She Was Also Born That Day
Paperback ₹795, free in India · or the e-book
Young Adult Nonfiction: Depression & Mental Health
She was also born that day
A Compassionate Guide for New Moms
Through the Untold, Unfiltered & Unseen
A woman with a doctorate in clinical psychology had a baby and could not make sense of what was happening to her. She knew the research. She could name every diagnosis in it. None of that told her why she felt the way she did at three in the morning with a six-week-old, and it did not make the words any easier to say out loud.
If it was that disorienting with the training, it is far harder without it. She Was Also Born That Day is a postpartum book for Indian mothers, written into that gap: postpartum depression and anxiety, the fourth trimester, and the family in the room while you live through both.
The paperback is posted free within India. The e-book, PDF and EPUB, reaches you anywhere in a minute. Read a page first.
- Free delivery anywhere in India.
- Every rupee the author earns from this book goes to charity.
By a mental health practitioner
PhD · RCI registered
Synergy Books India
Publisher · print edition
Proceeds go to charity
2 foundations, named below
Damaged in transit?
Replaced or refunded within 7 days
you are not failing
What is happening to you has a name
It is called matrescence, the birth of a mother. As real, as physical and as documented as adolescence, and almost nobody in the room will name it for you.
the things you have already typed into your phone at 3 a.m.
- is this normal after having a baby
- why don’t i feel what i’m supposed to feel
- how long does this last
The steepest
hormonal drop a human body goes through
Progesterone and oestrogen fall from pregnancy levels to almost nothing within days of the placenta coming out. Nothing in puberty or menopause is this abrupt.
A brain
physically rebuilding itself
The regions handling emotion, reward and threat are reorganising, so you wake at a sound nobody else hears. That is not anxiety. That is the rewiring working, at the cost of a mind that cannot switch off.
90 minutes
the longest sleep you are getting
And you are healing from a delivery or major abdominal surgery while you do it, often feeding every two hours.
If you did any one of those three things you would not be yourself either.You are doing all three at once.
read a little of it first
In her own words
from chapter two
The mirror moment
One of the hardest moments a new mother often faces is the mirror moment. The moment when she finally gathers courage to walk to the mirror with the intent of tidying up her hair or applying some moisturizer, but who does she really see?
She sees a version of herself that she never saw before and wasn't warmed up to. She sees herself as the finished product of bringing a life into the world, who is now not the most essential, as her job of birthing is over.
But is this really a new normal that she has to live with, or just a body in transition that she has to be attuned with?
Approximately 52–63% of women report negative views about their postpartum bodies. It is totally normal to not instantly be comfortable with a body that you haven't seen before. But it is important to remind yourself that the body you are seeing also just gave you a gift of life, and for that it did take a huge toll on itself.
if you read that and thought she has seen me. That is the whole book
Order your copyThe way through
Ten chapters across the fourth trimester and the year after it, in the order the year actually happens, not the order a textbook would put them in.
The beginning
The caesarean, the bond that did not arrive on cue, and the difference between failing and feeling.
Beyond the baby blues
Where the first fortnight ends and something else begins, depression, anxiety, and postpartum OCD.
But why does it feel so intense?
The rewiring brain, the hormone cliff, and sleep measured in ninety-minute fragments.
Sometimes love can co-exist with opinions and unsolicited advice
In-laws, your own mother, your partner, and forty days of rules nobody explains.
Real mothers make a choice
Feeding, supply, mastitis, D-MER, ghutti, and the guilt manufactured around all of it.
Every mother’s journey is different
Whose life you walked into motherhood carrying, and the comparison the feed feeds you.
Healing isn’t linear and doesn’t have to be perfect
Kintsugi, the grief for the woman you were, and asking where to instead of where from.
Finding yourself again with the strength you thought you never had
Survival mode, and the growth that happens in spaces too small to photograph.
You won’t have to carry it all by yourself
Why mothers say "we’re doing good", and how to actually ask. Includes a mental-health first-aid kit.
A letter to all the mothers who are struggling and still choosing to show up
The keepsake pages, and a letter that ends simply: Love, Rati.
this one is for you if…
Who it's for
- You are in the first year after having a baby, and nobody warned you it would feel like this
- You love your baby and still feel you have lost yourself
- Your house is full of people and you have never felt more alone
- You had a caesarean, a hard delivery, or a birth that went nothing like the plan
- You are a partner, a mother, or a mother-in-law who wants to understand what she is going through
- You work with new mothers, as a psychologist, obstetrician, nurse or doula
giving it to her, not diagnosing her
Buying it for someone?
