Mat Leave Was Supposed To Be Fun, Then Along Came the Algorithm

Every new mum has experienced the 3am scroll at some point. You know the one - baby on your chest or halfway through a bottle, the room dark, and one thumb moving on autopilot. You’re not really looking for anything. You’re just… there. And the algorithm knows it.

It starts innocently enough. A reel about newborn sleep and a post about baby-led weaning. A ‘day in the life’ of a mum who seems to have everything together - perfect hair, oat milk latte, pre-pregnancy jeans already. You watch it twice, not because you meant to, but because you zoned out and your thumb forgot to stop.

This is maternity leave and the algorithm, and it’s likely not working in your favour.

The problem isn’t social media, exactly. Most of us were on it long before the baby arrived. The problem is that mat leave changes the conditions. You’re more isolated than you’ve probably ever been as an adult. Your sense of self is changing. You have more hours of broken, directionless time than your pre-baby life ever prepared you for, and a phone always within reach. Into that gap, the algorithm moves fast.

It figures out what you’ll pause on. What you’ll rewatch. What makes you feel something, even if that something is vague inadequacy or some kind of low-level envy you can’t quite name. It’s not malicious, it’s just very, very good at its job.

The content that tends to perform best in the new-mum space is a particular flavour of aspirational. The ‘honest’ account that’s still somehow immaculate. The postpartum body content that’s framed as body positivity but lands as a before-and-after. The productivity mum who’s napping the baby, batch cooking, and building a side hustle, all apparently in the same afternoon.

None of it is necessarily fake. But none of it is the full picture either. And when you’re eight weeks postpartum, running on four hours of sleep and wondering who you are now, the gap between what you’re seeing and what you’re living can feel enormous.

The fix probably isn’t a digital detox. Who has the bandwidth for that on mat leave? It’s about getting more conscious about it.

Notice what you feel after you put the phone down. Not during, during is too easy to ignore. But after. Lighter, or heavier? Inspired, or a bit flat? Your feed is editable. It’s easy to forget that in the fog of early motherhood, but you do actually get to decide what lives there.

Seek out the accounts that make you feel like yourself, or like a version of yourself you actually want to be, not the ones that make you feel like you’re failing a competition you didn’t sign up for.

The algorithm will keep doing what it does. It will serve you the same handful of polished versions of motherhood at 3am tomorrow, and the night after that.

But every now and then, something else cuts through. A quiet moment, a small thought, a version of you that isn’t being performed or optimised or compared.

Those moments don’t trend, but they’re usually the ones that stay with you.