Your Postpartum Quiz Results
Even if you are YEARS postpartum, hormone changes can still be impacting how you feel day to day.
According to the answers you gave on the quiz, you’re experiencing some signs of:
High Cortisol
Super common! Over 60% of quiz takers get this result.
Your adrenals are the organ that secretes stress hormones, and they will almost always get out of whack at least temporarily after having kids. So you may have one or more of these symptoms:
Fatigue
Now obviously this is going to be the case if you have a newborn or a baby that’s not sleeping through the night regularly. But I also see extreme fatigue in exhaustion in moms whose sleep is okay-ish, and cortisol is often the cause. This can show up in a couple of ways - dragging yourself out of bed and through the day, or...
Wired-but-tired
Feeling tired all day long but get a gust of energy in the evening and have trouble falling or staying asleep. Baby sleeping through the night but you can’t - is a clear sign of hormonal mayhem!
Decreased stress tolerance
Becoming easily mad/ stressed/ angry/ sad at events that didn’t used to ruffle your feathers before having kids. Flying off the handle for generally mild reasons is a clue that hormones need some help (and that mama needs some space to fill her cup).
Foggy brain
That fatigue from earlier can also go to your brain! If you have trouble finding words, feel like cognitively your thinking or memory has slowed down, this is another sign that we need to focus on cortisol.
Difficulty losing weight
(or weight gain during postpartum) When your cortisol is constantly high, you tend to hold onto baby weight or even gain weight which usually shows up more around your midsection. If this gain is new and showing up after a period of higher stress, it certainly cortisol related. Same goes with the inability to lose belly fat despite proper diet and exercise. It's not all about calories!
Cravings
Cravings usually show up as sugar cravings or salt cravings, depending on which of two flavors of adrenal dysfunction is going on. This feeds into the difficulty of losing weight, and many of my clients find that they are crazy hungry when cortisol is elevated and can't seem to get satiated from their meals.
Frequent illness
Our immune systems are wrapped up with our hormones systems, and one of the first things to suffer in times of elevated cortisol is our immune system. So if you’re getting every single little germy your kid is bringing home from daycare or school, we want to look at this.
Which ones sound like you?
You don’t need to have all of these, but if you recognize a few (and I know you do, because you just took my quiz and here you are!), then it’s time to start working on getting that cortisol under control. Cortisol also deeply impacts many of your other hormones, so we need them all playing nice together!
How and why does cortisol go bonkers in new moms?
I'm so glad you asked!
Basically everything having to do with new motherhood drives up the stress hormone.
You don’t have to be classically “stressed out” to have a stress hormone problerm. Many physical things actually tax our adrenals and can create this imbalance.
Things like...
Pregnancy itself, and the healing of postpartum are stressors on your body that require time and nutrients to heal. Lactation can be seen as a stressor as well, especially if you're not eating in line with what your body needs to support breastfeeding.
Lack of sleep is perhaps the #1 thing that causes cortisol to elevate - both longterm sleep deprivation and just from one bad night!
Nutrient deficiencies (which are very likely in the first 2 years after pregnancy!), skipping meals or cutting calories, sickness and overexercise are the most common things I see that cause high cortisol, in addition to the more classic stuff like being very stressed, overwhelmed and never taking time to relax. So basically everything about being a new parent - so you can see why this is so common!
But COMMON does not mean NORMAL.
Now that you know what's going on, we can do something about it!
Because...
Motherhood is hard enough without feeling like you got run over by a hormone truck 😳
But time isn't the only thing that heals hormone drama. There are simple, effective strategies to balance and calm your body in a way that supports your postpartum body.
The first step is understanding WHICH one to work on ✅
The second step is a targeted plan to get your hormones to play nice.
I'm here to walk you through your Happy Mama Hormones journey!
I'm Alison. A registered dietitian specializing in postpartum and motherhood wellness. I'm obsessed with all things reproductive health, and after experiencing the hormone drama after my first baby, I developed a simple and effective roadmap for healing hormones after baby.
I’m here to show you how to feel good again after baby.
Welcome to my little community—I’m so glad you found me!
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