The Worry That Doesn't Switch Off: Understanding Postpartum Anxiety
You checked on the baby nine times last night, even though the monitor was on and everything was fine. You’ve replayed the same “what if” scenario in your head a dozen times before breakfast. You feel like you can’t relax, even in the rare moments when nothing is actually wrong.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not being dramatic, and you’re not “just a worrier.” You may be experiencing postpartum anxiety — one of the most common, and most under-recognised, conditions of the fourth trimester.
What it is
Postpartum anxiety isn’t the occasional new-parent nerves everyone warns you about. It’s a persistent, often physical, sense of dread or hypervigilance that doesn’t ease even when your baby is safe, fed, and sleeping. It can show up as racing thoughts, a tight chest, difficulty sleeping even when the baby is
asleep, constant checking behaviours, or a feeling of being permanently “switched on.”
Unlike postpartum depression, which tends to be better known and more openly discussed, postpartum anxiety often hides in plain sight. It doesn’t always look like sadness — it can look like a mother who seems extremely competent, organised, and on top of everything, because vigilance is exactly what
anxiety produces. That’s part of why it’s so often missed by the people around her, and sometimes by the mother herself.
Why it happens
The postpartum period is a perfect storm for anxiety: dramatic hormonal shifts, chronic sleep deprivation, and a brand-new, high-stakes responsibility that never fully switches off. Add in the isolation many new mothers feel, and a culture that frames constant worry as simply what “good
mothers” do, and it becomes easy for a normal amount of concern to tip into something more persistent and harder to shake.
How common is it
This is the part most mothers don’t hear until they’re already in it: postpartum anxiety is not rare — and it may be even more common here in Singapore than global figures suggest. A 2022 study of mothers at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital found anxiety symptoms in 56.7% of postnatal participants
screened, compared to a pooled international estimate of around 15% from earlier meta-analyses. Local researchers noted this local sample skewed higher partly because they screened mothers repeatedly across their pregnancy and the postpartum period, catching more cases than a single one-off screen
would. Even accounting for that, it points to anxiety being widespread, and likely under-detected, among mothers here.
In other words: if you’re feeling this way, you are in the company of a very large number of Singaporean mothers who felt the same and rarely said so out loud.
A note on intrusive thoughts
Anxiety sometimes sharpens into something more specific: a sudden, unwanted image of something terrible happening to your baby — dropping them on the stairs, a car accident, a fall. These are called intrusive thoughts, and they’re not a separate condition so much as anxiety’s hypervigilance taken to its
most vivid point — though they can also show up with other emotions such as rage or sadness. Research suggests many new mothers experience them in some form. Having the thought is not the same as wanting it to be true, and it doesn’t mean you’re a danger to your baby. However, if these thoughts
come with an urge to check obsessively, avoid normal caregiving, or feel compulsive rather than simply distressing, that’s worth raising with a professional specifically.
When to reach out
A little worry is part of new parenthood. It’s time to talk to someone when the anxiety is:
- Persistent — present most days, not just occasional bad moments
- Physical — affecting your sleep, appetite, or ability to catch your breath
- Interfering — making it hard to function, rest, or enjoy small moments with your baby
- Accompanied by a sense that you can never fully relax, even when your baby is safe
You don’t need to wait until it feels unbearable. Postpartum anxiety is highly treatable — through therapy, community support, and sometimes medication — and the earlier it’s addressed, the sooner the “on” switch can finally rest.
If any of this sounds like you, reaching out to a mental health professional who specialises in perinatal care is a reasonable, sensible next step — not an overreaction.
Sources: Dennis, C. L., Falah-Hassani, K., & Shiri, R. (2017). Prevalence of antenatal and postnatal anxiety: systematic review and meta-analysis.
The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 210(5), 315–323.
https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.116.187179 ; Quah, P. L., Poo, Z. X., Chen, H. Y., Chua, T. E., Tan, L. K., & Tan, K.H. (2025).
Perinatal mental health in Singapore-prevalence, knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Frontiers in medicine, 12,1623596. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2025.1623596