The first few weeks postpartum are wild times. Your body is healing, you’re not getting much sleep, and on top of it all, you’re adjusting to an entirely new person being in your home. And that person depends entirely on you. So it’s totally normal to feel a little disoriented and disorganized.
One mom documented the madness of her first few weeks postpartum, showing the number of dirty diapers she had lying around her house at the end of the day. The response was both encouraging and unnecessarily judgmental.
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Hannah Bhiatt was solo parenting for a day.
Hannah, a mother of two, shared that while she was solo parenting with her children — a toddler and a newborn — she had diapers all over the place. To show just how much of her time was monopolized as she cared for her children, she counted the number of dirty diapers she had lying around her house. They were diapers she changed quickly but didn’t get a chance to discard before some other parenting task demanded her attention.
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Hannah shared that she changes diapers anywhere and collects them later.
“I don’t own a diaper pal or a Diaper Genie,” she explained. “We just collect them and throw them in the dumpster at the end of the day.”
Although Hannah guessed there would be 15 dirty diapers in her home, there were actually 17, with most of them on the side of her bed, where her newborn sleeps. After collecting all of them, the mom concluded the video saying, “No wonder my house freakin’ stinks right now.”
'I miss people having secrets,' one TikTok user wrote.
Although many mothers could relate to the chaos, others took the opportunity to judge her. “This is absolutely not relatable,” one person wrote.
“You don’t need a diaper genie to throw away diapers. Hope this helps,” another critic offered sarcastically.
Others suggested Hannah should have kept this information to herself. “I miss people having secrets,” another commenter wrote. “On the coffee table???? Cmon,” someone else offered.
There were people who sympathized with Hannah.
Thankfully, there were other mothers who understood and offered encouragement for a parenting job well done. “Thats 17 times your sweet babies were prioritized over your house,” one person shared. “It’s 17 times your sweet babies were cleaned and felt comfort and loved. Being a mom is hard. You got this momma!”
“…you are doing amazing with 2 babies alone!” another person wrote encouragingly.
Someone else directed ire at the negative commenters. “I personally would LOVE to know how all these expert and perfect mothers commenting here experienced the first four to six weeks of motherhood,” the person wrote.
The video ended up starting a trend of sharing and acceptance online.
Ultimately, Hannah’s decision to share her story launched an entire hashtag where other mothers posted their #17diapers postpartum stories.
One mother, who goes by @lifeintheashlane on TikTok, shared how she struggled to connect with her second child in the first few weeks. “The guilt that women feel when society judges them for their hormones betraying them, for their body being so drastically different after birth that they don’t know who they are and then y’all expect us to just carry on as normal. It doesn’t always happen,” she commented. “Y’all stop judging these women for sharing their stories.”