Baby blues

Baby blues is the name given to a common but generally temporary emotional phase after childbirth. At Alice Espanet’s trial, Dr. Leclercq described it as affecting about 80 percent of postpartum mothers: a period of sadness, unexplained crying, anxiety, guilt, and feeling unequal to the demands of the new situation. The account distinguishes this early phase from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, making duration and severity central to the difference. Its significance in the book lies both in that medical distinction and in the way the surrounding narrative shows how easily the burdens of ordinary maternal life can remain unseen.

Clinical Definition and Course

Dr. Leclercq explained that baby blues is not considered pathological. He attributed it to the hormonal imbalance of the immediate postpartum period, with fatigue and sleep deprivation making the symptoms worse. A mother might cry without an apparent reason or feel that the work of caring for a baby is beyond her; anxiety and guilt are also characteristic. In the usual course he described, the condition subsides by itself after a few weeks.

The temporal boundary matters. If the situation persists or worsens after two or three months, Dr. Leclercq said, medical measures are needed and the condition is understood as postpartum depression rather than baby blues. He described an appropriate assessment as including the mother’s history, her psychosocial circumstances, and tests to rule out physical causes. Treatment for postpartum depression may combine psychiatric medication and psychotherapy, and recovery can take years. The progression can be more severe still: postpartum psychosis may carry a real risk that the mother will harm herself or the baby, and may require immediate hospitalization and round-the-clock care.

Baby Blues in the Trial

Dr. Leclercq’s account was presented during Alice Espanet’s trial, where the defense asked why she had not sought medical help. He had treated her throughout the year and gave extensive testimony on depression and postpartum psychosis, subjects in which he had conducted pioneering research in his native Belgium in the late 1970s. The distinction he drew among baby blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis supplied the court with a framework for considering mental illness and its possible bearing on Alice’s actions; it was not, by itself, a finding that Alice’s condition was merely baby blues.

The evidence also describes Alice’s state during her initial hospital admission. Two psychiatrists who first treated her confirmed that she was in shock and had shown disorientation, amnesia, and denial of reality. Those symptoms belong to the account of her crisis, not to the definition of baby blues. Keeping the categories distinct matters: the testimony sets out a common postpartum phase, a more persistent illness, and a potentially acute psychosis, while the trial asks what could explain Alice’s particular condition and conduct.

Dr. Leclercq added that few mothers sought help for postpartum depression. Research in the United States and Europe, as he summarized it, suggested that the proportion was around 15 percent. The statistic gives the clinical testimony a social dimension: a condition can be serious and prolonged while remaining unreported or untreated. His answer to the defense’s question therefore widened the issue beyond individual diagnosis to the difficulty mothers may have in reaching care.

Maternal Experience Beyond Diagnosis

The Narrator’s account of early motherhood gives concrete form to exhaustion and emotional strain, but does not label her experience baby blues. After three months without sleeping more than three hours at a stretch, repeated weight checks for her newborn, and meticulous attention to the baby’s bodily symptoms, she feels that the identity of mother has displaced her other selves. Walking alone, she feels incomplete and out of place, as if strangers cannot understand that she is a mother simply because the baby is not with her. Even solitary walks do not release her from the child: she remains mentally attached to him.

The narrative also insists on a less dramatic burden than sleeplessness: boredom. Days fill with feeding, changing diapers, trying to settle a crying baby, and checking that he is breathing after he falls asleep. The work is continuous, isolating, and socially undervalued, while time seems to proceed normally for everyone else. This account does not establish a diagnosis; it shows why postpartum distress cannot be reduced to a single visible crisis or to the question of whether a mother loves her child.

That contradiction appears in The Narrator’s thoughts about leaving Erik at daycare for longer. She worries about how Niclas and the educators would judge the decision, but is especially troubled by how she would justify it to herself. At midday, however, Erik notices her entering, crawls quickly toward her, and offers his arms. Their reunion brings her face to face with his tenderness and vitality. She tells herself that she should cherish the moment and wonders whether the intensity of contact with life might eventually appear in her writing, yet remains unsure that she can enjoy motherhood as she believes she ought to. Attachment, fatigue, guilt, and uncertainty coexist; none is presented as a clinical verdict.

Vulnerability, Care, and Meaning

The book sets the medical account alongside a broader challenge to the ideal that motherhood naturally makes women invulnerable. The Narrator contrasts online mothers who describe themselves as powerful, protective lionesses with her own sense of weakness. She feels ready to defend her child, yet knows that vigilance cannot prevent every danger, from an accident or abduction to illness. When Erik undergoes a lumbar puncture, she has to look away as the needle enters his spinal cord, and Niclas embraces her. The test confirms viral meningitis; after a night of observation for his high fever, the parents sit on either side of his cot and speak in whispers while he sleeps.

That episode ends not with a claim of maternal mastery but with Niclas saying that they are doing well and The Narrator resolving that they will do better. She recognizes that what she means is that she herself will do better. Placed beside the clinical account of baby blues, this private admission clarifies the book’s distinction between naming a postpartum condition and judging a mother’s feelings. The medical testimony identifies symptoms, duration, and thresholds for care; the narrative attends to the daily labor, dependence, love, fear, and self-reproach that can surround motherhood without automatically constituting a diagnosis.