Missing Life Before Baby (While Loving Your Baby Completely)

“I miss my old life before baby.”

Maybe you’ve said it quietly to yourself, or typed it into a search bar without saying it out loud to anyone. Missing your life before baby, while loving your little one to the moon and back at the exact same time, is completely normal. It’s also hard.

Maybe it’s the row of books on the shelf you haven’t touched since your little one was born, or the TV show you realized you’re two seasons behind on. Maybe it’s the clothes you used to fit into, an unhurried afternoon, or a real conversation with another adult. Or maybe it’s something bigger that you can’t quite name: a sense of freedom, of competence, of feeling settled in your own life.

Why nobody says it out loud

We’re expected to love parenthood and love our little ones wholeheartedly. We can love our kids wholeheartedly and still miss parts of our lives before them. If parenthood is something you wanted for a long time, this can be especially confusing. Why would you miss your old life when you have the thing you wanted so much?

Our public conversation about becoming a parent doesn’t leave much room for nuance. Social media tends to show either bliss or jokes about parenting mishaps, with very little in between. Western culture also has few rituals that mark the transition into parenthood. Baby showers can be lovely expressions of a community’s commitment to its newest member, but they celebrate the baby more than they honor the parent’s own transformation. Add limited or no parental leave and a quick return to work, and there’s little time or space to process any of it. Together, these factors make it much less likely that a parent who feels confused, ambivalent, or nostalgic will say so out loud.

Missing your old life isn’t the same as regretting your new life

You might be worrying that missing your old life means you don’t want your new life. The reality is a lot more complicated. It might help to see what you’re feeling as a kind of grief. When life changes this much, it’s natural to mourn the version of yourself who had more time, more sleep, and more say over her own days. Grieving that version of yourself doesn’t mean you’re wishing your baby away. Love, joy and loss can show up together, even at the exact same time, when the transition is big, and parenthood is a big transition. Mixed feelings are a sign that something has changed, not a sign that you’ve done anything wrong.

Coming to parenthood later, after building something

For those of us who became parents later, after building lives, relationships, and careers over a decade or two, the transition can be both easier and harder. We may be more mature and better at understanding and regulating ourselves. But our routines have been our routines for longer, and our sense of ourselves as competent adults is more firmly entrenched. It has also been a long time since we went through the upheaval of adolescence and young adulthood, so a similar upheaval now can feel especially disorienting.

Matrescence, or becoming a mother or parent

The anthropologist Dana Raphael, and later psychologist Aurélie Athan and others, use the word matrescence (along with patrescence and the gender-neutral parentescence) to describe the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual transition into parenthood. Researchers and clinicians in the perinatal field use the term to honor how complex this process is. Some describe the birth of the mother or parent alongside the birth of the child. The suffix -escence, shared with adolescence, signals a deep, all-encompassing developmental shift. Neuroscientists have even found that the brain changes during matrescence in ways that parallel adolescence. You are, quite literally, becoming someone new.

What might help

As with adolescence or menopause, simply recognizing how big this transition is can help you make sense of what you’re feeling. A few things that can help:

Get specific. Try naming the complicated feelings you’re feeling, perhaps at the same time. Love and nostalgia for a previous life? Grief and joy and exhaustion all wrapped up together? You might also name some specific things you miss.

Build small bridges back to who you were before. You probably can’t get back an entire unhurried afternoon right now. Ten minutes with a book, a weekly walk alone, or one show that’s just for you can remind you that the person you were is still there even as you and your life are changing dramatically.

Tell someone supportive. Telling a partner, friend, or other parent “I love my baby and I also miss my old life” often brings relief, and frequently a “me too.”

Try a moment of self-compassion. First, notice the thoughts that come up about parenthood, especially the complicated, ambivalent, or negative ones. Next, remind yourself that matrescence is a complicated process most new parents go through, so you’re far from alone. Finally, offer yourself some kindness. Imagine how a close friend or loving relative would talk to you about these feelings, and try saying those words to yourself.

When it might be something more

Missing your old life usually comes and goes. It can coexist with real moments of joy and connection with your baby. Sometimes, though, it’s part of something heavier. If you’re consistently feeling low, hopeless, numb, or anxious, losing interest in things you used to enjoy, or struggling to connect with your baby for more than a couple of weeks, it’s worth reaching out. Postpartum depression and anxiety are common and treatable, and about 1 in 8 women in the U.S. report depressive symptoms after giving birth.

Talking to a therapist can help. For more immediate support, you can call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262), which is free, confidential, and available 24/7. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911.

If you recognize yourself here, you’re not alone. You can book a free 15-minute consultation below.

Sources

Athan, A., & Reel, H. L. (2015). Maternal psychology: Reflections on the 20th anniversary of Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. Feminism & Psychology.

Bauman, B. L., Ko, J. Y., Cox, S., et al. (2020). Vital signs: Postpartum depressive symptoms and provider discussions about perinatal depression — United States, 2018.

Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity.

Orchard, E. R., Rutherford, H. J. V., Holmes, A. J., & Jamadar, S. D. (2023). Matrescence: Lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Raphael, D. (1975). Matrescence, becoming a mother, a “new/old” rite de passage. In D. Raphael (Ed.), Being Female: Reproduction, Power, and Change (pp. 65–71). De Gruyter Mouton.