What I wish I'd known about ADHD postpartum | Amy Marie Hann (ADHD coach, creator of Master the Mundane)

Three things, from a mom of three who learned each one the hard way.

You expected the exhaustion. You did not expect to stand in the kitchen at 3pm, baby asleep on your shoulder, unable to remember if you’ve eaten today, whether you took your medication, or what time the next feed is.

Amy Marie Hann is an ADHD mom of three raising kids with ADHD, and she has spent the last five years helping moms with ADHD find structure, calm, and genuine confidence in their everyday lives. She is the creator of Master the Mundane, a step-by-step system and support community that helps moms with ADHD manage their home, energy, and daily life in a way that actually works for their brain. She also offers Bye Bye Burnout for moms who are too exhausted to even know where to start. Amy writes weekly at ADHD and Motherhood on Substack and has 195,000+ followers on Instagram.

Inside this guest post, Amy shares the three things she wishes someone had told her about ADHD postpartum, from a mom who has been through it twice and coached thousands of women through it since.

I was diagnosed as a child in the mid-80s and medicated for most of my life. I was 29 during my first pregnancy and 37 during my second, and I can tell you those were vastly different experiences.

The first time around, exactly zero of my real-life friends knew what it was like to have a baby when you have ADHD. I had a therapist and a psychiatrist, but no one to talk to about how to manage my brain without medication. I worked through those questions in complete isolation, carrying a lot of shame about what my choices said about me as a mom.

So when I sit down to write this, I’m writing from both versions of myself: the one drowning the first time, and the one who’d figured a few things out by the second.

This is not going to be a list of “tips for ADHD postpartum” you can find on ADDitude or ChatGPT. You’ve been there, done that. What I want to share is what I wish someone had told me during that unique season of life, both the first time around and with my later kids.

The shame piece

I wish I could say the shame piece is unique to postpartum, but honestly, it’s a central theme in learning to thrive in motherhood with ADHD.

It’s a theme for all of us with ADHD regardless of life stage, but it’s uniquely challenging in motherhood because we care so deeply. We want to show up well for our children and give them the very best, and yet sometimes the needs of our brains prevent us from doing that in the way we always imagined we could.

I wish I could tell you I figured out how to function without my medication so I could nurse for a full twelve months. I didn’t. In both pregnancies, I nursed until the three to four month mark and then switched to formula. By that point, the lack of sleep had really caught up with me, and I needed more support in order to care well for my children.

I have zero shame about that now. But at the time, it was a different story. It felt like I was a less capable mom because of it. I see now that I am the perfect mom for my kids.

There are so many things in ADHD motherhood that are less than ideal. So many things I wish I could give my kids that the Mary Poppins version of me, the one who lives in my brain with unlimited capacity, would be able to give them. I’m an amazing mom, but I am not Mary Poppins.

I have limited capacity. The sooner I can become aware of my own limitations and get the support I need, the better off my whole family is.

I can’t tell you how to white-knuckle your ADHD through a full year of breastfeeding without medication. But I can tell you, with so much love and compassion, that motherhood with ADHD will absolutely require letting go of some things you thougreat ght you’d be able to do.

Maybe it’s nursing. Maybe it’s staying home. Maybe it’s going back to the same job. Maybe it’s sending your baby to daycare earlier than planned. Maybe it’s using the gym childcare before you thought you would.

There will be a gap between the version of how you thought it would look and what your mental health actually needs. That gap will be hard. You will feel sad and disappointed in yourself.

And you will need to choose to believe that prioritizing your mental health is, without question, the best long-term decision for the wellbeing of your family.

Surround yourself with people who support you and believe the best about your intentions. Learning to be your own best cheerleader and advocate is the biggest ADHD motherhood flex there is.

Managing executive function

One of the core working assumptions that has changed my life as a mom with ADHD: my brain can handle around six to seven “taxing tasks” per day when my ADHD is managed well. (I break this down fully in this post if you want the complete picture.)

There are two important things to understand about this framework in the context of postpartum.

First, my brain has a limited capacity for taxing tasks. Taxing tasks are anything that requires executive functioning: decision-making, task initiation, organization, planning. I have a finite amount of mental energy to give toward these things each day.

Second, being able to do those taxing tasks at all requires me to manage my ADHD well. Managing my ADHD well means taking my medication, getting good sleep, maintaining some predictable structure, and getting consistent exercise. These are the prerequisite.

Here’s the problem with having a new baby. It both increases the number of taxing tasks on your plate (tracking feeds, tracking sleep, more medical appointments, more mental load all around) and makes it significantly harder to do the things that help you manage your ADHD in the first place. You are sleep-deprived, off-routine, and not getting nearly enough movement.

