Processing Differences and the Greatest Hormonal Shift Known To Womankind
On delayed processing, dissociation, the postpartum hormone shift, and what gets missed when no one knows the difference.
I’ve sat with a lot of women as they move through one of the most intense and transformative moments they will ever endure.
Sometimes I’m holding a leg, sometimes I’m holding her hand, empowering her with each push, and other times I’ve taken a step back to capture each beautiful moment.
The moment the baby arrives is the moment that everyone’s looking at. Everyone’s attention is captivated by this new entity of life.
But I see her. I see that she is processing, deeply, slowly, almost as if she’s replaying every detail back in her head. Feeling every sensation. Sensing the intense wave of change about to overturn her.
She looks emotionally flat. Like the words or feelings have not yet come to her. Like the room around her was moving, but she was stationary.
She appeared fine. She seemed to be holding it all together. second by every second, the nurses and doctors around her began to ignore her as a part of the process instead of involving her in this early sacred practice.
Suddenly they stopped narrirating, they stopped asking for consent, they would all move in a coordinated, chaotic manner, communicating with one another but not to the mother.
This is the moment she became secondary.
And that comes at a cost.
Hi, I'm Abigail. I'm a neurodivergent doula, childbirth educator, and the founder of Mind the Bump. I burned out because the perinatal care system was not designed with the sensitive person in mind, and I spent a long time trying to fit myself into a model of care that was never built for people like me or the clients I served. I built Mind the Bump to change that. This work lives at the intersection of nervous system safety, neurodivergent experience, and the real, embodied reality of moving through birth and early parenthood as a highly sensitive person. If this resonates, consider subscribing or share this publication.
Present in the room, emotionally and physically overwhelmed, still processing.
There is a critical distinction that I think needs to be named that will preserve the experience of more women as they move through birth and immediate postpartum. And that is the difference between a dysregulated state and delayed processing.
Many neurodivergent and highly sensitive people experience delayed emotional and intellectual processing.
Delayed Processing: Deep nuanced comprehension of external and internal stimuli that requires extra time to comprehend and emerge.
This is like what I described above. She is present but also in deep thought. And the expected emotional outburst is paused.
When I ask these mothers how they’re feeling, they often don’t have the words to describe it yet. Because I see her, and I know that this isn’t just a lack of EQ. It just means she needs time. And let me be clear: her presence should never be discounted.
She still deserves to be a part of the process fully. That means helping her bring the baby up to her chest, show her how to clean the baby (if thats what she prefers; preferences come first), helping her latch baby (not just doing it for her), encouraging her and her partner. Involving her in her own story.
Differences in processing is misunderstood too often as dissociation if there is no one there to see otherwise. Dissociation is a dysregulated state. It is not the same as delayed processing. However, delayed processing can quickly become dissociation if her nervous system never received the safety it needed. If dissociation is ignored or written off as normal, you are allowing nervous system to wreak havoc in her mind and body. You are impeding the critical bonding hours between her and her baby.
Dissociation: A disconnect from the mind, body, and spirit. Often described as “out of body”.
Dissociation requires a different approach. She needs grounding, she needs reassurance, and safety she can retrieve back to. Something has to change. The room needs to quiet. The lights need to dim. The people need to leave. If the room is still chaotic and overwhelming, her nervous system will not retreat back.
And every moment we miss on bringing her back to her body and her baby, she is missing out on the early moments of motherhood. And for some, they resent that for the rest of their lives.
Not to get dark, but it really is that serious.
Nothing about the postpartum hormone shift is subtle.
For even the most typical nervous system this transition is enormous.
For highly sensitive and neurodivergent people, who already tend to process internal signals with more intensity, this is not just a hormonal event. It is a full-system recalibration happening at the exact moment they are also meeting their baby, recovering from birth, establishing feeding, navigating a new identity, and existing in an environment that is loud and bright and full of people with opinions.
So imagine… the horror of that dreaded hormone shift. What feels like a wave to most feels like a monsoon to us. And some barely get up for air. Not to mention that what had been delayed in the beginning is now compounding on top of each event making it that much more intense and excruciating.
The gap between what she is feeling on the inside and what the world expects her to look like on the outside can be enormous, and most of the time, nobody warned her. Nobody told her it would feel like this, or that feeling it this intensely did not mean something was wrong with her. That gap, between her actual experience and what she thought she was supposed to experience, is where so much quiet postpartum suffering lives.
This expectation is something she can pick up on, even if its subtle. And so she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tell anyone how hard it is. She doesn’t ask for help. She tries to figure it out quietly while her nervous system is slowly eating her alive. The mask just becomes heavier and all more consuming, to the point where she doesnt know who she is, where she went, or how to get back.
