Why Your Nervous System Is on High Alert After Baby Arrives

The baby is finally asleep. The house is quiet. You have a precious window of time to rest, shower, or eat a hot meal. But as you lay down, your heart is still pounding in your chest. Every creak of the floorboards makes you jump. You feel a strange vibration under your skin, like a live wire is humming through your veins. You are exhausted—bone-deep exhausted—but you cannot turn off.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. You are experiencing a nervous system on high alert.

In the postpartum period, we talk a lot about hormones, sleep deprivation, and physical recovery from birth. But we rarely talk about the massive recalibration happening in your nervous system. For many new parents, this transition doesn’t feel like a gentle landing; it feels like being stuck in a state of hyper-vigilance, constantly scanning for threats that aren’t there.

This isn’t just “new parent jitters.” It is a physiological response rooted in biology, survival, and sometimes, past trauma.

In this article, we will explore the somatic reality of postpartum life. We will look at why your body feels unsafe even when you are home with your baby, how trauma impacts this transition, and practical, body-based ways to help your nervous system find its way back to safety.

The Biology of Vigilance: Why You Are Wired to Worry

First, let’s normalize what is happening. To some extent, a heightened nervous system is a biological imperative.

From an evolutionary perspective, a human infant is incredibly vulnerable. They cannot run, hide, or feed themselves. They rely entirely on their caregivers for survival. Therefore, nature has designed the parent’s brain—specifically the birthing parent’s brain—to undergo significant changes that prioritize vigilance.

The Amygdala Hijack

During pregnancy and immediately postpartum, the amygdala—the part of the brain responsible for processing fear and threat detection—actually grows in size and activity. This is nature’s way of ensuring you wake up when the baby whimpers, that you smell smoke before anyone else, and that you are fiercely protective of your offspring.

In a balanced system, this “alarm” would ring when there is a need, and then silence itself once the need is met. But for many modern parents, the alarm gets stuck.

The Modern Mismatch

Our biology expects us to be raising children in a community (a village), where threats are tangible (predators, weather) and support is constant. Instead, we are raising children in isolation, often inside boxes (our homes) separated from our support systems. The “threats” we face today are different—financial stress, social media comparisons, returning to work too soon, and the overwhelming pressure to do it all alone.

Your ancient nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a tiger in the bushes and a terrifying email from your boss or a judgmental comment from a relative. It treats all stress as a survival threat, pumping cortisol and adrenaline into your system to keep you ready to fight or flee.

Understanding the Nervous System States

To understand why you feel this way, it helps to understand the Polyvagal Theory, which maps out how our autonomic nervous system responds to safety and danger.

There are three main states we move through:

1. Ventral Vagal (Safety and Connection)

This is the “rest and digest” state. You feel calm, grounded, and capable of connecting with your baby and partner. Your heart rate is steady, your digestion works, and you can engage socially. This is where we want to be most of the time.

2. Sympathetic (Fight or Flight)

This is the “mobilization” state. When a threat is detected, your body gears up for action.

• Postpartum signs: Racing thoughts, inability to sit still, rage cleaning, snapping at your partner, anxiety attacks, feeling “wired but tired.”
• This is the state of high alert. You are running on adrenaline to survive the demands of parenting.

3. Dorsal Vagal (Freeze or Shutdown)

This is the “immobilization” state. When a threat feels too big to fight or flee from, the system shuts down to conserve energy and numb pain.

• Postpartum signs: Numbness, dissociation (feeling like you are floating outside your body), depression, inability to get off the couch, feeling “checked out” even when holding your baby.

Many new parents find themselves oscillating rapidly between Sympathetic (anxiety/rage) and Dorsal Vagal (collapse/depression), rarely spending time in the safe harbor of Ventral Vagal.

Why the “Alarm” Gets Stuck ON After Birth

If the biological shift is normal, why does it feel so unmanageable for some? Several factors contribute to a nervous system that cannot settle.

1. Sleep Deprivation as a Trauma

We often joke about sleepless nights, but chronic sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Sleep is when the nervous system repairs itself and processes the emotional data of the day. Without it, your baseline for stress lowers dramatically.

