If you are a new mother, some fear and jumpiness can be part of a body that has just done something enormous. Anxiety that will not switch off, or that gets larger instead of smaller, is worth treating as medical — not as a personality you now have to live with.

This sits beside our note on when joy and heaviness share a room. Depression and anxiety can travel together. They can also show up one without the other.

What people often notice

A mind that will not stop scanning for danger. Trouble sleeping even when the baby sleeps. A sense of dread, irritability, or panic. Rechecking the crib, the locks, the breath. Feeling sure that something terrible is about to happen.

This list is not a diagnosis. Only a licensed clinician can do that. If you have thoughts of harming yourself or the baby, or you cannot tell what is real, call 911 or 988. That is using the right door.

Treatment belongs with people licensed for it

Talk to your obstetric clinician, midwife, or primary doctor. Therapy and, when it is appropriate, medication are clinical decisions. Partners: if she is explaining away a change you can see, believe the change.

Eden is not a mental-health clinic. We will make room for the truth of how you feel, and we will not call it weakness. Request an appointment if a confidential hour would help you say it out loud — then take the clinical next step with someone who treats anxiety for a living.