Most people who buy this book are not the mother. They are her husband, her own mother, her sister, a friend who can see it and cannot name it, and every one of them worries about the same thing: that handing it over will sound like I think there is something wrong with you. It is written so that it does not.
- A signed inscription, free. Ask at checkout and Dr. Khurana writes it herself.
- Posted straight to her. Her address at checkout, packed by hand.
read before it was printed
What clinicians said
A deeply empathetic and vital exploration of early motherhood… a gentle reminder that caring for a newborn must begin with caring for the person who brought them into the world.
Solicited pre-release reads, also printed on the book's back cover. Now showing Dr Nimisha Kumar.
a mental health practitioner, and a mother: the book needed both
who wrote it
Dr. Rati Khurana
Practises in Gurugram and sees mothers online across India. Certified in CBT by the Beck Institute, USA, in Positive CBT, and as an EFT practitioner. Winner of the Beck Institute's Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in Asia, 2024.
not a Western book with an Indian cover
Written for this house, not adapted to it
Relatives with advice that contradicts the doctor. Mothers-in-law with forty years of certainty. The chilla, log kya kahenge, ghutti and honey. These are not footnotes added to an American postpartum guide; they are the architecture of an Indian mother’s first year, and the book is built on them from the ground up.
permission, not instructions
A clinician’s book whose deepest function is permission
A mental health practitioner wrote it, so the clinical spine is there and it is accurate. But its deepest function is the thing no one in the room is saying out loud: that you are allowed to feel this, and you do not have to earn the right to say so first.
before you decide
Questions people ask
No. It reads like a friend talking to you at 3 a.m., not a textbook. The science is woven into plain language, there are no clinical tables inside the chapters, and most people finish it in two or three sittings.
Not at all. Postpartum depression can begin any time in the first year, and a great deal of what the book covers, the grief for who you were, in-law dynamics, the guilt, does not expire at twelve months. Plenty of what mothers carry from that year is still being carried years later.
Yes, and that is most readers. The book is not a treatment manual. It is a companion for the fourth trimester, and much of it is simply permission, to feel what you feel without deciding first whether you have earned the right.
Yes, and it is one of the commonest reasons people buy it. Nothing in the book asks her to accept a label, and it opens on a woman at 3 a.m. rather than on a diagnosis, so the first page she reads is recognition and not assessment. Ask for a signed inscription at checkout and it arrives addressed to her.
Yes. Every organisation is named on this page and linked to its own website, so you can check each of them independently rather than take the claim on trust. Records of the transfers are kept and can be asked for.
A little over a week to most PIN codes, and longer to the north-east and the islands. Tracking is emailed the moment it leaves. The book ships within India only — the author packs and posts every copy herself, so there is no warehouse anywhere in this.
Yes. The paperback ships within India only, but the e-book (PDF and EPUB, the same text word for word) is sold worldwide at helpdocrati.com/book/ebook, priced in your own currency.
The book is written to tell you when it is not. One chapter sets out the specific signs that mean this needs a clinician rather than a companion, and what to do about each of them, so you are not left deciding on instinct.
where your ₹795 goes
This book was never meant to earn anyone anything
The author’s proceeds from this book, her publisher royalties and the margin on every copy sold here, are donated.
Smile FoundationHealth, education and livelihood programmes for Indian children and their families.
U&N FoundationGrassroots initiatives towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for inclusive growth.
Names link to each organisation's own page, so you can check them yourself. Records of the transfers are kept.
₹795, posted to your door.
Packed and posted by the author. Dispatched in 3-5 working days, then 4-8 in transit.
Reading from abroad, or on a phone? The e-book comes as PDF and EPUB, priced in your currency.
if you would rather talk to someone
Some things a book cannot do
A book can tell you that you are not the only one. What it cannot do is look at your particular house, your particular birth and your particular family and tell you what is actually happening. Dr. Khurana sees mothers online across India, the same voice you have been reading, in a room with only you in it.
Stay in touch
Not ready for the book yet, or already reading it? Letters from Dr. Rati for mothers and the families around them, no more than two a month.
Buying for a hospital, clinic, college or team?
Copies for maternity wards, antenatal programmes, counselling departments, libraries and returning-parent programmes are arranged directly. Tell us roughly how many and we will come back with terms.
Your baby was born that day.
So were you.