When you are sleep-deprived, your prefrontal cortex (the rational, thinking brain) weakens its connection to the amygdala (the emotional, fear brain). This means you lose the ability to reason with your fear. A crying baby at 3 AM doesn’t just feel like a nuisance; it feels like an emergency. Your body stays in a state of sympathetic activation just to keep you awake, creating a cycle of exhaustion and wiring.

2. The Physical Trauma of Birth

Whether you had a “textbook” delivery or a complicated emergency C-section, birth is a massive physical event. It involves pain, intense sensation, and a complete hormonal crash.

If your birth experience felt frightening, overwhelming, or out of control, your body may have stored that energy. In somatic therapy, we understand that trauma isn’t just about what happened, but about the energy that got “trapped” in the body when the fight-or-flight cycle wasn’t completed. If you felt helpless during birth (a freeze response), your nervous system might still be stuck in that moment, waiting for safety that hasn’t fully registered yet.

3. Sensory Overload

New parenthood is a sensory assault.

• Touch: You are being touched constantly by a baby who needs holding, feeding, and rocking. This can lead to “touched out” syndrome, where your skin actually feels like it’s burning or crawling.
• Sound: A baby’s cry is biologically designed to pierce your brain. It triggers an immediate stress response.
• Visual: The clutter of baby gear, the constant mess, the lights on at all hours.

For a highly sensitive nervous system, this constant input keeps the threat detection system firing. You are overstimulated, and your body interprets that overstimulation as danger.

The Role of Past Trauma: When Ghosts Enter the Nursery

One of the most profound reasons for a high-alert nervous system postpartum is the resurfacing of past trauma. Parenthood is a vulnerability amplifier. It cracks you open, which lets the light in, but also lets old ghosts out.

Implicit Memories

Trauma is often stored in implicit memory—meaning it’s not a movie-scene memory you can describe, but a feeling in your body. The sensation of being helpless, trapped, or ignored as a child can be reactivated by the experience of parenting a helpless infant.

If you grew up in a chaotic or unsafe home, your nervous system developed a “survival setting” of hyper-vigilance. You learned to scan the room for danger (a parent’s mood, a loud noise) to stay safe.

• The Trigger: Now, as a parent, the unpredictability of a baby triggers that old survival setting. Your body remembers: Unpredictability = Danger.
• The Result: You try to control everything—the schedule, the ounces of milk, the sleep environment—because your inner child believes that control is the only way to be safe.

Trauma-Informed Care for Parents

This is where trauma-informed care becomes essential. We aren’t just treating “postpartum anxiety”; we are honoring the fact that your body is remembering its history. Dr. Esther Chon specializes in helping parents untangle the current reality of the baby from the past reality of their own childhood.

When we look through a trauma lens, we stop asking “What is wrong with you for being so stressed?” and start asking “What is your body trying to protect you from?”

Somatic Signs Your Nervous System Needs Support

How do you know if you are just “tired” or if your nervous system is dysregulated? Here are somatic (body-based) clues to look for:

• Startle Reflex: You jump easily at noises or touch.
• Jaw Tension: You wake up with a sore jaw or catch yourself clenching your teeth throughout the day.
• Shallow Breathing: You notice you are holding your breath or breathing only into your upper chest (apical breathing), which signals panic to the brain.
• Digestive Issues: Your stomach is always in knots, or you have sudden nausea. The gut shuts down in fight-or-flight.
• Inability to Focus: Your eyes dart around the room; you can’t finish a sentence or a task.
• Hypersensitivity: Clothes feel too tight, lights are too bright, and noises are physically painful.
• Phantom Cries: Hearing the baby cry when they are fast asleep or not even in the house.

Moving from High Alert to Safe Harbor: Somatic Strategies

You cannot “think” your way out of a nervous system response. Telling yourself to “calm down” usually backfires. You have to communicate safety to your body in a language it understands: sensation, rhythm, and breath.

Here are practical strategies to down-regulate a high-alert system.

1. The Physiological Sigh

This is one of the fastest ways to engage the parasympathetic (rest) nervous system.

