The baby is five months old and the third meal today has gone the way of the other two. You are not skipping food on purpose and you are not ill; you open the fridge and want none of it. The people you have mentioned it to have all landed on the same answer, which is that this is what this stage is like. Whether they are right is not something you can settle from the inside. What you can do this week is check it against the two things a clinician would check it against: how long after a birth this window actually runs, and whether an appetite that has gone is on a symptom list at all.
Both of those have published answers and both go the same way. The window is longer than five months. A change in appetite is a named item on the symptom lists, not an outlier somebody has to be talked into. Neither fact tells you what is happening to you, which takes a short questionnaire and somebody qualified to read the answers. Between them they retire the two reasons you have been given for leaving it alone.
How long after a birth this window runs
This window runs to the end of the first year, which puts five months well inside it: postpartum depression is a common but serious mood disorder that can begin anytime within the first year after childbirth. The figure that makes people think otherwise is real and says something narrower — most episodes of perinatal depression begin within 4-8 weeks after the baby is born — most rather than all, and a statement about when episodes start rather than about when they stop being possible.
What does end early is the other thing, and their clocks are what separate them.
| What it is called | When it starts | How long it runs |
|---|---|---|
| Postpartum baby blues | The postpartum period, the time after you give birth | Usually go away within a few days to a week; symptoms typically resolve on their own within a few days |
| Postpartum depression | Anytime within the first year after childbirth, most perinatal episodes within 4-8 weeks | Women with postpartum depression generally will not feel better without treatment |
Five months is not the first row, whatever else it turns out to be.
Whether a missing appetite counts as a symptom
A missing appetite counts on both of the symptom lists, and neither list closes. Under a lead-in reading some of the more common symptoms include, NIMH names abnormal changes in appetite or unplanned weight changes alongside a persistent sad, anxious or empty mood most of the day nearly every day for at least 2 weeks, loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities, trouble bonding with the baby, and thoughts of death or harming oneself or the baby. Those are five of the fourteen items on that page.
The shorter list runs under symptoms may include and puts the same thing as eating too much or too little, beside feeling sad or empty most of the time, crying more than usual or for no clear reason, and feeling little or no interest in your baby — three of the nine others. Neither list ranks its items or presents itself as complete, so an appetite that has gone does not need company to belong on it.
This is not a fringe reading of a hard stage. CDC research shows about 1 in 8 women with a recent live birth reported symptoms of postpartum depression, and about 1 in 10 women of reproductive age in the United States reported symptoms suggesting an episode of recent major depression.
One item on those lists changes the timing of everything else here. Thoughts of death, of harming yourself or of harming the baby appear on both, and the page that carries them says where to go on the day you have them rather than at the next visit. If you have thoughts about suicide, or hurting yourself or your baby, get help right away: call 911 or go to your local emergency room, or call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262) to reach the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline. Separately and very rarely, a new mother may develop postpartum psychosis, a medical emergency, which can involve delusions, hallucinations, mania, paranoia and confusion.
Who was supposed to ask you about this
Asking you about it has a name and a schedule. A postpartum depression screening is a standard set of questions you answer to help your health care provider find out whether you have depression related to having a baby, and one of the most common questionnaires is the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, which is 10 questions about your mood and thoughts. It is usually part of a routine checkup a few weeks after the baby is born, which is a window that has already closed behind you.
That is not the only one. Because symptoms may begin at any time during the first year of parenthood, your and/or your baby's provider may repeatedly screen you for postpartum depression throughout the first year of your baby's life — may rather than will, and the baby's provider counts as well as yours. Where that has not happened since the hospital, the instruction for exactly that case is one sentence long: if you have symptoms of postpartum depression before or after your routine checkup, contact your provider as soon as possible.
The first step to seeking treatment is to talk to your health care provider, and a referral to a mental health professional is something you can ask that person for by name. Neither of those asks you to have decided what this is first.
Weight care while this is still unsettled
Weight care is why many readers are here, and while this is unsettled it belongs in that same conversation. An appetite that has disappeared and a medicine described as one that slows the emptying of the stomach and may decrease appetite and cause weight loss pull the same way, and only somebody with your history in front of them can weigh that. The same page carries an instruction for the room: tell your doctor if you are pregnant or are breastfeeding, and if you become pregnant while taking semaglutide injection, call your doctor immediately. Contraception in this window is its own question with its own answer.
A physician can decline, and the evaluation runs the same length either way. A quiet appetite with a named cause behind it is a different situation, and this is not it.
The next visit either of you has
- Write down which items from the two lists above have been true for you, and for roughly how long. The appetite is one line of that, not the whole of it.
- Lead with the sentence rather than working up to it: I have not been eating, and I would like to be screened for postpartum depression.
- Raise it at the baby's appointment if that is the next one booked. Screening across the first year can come from either provider.
- Ask for a referral to a mental health professional by name if the answer stops at reassurance.
- Bring the weight-care question to that same visit, and say that you are breastfeeding if you are.
- Thoughts about suicide, or of hurting yourself or your baby, go to 911 or your local emergency room, or to 988, or to 1-833-852-6262 — on the day you have them, not at the visit.
The people telling you this is what the stage is like are answering a question about the stage, and about the stage they may well be right. It is a different question from the one a screening asks, which is about you and is settled by answering a set of questions — the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, ten questions about your mood and thoughts, is named as one of the most common. That year-long window and that questionnaire exist whether or not anybody has offered them to you, and the sentence that reaches them is short enough to say at an appointment already in the book.
