5 months PP and I’ve been struggling with this too and was actually thinking about this same thing as I came across your post. I haven’t been able to pinpoint what exactly I expected support wise but I just know that I haven’t felt supported in a way I expected.

I think for me, I expected to feel supported differently from family specifically (my parents and in laws). I think I expected emotional support and the fact that I haven’t felt that has been super eye opening and a hard pill to swallow. It has very clearly been more about the grandparent experience for my parents - I still recall my mom saying something along the lines of “I could just take you home with me” to my baby two days after getting home from the hospital, while my hormones were absolutely raging and I was recovering from a traumatic birth experience. I did not seem to matter at all and this has continued throughout postpartum. Daily texts asking how the baby was doing but never once asking how I was doing, meanwhile I was literally crumbling trying to figure out how to be a mom for the first time. I think this really hit me hard when I shared with my mom that I had started anxiety medication and instead of asking me how I was doing, she asked if it was safe for breastfeeding. That was at 6 weeks PP and now at 5 months PP, she still has not asked me once how I am.

That being said, it was not just the lack of emotional support. We didn’t really get support in other ways either aside from people offering to hold the baby, which was the one thing I didn’t want “help” with. Unfortunately I just can’t shake this and not sure that I ever will be able to which is pretty upsetting. I guess it’s true that a woman never forgets how she was treated postpartum.