselves as a separate individual to their mother and their parent yet — that's part of the process as they grow and achieve their milestones. And also, I talked about the rewiring of your brain and how the priorities have shifted. It's natural that you just focus on everything with your child. So this is where you have to really tap into that more logical, rational side and just say, okay, I need to think about myself. I need to ask these questions. Write them down.

Keep a little notebook so that you can bring it along to the appointment, because that brain fog postpartum — or the so-called mum brain, which I don't really like to say in a negative connotation, that's how I've heard it and how I've talked about myself as well, until I learnt more about how amazingly our brain has remodelled, which is so cool — you might forget certain things because the priority has shifted to the infant and to the baby. So make sure you have a notebook, or any questions noted in your phone. Put everything in there so that even if you don't fully remember, you can open that up. Say your appointment is next week — you can go through your notes and see what's really important to you, what you want to ask your OB and your midwife, and then you have a more solid list going in to ask about all these things and to advocate for yourself.

Unfortunately, yes, we're in 2026, and yes, women, mothers, and parents have been giving birth literally since the start of the human race — but we're still here today with insufficient care and fragmented care. So until things improve, let's work together. And with this episode as well, even if it's a simple encouragement from me to say advocate for your health and ask — if that's the least you can do, then it's still better than nothing and not asking. So that's the fourth pivotal postpartum moment — the week of your six to eight week postpartum checkup.

And now the last, the fifth pivotal postpartum moment — that is when you've got anything new to adjust to during the two years of your postpartum. Now, if you're wondering why I keep saying two years for postpartum, that's how I define it for many reasons, and I explained all of that in episode 17. So please go revisit that, and I set my case for you there on why postpartum should be viewed as two years. So any time there's something new, you are frankly going to go through this quite often, and it can be just super, super frustrating, because you have basically tried to set up new routines. And I say routine, not schedule, because schedules are a bit tricky — schedules mean you go by time. But a routine is more like, it doesn't matter if the timing shifts; a routine is I do this first, this second, this third, and then it becomes routine, becomes habit, because you have a flow of how you do a task to achieve the outcome. That's why you have a bedtime routine, you have a morning routine — all those types of things.

So with babies this young, and with just life happening to you as an adult, your routines could be disrupted, because things change — especially when the babies grow, or with teething. Something that has been working well for say a month just gets completely disrupted, especially when the baby's sleep patterns start to change again, because as they grow, their brains grow and the sleep patterns are going to change. And that adjustment time and that change can be very frustrating and very exhausting.

And the first time the baby gets ill — oh gosh, that's around-the-clock caring for the child. I've had to hold my kids when they were babies — they would sleep on me and I'd be sitting upright in the rocking chair because they couldn't breathe as well. Despite getting all the suction and taking all of the phlegm and the boogers out, sometimes that's just the way it is. And then teething could hurt them — they just want to be comforted, just want to be held. And changes like this, again, they're temporary, but when you're in the thick of it and when it's happening, it's just chaos. And then a lot of things that you might have set in place just don't work anymore, and you have to change.

And for me, I actually got diagnosed with ADHD after having my second child — about a year and a half later, yes, still within that two-year timeframe of having my second child — because it was such a struggle where everything seemed to be falling apart after a few months, and I felt so hopeless. I was like, what is going on? Am I such a terrible mother? I can't even keep up — this is literally my second rodeo, what is going on? And then I discovered, oh, I have ADHD. Okay, great. But that helped to explain a lot of things, and that also helped me to then take more specific actions to better protect my mental health. And when pivotal moments were coming up, something was about to happen, I could allow myself some leeway — to drop things for a moment or allow things to be messy for a moment. And then you pick things up again later.

I just want to encourage all of you to have a think about these five pivotal moments for yourself in your postpartum journey, so that when you notice these things happening and you suspect, oh, this is about the time, there's a pattern here and I've noticed this pattern, something's coming up — then you have a gear that you go into, you prepare yourself for it, and you are also kinder to yourself during this time. Then you just ride it out, and then things go back to either a new routine or the old routine that had worked before.

Before I leave you, I want to let you know I have a little checklist for these five pivotal moments, with some ideas on essentials that could help you — to double-check on your sleep, double-check on your snacks, double-check on basics at home, and also a financial review. Because at the end of the day, for us mere mortals — and P.S., if I ascend into the higher echelons of our modern kingdom, I will not leave you all behind, you're all coming with me — but for now, I'm a mere mortal. Financial reviews are so important because that does dictate how much we can do for ourselves and for the family and for our baby and children, which can impact how we're feeling and our mental health as well. So always just have a quick checklist. Please go and download this — it's free, you just have to join the hub, also for free, and then you can access the checklist from there.

So with that, here are your five pivotal postpartum moments. Share with me if you have noticed this pattern in your journey, or if you're going through something like that right now. How are you feeling about it? Do you have any tricks that you use to help yourself feel better during this time, or to just ride it out? What worked, what didn't work? Share with me — I would love to hear from you. Until then, take care. I'll see you in the next episode.