I believe depression is likely to hit when the amount of losses in your life outweight the gains.
As you become a parent there can be a lot of loss. Here’s an example of how my losses vs gains looked at around 1 month postpartum.
I felt overwhelmingly sad over all my losses – a form of grief (which I now know is totally ok to feel – see my post It’s OK to grieve for your old life). In the beginning, babies don’t give a hell of a lot back.
But as time goes on, these scales change. As you take positive steps towards your recovery, for example taking some ‘me time‘ and also as your baby develops and starts to interact with you. Things like their first smile can be a massive gain and you see that things start weighing up again.
This is how my scale might look now, at 10months postpartum.
An nice idea, could be to do a loss/gain list on a monthly basis. See how things change as you and your baby develop.
It’s also a great starting point to talk to your partner about how they are feeling too. You might be surprised at how they have similar or quite different losses. Husbands can often feel as though they have lost their wife – who now dedicates all her time to the baby. You can use this as a talking point to work as a team to improve your gains and reduce the losses.
PND Recovery 
This is a really great way of visualising those feelings that we all experience when we first become parents. I like the way the gains get bigger over time as the losses get smaller. I also like that there’s no pressure to be totally gains-focused, that it’s alright to still experience some feelings of loss even when we have plenty of gains to be thankful for.
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Love this post. It really is true that although there are quite a fair few losses which can really become very overwhelming, the gains are enormous. Great to see it visually represented in this way! Thanks for linking to #coolmumclub lovely x
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Thanks for your comment. I’m a really visual person so love this technique to see how things are changing. It is overwhelming to begin with but slowly things weigh up again. My son is almost walking… seeing his progress everyday is a lovely gain 🙂 xx
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This is such a lovely and thoughtful post! The visual of the scales are really great. The gains are definitely more for me now that my little boy is a toddler rather than a baby #coolmumclub
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