You're doing something ordinary, and a thought arrives that horrifies you. Then comes the fear about the thought itself: what kind of person thinks that? If you're having scary, unwanted thoughts after your baby arrived, you're not alone, and you're likely not the danger you fear. Here's what intrusive thoughts mean, what they don't, and what genuinely helps.

 It's 9:30 in the morning, the baby is asleep, and you've already stared at the same four walls for what feels like a full afternoon. New motherhood can be boring, and that doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. Here are five less obvious ideas for breaking out of the loop, plus when boredom might be telling you something more.

Something snaps. The dishwasher, the crying, the cup of the wrong color, and suddenly you're shaking and ashamed. If new-parent anger feels intense and unfamiliar, what you're describing has a name: postpartum rage. Here's why it happens, how it's different from postpartum depression and anxiety, and what actually helps.

You took the test. You saw the result you've been begging for. You should have felt relief flood through you. Instead, the fear arrived. If pregnancy after infertility has felt more anxious than joyful, you're not alone, and there's nothing wrong with you. Here's why this happens, what it often looks like, and what genuinely helps.

…if there is one day in particular that is without a doubt incredibly difficult during infertility, it’s Mother’s Day. And the day after. All the social media posts showing the ways your friends and family celebrated and were honored as mothers is simply too much for your heart to bear right now. You have invested so much energy and effort into becoming a mother, with nothing to show for it. Your feelings are 100 percent valid.

You tend to over analyze everything now, and it often takes you a long time to make a decision. It’s not just that though, you also intensely worry about the decisions you’ve made and how they will affect your baby. You’re confused about your symptoms. And since you don’t seem to fit in any box, you feel guilty and like you are failing as a mother.

Needless to say, your birth was nothing like you had hoped it would be. And as a result, you feel cheated. You blame yourself for everything that went wrong and feel betrayed by everyone who was supposed to be caring for you: your OB, the nursing staff, and maybe even your partner. Your sense of trust and safety has been turned upside down.

You try to calm your anxiety by attempting to stay positive. Yet, you cannot help but think of the potential for a negative result. You monitor your body for the slightest sign of pregnancy. And like thousands of other women who are going through IVF, you’re excited, hopeful, anxious, and downright impatient.

The end result of perfectionism, however, is not feeling more accomplished and lovable, but instead feeling more stressed out and anxious. Eventually, you realize that pushing hard is not actually going to get you to the finish line you’ve imagined for yourself. It’s actually only pushing the finish line further away.