Parenting

Postpartum Rage Is Real—And ‘After Bedtime’ Wants You to Know You’re Not Alone

January 18, 2026

The newborn stage, at least for the person who just gave birth, has the worst PR of all time. Everyone’s like, “soak it in,” while you’re standing there with a leaky body, a fried nervous system, and a brain that’s suddenly producing intrusive thoughts like it’s getting paid per spiral. And nobody warns you that this can happen even when you love your baby more than anything.

On After Bedtime, hosts Deena Margolin and Kristin Gallant sit with that exact reality. Margolin, who just welcomed her third baby, opens up about her postpartum experience—not the “grateful and glowing” version, but the real one. It’s honest and weirdly relieving, especially if you’ve ever wondered why the fourth trimester feels harder than anyone prepared you for.

The week five crash is real

Margolin says the first month postpartum can feel like a bizarre high: “a lot of happiness and a ton of relief,” with hormones and adrenaline doing the heavy lifting. Then, “it all kind of crashes” around week five. She’s not being dramatic—she’s describing a common pattern where your body stops running on emergency fuel and you finally feel the accumulated exhaustion.

Research backs this up. The postpartum hormone crash—when estrogen and progesterone drop hard after being sky-high during pregnancy—tends to hit around weeks four to six. That’s also when sleep deprivation has fully stacked, the meal trains slow down, the visitors stop checking in, and the reality of this new life sets in.

What makes the timing especially brutal is that week five is often when you finally solve the baby puzzle. Margolin talks about pushing past the “it’s just colic” shrug, advocating harder, and realizing something deeper was going on—then starting reflux medication and seeing a completely different baby within 48 hours. The problem gets solved. The crying finally eases. And right when you think, “okay, we can breathe now,” your hormones drop and your brain goes, “absolutely not.”

Gallant says she had a nearly identical experience. The first five or six weeks were spent frantically trying to figure out what was wrong with her baby, only to finally get answers and feel “pretty good, glowy,” flooded with oxytocin—right before the crash hit.

“This is such bullsh*t,” she recalls thinking. And that reaction makes sense. Because by the time things stop being a crisis, there’s often nothing left in the tank to enjoy it. You didn’t get to bask—you survived. And the grief of missing the newborn experience you were promised is real, even when you’re deeply grateful for the baby in your arms.

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The rage nobody warns you about

Most people have heard about postpartum depression. Some know about postpartum anxiety. Postpartum rage, though? That one doesn’t get talked about much.

Margolin says it hit during a moment that felt impossible to manage. “I had a deadline, which is one of my big triggers…and my baby started crying. And I literally got so overwhelmed. I truly felt that urge of like, ‘I’m going to shake this baby. Like this all just needs to f*cking stop right now.’” Realizing she was past her limit, she put her baby down safely in his crib and stepped away to calm herself down.

If you’ve ever had a moment like that—where your body feels hijacked and your thoughts scare you—you’re in very real company. Research suggests up to 1 in 3 postpartum moms report clinically significant anger in the months after having a baby. And here’s the part that catches a lot of people off guard: that anger doesn’t always aim itself at the smallest person in the room. Sometimes it spills sideways.

Margolin says it showed up most with her older kids this time around. “I was really irritable. Like especially with the two older ones in the beginning,” she says. “And I almost feel embarrassed about admitting this. Like as a therapist, as if I should not be struggling with this. But this is part of being human.”

For a lot of parents, this is where the shame creeps in. The part where you replay everything and wonder why you couldn’t hold it together better. Margolin says she used to get stuck there. Now, she tries to meet those moments with more honesty. “I don’t think I could have done better,” she says. “I was giving it my best. And that’s all I had.”

That mindset shift matters. Because in the thick of postpartum life, “better” is often a fantasy version of you who slept more, needed less, and wasn’t being pulled in six directions at once. Real life looks messier than that. And learning to call a hard moment a hard moment—rather than a personal failure—can be the difference between moving on and spiraling for hours.

The intrusive thoughts are normal, too

Rage is one thing. Thoughts you didn’t invite into your head are another. The kind that pop up out of nowhere and immediately make you think, “what is wrong with me?”

“Definitely still have intrusive thoughts,” Margolin says. “You know, the one where you’re walking by the stairs and you’re like, ‘I’m going to toss this baby over the banister.’” And it’s not always violent imagery. Sometimes it’s pure catastrophe planning. “When the house lights on fire tonight, how do I get all three of them? Who do I go to first? What’s the escape plan?” she says. It sounds extreme, but Margolin is quick to explain where it actually comes from. “It comes from a place of love,” she says. “Because we care so much about our kids.”

Intrusive thoughts are incredibly common in the postpartum period, especially when you’re exhausted and suddenly responsible for keeping a tiny human alive. They’re not desires. They’re not intentions. They’re your brain firing off worst-case scenarios because it’s on high alert.

The key difference is what you do with the thought. Having it doesn’t mean anything about you as a parent. It doesn’t mean you’ll act on it. It means your nervous system is working overtime. Letting the thought pass without assigning meaning to it—without spiraling into shame—is often the most helpful move.

And of course, everyone’s experience is different. If the thoughts start looping, getting louder, or just feel like too much to sit with alone, it never hurts to tap someone in. That could be your partner, a bestie who won’t judge, or your doctor who’s seen this exact thing before. You don’t get bonus points for going through postpartum by yourself.

Want to hear the full conversation? Tune into After Bedtime, streaming now wherever you listen to podcasts.