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Postpartum depression: when the baby blues don’t lift

For anyone who is pregnant or has had a baby in the last year and does not feel like themselves, and for the people who love them. This page passes on, by name, what the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), MedlinePlus, the Office on Women’s Health (OWH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say: how the baby blues differ from depression, the signs, why it happens and why it is not your fault, who to call, what treatment is like, what helps at home, and what partners and family can do. It builds the questions to ask at a visit. Take only what you need today.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse, midwife or therapist has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 9, 2026 on four government websites: the National Institute of Mental Health’s Perinatal Depression (revised 2023; the Spanish edition, revised 2024), read in English and in Spanish; MedlinePlus’s Postpartum Depression, read in English and in Spanish; the Office on Women’s Health’s Postpartum depression (last updated October 17, 2023), which we found in English only; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Symptoms of Depression Among Women (updated May 15, 2024), read in English. The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own. The sources mostly write about “women” and “mothers”, and where we pass on their words we keep them. The sources differ a little on how long the baby blues last and on when depression usually begins, and the page gives each. What we left out or did not read: the names of the two medicines approved for postpartum depression, which the National Institute of Mental Health’s page gives; the names, doses and side effects of any antidepressant; the Office on Women’s Health’s list of what researchers believe untreated depression can mean for a child, because a list like that can read as blame and the same page says treatment helps; depression in fathers and partners, which MedlinePlus links to and we did not read; postpartum anxiety, obsessive thoughts and trauma after birth, which our sources name only in passing or not at all; the web pages of the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline and of Postpartum Support International (we pass on what the National Institute of Mental Health and the Office on Women’s Health say about them); and what any visit, therapy or medicine costs. We called no number. It saves nothing and loads no tracking.