• How to do it: Take a double inhale through your nose (one long breath, followed by a short sharp sip of air to fully inflate the lungs).
• Then: Exhale long and slow through the mouth, as if you are breathing through a thin straw.
• Why it works: It offloads carbon dioxide and physically slows the heart rate. Do this 3-5 times when you feel the panic rising.

2. Orienting to the Environment

Anxiety creates tunnel vision. To break the tunnel, you need to show your brain that the immediate environment is safe.

• How to do it: Slowly turn your head and neck to look around the room. Let your eyes land on objects—a chair, a plant, a window. Name them silently. “That is a green pillow. That is a wooden floor.”
• Why it works: This mimics the biological “scanning” animals do. By turning your head slowly (not frantically), you signal to your brain stem: “I have looked, and there is no tiger.”

3. Weighted Connection

Pressure is calming for the nervous system (think of swaddling a baby).

• How to do it: When you are sitting, place a heavy pillow on your lap. Wrap yourself tightly in a blanket. Or, ask your partner to squeeze your arms firmly or place a heavy hand on your back/shoulder blades.
• Why it works: Proprioceptive input (pressure) helps you feel the boundaries of your body, which can stop the feeling of floating away or shattering.

4. Shake It Off

Animals shake after a stressful event to discharge the adrenaline. Humans tend to freeze and hold it in.

• How to do it: If you have a moment of high stress (a screaming fit, a scary thought), find a safe spot and literally shake your body. Shake your hands, your legs, bounce on your heels. Make a sound (a low hum or a groan).
• Why it works: This completes the stress cycle, allowing the energy to leave your muscles rather than staying trapped as tension.

5. Co-Regulation with Nature

Nature is inherently regulating. The fractals in leaves, the sound of wind, and the color green reduce cortisol levels.

• How to do it: Step outside. Even for 2 minutes. Put your bare feet on the grass or dirt. Look at the sky.
• Why it works: It changes the sensory input from the artificial (screens, indoor lights) to the natural, hitting the reset button on your sensory overload.

Repairing the “Village” Gap

One of the biggest stressors for the nervous system is isolation. We are pack animals; being alone with a vulnerable infant registers as dangerous to the primal brain.

To heal your nervous system, you must build pockets of community. This doesn’t mean having a party; it means having safe others.

• Ask for specific help: Instead of “I need help,” try “I need you to hold the baby for 20 minutes so I can take a shower without listening for cries.”
• Body doubling: Have a friend come over just to sit on the couch while you fold laundry or feed the baby. You don’t need to entertain them. Just having another safe adult in the room lowers the threat level for your nervous system.

Professional Support: When to Reach Out

Sometimes, these strategies aren’t enough. If your nervous system is stuck in a chronic loop of panic, rage, or shutdown, and it is impacting your ability to function or bond, it is time to seek support.

At Therapy and Play, we offer trauma recovery and somatic therapy specifically designed for this life stage. We don’t just sit and talk; we work with the body.

Somatic Therapy for Postpartum

Somatic therapy helps you:

• Identify where the tension lives in your body.
• Safely discharge the “stuck” energy from birth or past trauma.
• Expand your “window of tolerance”—the amount of stress you can handle without flipping into fight-or-flight.

EMDR for Birth Trauma

If your high alert is linked to a traumatic birth experience, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can be incredibly effective. It helps the brain reprocess the memories so they feel like something that happened in the past, rather than something that is happening right now.

A Note on Compassion

If you are reading this and realizing your nervous system is fried, please offer yourself grace. You are not “doing it wrong.” You are a mammal doing a fiercely difficult job in an environment you weren’t evolved for.

Your high alert state is a testament to how much you care about your baby’s survival. It is your body trying to love them the best way it knows how—by protecting them. Now, it is time to teach your body that you deserve protection too.

You can reclaim a sense of safety. You can find moments of true rest. It starts by listening to the quiet signals of your body and honoring them.

If you are in Washington or California and are ready to help your nervous system land softly, connect with us. We are here to hold the space so you don’t have to be on guard alone.