Having a new baby is hard and messy. It is also really, really wonderful. It can be both at the same time. I am genuinely thankful for the gift of motherhood.

I share this reality not to talk anyone out of having a baby, but to help shift the narrative from “this is so hard, I must be a terrible mom” to “I have ADHD, and this season is especially hard for my brain.” When you understand the challenges clearly, you can get to the place of “I have unique needs right now and I need more support,” rather than just spiraling in shame.

You cannot compare yourself to other postpartum moms, or even to other moms with ADHD who are not in the postpartum season. During postpartum, your capacity is significantly lower than your baseline. You are giving more mental energy to caring for a newborn while also being less sharp because you are not getting the sleep and exercise your brain needs to function.

Planning for less mental capacity in this season looks like delegating, outsourcing, simplifying, or eliminating as many optional taxing tasks as possible. This might look like:

• Taking a break from travel, entertaining, or hosting houseguests

• Signing up for a meal kit service and handing off that daily responsibility to your partner

• Pausing after-school activities for older kids, even temporarily

• Outsourcing some aspect of cleaning or laundry if at all possible

• Stepping back from volunteering commitments

These don’t have to be permanent changes. With more sleep and structure, you’ll likely be able to add most of them back. The goal is to create margin in your mental load so you have the capacity to actually care for your baby, and yourself.

And as much as you possibly can, protect the things that help you manage your ADHD. Work with your partner to maximize sleep wherever possible, even when it feels like that is not fully in your control.

Stimulation

This one is the hardest to explain, the least talked about, and in my opinion the most important.

Our interest-driven brains need mental stimulation. Without a meaningful outlet, we will go rogue and take on some enormous, ridiculous project that leaves us more drained than fulfilled.

I can best explain this through my own very bad personal decisions.

With my first baby, I planned an elaborate baptism brunch six weeks after his birth. I look back at pictures now and realize I was standing up in front of the church with this tiny baby who looked like he had literally just arrived in the world. He was so small. And I thought this was totally normal.

Not only did I plan the baptism and invite all of our family to town, I also invited our thirty to forty nearest and dearest over for an elaborate Mother’s Day brunch. We’re talking Barefoot Contessa-level spread. It was a stressful, chaotic weekend that required my dad and husband to spend two full days getting our backyard ready for guests after a long DC winter, while my mom spent her whole trip to see her new grandson making Costco runs and cooking in the kitchen.

I had twelve weeks of maternity leave with my precious new baby, and I spent much of it stressed out and consumed by a party that, looking back, really just did not matter.

Why. I needed a project. My combined-type, hyperactive ADHD self does not do well with idleness. Though I was exhausted and foggy, I was still mentally and physically hyperactive and needed a release. Without my medication, my attention went completely rogue. I went all in on the brunch because I had no guardrails.

Here is what I want you to take from this: babies are really boring.

Yes, it is magical and special and you will love them fiercely. But they also sleep a lot and do not move much, and if you nurse, there is a lot of sitting.

Think now, before you’re in it, about what a right-sized challenge might look like for you. Something that will be mentally and physically satisfying without being a drain on you or your entire support network.

My personal tendency is always to go way, way too big. In coaching thousands of moms with ADHD, I find this to be nearly universal. Over time I have learned that I need creative outlets and projects to stay engaged, but I almost always need to bring my ideas down a few notches before I actually execute them.

If you are on maternity leave or staying home with a new baby, you will need some kind of project or creative outlet. Pick something you can work on in small windows of time over those first few months, something that scratches your itch for mental stimulation without consuming everything around you.

What I wish someone had told me

The postpartum season with ADHD is genuinely one of the hardest things I have done. It will test your patience, your sense of self, and your ability to ask for help. It will also be one of the most meaningful seasons of your life.

So here is what I wish someone had told me.

You will have to let go of some things you imagined you’d do. That is accurate self-assessment, and it is how you make room for what actually matters.

Your capacity for taxing tasks will be lower than your baseline. Plan for that. Outsource, simplify, eliminate, and do not apologize for it.

Your interest-driven brain still needs a project. Without one, it will pick one for you, and it will be too big.

The hard parts are evidence that you have a brain that needs different things. Getting those needs met, even when it looks different from what you imagined, is the very thing that makes you a great mom.

You are not Mary Poppins. Neither am I. And our kids are genuinely better off for it.

💬 This week’s question

Name the one thing the Mary Poppins version of you would do that you’ve had to let go of.

Each week, one comment wins a $25 USD Amazon gift card.

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