The guilt, shame, and resentment that ultimately follow when safety is just out of reach.
The bonding window has become more of a priority in recent days, but in many ways we’re still missing a critical piece. We’ve developed standards that protect skin-to-skin contact “when its safe to do so”, but from what I’ve seen, it’s more of a controlled procedure that neglects the mother as the primary actor in this story.
Picture this: Mom pushes her baby out. Before she has drawn her next breath, there are five people at the bedside. who are they? Towels. Hands. Movement. Someone opens her gown and places the baby on her chest while still rubbing the baby down. I didn’t ask for this. The cord is cut at fifty seconds, delayed, technically, while the doctor is still working and a nurse is already asking questions she cannot hear. And then the baby is gone. To the warmer. For measurements. For weight. For the things that can, in most cases, wait.
Ten minutes pass.
Where is my baby? Where am I?
They bring him back. Someone puts him to the breast. It pinches. It is uncomfortable and strange and she was not taught how to do this, and she does not know how to ask, and she is still somewhere between the birth and this moment, trying to find the familiarity. Processing slides into dissociation. She is watching from the ceiling now.
Everyone leaves.
And suddenly, she has a baby.
Whose baby is this? Did I do this? I cannot do this.
She begins to spiral ,quietly, invisibly, in a room that has already moved on.
I want to be clear that there are far more traumatic versions of this story, and they are lived by real women every day, with outcomes that are even more devastating. What I am describing is not the worst case. It is closer to the average case. And that is the problem. Feel free to share your story below, its valid and meaningful to this conversation.
Because nobody told her she was capable. Because she was not invited into the process of bringing her baby into the world, she was managed through it. Her stillness was read as absence. Her processing was mistaken for detachment. She felt invisible in the most significant moment of her life, and that invisibility has a cost.
She goes home in a body that is sore and foreign, holding a baby she barely got to meet, with a sense of self that has come completely undone, and everyone around her is acting as though she should simply know what to do next. The breastfeeding that she hoped for slipped through that first window, rushed and proceduralized before she ever had the chance to find it herself. Not because her body failed. Because the room did not give her the time or the guidance to learn in the moments that were made for exactly that. And so formula becomes the default, not always by choice, but by circumstance. And the grief of that, for a mother who wanted something different, is real and it deserves to be named.
(There is nothing wrong with formula feeding. There are genuine needs and valid reasons and mothers who choose it fully and freely. What is worth grieving is when a mother does not get to choose ,when the window closes before she ever got to step into it.)
The guilt accumulates. The shame compounds. The resentment settles into the body in ways that do not resolve on their own. And the nervous system, which never forgot any of it, carries all of it forward into the rest of the transition.
This is not a story about a bad birth. This is a story about a system that was never designed to see her. And for a highly sensitive or neurodivergent mother, who already needs more time, more presence, more intentional care to feel safe. The gap between what she needed and what she received does not close easily.
It echoes.
The opportunity for change.
The postpartum window is one of the highest-risk periods in a woman’s life. It is also one of the highest-opportunity for impact.
When a highly sensitive or neurodivergent mother is genuinely held through this transition, not rushed, not misread, not treated as a secondary to her own story, not made to feel that her processing is a problem, deeply positive transformation occurs.
The transformation of matrescence, the becoming that birth initiates, can unfold the way it was always meant to. With room. With witness. With the kind of support that sees her nervous system not as an obstacle to manage, but as the very thing that makes her the mother she is going to be. without shame, guilt or resentment, because those around her worked together to actually protect her nervous system and preserve the safety through vulnerable transition.
That is what this work is for. That is what is possible. And it starts with the people in the room knowing the difference.
I want to hear from you.
If you’re reading this and something stuck out, something felt familiar, please share. Your story ripples to each reader and can help someone feel seen in their darkest most isolating moments.
If you’re just here for the vibes, what drew you in? why did you stay?
If you are a birth worker or perinatal professional looking for language and tools to actually support the highly sensitive and neurodivergent people in your care, I put together a free guide to help you get started. The Nervous System Safety Basics Guide is available on my website. Use the link below to grab it.
This is the work I have committed my life to. I’m building infrastructure, slowly and intentionally, for the people the system keeps getting wrong. I am glad you’re here, let’s make a difference together.
Love always,
Abigail <3
P.S. I'm returning from a month away, which I spent reflecting and aligning with the mission of Mind the Bump. It's good to be back. If you're a writer or educator working in the perinatal, maternal health, or neurodivergent space and you've ever thought about collaborating, I'd genuinely love to hear from you. My inbox is open.